Jazz

St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture, Jan 29, 2002 by Tad Richards

Of all the great American musical forms--blues, rock 'n' roll, country, and jazz--jazz has proven to be the most subtle, the most flexible, the most capable of growth and change, the one which has developed from folk art and popular art to fine art. Due partly to the extraordinary talents and innovators who have dotted the history of jazz, the wide range of artistic possibilities available to jazz are inherent in the form itself: a music which is structured enough to permit intricate compositions for ensemble play, but loose enough to allow for individual improvisation, individual style and voicing, and considerable virtuosity.

Jazz developed around the turn of the twentieth century in the South and Southwest, particularly New Orleans. It built on a number of earlier African American musical forms, including blues and ragtime, and European-influenced popular music and dances. The first great New Orleans jazz innovators, such as Buddy Bolden (who never recorded), Louis Armstrong, Bunk Johnson, Jelly Roll Morton, Freddie Keppard, King Oliver, and Sidney Bechet, added a number of key African American musical techniques to conventional popular and dance music styles. The two most important were the blue note, a microtonal variation on conventional pitch, and the complex rhythmic variations developed from the polyrhythmic heritage of African drumming. These additions gave jazz the rhythmic flexibility that came to be called "swing"--an almost indefinable quality which has been summed up best in the Duke Ellington song, "It Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing."

Although there are reports of jazz being played in the first few years of the twentieth century, the early musicians were not recorded. The first recorded jazz album came in 1917 when a white group, the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, recorded for both Columbia and RCA Victor, with million-selling results. It took longer for record companies to take a chance on black jazz musicians. Mamie Smith's recording of "Crazy Blues," in 1920, began a blues craze, and many of the early appearances on record by the great African American jazz masters, like Armstrong, were as accompanists to blues singers.

Meanwhile, as the recording industry grew throughout the 1920s, the post-World War I generation found itself restless, dissatisfied, and looking for expressions of his own identity. The era was called the Jazz Age, but the Jazz Age was basically a white, middle-class phenomenon, and the music which became popular was mostly by white groups like the Original Dixieland Jazz Band. Some of them were excellent musicians--in particular Iowa-born cornetist Bix Beiderbecke.

The African American musicians of New Orleans continued to be the artistic vanguard of jazz, although the scene had shifted. King Oliver was one of many who moved to Chicago. Arriving in 1918, he formed his first band in 1920, and was joined by Louis Armstrong in 1922. Oliver's New Orleans-style ensemble jazz influenced many musicians, both black and white, but it was Armstrong who became jazz's seminal influence. He left Oliver in 1924 to join Fletcher Henderson's orchestra in New York, then returned to Chicago to record with his own groups, the Hot Five and the Hot Seven. Armstrong's extraordinary technique and his artistic intensity and innovation dominated jazz, and as a result, the role of the soloist became predominant. Armstrong in the 1920s not only created one of the greatest artistic legacies of any American artist, he also established the importance of individual creativity in jazz.

During this same era, however, ensemble jazz was developing into orchestral jazz--the big bands, featuring section arrangements and tight organization. Armstrong, through his work with Henderson, was important here too, in integrating the concept of fiery, original jazz solo work into the large ensemble framework. Equally important in Henderson's band was the work of Coleman Hawkins, a great soloist who, more than any other musician, introduced the tenor saxophone as an important jazz solo instrument.

Just as jazz experienced its first great wave of popularity in the 1920s, the era of the phonograph record, Prohibition, and the speakeasy, big-band jazz was also a product of its time. As newly-legal nightclubs closed and musical groups disbanded due to the hardships incurred by the Great Depression, jazz continued to find audiences in major supper clubs, such as the Cotton Club (located in New York's Harlem, but open only to white audiences), and ventured into the increasingly important medium of radio. With fewer venues, the bigger, richer sound of big-band jazz become more popular. At the same time, the glut on the market of talented musicians drove salaries down, and made it cheaper for a successful bandleader to hire a large group.

The single most successful band of the big band, or Swing Era, was led by Benny Goodman. Goodman's success was due to his brilliant musicianship and his organizational and promotional skills, but it was also due to the fact that he was white. Goodman used his preeminence to advance the mainstream acceptance of black jazz musicians. He not only hired Fletcher Henderson as an arranger, which was a behind-the-scenes job, he integrated his band, hiring great black musicians like Teddy Wilson (piano), Lionel Hampton, and Charlie Christian. There had been a few other integrated jazz groups before, but none as successful as Goodman's group.