Roots of Jazz in New Orleans

At the turn of the century, the streets of New Orleans were awash in blues music, ragtime and the na-
tive brass-band fanfares. Jazz music was, ultimately, the product of New Orleans' melting pot of musi-
cal styles (centered around the fusion of European & African cultures).

It is worthwhile noting that New Orleans was occupied by the French and Spanish during the 18th
century before the United States gained control of the state of Louisiana in the early 19th century. The
native people of New Orleans (ethnic group tracing their combined ancestry to French, Spanish, Afri-
can, Native American, German, Irish people) were referred to as Creoles.

In 1898 after the end of the Spanish-American war (whereby the US annexed Spain’s Pacific territo-
ries, including temporary control of Cuba by way of a provisional US military govt. being installed).
Returning troops often landed in New Orleans with European brass instruments that were sold cheap-
ly on the black market. Within a few years brass bands were ubiquitious in New Orleans’ musical
landscape. The influence of blues music could be heard in the way instruments emulated the vocal
styles of early blues music overlaid on syncopated rhythms borrowed ragtime.

New Orleans' brass bands eventually spread into the saloons and the dancehalls of "Storyville", the
red-light district created by a city ordinance in 1897. The performers who shared a passion for synco-
pation and for improvisation were either brass bands, or solo pianists, who very often were ragtime
pianists.

During the first decade of the 20th century, these brass bands would compete in public contests that high-
lighted the virtuosi. For example, Charles "Buddy" Bolden's trumpet playing became legendary, as did
his arrangements as did his division of instrumental roles (the cornet leading the melody, the trombone
providing a bass counterpoint and the clarinet dancing around the melody in a higher tone).

Buddy Bolden's (2nd from top left) band was

probably the first New Orleans band to truly
emphasize improvisation.

The most popular orchestras & brass bands

emphasized the cornet/trumpet (the main me-
lodic instrument) and the clarinet (the coun-
ter-melody), while the trombone provided the
bass counterpoint and the other instruments
(drums, banjo, guitar, contrabass, piano) pro-
vided the rhythm section

Unlike blues music, that was exclusively performed by African-Americans, jazz music was as inter-racial
as the melting pot of New Orleans. Black people were not the only ones who played jazz. Jazz groups
were formed by African Americans, Creoles, and all sorts of European immigrants. The "African" roots
of the music may or may not have been obvious to the practitioners, but clearly it did not stop them from
adopting it.
Summary 1.
1. Early jazz music was very much a continuation of blues music, except that it took advantage of the in-
struments of the marching band. The jazz musician was basically "singing" just like the blues singers
even though he was playing an instrument instead of using his vocals.

2. The call-and-response structure was replicated in the dialogue between solo instrument and ensemble.
Compared with European music, that for centuries had "trained" the voice to sound as perfect as the
instruments, jazz music moved in the opposite direction when it trained the instruments to sound as
emotional as the human voice of the blues. After all, many jazz instrumentalists made their living ac-
companying blues singers in the vaudeville circuit.

3. Thus the marching bands contributed the instruments, blues singers contributed the improvisation,
and ragtime contributed the syncopation (that ragtime had, in turn, taken from the "minstrel shows").
Jazz as a separate genre of music was born at the intersection of collective improvisation and heavy
syncopation.

4. Another defining feature was that it was mainly instrumental (blues music was mainly vocal). For
some observers of the time jazz music may have sounded simply like the instrumental side of blues
music, or the group version of ragtime, or a non-marching club-oriented evolution of the marching
bands.

5. Soon new instruments were incorporated (such as the saxophone) and arrangement cues were devel-
oped (the "riff", a rhythmic phrase repeated several times, or the "break", a brief solo during a pause
by the ensemble).

6. The material that was played came from the most diverse sources: William Handy's songs, Scott Jo-
plin's rags, pop songs, blues songs, and traditional slave songs.

When Storyville was shut down in 1917 by

the US Navy, jazz simply moved with the
black musicians who had to relocate to
Memphis and Chicago (e.g., King Oliver in
1918, Louis Armstrong in 1922). But the
exodus of black musicians was also part of
the "Great Migration" that saw thousands
of blacks leave the South for the northern
cities, mostly because of better job opportu-
nities created by World War I in the North
(the defense industry was mostly based in
the North) and because of a boll weevil in-
festation that caused great damage to cot-
ton plantations in the South. Furthermore
the industrialists of the North with more tolerant attitudes towards African-Americans presented work op-
portunities in their factories while plantation owners were still treating them like slaves. The result of the
migration was the establishment of large black communities in Chicago, Detroit and New York.
New York & Chicago

The popularity of ragtime in the early 20th century along with emerging dance forms such as the cakewalk
& foxtrot, fostered the creation of “syncopated orchestras” (adopting the musical sensibilites of ragtime to
an ensemble format) both in New York and Chicago. These were strictly speaking proto-jazz ensembles.
New York was the epicenter of this fusion of ragtime and early blues music as played by brass bands and
small orchestras.

Bandleader (Lt.) James Reese Europe (pictured) pioneered these new

musical stylings, becoming a centerpiece of New York’s orchestral style in
the pre-jazz era. Leading the Clef Club (a group of all black professional
musicians and vocalists), who would present a series of programs
featuring ragtime, marching band favorites, and light classical selections
at the Manhattan Casino.
During World War I, Europe obtained a commission in the New York Army
National Guard, where he fought as a lieutenant with the 369th Infantry Regi-
ment (the "Harlem Hellfighters") when it was assigned to the French Army.
He went on to direct the regimental band to great acclaim. In February and
March 1918, James Reese Europe and his military band travelled over 2,000
miles in France, performing for British, French
and American military audiences as well as
French civilians.

James Europe along with composer and violinist Will Marion Cook (who
studied with Czech composer Antonin Dvořák in the late 19th century) were
two of the most historically significant African-American composers and
bandleaders of the early 20th century.

Chicago readily grew from a swampy wilderness outpost into a bustling

center for transportation, commerce, manufacturing, and entertainment,
becoming America’s second largest city by 1900. Protected by the Mayor’s
office, the clubs carried on business as usual even after the enactment of
Prohibition in January 1920. Drawn by opportunity, African Americans from
the Mississippi Delta to the Gulf Coast migrated to Chicago in droves. New
Orleans jazz expatriates inspiredthe development of the Chicago style, which emphasized individual
soloists and a freer rhythmic approach.

The "Great Migration" from the south to the north, the closure of Storyville (1917) and the rise of Al
Capone and other mobsters following the Prohibition (1920) turned Chicago into a bustling center of
black entertainment.

As jazz music moved to Chicago, the role of the soloist became more prominent, and the ensemble
playing became more complex. In New Orleans the collective sound had prevailed over the individual
sound, in Chicago individual players were allowed more freedom to improvise.

Jazz was immediately successful in Chicago. In the age of Prohibition the "speakeasy" helped whites
hear the music of the blacks

The first commercial radio station opened the same year that the Prohibition started, in 1920. Within a
few years there were several radio stations. Radio stations initially boycotted jazz and blues music, but
enough percolated through the air waves to increase the cult status of jazz.
The soul of the city's black music were venues such as the Pekin Theater (the first entertainment venue owned and
operated exclusively by African Americans) showcasing music by composers such as Joe Jordan.

The Original Dixieland Jass Band was formed in Chicago by white musicians from New Orleans who popularised
the traditional stylings of the New Orleans brass bands. “Livery Stable Blues” is recognised as the first commercially
available recording of jazz (recorded in New York City for Victor Talking Machines, in 1917). A tour by Will-Mari-
on Cook's orchestra in 1919 introduced Chicago to the musical style of New York and at the end of the war Cook
formed the American Syncopated Orchestra.

On the heels of a crackdown on the speakeasies in the mid-1920s, a host of Chicago musicians moved on
to New York. At that time, NY was an unparalleled entertainment hub with the burgeoning film industry
set in Long Island, the musical theater of Broadway (Tin Pan Alley) and African-American music centric
venues and publishing houses based out of Harlem.

Jazz eventually spread to every corner of the USA. In fact, jazz was one of the first musical genres to owe
its diffusion to a whole new world of communication of information. The birth of jazz music parallels a
revolution in music "media". The first revolution was caused by the networks of vaudeville theaters (the
Theater Owners's Booking Association, or T.O.B.A., became the most important for black performers).
These circuits created a low-inertia way to distribute musical novelties to the entire country: the musi-
cians would simply follow the circuit. The dance craze of the 1910s was spread around the USA mainly
by "territory bands" (both white and black) that traveled the circuit of vaudeville theaters and other impro-
vised dancehalls. Many of them converted to jazz music after 1917.
Another revolution came (in the following decade) with the popularity of the phonographic record, that
turned a local phenomenon into a city-wide, state-wide and eventually country-wide phenomenon. And
later (in the 1920s) the boom of jazz would come thanks to the radio, that dramatically accelerated that
communication from region to region. Jazz was as much the product of New Orleans' melting pot as the
product of an organizational and technological revolution
 Founding Fathers

Ferdinand "Jelly Roll Morton" LaMothe (also spelled as Le-

Mott), a flamboyant Creole pianist who stands out as the first
major jazz composer, blended blues and ragtime styles, a fusion
that perhaps represented the origins of jazz music better than
anything else. His Jerry Roll Blues (september 1915) was the
first published piece of jazz music.

Morton left New Orleans in 1908, played in California from

1917 until 1922, then in Chicago and moved to New York City
in 1928.

Discovered by publisher Walter Melrose (who sold sheet music of Morton’s

compositions), Morton was launched in a sextet fronted by cornet, clarinet,
trombone and alto saxophone, that recorded Big Foot Ham (june 1923)
and Muddy Water Blues (june 1923), and coupled with the New Orleans
Rhythm Kings in performances of three of his pieces: Mr Jelly Lord, London
Blues and and Milenberg Joys (july 1923). Both recordings displayed Mor-
ton's skills in devising a variety of tonal and dynamic solutions.

He laid the foundations of his ensemble music with a handful of early gems, mostly for solo piano, such as Wolverine
Blues (published in february 1923, solo version recorded in july) and several ragtime-like pieces: The Pearls (july
1923), Kansas City Stomp (july 1923), King Porter Stomp (july 1923)

Morton liberated ragtime music from its own limitation: the clockwork geometry of melody and rhythm. The syncopation
of ragtime could be applied only to some themes, while Morton's kind of syncopation could be applied to virtually any-
thing.

Morton's art was still a clockwork art, in the sense that the performance was carefully planned and very little room was
left to improvisation. His orchestra was basically an extension of the piano. No other orchestra of the time reached the
same level of sonic and rhythmic sophistication.

The first black band to be well documented on record

was actually Joe "King" Oliver's Creole Jazz Band
(1923) King Oliver, who had developed his style at the
cornet in Kid Ory's Brownskin Babies since 1914, ce-
mented a group of talents that included cornet player
Louis Armstrong, clarinetist Johnny Dodds, drummer
Warren "Baby" Dodds, trombonist Honore Dutery, pia-
nist Lil Hardin, Bill Johnson on banjo and bass
 This classic line-up recorded Dippermouth
Blues (april 1923), which contains Louis Arm-
strong's first recorded solo, Armstrong's Weather
Bird Rag (april 1923), which are models of harmo-
nious, disciplined group playing despite the group
improvisation: the piano, the drums and the bass
provided the rhythmic foundation over which the
cornets lead the melody against the petulant counter-
point of the clarinet and the bass ("tailgate") coun-
terpoint of the trombone.

 Oliver basically perfected the collective improvisation of New Orleans' marching bands.

 The Creole Brass Band was also innovative in introducing the solo section within the form.
 Cornet/trumpet player Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong revolu-
tionized both the instrumental and the vocal style of jazz.
King Oliver's substitute in Kid Ory's band, Armstrong left
New Orleans in 1922 to join King Oliver in Chicago, where
he recorded his Weather Bird Rag (april 1923), and then
(1924) Fletcher Henderson in New York.

 While in New York, he also accompanied blues singers

(notably Bessie Smith's legendary january 1925 record-
ing of St Louis Blues) and cut some songs (Clarence Wil-
liams' Texas Moaner Blues in october 1924) with smaller
groups that included clarinetist Sidney Bechet. In fact
the classic recording of the age, and perhaps the most
faithful to the original sound of New Orleans' jazz, was
an interpretation of Benton Overstreet's Early Every Morn (december 1924) by a quintet named Red Onion Jazz Ba-
bies, organized by Clarence Williams, that featured Armstrong, Bechet, pianist Lil Hardin and blues vocalist Alberta
Hunter.

 In 1925 he returned to Chicago, formed the drum-less Hot Five a spin-off of King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band (John-
ny Dodds on clarinet, Kid Ory on trombone, Johnny St Cyr on banjo, Lil Hardin on piano, but the line-up changed
quickly), and cut songs that were celebrated for the smooth and elegant phrasing of his trumpet solos: Gut Bucket
Blues (november 1925), Cornet Chop Suey (february 1926), Heebie Jeebies (february 1926)

 Heebie Jeebies (1926) features the first recording of scat singing (already used by white vaudeville singers such as
Cliff "Ukulele Ike" Edwards) in jazz.

 Armstrong's trumpet solos were majestic, phantasmagoric and full of drama. His experience with blues singers had
prompted him to develop a trumpet style that was a mirror image of human singing. His trumpet was literally the in-
strumental counterpart of blues singing.

 contrasted with King Oliver's style because Armstrong's instrument dominated the proceedings: Armstrong had in-
troduced a dose on individualism in jazz. Jelly Roll Morton had used the solos to increase the sophistication of his
orchestral music, but his focus was still on the sound of the ensemble. It was Armstrong who shifted the emphasis
towards the vocabulary of the extended virtuoso solo. Solos became longer and longer, while displaying an even
stronger sense of control.
Armstrong applied a similar technique to his vocals, which did more than just popularize "scat" singing: they invented a way to sing
without singing. His singing often sounded like a conversation. Sometimes his vocals were so estranged from the music that it sounded
like he didn't know what song he was singing. The voice had always been an instrument, but Armstrong started the trend that would turn
it into the most malleable of instruments. Armstrong turned the human voice into not only an instrument but an instrument that was as le-
gitimate for improvising as any other instrument of the orchestra.

Clarinetist Sidney Bechet was the musician who introduced the soprano
saxophone (which he discovered while on tour in London) for jazz. His
style at both instruments indulged in a heavy vibrato sound. His saxo-
phone style was exuberant, eloquent and even torrential. After perform-
ing in Will-Marion Cook's orchestra during its legendary European tour
of 1919, cutting a handful of tracks in 1923-24, including his first tour
de force in Clarence Williams' Kansas
City Man Blues (august 1923),

A black songwriter, but born in New Or-

leans, Clarence Williams, claimed to have
been the first to use the word "jazz" in a
sheet of music. He wrote Royal Garden
Blues (1919) for the Original Dixieland Jazz Band (recorded in may 1921),
before moving to Chicago (1920) and to New York (1923) where he helped
bootstrap Bessie Smith's career with Gulf Coast Blues (february 1923) and
several more hits. Williams, also a pianist himself, was instrumental in or-
ganizing the Blue Five series of recording sessions with rising stars of jazz
and blues music such as Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bechet. He recorded several of his own composi-
tions in intriguing arrangements: Bozo (november 1928), for a big band featuring both cornetists King
Oliver and Ed Allen

Armstrong's counterpart at the piano was Earl

Hines, one of the few early heroes of jazz who was
not born in Louisiana (he was born in Pennsylvania
and in 1924 moved to Chicago). His technique aug-
mented right-hand delicate virtuoso Armstrong-style
phrases with a left-hand rhythmic exuberance that
set him apart from the tradition of Jelly Roll Mor-
ton.
After recording with Louis Armstrong in 1928, and penning
with clarinetist Jimmy Noone's Apex Club Orchestra his A
Monday Date (december 1928) and Noone's Apex Blues (july
1929). He delivered a handful of 1928 solo piano interpreta-
tions of his own compositions, including A Monday Date, that
already displayed his mastery at intricate rhythmic patterns
and lyrical phrasing

Cornet player Bix Beiderbecke was the first white jazz master. Born in Io-
wa, far away from any major source of black music, he was also the first
major musician to learn about jazz from records, not first hand. No surprise
therefore that his technique was unorthodox.

He arrived in Chicago in 1921 and recorded for the first time in 1924, with the Wolver-
ine Orchestra (Tom Delaney's Jazz Me Blues).
his own Davenport Blues (january 1925) for a quintet of cornet, clarinet, trombone, pia-
no and drums (called the Rhythm Jugglers)
His own compositions were less famous, and delivered as solo piano pieces, but in reali-
ty In a Mist (september 1927), perhaps his masterpiece (more influenced by Debussy
than by jazz), Candlelight (1930), Flashes (1931), In The Dark (1931), proved the depth
of his musical vision.
George Gershwin's Concerto in F (october 1928), Bing Crosby's From Monday On (feb-
ruary 1928) and Irving Berlin's Waiting at the End of the Road (september 1929), all
with Paul Whiteman’s Orchestra

Beiderbecke was at the vanguard of a wave of white jazz musicians who originated in Chicago and
moved to NY in the late 1920’s to early ’30’s : banjoist Eddie Condon, drummer Gene Krupa, the first
drummer to experiment with extended solos, who moved to New York with Condon in 1929 and became
a star in Benny Goodman's big band formed in 1934; clarinetist Charles "Pee Wee" Russell, who moved
to New York; tenor saxophonist Lawrence "Bud" Freeman; and especially xylophonist Kenneth "Red
Norvo" Norville, who composed and recorded one of the most avantgarde pieces of the time, Dance Of
The Octopus (november 1933) for a quartet of xylophone, guitar, bass and clarinet (Benny Goodman),
and was also the first jazz musician to try the vibraphone.

These white players also happened to be featured soloists forwarding the vocabulary and style within the
canon of jazz (add Jack Teagarden for the trombone, Eddie Lang for the guitar and Joe Venuti for the vio-
lin).
Summary 2.

Jazz music had been, ultimately, the product of New Orleans' melting pot, and, in general, of the black culture of the
southern states. The big difference between jazz and blues (or the spiritual or the work song) was that jazz was indeed an
"American" phenomenon, not an "African" one.

The roots of jazz music were in the South of the USA, not in West Africa. There was little relationship between the in-
struments of jazz and the original instruments of the West African slaves. The instruments of jazz came from the Europe-
an brass bands.

there were white jazz musicians from the very beginning, whereas there were no white blues musicians until the 1950s.

Early jazz was more properly a descendant of ragtime than of blues. Jazz was about embellishing a melody, an old Euro-
pean paradigm. Blues was more about rhythm than melody, thus remaining closer to the original African paradigm. In its
early phase, jazz was recognized by both white and black audiences as a close relative of ragtime.

The main difference between ragtime and jazz was, of course, the means of transmission. Ragtime was written composi-
tion, distributed as sheets. Jazz was improvised music, distributed as records. Other than that, the line between the two
was blurred. Only in the 1920s did jazz music begin go beyond the limitations ragtime’s conventions

The West-African element of jazz music was the emphasis on (syncopated) rhythm and the widespread use of poly-
rhythms, or, from the viewpoint of instrumentation, the drums.

Also largely West African was the passion for timbral exploration: where European music had always favored crisp tonal-
ity and harmonic rules (i.e., only some sounds and some combination of sounds are lawful), black music tended to ex-
plore the whole range of timbral and harmonic possibilities (something that white academic music was beginning to do
independently and for different reasons at the beginning of the 20th century). This also included the prominence of blue
notes (notes that are not part of the European pitch system).