Jazz to the 1920s: First Players

Early jazz was group music featuring collective improvisation. Jazz's first important soloists, such as sax and clarinet man Sidney Bechet, cornetist King Oliver, and trumpeter Louis Armstrong began their careers improvising in these popular bands. Long before the music and its variations moved into the swing era of the late 1920s and 1930s, jazz was primarily the entertainment of the black working class, alongside rags, cakewalks, and other popular music of the day. Early jazz was mostly party music, music made for dancing - as it was for years to come. This music wasn't yet known as jazz - the widespread use of that word wouldn't come for several more years, when the Original Dixieland Jass Band made the first jazz recording and lent its name to the genre.

BUDDY BOLDEN (1877-1931)

Cornet player Buddy Bolden cut a colorful figure in New Orleans' African American community. Physically imposing, boisterous, a womanizer, he could play his horn with such power that many claimed it could be heard for miles ... even across the Mississippi.

In 1895, Bolden put together the first significant jazz band. Bands such as Bolden's were brassy and sassy. Their music was based on the simple, one-two rhythms of marching bands, and many of the players didn't read music. They made loose, frenzied music. Clarinet and cornet players wove improvised melodies in and out of driving, syncopated rhythms laid down by guitar or banjo, bass or tuba, and sometimes drums.

Musical ideas and songs were passed around through casual conversations or jam sessions. Because the music came mostly from feelings and not from the commercial sheet music of the day, it had a free, spontaneous spirit that suited New Orleans and defined jazz. Eventually, during the 1940s and 1950s revival of early jazz, the jazz of New Orleans and 1920s Chicago became known as Dixieland. If you've ever heard something called "Dixieland," you have some idea what Bolden's music sounded like.

Though the wax-recording cylinder was invented in 1885, the first jazz was not recorded. Instead, the sound of the music survives in stories told by I those who were there, and in recordings made years later by musicians who heard or played the earliest jazz.

Beginning in 1906, Bolden's unpredictable, violent antics (such as striking his mother in the head with a porcelain water pitcher) made him a danger those around him. He moved to a mental hospital where he spent most of the rest of his life. But the basic lineup of early jazz bands such as his - two or three lead horns, plus a three-piece rhythm section - served as the bas small band model for years to come.

Go To Page: 1 2 3

Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic