It is difficult to trace the origins of jazz because it was originally an improvised music, transmitted orally rather than being recorded. What we do know is that it originated in the South and that New Orleans was the first significant center of activity. We also know that the music resulted from the mixing of both European and West African music traditions. The use of call and response, blue and bent notes, and complex rhythms came from African cultures. European influence was evident in the harmonic structures used and some of the instruments adopted by the early jazz bands.

     Two other jazz-related styles, also based on African influence, also developed in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, ragtime and blues. Ragtime was a highly syncopated music used for the cakewalk, a popular dance during the 1890s. Although played on a variety of instruments, ragtime eventually became a dance music for piano. It was composed rather than improvised.

     Blues derived from work songs and field hollers that were sung by slaves as they worked on southern plantations. It was a vocal form, usually accompanied by banjo or guitar. A distinguishing feature of the style was the use of blue notes, usually the flatted third and seventh of the scale. In the mid-1920s a female blues craze was led by Bessie Smith, who is considered the greatest of the female blues artists.

     New Orleans-style jazz, sometimes called Dixieland jazz, featured a small instrumental group made up of a front line and a rhythm section. Although a variety of instruments appeared in the front line, the most common front line consisted of one or two cornets, clarinet, and trombone. These instruments were supported by a rhythm section consisting of tuba, banjo, and sometimes piano and string bass and drums. The rhythm section provided a steady beat and filled in harmonies while the front line improvised collectively around a known melody.

     Beginning in the first decade of the century blacks migrated out of the South to other parts of the United States. This migration included many jazz musicians. Added to this impetus was the fact that in 1917 New Orlean’s Storyville district was shut down. Although musicians traveled to cities upriver from New Orleans and took trains east and west, the next important center of jazz activity was Chicago.

     In Chicago the style changed somewhat. Solo improvisation came to be featured more than collective improvisation. One of the leading figures in this era was Louis Armstrong. Armstrong is credited with creating a rhythmic style that was the embodiment of swing. His scat singing and his approach to improvisation were highly influential.

     By the mid-1930s, with the repeal of prohibition, the economic recovery following the Great Depression, and the advent of radio broadcasts, a new style of jazz emerged. Because of dance halls and ballrooms opening up, larger groups were needed to be heard over crowd noise. This led to the development of the big band and what became known as the swing era.

     The big band was made up of from fifteen to seventeen performers grouped in sections. The sax section consisted of anywhere from three to five sax players, all of whom doubled on other woodwind instruments. The brass section included both trumpets and trombones. The rhythm section was made up of piano, bass, drum set, and sometimes guitar. Many of the bands included one or more vocalists, too. Band leaders often became nationally recognized figures. Some of the most successful were Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Benny Goodman. 

QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 

1. Because blues and jazz musicians originally transmitted their music orally, it is difficult to trace the origins of either form. In addition, racism that prevented these styles from being accepted as legitimate music. Likewise, because much of the music making took place in saloons and other less than savory places during the early twentieth century, it wasn’t considered respectable. A final hurdle that took more than half a century to surmount was the acceptance of jazz as a legitimate art form by academia. It has been only during the last thirty or forty years that serious, scholarly study of the history and origins of this music has been undertaken.

2. Once the recording industry caught up with the music, jazz and blues became widely known and enjoyed. The first jazz recording was issued in 1917, featuring a group of white New Orleans jazzmen calling themselves the Original Dixieland Jass [sic] Band. In 1920, Mamie Smith, a veteran vaudeville singer, recorded “Crazy Blues,” which was the first recording to use the word “blues” in the title. It wasn’t in the traditional blues form, but it launched a blues craze, especially for female performers. Between 1920 and 1926 hundreds of sides were issued by dozens of female artists. Following this craze, the hunt for “authentic” blues began. The result was recordings by male blues artists like Son House, Robert Johnson, and Blind Lemon Jefferson.

3. Scott Joplin’s lifelong ambition was to be considered a composer of serious music. With the success of “Maple Leaf Rag,” he moved to St. Louis, Missouri to study composition with the conductor of the St. Louis Symphony. He then went to New York in the hopes of producing his ragtime opera, Treemonisha. He was unable to find backers and ended up producing it himself in an off-Broadway theater, with only a piano for an orchestra. The opera received little attention in the press and Joplin, depressed and exhausted, died not long after. The opera was ignored until a 1972 production by Morehouse College in Atlanta with Robert Shaw conducting.

4. Although the blues began as a vocal form, instrumentalists began taking up the style, using blue and bent notes in their performances. The form continued throughout the twentieth century. Charlie Parker recorded numerous blues tunes and Miles Davis, in his move to modal jazz, recorded a milestone album, Kind of Blue, featuring blues and blues-related tunes. Early rock and roll traces its origins to a blues influence, too.

FURTHER TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION

1. What elements present in “Village Celebration” are related to the blues or jazz?

2. How does the big band of the swing era differ from the New Orleans style band?

3. Although jazz and the blues came primarily from the black experience and were practiced first by black Americans, many white artists were involved from the start. Nick Larocca, the leader of the Original Dixieland Jass Band; Bix Beiderbecke, a cornetist with Paul Whiteman and also with the Wolverines; and Marion Harris, a wonderful blues singer from the 1920s, were all important contributors.