The Jazz Age

1. The Jazz Age Jazz developed in turn-of-the-century New Orleans from the confluence of multiple music traditions. The new style incorporated blue notes, call and response, syncopation, poly rhythms and improvisation. The Jazz Age

2. The Jazz Age The basic instruments of jazz were those used in marching bands and dance bands: brass, reeds and drums. Small bands of musicians, most of whom came from New Orleans, played a seminal role in the development and dissemination of early jazz.

3. The Origins of Jazz The origins of the word Jazz are uncertain. The word is rooted in American slang, and various derivations have been suggested. Jazz was not applied to music until about 1915. Earl Hines, born in 1903 and later to become a celebrated "jazz" musician, used to claim that he was "playing piano before the word 'jazz' was even invented". Music in America, MU-112WI

4. While jazz may be difficult to define, improvisation is clearly one of its key elements. Early blues was commonly structured around a repetitive call-and-response pattern, a common element in folk music. A form of folk music which rose in part from work songs and field hollers, early blues was also highly improvisational. These features are fundamental to the nature of jazz. The Elements of Jazz Jazz, an improvisational art form Music in America, MU-112WI

5. While in European classical music elements of interpretation, ornamentation and accompaniment are sometimes left to the performer's discretion, the performer's primary goal is to play a composition as it was written. In jazz, however, the performer will interpret a tune in very individual ways, never playing the same composition exactly the same way twice. Improvisation Music in America, MU-112WI

6. Improvisation Depending upon the performer's mood and personal experience, interactions with fellow musicians, or even members of the audience, a jazz musician/performer may alter melodies, harmonies or time signature at will. In Dixieland jazz, performers took turns playing the melody, while others improvised countermelodies. Music in America, MU-112WI

7. European classical music has been said to be a composer's medium. Jazz, however, is often characterized as the product of democratic creativity, interaction and collaboration, placing equal value on the contributions of composer and performer, 'adroitly weighing the respective claims of the composer and the improviser'.

8. The interaction between various ethnic music traditions had been a part of mainstream popular music in the United States for generations, going back to 19th century minstrel show tunes and the 'European'-style melodies of (such as) Stephen Foster. Public dance halls, clubs and tea rooms had opened in the cities.

9. The popular dance music of the time were blues-ragtime styles. The music was vibrant, enthusiastic and almost always improvised. Early Ragtime music was in the format of marches, waltzes and other traditional song forms but the consistent characteristic was syncopation. The Jazz Age Music in America, MU-112WI

10. Syncopated notes and rhythms became so popular with the public that sheet music publishers included the word "syncopated" in their advertising. In 1899, a classically trained young pianist from Missouri, Scott Joplin, published the first of many Ragtime compositions that would come to shape the music of a nation. Bandleader Buddy Bolden's performances in New Orleans parades and dances are an early example of jazz-style improvisation. The Jazz Age

11. Later, Tin Pan Alley composers like Irving Berlin began to incorporate ragtime into their compositions. The rapid growth of public schooling in the post-bellum produced more formally trained musicians. The Jazz Age Music in America, MU-112WI

12. For example, Lorenzo Tio, Scott Joplin and many other important figures in the early jazz period were schooled in classical musical forms. Joplin, the son of a former slave and a free-born woman of color, was largely self-taught until age 11, when he received lessons in the fundamentals of music theory. Musicians with formal music skills helped to preserve and disseminate the essentially improvisational musical styles of jazz. The Jazz Age Music in America, MU-112WI

13. A number of regional styles contributed to the development of jazz. In the New Orleans area an early style of jazz called "Dixieland" developed. New Orleans had long been a regional music center. In addition to the slave population, New Orleans also had North America's largest community of free people of color. The Jazz Age

14. The New Orleans style used more intricate rhythmic improvisation than ragtime, and incorporated "blues" style elements, including "bent" and "blue" notes and began using European instruments in novel ways. The Jazz Age

15. Key figures in the development of the new style were trumpeter Buddy Bolden and his band, who arranged blues tunes for brass instruments and improvised. Also Freddie Keppard, who was influenced by Bolden, Joe Oliver whose style was bluesier than Bolden's, Kid Ory, a trombonist who refined the style and Papa Jack Laine who led a multi-ethnic band called the Waifs. The Jazz Age

16. In 1891 in Charleston, South Carolina, Reverend Daniel J. Jenkins, an African-American minister, established the Jenkins Orphanage which produced a variety of orphanage bands and Louis Armstrong came out of The New Orleans Home for Colored Waifs. The Jazz Age

17. In the northeastern United States, a "hot" style of playing ragtime developed, characterized by rollicking rhythms, without the bluesy influence of the southern styles. The music had collective improvised solos, around a melodic structure, that ideally built to a climax, supported by a rhythm section of drums, bass, banjo or guitar. The Jazz Age

18. The solo piano version of the northeast style was typified by Eubie Blake's "Stride" piano playing, in which the right hand plays the melody, while the left hand provides the rhythm and bass line. 'Stride' was developed further by James P. Johnson who was then to influence later pianists like Fats Waller and Willie "The Lion" Smith. The new inventions of recordings and radio spread the "Hot" new sound across the country. The Jazz Age

19. In Chicago in the early 1910s, saxophones vigorously "ragged" a melody over a dance band rhythm section, blending New Orleans styles and creating a new "Chicago Jazz" sound. Chicago was the breeding ground for many young, inventive players. The Jazz Age

20. Characterized by harmonic, innovative arrangements and a high technical ability of the players, Chicago Style Jazz significantly furthered the improvised music of its day. Contributions from dynamic players like Louis Armstrong, Earl Hines, Eddie Condon, Bix Beiderbecke and Bud Freeman helped to pioneer jazz from its infancy and inspire those who followed. The Jazz Age

21. With Prohibition, the constitutional amendment that forbade the sale of alcoholic beverages, speakeasies emerged as nightlife settings, and many early jazz artists played in them. The invention of the phonograph record and the rise of popularity in radio helped the proliferation of jazz as well. The Jazz Age – 1920s

22. Radio stations helped to popularize Jazz, which became associated with sophistication and decadence that helped to earn the era the nickname of the "Jazz Age." In the early 1920s, popular music was still a mixture of things: current dance songs, novelty songs, and show tunes. In this decade, jazz music became popularized in a mainstreamed dance music form popularized by such orchestra leaders as Paul Whiteman and Ted Lewis. The Jazz Age – 1920s

23. Paul Whiteman, the self-proclaimed "King of Jazz," was a popular band cheerleader of the 1920s who hired Bix Beiderbecke and other white jazz musicians and combined jazz with elaborate orchestrations. Whiteman commissioned Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, which was debuted by Whiteman's Orchestra. The Jazz Age – 1920s Music in America, MU-112WI

24. Ted Lewis was another popular bandleader. Some of the other bandleaders included: Harry Reser, Leo Reisman, Abe Lyman, Nat Shilkret, George Olsen, Ben Bernie, Bob Haring, Ben Selvin, Earl Burtnett, Gus Arnheim, Rudy Vallee,, Isham Jones, Sam Lanin, Vincent Lopez, Ben Pollack and Fred Waring among others. The Jazz Age – 1920s

25. “True Jazz” Music that would be considered "true Jazz" today, never became widely popularized except among isolated groups in cities, especially among minorities to whom race records, with true Jazz music, were marketed. Music in America, MU-112WI

26. The 1930s belonged to Swing - and to the radio and dancing. During what many regard as jazz's classic era the popular bands became larger in size - Big Bands – and the solo became more important in jazz, with the soloists sometimes as famous as their leaders. The Jazz Age – 1930s

27. Key figures in developing the "big" jazz band were bandleaders and arrangers Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Earl Hines, Jimmie Lunceford, Walter Page, Don Redman and Chick Webb. Other Big Bands, such as Artie Shaw's, Tommy Dorsey's and Benny Goodman's "Orchestra", were highly jazz oriented while others, such as, later, Glenn Miller's, left less space for improvisation. The Jazz Age – 1930s

28. Swing was also dance music - hence its immediate connection to the people - and it was broadcast 'live' coast-to-coast nightly across America for many years, most famously by The Earl Hines Band from Al Capone's Grand Terrace Cafe in Chicago, well-positioned for the 'live coast-to-coast' time-zone broadcasting problem. Although it was a collective sound, swing also offered individual musicians a chance to 'solo' and improvise melodic, thematic solos which could at times be very complex and 'important' music. The Jazz Age – 1930s

29. The Jazz Age – 1930s Over time, social strictures regarding racial segregation began to relax, and white bandleaders began to recruit black musicians. In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman hired pianist Teddy Wilson, vibraphonist Lionel Hampton, and guitarist Charlie Christian to join small groups. During this period, swing and big band music were popular. Music in America, MU-112WI

30. The Jazz Age – 1930s The influence of Louis Armstrong can be seen in bandleaders like Cab Calloway, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, and vocalists like Bing Crosby, who were influenced by Armstrong's style of improvising. The style further spread to vocalists such as Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday; later, Frank Sinatra and Sarah Vaughan, among others, would jump on the scat bandwagon. Music in America, MU-112WI

31. The Jazz Age – 1930s An early 1940s style known as "jumping the blues" or jump music used small combos, up-tempo music, and blues chord progressions. Jump blues drew on boogie-woogie from the 1930s, with the rhythm section playing "eight to the bar," (eight beats per measure instead of four). Big Joe Turner became a boogie-woogie star in the 1940s, and then in the 1950s was an early rock and roll musician The mid 1990s saw a revival of Swing music fueled by the retro trends in dance. Music in America, MU-112WI

32. Kansas City Jazz in the 1930s marked the transition from big bands to the bebop influence of the 1940s. During the Depression and Prohibition eras, the Kansas City Jazz scene thrived as a mecca for the modern sounds of late 1920s and 30s. Characterized by soulful and bluesy styling's of Big Band in particular Jay McShann's and small ensemble Swing, arrangements often showcased highly energetic solos played to "speakeasy" audiences. The Jazz Age – 1930s

33. Alto sax pioneer Charlie Parker hailed from Kansas City via Jay McShann's Big Band. Tom Pendergast encouraged the development of night clubs featuring musical improvisation. In 1936, the Kansas city era waned when producer John H. Hammond began sending Kansas City acts to New York City. The Jazz Age – 1930s

34. 1940s In the mid-1940s bebop performers such as saxophonist Charlie Parker, pianist Bud Powell and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie helped to shift jazz from danceable popular music towards a more challenging "musician's music." Differing greatly from swing, early bebop divorced itself from dance music, establishing itself more as an art form but lessening its potential popular and commercial value. The Jazz Age

35. Other bebop musicians included pianist Thelonious Monk, drummer Kenny Clarke, trumpeters Clifford Brown and Fats Navarro, saxophonists Wardell Gray and Sonny Stitt, bassist Ray Brown, drummer Max Roach, guitarist Charlie Christian and vocalist Betty Carter. The Jazz Age – 1940s

36. Beboppers borrowed from the innovations of key earlier musicians – in particular Coleman Hawkins, Earl Hines, Art Tatum and Lester Young – and carried their ideas several steps further, introducing new forms of chromaticism and dissonance into jazz. Where many earlier styles of jazz improvisation kept close to the basic key and melodic line of the piece, bebop soloists engaged in a more abstracted form of chord-based improvisation. The Jazz Age – 1940s

37. The Jazz Age – 1940s This often involved the use of "passing" (i.e. additional) chords, substitute chords, and altered chords which stepped outside of the basic key of the piece. Notes usually thought of as temporary dissonances in earlier jazz were used by the boppers as key melody notes – for instance, the flatted fifth (or augmented fourth) of the scale.

38. The Jazz Age 1940s The style of drumming shifted too, from the earlier four-to-the-bar bass-drum pulse to a more elusive and explosive style where the ride cymbal was used to keep time while the snare and bass drum were used for unpredictable accents. Music in America, MU-112WI

39. These divergences from the jazz mainstream of the time initially met with a divided, sometimes hostile response among fans and fellow musicians. (Louis Armstrong, for instance, condemned bebop as "Chinese music.") But it was not long before bebop's influence was felt throughout jazz: older big-band leaders like Woody Herman (extensively) and Benny Goodman (briefly) experimented with the style. By the 1950s bebop had become an accepted part of the jazz vocabulary, and it has come to form the bedrock of modern jazz practice. The Jazz Age – 1950s

40. Hard bop is an extension of bebop (or "bop") music that incorporates influences from rhythm and blues, gospel music, and blues, especially in the saxophone and piano playing. Hard bop was developed in the mid-1950s, partly in response to the vogue for cool jazz that became popular in the early 1950s. It is in part intended to be more accessible to audiences unfamiliar with or not fond of bop. Hard bop brought the church and gospel music back into jazz. The Jazz Age – 1950s

41. The hard bop style coalesced in 1953 and 1954, paralleling the rise of rhythm and blues. The performance by Miles Davis of his composition "Walkin'," the title track of his album of the same year, at the very first Newport Jazz Festival in 1954, announced the style to the jazz world. The quintet by Art Blakey featured pianist Horace Silver and trumpeter Clifford Brown, all of whom would be leaders in the hard bop movement along with Davis. HARD BOP The Jazz Age – 1950s

42. The hard bop style enjoyed its greatest popularity in the 1950s and 1960s, but hard bop performers, and elements of the music, remain popular in jazz. According to Nat Hentoff in his 1957 liner notes for the Blakey Columbia LP of the same name, the phrase "hard bop" was originated by critic-pianist John Mehegan, jazz reviewer of the New York Herald Tribute at that time. Soul jazz developed from hard bop. The Jazz Age – 1950s

43. The Jazz Age – since 1960 Free jazz and avant-garde jazz, are two partially overlapping subgenres that, while rooted in bebop, typically use less compositional material and allow performers more latitude. Free jazz uses implied or loose harmony and tempo, which was deemed controversial when this approach was first developed.

44. Early performances of these styles go back as early as the late 40s and early 50s: LennieTristano'sIntuition and Digression (1949) and Descent into the Maelstrom (1953) are often credited as anticipations of the later free jazz movement, though they seem not to have had a direct influence on it. The bassist Charles Mingus is also frequently associated with the avant-garde in jazz, although his compositions draw off a myriad of styles and genres. FREE JAZZ & AVANT-GARDE The Jazz Age – since 1960

45. FREE JAZZ & AVANT-GARDE The first major stirrings of what free jazz came in the 1950s, with the early work of Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor. In the 1960s, performers included John Coltrane, Sun Ra, Makanda , Pharoah Sanders, Don Pullen, and others. Ken Vandermark, William Parker, and Evan Parker are leading contemporary free jazz musicians, and musicians such as Coleman, Taylor and Sanders continued to play in this style. The Jazz Age – since 1960

46. ROCK FUSION In the late 1960s and early 1970s the hybrid form of jazz-rock fusion was developed. Although jazz purists protested the blend of jazz and rock, some of jazz' significant innovators crossed over from the contemporary hardbop scene into fusion. Jazz fusion music often uses mixed meters, odd time signatures, syncopation, and complex chords and harmonies, and fusion includes a number of electric instruments, such as the electric guitar, electric bass, electric piano, and synthesizer keyboards. The Jazz Age – Since1960

47. ROCK FUSION Notable performers of jazz fusion included Miles Davis, keyboardists Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock, drummer Tony Williams, guitarists Larry Coryell and John McLaughlin, Frank Zappa (and his drummers Terry Bozzio, and Vinnie Colaiuta), Al Di Meola, jazz violinist Jean-Luc Ponty, Sun Ra, Narada Michael Walden, Wayne Shorter, and bassist-composer JacoPastorius. The Jazz Age – Since1960

48. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, jazz fusion gradually turned into a lighter commercial form called pop fusion or "smooth jazz" (see paragraph below). Although pop fusion and smooth jazz were commercially successful and garnered significant radio airplay, this lighter form of fusion moved away from the style's original innovations. But into the 1990s and 2000s, some fusion bands and performers such as Tribal Tech have continued to develop and innovate within the genre. The Jazz Age – Since 1960

49. Smooth jazz solos were actually very stylized. For instance, the saxophone improvisations by Kenny G were considered "light fusion." His music became popular. Musicians gave this music the name "fuzak" (cf. muzak) because it was a soft, pleasant fusion of jazz and rock. By the late 1990s smooth jazz became very popular and was receiving a lot of radio exposure. The Jazz Age – Since1960

50. Some of the most famous saxophonists of this style were Grover Washington, Jr., Kenny G and Najee and many imitators. Kenny G’s music and smooth jazz in general defined a large segment of jazz during the 1980s and 1990s. Not only is smooth jazz played on the radio and in jazz clubs, it is also played in airports, banks, offices, auditoriums and arenas. The Jazz Age since 1960