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~History of Jazz~
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The front line:
Cornet--carries the melody (later replaced by trumpet)
Clarinet--harmonizes above the melody
Trombone--punctuates the melody from below
The rhythm section:
Drums--keeps a steady beat
Bass--holds the sound together
Guitar--provides chord structure
(later replaced by banjo and/or piano)
Most early jazz was played in small marching bands or by solo pianists. Besides ragtime and marches, the repertoire included hymns, spirituals, and blues. The bands played this music, modified frequently by syncopations and acceleration, at picnics, weddings, parades, and funerals. Characteristically, the bands played dirges on the way to funerals and lively marches on the way back.
Although blues and ragtime had arisen independently of jazz, and continued to exist alongside it, these genres influenced the style and forms of jazz and provided important vehicles for jazz improvisation.
The earliest easily available jazz recordings are from the 1920's and early 1930's. Trumpet player and vocalist Louis Armstrong ("Pops", "Satchmo") was by far the most important figure of this period. He played with groups called the Hot Five and the Hot Seven; any recordings you can find of these groups are recommended. The style of these groups, and many others of the period, is often referred to as New Orleans jazz or Dixieland. It is characterized by collective improvisation, in which all performers simultaneously play improvised melodic lines within the harmonic structure of the tune. Louis, as a singer, is credited with the invention of scat, in which the vocalist makes up nonsense syllables to sing improvised lines. Other notable performers of New Orleans or Dixieland jazz include clarinetist Johnny Dodds, soprano saxophone player Sidney Bechet, trumpeter King Oliver, and trombonist Kid Ory.
Other styles popular during this period were various forms of piano jazz, including ragtime, Harlem stride, and boogie-woogie. These styles are actually quite distinct, but all three are characterized by rhythmic, percussive left hand lines and fast, full right hand lines. Scott Joplin and Jelly Roll Morton were early ragtime pioneers. Fats Waller, Willie "The Lion" Smith and James P. Johnson popularized the stride left hand pattern (bass note, chord, bass note, chord); Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis developed this into the faster moving left hand patterns of boogie-woogie. Earl "Fatha" Hines was a pianist who was especially known for his right hand, in which he did not often play full chords or arpeggios, playing instead "horn-like" melodic lines. This has become commonplace since then. Art Tatum is considered by many to be the greatest jazz pianist ever; he was certainly one of the most technically gifted, and his harmonic insights paved the way for many who came after him. He is sometimes considered a precursor of bebop.
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~New Orleans Jazz~
~Around the turn of the 20th century the earliest fully documented jazz style emerged, centered in New Orleans, Louisiana. In this style the cornet or trumpet carried the melody, the clarinet played florid countermelodies, and the trombone played rhythmic slides and sounded the root notes of chords or simple harmony. Below this basic trio the tuba or string bass provided a bass line and drums the rhythmic accompaniment. Exuberance and volume were more important than finesse, and improvisation was focused on the ensemble sound.
A musician named Buddy Bolden appears to have led some of the first jazz bands, but their music and its sound have been lost to posterity. Although some jazz influences can be heard on a few early phonograph records, not until 1917 did a jazz band record. This band, a group of white New Orleans musicians called The Original Dixieland Jazz Band, created a sensation overseas and in the United States (The term Dixieland jazz eventually came to mean the New Orleans style as played by white musicians.) Two groups, one white and one black, followed: in 1922 the New Orleans Rhythm Kings and in 1923 the Creole Jazz Band, the latter led by the cornetist King Oliver, an influential stylist. The series of recordings made by Oliver's group are the most significant recordings in the New Orleans style. Other leading New Orleans musicians included the trumpeters Bunk Johnson and Freddie Keppard, the soprano saxophonist Sidney Bechet, the drummer Warren "Baby" Dodds, and the pianist and composer Jelly Roll Morton. The most influential musician nurtured in New Orleans, however, was King Oliver's second trumpeter, Louis Armstrong.
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Biography of Louis Armstrong
New Orleans Excursion main page
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~Louis Armstrong
~The first true virtuoso soloist of jazz, Armstrong was a dazzling improviser, technically, emotionally, and intellectually. He changed the format of jazz by bringing the soloist to the forefront, and in his recording groups, the Hot Five and the Hot Seven, demonstrated that jazz improvisation could go far beyond simply ornamenting the melody-he created new melodies based on the chords of the initial tune. He also set standards for all later jazz singers, not only by the way he altered the words and melodies of songs but also by improvising without words, like an instrument (scat singing).
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~*Preservation Hall*
~New Orleans is considered the birthplace of jazz. The finest in tradional New Orleans jazz is performed at Preservation Hall by jazzmen of the old school. |
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