What is now called ‘old jazz’ – still alive and kicking – originated in New Orleans in the late 19 century. Jazz evolved from genres that already came into being within the Afro-American communities, such as worksongs, boogie woogie, ragtime and spirituals. Other genres, par example marches and hymns had primarily a European background.
To begin with, you will hear the Dixieland classic “One step” played by the Dutch Swing College Band (1974).
In North America and in South America and the Caribbean, contacts between populations originating from Africa and from Europe resulted in a variety of musical style. I limit myself to the first region. In doing so, six genres are highlighted: old jazz, swing, bebop, ‘cool’, ‘fusion’ and free jazz. To this day, they have practitioners and enthusiasts. In addition to six posts dedicated to each genre, you are acknowledged with five leading musicians, bandleaders and composers: Louis Armstrong, ‘Duke’ Ellington, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillepsie and John Coltrane.
Characteristics of jazz
The following five characteristics can be found in almost all genres of jazz, developed to date:
- Collective participation: While jazz music is often (partly) written out, musicians have a relatively large amount of freedom.
- Improvisation: Written jazz music almost always allows room for improvisation, sometimes by soloists but often also by other orchestra members.
- Antiphony: Members of an orchestra respond to each other, either by arrangement, or while improvising.
- Polyphony: A piece of music combines different, sometimes contrasting melody lines.
- Polyrhythmic: Sometimes a song consists of several successively or simultaneously occurring rhythmic lines.
The forerunners
From the second half of the 19 century, there are several ‘precursors’, for example the New Orleans-based Louis Gottschalk who composed in 1853 the musical piece “The banjo: grotesque fantasy”.
New Orleans would become the mecca of old-time jazz from the end of the 19 century. One reason was that many freed slaves settled in in this town after the abolition of slavery. Every café or brothel had a band playing. The first band was called the “Original Dixieland Jass Band”, but ‘jass’ soon became ‘jazz’, which means something like ‘bunch of jerks’. This name came from that part of the population that disliked jazz (see print above). Musicians considered it as a nickname. In 1925 released the first jazz record, the ‘Livery Stable Blues’. Listen to it here. What this song sounds like 100 years later can be heard here. Better sound quality, but otherwise the same. In 2006, Jelly Roll Morton composed the “Jelly Roll Blues”. You can hear a version from 1926, played by his then band, the ‘Red Hot Peppers’, here.
Dance orchestras
The instruments you see and hear here can be found to this day in Dixieland bands. ‘Dixieland’ is a nickname for the southern US. The word is derived from the French word ‘dix'(10), which appeared on banknotes circulating in the area during the Civil War. In time, many jazz musicians from New Orleans moved to Chicago and later New York, or crossed the ocean to Europe, where old jazz also flourished. So did the ‘Original Dixieland Jazz Band’ and it created a jazz craze in Britain.
Louis Armstrong also began his career in New Orleans, where his virtuosity on the trumpet distinguished him. He did have to scrape together his living, first at the age of 12 as a street musician. Later he played in various orchestras. At the invitation of his mentor King Oliver, he left for Chicago at the age of 22, where he played the trumpet in Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band and earned well. You can listen to the first record of this band (1923)
Young people in the 1920s saw jazz as a means of rebelling against the older generation. Young women dressed in ‘flapper fashion, smoked in public, danced the Charleston and talked freely about sex. The ‘prohibition’ in the US contributed to the spread of jazz also. ‘Speakeasies’, well-hidden pubs and cabarets where live music was everywhere, sprang up almost in every street. For many older people jazz equaled moral decay in the first place.
Jazz was becoming less and less an exclusive affair for black people. ‘White’ Paul Whiteman became top bandleader in the 1920s and he hired Bix Beiderbecke and brothers Jimmy and Frankie Dorsey, among others; musicians who would go on to make a big name for themselves. You can now listen to a recording of his band from 1925.
The same Paul Whiteman had commissioned George Gershwin to write the “Rhapsody in Blue, which his orchestra would premiere. You can listen to this orchestral work here, in a performance by the New York Philharmonic with Leonard Bernstein (1976)
Marching bands
In addition to the dance orchestras, marching bands graced every celebration. This custom lives on to this day. Whether it was a funeral or wedding, groups of 10 to 15 musicians would move along in the procession at a slow pace, followed by a dancing crowd. This practice was not always appreciated too. Watch a funeral procession with the New Orleans Traditional Band here.
Some of these bands became famous and performed outside New Orleans. For example, the Eureka Brass Band, the Tuxedo Brass Band (1958), the Treme Brass Band (2013) and the Olympia Brass Band (2009). Some contemporary New Orleans Brass Bands, such as the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, and the Rebirth Brass Band combine Dixieland music with influences from funk, hip hop and rap. You can watch and listen to the Dirty Dozen Brass Band during a performance on stage.
Sustained popularity
The Dixieland craze lasted until the early 1930s, but the genre remained popular. In the late 1940s, Louis Armstrong’s Allstars band became a leading orchestra. In the 1950s and 1960s, Dixieland music was one of the most popular jazz styles in the US and abroad. It was a reaction to polished big band swing and complex bebop, which will be discussed later. Musicians were partly older musicians who had started their careers with old jazz. But also young musicians, such as the Lu Waters Band, Ward Kimball and his Firehouse five plus two and Conrad Janis and his Tallgate jazz band.
Music critics have made lists of all genres of music that include the most listened, loved, covered songs. You’d be amazed at how many songs that almost everyone knows today stem from this period, such as “When the Saints Go Marching In”, “Charleston”, “Tiger Rag”, “Basin Street Blues”, “Sweet Georgia Brown”, “Tea for two”, “Crazy rithm”, “Bye Bye blackbird”, “Mack the knive”, “At the Jazz Band Ball , “I Found a New Baby”, “Ain’t misbehavin'” and many others. A full list of jazz standards from the pre-1930 period can be found here.
I finish with an old hand: Louis Armstrong playing and singing “When The Saints Go Marching In”.
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