[Up: Favorite music] [Robot Wisdom home page]
This is only half-done. Large sections are just clippings from the sources listed here: DMoz directory; Doug's Timeline, multipage overview, ditto; Britannica; artists/hits list
Books: Gridley's "Concise Guide to Jazz" [Amazon w/CD]; DeVeaux'x "Birth of Bebop" [Amzn]; Count Basie's "Good Morning Blues" [Amzn]
Most of the song-links on this page lead to another page that offers a full-length RealAudio of the song. Where I couldn't find full-length, I used Amazon samples. To minimize the annoyance of switching back and forth from this page to the others, try multiwindow surfing.
This Amazon page has a zillion relevant samples, from every era. A much shorter selection from Joplin to Spyro Gyra. A CD history of jazz drumming but with no samples.. Multipart RealAudio lecture history and analysis of jazz.
What sorts of innovations were taking place in American music between 1870 and 1900?
At the end of the Civil War four million slaves were freed. Many still remembered the music of Africa, with its drumming and chants. Limbadji Toko (various samples)
The possible venues for new music in those days included: concert hall, public park, church, porch, and various 'dens of sin' (bars, dancehalls and brothels). But to be heard in a large venue in the days before amplification you needed a large group with loud instruments, eg a brass band playing marches.
What musicians heard in other venues, they tried to make use of in their own-- as early as 1847, Louis Moreau Gottschalk [18yo] combined African rhythms with European classical music in Bamboula: Danse des Negres. As all the artists in a given city grew familiar with each others' experiments, the music of that city would take on a distinctive character.
Some performers toured, spreading new musical styles. Sheet music was available mainly to professionals at first, but later more widely to individuals. The phonograph was introduced only late in this period [history], and there was no radio yet.
Piano rolls provided the first 'recordings' of musical performances that could be endlessly duplicated-- player pianos were especially popular in dens of sin. The more expensive houses offered live piano accompanied on kazoo and washboard. The saxophone was also slowly gaining popularity during these years. [sax page]
The emotions that music can express range from joy to worship to sorrow. Popular music tended towards simple rhythms and harmonies, with AABA verse structure. Popular subjects for songs included home, mother, love, death, and temperance. The lovesongs of the era were chaste, with no hint of lust. [history] [hits 1870-85] (samples) (songs)
Black church music was dramatically more energetic than white hymns, and black musicians were valued performers in white dens of sin (where they were required to keep customers' spirits high). Black dance music innovated many new styles; while white dance rhythms included polkas (example) and quadrilles (non-streaming sample w/pic). (1939 Trinidad quadrille) [info]
Where black performers weren't welcome, white 'minstrel shows' impersonated them (coon song), succeded in the late 1880's by vaudeville shows, touring with small bands that carried the evolving music to smaller towns.
The mainstream piano rhythms that preceded jazz can be sampled in Sam Lucas's 1878 Shivering and Shaking Out in the Cold, written by a black composer in the white style.
Various piano rhythms were being explored c1890. Barrelhouse piano (aka 'fast Western') may have originated in the saloons of western mining camps. Music publishing had been centered on New York's Tin Pan Alley neighborhood starting in 1892 with Charles Harris's "After The Ball" [lyrics and MIDI]. 'Honky tonk' piano got its name from the Tonk Piano store that supplied Tin Pan Alley. And a later style called 'stride piano' would evolve into boogie woogie. [Tin Pan Alley backgrounder]
The cakewalk dance rhythm had come from the Caribbean c1890 as a syncopated blend of march, polka and two-step, and led directly to the ragtime piano style of a heavy, syncopated 2/4 left hand and a fast, melodic right hand. (various samples) [backgrounder] [history] [early history] [MIDI comparison of stride et al] (RealAudio demo/lecture) [video .mov]
1897 first true ragtime composition was published by William Krell called "The Mississippi Rag" [MIDI]
Tom Turpin, the first published African American composer wrote "The Harlem Rag" [MIDI]
1899 31yo Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag sells over 1,000,000 copies in a year (others- non-streaming) (one more) MIDI links
In the early 1900s, ragtime moved from solo piano to small orchestras, military bands and piano-banjo combos.
When whites of this era sang about their sorrows, the songs tended to be pious and sentimental. Meanwhile, blacks were developing the Blues, from African chants (1939 Shango invocation) to slave songs, via solo performances with banjo or guitar, to three-pieces groups with fiddle, banjo and drum, then adding bass fiddle and cornet, leading to a form of 'hot' instrumental blues (with horns imitating blues-style singing). [history] [glossary] [history] (Survey of recorded blues samples.) (Extensive ethnomusicological survey of the South in 1939 w/samples)
"Before the field cry, with its bending of notes, it had not occurred to musicians to explore the area of the blue tonalities on their instruments. The early blues singers would sing these "bent" notes, microtonal shadings, or "blue" notes, and the early instrumentalists attempted to duplicate them." [cite]"The blues as such are synonymous with low spirits. Blues music is not. With all its so called blue notes and overtones of sadness, blues music of its very nature and function is nothing if not a form of diversion." --Albert Murray.
1905: Blues guitarist Huddie "Leadbelly" Ledbetter partners with Blind Lemon Jefferson (classic blues) (later samples) (ditto)
1936: Robert Johnson's blues recordings rediscovered in 1961. Amazon samples: some, more, more, more, more
Jelly Roll Morton mixing blues and rag as early as 1905, in Jelly Roll's Blues (recorded 1923) [MIDI index]
29yo WC Handy had first encountered rural blues in Mississippi in 1903, and scored a huge hit with his own Memphis Blues in 1912 followed by his St Louis Blues in 1914. [history].
The blues form was becoming standardised as 12 bars with three stanzas of four measures each. The first two stanzas state a problem twice, the third concludes it. ("My man's gone and left me, I think I'm gonna cry. My man's gone and left me, I think I'm gonna cry. If he don't come back soon, I think I'm gonna die.")
First recorded blues: Mamie Smith's 1920 Crazy Blues with Willie 'The Lion' Smith [23yo] on piano, recorded at NYC's Okeh Records [background]. (Compare also Noble Sissle's tamer version of the same song, or from the same period this feeble white 'blues' hit or this lame white comic song about drinking.)
In New Orleans the blues were taken up by the city's many marching bands (which had some roots of their own in Sicily), requiring the characteristic rhythm of New-Orleans-style Dixieland, with equal emphasis on all four beats of the measure. And for mobility they replaced the conventional blues bass with a tuba, and the fiddle with a clarinet and trombone. [backgrounder] [later KC pic]
When The Saints Go Marching In
1902 Bill Bailey Won't You Please Come Home- Arthur Collins
By 1885 Papa Jack Laine's Reliance Brass Band [info] was noted as playing with a 'ragged time' (variations in the tempo to make it swing). Early hints of improvised group playing-- the hallmark of jazz-- were beginning to appear, and many people credit the first jazz perfomance to cornetist Buddy Bolden in 1891. [14yo??] ditto [what-is-jazz backgrounder]
The brief heydey of the Storyville redlight district in New Orleans from it establishment in 1897 to its dissolution in 1917 defines the first phase of jazz history. But none of this evolution was recorded until the very end, with 28yo Sicilian cornetist Nick LaRocca's Original Dixieland Jazz Band's Livery Stable Blues followed by the smash hit "Tiger Rag" in 1918. So because the innovations of jazz can't really be annotated in the sheet music, we can only view the masters of the era in their recordings of the 1920s. [good backgrounder] [essay] [early white jazzmen]
Jelly Roll Morton [27yo in 1917] had played in Storyville for more than a decade, and probably did innovate some early jazz forms, but his first piano solos on disc were in 1923. He identified his earliest tunes as Kansas City Stomp and "Jelly Roll Blues". [backgrounder] [Flash tribute]
Cornetists King Oliver [32yo in 1917] and Louis Armstrong [16yo in 1917] only debuted on record in 1923 with King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band's Dippermouth Blues (called the purest recorded New Orleans jazz style). Kid Ory [31yo in 1917] recorded Ory's Creole Trombone in 1922.
Cornetist Willie G "Bunk" Johnson [28yo in 1917] didn't record until 1942.
Louis Armstrong later claimed 27yo violinist Armand Piron's 1915 hit I Wish That I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate as his own (stolen) composition (age 14!?).
20yo pianist Clarence Williams' 1918 Royal Garden Blues was an early Dixieland jazz classic.
Clarinet prodigy Sidney Bechet [20yo in 1917] would turn on Europe to New Orleans style jazz in 1919 [info] but remained unrecorded until 1926's Lonesome Woman's Blues and "Down On The Levee Blues". [modern tribute]
After Storyville was put out of business, its musicians went either to Chicago or to Kansas City, which was a transportation hub and supported a huge redlight district under 'Boss' Pendergast. 27yo Euday Bowman's 1914 smash 12th Street Rag immortalised Kansas City at a very early stage.
There's plenty of documentation about popular music elsewhere in the USA during this period, though. [Year by year list of popular songs 1898-1939] [multipage 1890-1998 list] (samples)
Barbershop quartets were popular. The decade of 1910-19 saw American black music begin to gain appeal in Europe. There was a craze for the Charleston and foxtrot (sample). The rise of silent pictures produced a thriving market for musicians to accompany them (at the very least a pianist). Irving Berlin's "Alexander's Ragtime Band" was so popular people bought radios and phonographs just to hear it.
In Washington DC, a 14yo Duke Ellington was wrote his first piano piece, "Soda Fountain Rag", recorded in 1940 (no sample). [bio]
Still-popular rags grew jazzier: New York Military Band's 1913 Hungarian Rag; the 1917 New York Blues (derivative accordion ragtime); Frisco Jass Band's (white) 1918 Umbrellas to Mend and Night Time in Little Italy [related tunes] [Tin Pan Alley takes notice]
26yo James P Johnson of Harlem cut his first piano rolls in 1917
Swanee- Al Jolson
The trauma of World War One undermined the pious and sentimental worldview that had dominated since the Civil War, but not before Prohibition was enacted in 1920, creating a booming new market for jazz musicians-- the speakeasy-- and turning New York into a new center of jazz creativity. [WWI songs in GSM format] [in RealAud]
One force for change in the 1920s was that the electric microphone allowed singers to sing in a much more intimate style and still be heard thruout a club or concert hall.
Original Dixieland Jazz Band's 1920 smash Soudan
NYC's Paul Whiteman with his watered-down 'symphonic jazz' had a 1920 mega-hit, Whispering (slow 120k page w/many songs).
In 1921 Harry Pace (black) started Black Swan Records in Harlem, but their early releases are watered down for whites, like Fletcher Henderson's version of Chime Blues, or My Oriental Rose
1921 marimba band version of 12th Street Rag; (early Hawaiian exotica)
Zez Confrey's Kitten on the Keys
Peerless Orchestra's In a Monastery Garden
1922 My Man- Fanny Brice
(A wide selection of samples from 1918 to 1934) (Edison recordings)
The Chicago Dixieland jazz style was smoother but more aggressive and less relaxed, with larger bands that featured individual soloists. The ragtime rhythm supplied a 2/4 backbeat, and an 'eight beats to the bar' piano rhythm (not yet called 'boogie woogie') was well established in Chicago by 1920.
In 1920, trumpeter Louis Armstrong [20yo] [19yo?] debuted the concept of swinging (playing off the beat). To hear the difference between pre-swing jazz and swing jazz, compare the Bennie Moten Band's 1924 version of "South" to its 1928 version. (The marching-band rhythm is fading.)
Many legendary jazzmen finally made it onto records including stride piano performances from James P. Johnson with 1921's Carolina Shout. (Stride piano uses a left hand pattern of bass note, chord, bass note, chord, a slower incarnation of boogie-woogie [qv].)
Fats Waller made his first piano rolls at 18yo in 1922 (various examples) and Jelly Roll Morton his first piano solos on disc with 1923's New Orleans Joys, Kansas City Stomp, Milenburg Joys, Wolverine Blues and The Pearls. [modern tribute]
Radios finally started becoming popular in 1922 [info] and Duke Ellington [24yo] performed on radio in 1923 [history].
American music copyrighted before 1923 is officially in the public domain, also music before 1964 if the copyright wasn't renewed. [table]
Blues legend Bessie Smith [28yo] had a huge 1923 hit with Downhearted Blues, along with Gulf Coast Blues. Gertrude "Ma Rainey" Pridgett was also recorded for the first time that year [37yo]. In 1924 they record with 27yo Fletcher Henderson's band (a model for the new big bands of swing) which now includes Louis Armstrong and Coleman Hawkins. Various songs; Teapot Dome Blues
The New Orleans Rhythm Kings first recordings (various tunes) were made in Richmond, Indiana in 1922 [studio backgrounder] and inspired Chicago highschoolers, the Austin Hill Gang [info].
The Lois Deppe Band with Earl Hines on piano recorded a combination of stride and blues. The Mound City Blues Blowers record Red Hot.
The Bennie Moten Band's Evil Mama Blues was the first recording of Kansas City jazz. (Count Basie said later of their Kansas City beat, "I can't dig that two-beat jive the New Orleans cats play; cause my boys and I got to have four heavy beats to a bar and no cheating.")
Working in KC: Bennie Moten [28yo], George E. Lee [26yo], Pete Johnson [18yo], and in closely-linked Oklahoma City, Walter Page [22yo] and Jimmy Rushing [19yo]. [info] [more bios]
In Nov 1922, KC's Coon-Sanders Original Nighthawk Orchestra starts a regular national radio broadcast. They relocate to Chicago in 1924 and record Nighthawk Blues. [history]
Coleman Hawkins [21yo] was discovered by Mamie Smith [39yo] in KC in 1922, and joined her band in New York.
In 1924 in NYC, Duke Ellington took over leadership of the Washingtonians and recorded Rainy Nights (Rainy Days), and introduced a new 'jungle sound' with "East St. Louis Toodle-Oo".
Chicago's Bix Beiderbecke [21yo] forms the Wolverines and records Fidgety Feet (but he's not yet swinging).
The term 'jazz' is still broad enough to include 26yo George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.
Sweet Georgia Brown- Ben Bernie
Three of the main anchors of swing are Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Sidney Bechet. In 1925, Armstrong and Bechet form the Red Onion Jazz Babies with singer Alberta Hunter (many songs), but Bechet also performs with Ellington's band.
Ellington's Birmingham Breakdown and Jig Walk.
Armstrong's Hot Five quintet records My Heart along with the first scat solo on Heebie Jeebies (supposedly because Armstrong accidently dropped his lyrics sheet).
Bennie Moten's Band 18th Street Strut
Jelly Roll Morton's Red Hot Peppers record Deep Creek, The Pearls, Wolverine Blues, Dead Man Blues and King Oliver's Doctor Jazz.
Earl Hines records his first solos including Blues in Thirds.
17yo Benny Goodman's first recordings
Fats Waller's organ versions of St Louis Blues and "Lenox Ave Blues" [article]
Coon-Sanders popularity continues (samples)
Treasury agents raid Chicago speakeasies, jazzmen move to NYC [cite]
By 1927, Armstrong has perfected his approach to swing, setting whole phrases ahead of or behind the beat, not just pulling single notes. His popularity makes Chicago-style soloing the new standard. Songs include Struttin' with Some Barbecue, Big Butter and Egg Man and Hotter than That; also Chicago Breakdown
Duke Ellington is broadcasting coast to coast from the Cotton Club with songs like Black and Tan Fantasy and East St. Louis Toodle-oo. (many others)
Bix Beiderbecke records Singin' the Blues and I'm Comin' Virginia; also Wringin' and Twistin'; and writes In a Mist, Flashes, Candlelight and In the Dark. [essay] ditto
Coleman Hawkins on tenor sax imitates Art Tatum (on piano), improvising using the individual notes from the chords of a song instead of its melody.
Count Basie [23yo] arrives in Kansas City, and Big Joe Turner [16yo] starts singing there.
James P. Johnson shifts from stride to jazz with Snowy Morning Blues.
Benny Goodman makes first record using his own name. (samples) ditto
The Jazz Singer starring Al Jolson in black face is the first talking picture.
Meade Lux Lewis records Honky Tonk Train Blues (boogie woogie, released 1929)
1928: Louis Armstrong drops the New Orleans style completely West End Blues (many believe this to be the top Jazz recording of all times) and A Weather Bird Also Wild Man Blues
The word bop appears in the song Four or Five Times by Mckinney's Cotton Pickers.
Ellington Hottentot
Coon-Sanders (samples)
Andy Kirk's band moves to KC [cite]
A young Laurence Welk records Spiked Beer
(Samples of piano blues of this time)
1929:
Armstrong does his first pop song-- Ain't Misbehavin'-- and his first big band recordings. Mahogany Hall Stomp
Ellington Six or Seven Times
Benny Goodman After a While
4yo Mel Torme debuts in Chicago with Coon-Sanders Original Nighthawk Orchestra
Clarence "Pine Top" Smith records Pine Top's Boogie Woogie
Trumpeter Jabbo Smith records Take Me to the River
Andy Kirk [31yo] moves to KC, records Lonely Moments
George E Lee hit If I Could Be With You
Jimmy Rushing does Blue Devil Blues with Walter Page's Blue Devils.
1930 Armstrong is by now enunciating no more than one beat per measure. St Louis Blues, Dallas Blues, Confessin, If I Could Be With You
Three Little Words- Duke Ellington
Mary Lou Williams [20yo] improv Night Life
Depression drives Chicagoans to NYC
- POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS - POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS -
(just kidding, you can look... but no flaming yet)
Swing groups have grown to 10 or more players with at least three saxophones, two or three trumpets, two or three trombones, piano, guitar, bass, and drums. The rhythm section was responsible for keeping it all danceable (as that's where the money was). The 'hot' style of Ellington or Basie offered hard-driving rhythms and solo improvisations, unlike the 'sweet' bands of Glenn Miller or Guy Lombardo (samples). (As swing bands grew in size they have to emphasize precision over improvisation [backgrounder].) (samples) [Rockin' In Rhythm has cartoony saxes]; (samples)
Ellington's big 1930 hit was Dreamy Blues (aka Mood Indigo). (another version) [memoir]
Young people begin to revolt against the standard of "niceness". "Express your true feelings" becomes a catch phrase
With Coleman Hawkins and his followers Ben Webster and the young Chu Berry and his only competitor at the time Lester Young, the saxophone, in general, and the tenor saxophone, in particular, becomes a major competitor of the trumpet/cornet in Jazz. Recall that the cornet was king in New Orleans Jazz. The faster changes which a sax allows begins to push the trombone out of Jazz.
1931
John Hammond drops out of Yale to start a 54-year career searching for innovative talent [bio]
Armstrong records Hoagy Carmichael's classic Stardust.
Minnie The Moocher- Cab Calloway
Ellington records the first extended Jazz piece called Creole Rhapsody this piece covers two full 78 sides. He will also record Mood Indigo and Rockin' in Rhythm
Fletcher Henderson's drummer, Walter Johnson, moves the ground beat from the bass/snare combination to the bass/hi-hat combination on Radio Rhythm and Low Down on the Bayou. Basie's drummer Jo Jones adopted this method and is usually given the credit for this important innovation which became necessary to quiet the drums for a small group.
The Bennie Moten Band now contains most of the members of the now defunct Blue Devils who had run into financial troubles. Even Walter Page is with Moten. Walter is the first bass player to sound all four beats. Basie and Ben Webster are also with Moten. This band is on par with the best, the Fletcher Henderson band. Tunes like Toby, Blue Room and Prince of Wails show complicated writing but usually they revert to simpler riffing which is where this band shines.
Benny Goodman (samples)
1932
Ellington is also getting a bit fed up with the music
business. He records the classic It Don't Mean a Thing if it Ain't Got that Swing , and later Solitude and Sophisticated Lady.
Also recorded that year: Bing Crosby's version of St Louis Blues, "I Must Have That Man", the Mills Brothers on "Diga Diga Do", and Ethel Waters on "I Can't Give You Anything But Love". (non-streaming)
The Bennie Moten Band swings in Kansas City, Missouri with five brass, four saxes and four rhythm pieces. This band is what defined the standard Swing band. Moten's Swing
Art Tatum comes to New York City and accepts a job accompanying Adelaide Hall. He will take New York by storm
1933
Billy Holiday is discovered in Monette's in New York City by --guess who-- John Hammond. Billy records with Benny Goodman.
Stormy Weather- Ethel Waters
Django makes a recording of Si J'aime Suzy
Art Tatum makes his first solo records including Tiger Rag and Tea for Two. The stride is very evident on Tea for Two. Art is currently the biggest draw on 52nd Street. Tatum who has a better grasp of harmony than anyone currently in Jazz claims Fats Waller as his inspiration.
Lester Young relocates to KC [24yo]
Prohibition is repealed, reducing attendance at speakeasies
1934
Large bands with five brass instruments (mostly trumpets and trombones), four reed instruments (mostly clarinets and saxophones which are increasing in popularity) and four rhythm instruments (usually piano, guitar, bass and drums) become the standard. The brass and reed sections normally play together as two voices which playoff against each other in "call and response" form. Riffing (developed by Don Redman with Fletcher Henderson's band) becomes increasingly popular.
a melodic idea stated in forceful rhythmic terms usually contained in the first two bars of a piece, repeated in the second eight-bar section and concluding with a return to the original idea. The riff is thought to derive from the repetitive call-and-response patterns of West African music, and appeared prominently in black-American music from the earliest times."
Quintet of the Hot Club of Paris is formed with Django Reinhardt on guitar, Stephane Grapelli on violin, Louis Vola on bass, Joseph Reinhardt (Django's brother) on guitar and Eugene Vees on guitar. This is the first non-American group to give the Americans serious competition. Their first recording is Dinah/Tiger Rag.
Benny Goodman (songs) (samples)
Robert Altman's 1996 movie "Kansas City" takes place in 1934 and depicts a 'cutting contest' between Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, and Ben Webster with Charlie Parker watching from the balcony. [backgrounder] (various KC tunes) [essay on Hawkins' sax development]
1935
Basie finds work in Kansas City and draws many former Moten band members into his new band. The best of all Swing bands has gotten its start.
The Swing band era opens with the sudden rise of Benny Goodman.
Benny Goodman records Jelly Roll Morton's King Porter Stomp (same arrangement as Fletcher Henderson's 1932 New King Porter Stomp). In retrospect, Henderson's version is superior.
Django and the Quintet of the Hot Club of Paris record Hoagy Carmichael's Stardust with Coleman Hawkins.
Louis Armstrong On the Sunny Side of the Street (maybe 1947 or 1956?)
1936 Basie's 1936 record Lady be Good featured a very cool, behind the beat, sax by Lester Young in an era of very hot solos. Lester's sweet and light sound
Basie's small band the K.C. Six records such songs as Dicky's Dream and One O'Clock Jump
Lester considers his solo on Shoe Shine Boy his finest.
Jay McShann arrives in KC [bio]
Billie Holiday Did I Remember?, No Regrets and Billies Blues.
Goody Goody- Benny Goodman
The Music Goes Round & Round- Tommy Dorsey
Django Reinhardt and the Hot Quintet make a recording of I Can't Give You Anything but Love.
Big Joe Turner's Roll 'Em Pete
Andy Kirk and His Twelve Clouds of Joy Until the Real Thing Comes Along
1937
Duke Ellington band records the classic Caravan.
Pittsburgh drum innovator Kenny Clarke moves the ground beat from the Bass/Hi-hat combination (previously innovated by Walter Johnson and Jo Jones) to the large ride symbol. This moves the ground beat completely away from the bass drum and makes faster Bop-type rhythms possible. Clarke found that he could get pitch and timbre variations and produce an airy sound.
By now, "Swing is King". There are dozens of Swing bands . The boom is really on. There are two different streams feeding the river. One is the Henderson/Goldkette stream using interesting scores and precise playing and the other is the Southwest school which emphasizes riffs and solos.
Benny Goodman's Roll 'Em
1938
Jelly Roll Morton records Creepy Feeling
Charlie Parker is being heavily influenced by tenor saxophonist Lester Young and piano virtuoso Art Tatum. Charlie goes to Chicago and then New York. He picks up odd jobs to support his playing. One of these jobs is as a dishwasher in a club where Art Tatum is playing. Tatum plays fast with numerous chord changes. This style would be Charlie's also.
Duke Ellington meets Billy Strayhorn. Strayhorn shows him Lush Life. Ellington is duly impressed.
Lester Young records a number of very influential sides for Commodore with the Kansas City Six. Young plays mostly clarinet here and produces excellent solos on Pagin' the Devil, I Want a Little Girl and Way Down Yonder in New Orleans.
Mary Lou Williams Mary's Idea
Count Basie and Jimmy Rushing [mislabeled] Swingin the Blues (Lester Young?)
Saxophonist Louis Jordan leaves Chick Webb's sax section to form his Tympany Five. This might well mark the beginnings of what we know as Rock and Roll. ('before' samples) Somebody Done Hoodooed The Hoodoo Man and "Bounce The Ball (Do Da Ditle Um Day)"
The Artie Shaw Band has its first big hit with Begin the Beguine.
Sidney Bechet records a version of Summertime that many people call the definitive version of Summertime.
John Hammond brings Blues shouter Big Joe Turner to New York City for a Carnegie Hall concert.
Jump bands begin to form. These are small, Swing oriented bands featuring off color lyrics and commercial arrangements. Louis Jordan has the most famous Jump band. These bands will evolve into Rock and Roll bands, possibly in response to the later Bop revolution.
Vocalist Slim Gaillard and bassist Slam Stewart (affectionately known as "Slim and Slam") become almost instantly famous with the catchy Flat Foot Floogie.
Robert Johnson makes his landmark recordings for Vocalion. Many believe that these represent the transition from Country Blues to City Blues. Johnson is strictly following the twelve bar Blues form.
1939
Swing players who are king and the Dixieland players who are trying to revive what they think of as "real" Jazz but ... what's this up on the horizon? It's Charlie Christian, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie who are sowing the seeds of what will take Jazz over in the next few years! Bop rebellion is beginning because many excellent young black players are getting irritated that the whites are making most of the money in Jazz.
Alan Lomax does the famous Jelly Roll Morton recordings for the Library of Congress. This presents as close as we can get to a realistic view of the early days of Jazz.
The Dixieland revival has two schools 1) Those committed to Armstrong, Oliver and Morton and 2) Those committed to Bix and the midwesterners. Dixieland is not really New Orleans music. It has a 4 beat ground beat instead of a 2 beat ground beat to give it a speedier feel. There are other differences. Dixieland is primarily a white movement.
Charlie Parker is in New York City working at Clarke Monroe's Uptown. He'll be at Monroe's for about a year. One night during this year, Charlie realizes that by using the high notes of the chords of a song, he can "play what's inside of him". The rest is the history of Bop. Charlie returns to Kansas City to play in Jay McShann's band. It will be awhile before everyone realizes that he is a genius.
mid 1930's swing era big bands Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Artie Shaw, Duke Ellington, and Count Basie
small group swing recordings emphasized the individual soloist, melodic blues
1939: Coleman Hawkins' Body and Soul precursor to Bop harmonics
Jeepers Creepers- Al Donohue
Charlie Christian's unique electric guitar phrasings allow the guitar to compete as a lead instrument head to head with the trumpet and the sax for the first time. Charlie probably learned of the electric from Floyd Smith whose Floyd's Guitar Blues made with Andy Kirk's Clouds of Joy is the first important use of the electric guitar. The electric guitar was almost unknown before this.
1940 bop innovations
Dizzy deliberately uses major thirds over minor changes in the song Pickin' the Cabbage recorded in May. In June, he uses a diminished 9th on Bye, Bye Blues. These things are new.
Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Christian are occasionally beginning or ending phrases on 2nd and 4th beats. This is called "offbeat". The usual practice is to use the 1st or 3rd.
new big band trend is afoot. This trend is called Progressive. Its proponents are Stan Kenton, Boyd Raeburn and Earle Spencer. This will eventually influence what will become Cool Jazz.
Ellington records Ko-Ko which contains elements of modality, Jack the Bear, Morning Glory, Across the Track Blues and others.
Yerba Buena Jazz Band returns to New Orleans roots-- San Francisco Dixieland style.
Decca releases 6-disc survey of KC jazz [history]
1941
WW2 draft breaks up big bands, opens up competition to new ideas
The country was nervous, and the music was nervous and agitated.Bop became the first jazz style that was not used for dancing.elitism
Bop begins in New York City. At first, Bop is only a few new ideas. [backgrounder]
Bud Powell meets the creators of Bop at Minton's (an event later immortalized in the Monk song In Walked Bud). He will become Bop's premiere pianist.
Others at Minton's include Monk on piano, Kenny Clarke on drums and Dizzy on trumpet. Monk will become a high priest of Bop. Parker and Dizzy are given credit for founding it. Clarke developed the rhythm on which it sits.
The recording ban (starting in 1942) will make the development of the new Bop something of a romantic mystery even to this day.
Kenny Clarke's new Bebop style of drumming (see 1937) is finally documented on a May recording at Minton's.
Bop players are substituting different but related chords for normal, mainstream "Swing" chords. Rhythm changes in Bop are bigger than the harmonic changes however. They are using faster tempos for fast songs and slower tempos for slow songs. The beats are divided more evenly for fast songs and fast tempos than Swing.
Bop players are deliberately playing "off-beat".
Players had to have a greater and more immediate sense of chord recognition, as well as their extensions and possible substitutions.
Ellington Band continues on what critics say is its best period. Duke records such favorites as I Got it Bad and That Ain't Good, Take the A-Train
Joe Thomas's trumpet masterpiece Stompin' at the Savoy with Art Tatum, Joe Turner and Edmond Hall.
Lester Young turns Jack Kerouac, the founding father of the "beat generation", on to his first marijuana cigarette.
Big Joe Turner's Piney Brown Blues
1942
Charlie Parker is now jamming regularly at Minton's and playing the Savoy Ballroom with the Jay McShann band. Examples of Parker's work at this time are Hootie Blues amd Sepian Blues recorded with McShann. It is Blues inflected Swing. Parker was a Blues player.
An amateur recording of Parker playing Cherokee at Minton's is made by Jerry Newman. This is music in transition.
Parker and Holiday addicts
Lionel Hampton has a huge hit with Illinois Jacquet's sax playing on Flying Home.
1943
Ellington's 45min Black, Brown, and Beige [review]
Lester Young records a number of very influential sides for Keynote as the Lester Young Quartet. Young is showing signs of change in his playing. His tone is getting thicker and his lines are not nearly as sculptured. Afternoon of a Basie-ite is particularly good.
Stan Kenton has a hit with Artistry in Rhythm which is based on Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe. A trend to more complex arrangements begins.
1944
Charlie Parker is with Billy Eckstine's band. Eckstine had the first big band to feature the Bop artists.
The First Bop record is cut by a band fronted by Coleman Hawkins. The band includes Hawkins on tenor sax, Dizzy Gillespie on trumpet, Max Roach on drums and Leo Parker on alto sax. Sides are Woody 'n' You and Disorder at the Border.
Coleman Hawkins had been using Monk in a small combo on 52nd Street. In October, Hawkins gives Monk a solo on a recording of Flying Hawk.
The winners of Esquire magazine's first Jazz poll perform in the first Jazz concert ever to be given at the Metropolitan Opera House. The concert date is January 18. The concert is recorded but never released in America. A Japanese release becomes available years later.
Mary Lou Williams What's Your Story, Morning Glory? plagiarised as "Black Coffee"
1945
Bop players begin to dress like business men instead of popular performers. Cool becomes the word, not hot. Things become hip, not hep. Performers cooly bow at the end of a tune. They don't mug. They become aloof.
Jazz is becoming the preferred music of white renegades (will be until the mid 60's).
Parker: Groovin' High, Salt Peanuts, Hot House, Koko, Billie's Bounce and Now's the Time. Yardbird Suite
Sarah Vaughan was able to vocalize much of the notes that Charlie Parker was playing
Mary Lou Williams Timmie Time
1946
Ellington Trumpets No End
1947 Ella Fitzgeral Flying Home" (thought to be her first scat based song, released in 1947 [backgrounder on scat]
Take Love Easy and "Don't Get Around Much Anymore" (non-streaming)
1948 Pee Wee Hunt Dixieland
bebop in the 1940's grew out of the small swing groups, more complex harmonies saxophonist Charlie "Bird" Parker was the father of bebop, also trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie songs by George Gershwin and Cole Porter not intended to be dance music fast tempos based on the chord progressions of popular songs, such as "I Got Rhythm", "Cherokee", or "How High The Moon". The improvisations were based on scales implied by those chords, and the scales used included alterations such as the flatted fifth.
The development of bebop led to new approaches to accompanying as well as soloing. Drummers less bass drum more cymbal and hi-hat. Bass players took over the pulse freeing pianists left hands modern jazz standard form: melody in unison, take turns playing solos, then reunite for melody again
1949 Art Tatum's "Willow Weep for Me" (non-streaming)
the end of WW2 relaxed people again [backgrounder]
Miles Davis The Birth Of The Cool. West Coast jazz more relaxed than bebop, often no piano
Listen to Youngıs style on "Lester Leaps In" and Davisıs "Boplicity" to hear examples of the cool sound. Also listen to Miles Davis on "Summertime" to hear sonorous sounds typical of Gil Evansıs arrangements.
Stan Getz and Gerry Mulligan, and trumpet player Chet Baker. Dave Brubeck
Stan Getz bossa nova and samba.Latin jazz.
Modern Jazz Quartet elements of classical music called the third stream.
1952 Take the 'A' Train (non-streaming)
1956 Sophisticated Lady (non-streaming)
1957 Autumn Leaves (non-streaming)
1959 Hello, Little Girl (non-streaming)
Hard Bop backlash against cool 1950's. maintaining the rhythmic drive of bebop while including blues and gospel [backgrounder]
Funky jazz uses simpler harmonies, an emphasis on rhythm, easily recognizable tunes, and anything else that players like Horace Silver could invent to increase the audienceıs involvement and pleasure. Gospel jazz is an extension of funky jazz. Funky jazz can be heard in the performances of Bobby Timmons with Art Blakey, as well as with Cannonball Adderly. The adoption of gospel idioms by Les McCann could place his performances in the church as easily as on stage or in the night club.
Art Blakey And The Jazz Messengers (samples)
Post Bop mid 1950's until the mid 1960's heyday of mainstream modern jazz
Miles Davis had four important groups during this time. The first featured John Coltrane single greatest jazz group ever. Workin' ..., Steamin' ..., Relaxin' ..., and Cookin' with the Miles Davis Quintet. muted ballad playing rhythm section hardest swinging in the business.
The second important Davis group album Kind Of Blue from this group is high on most lists of favorite jazz albums. The primary style of this group is called modal, as it relies on songs written around simple scales or modes that often last for many measures each, as opposed to the quickly changing complex harmonies of bebop derived styles.
The third Davis group of the era was actually the Gil Evans orchestra. Miles recorded several classic albums with Gil, including Sketches Of Spain.
The fourth important
Miles group of this period included Wayne Shorter on saxophone,
Herbie Hancock on piano, Ron Carter on bass, and Tony Williams on
drums. The early recordings of this group, including Live At The
Plugged Nickel, as well as the earlier My Funny Valentine
John Coltrane is another giant of this period. In addition to his playing with Miles, he recorded the album Giant Steps under his own name, which showed him to be one of the most technically gifted and harmonically advanced players around. After leaving Miles, he formed a quartet with pianist McCoy Tyner, drummer Elvin Jones, and a variety of bass players, finally settling on Jimmy Garrison. Coltrane's playing with this group showed him to be one of the most intensely emotional players around. This group evolved constantly, from the relatively traditional post bop of My Favorite Things to the high energy modal of A Love Supreme to the wailing avant garde of Meditations and Ascension.
Charles Mingus was another influential leader during this period. His small groups tended to be less structured than others, giving more freedom to the individual players, although Mingus also directed larger ensembles in which most of the parts were written out. Mingus' compositions for smaller groups were often only rough sketches, and performances were sometimes literally composed or arranged on the bandstand, with Mingus calling out directions to the musicians. Alto saxophonist, bass clarinetist, and flautist Eric Dolphy was a mainstay of Mingus' groups. His playing was often described angular, meaning that the interval in his lines were often large leaps, as opposed to scalar lines, consist mostly of steps. The album Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus featuring Dolphy is a classic.
Thelonious Monk is widely regarded as one of the most important composers in jazz, as well as being a highly original pianist. His playing is more sparse than most of his contemporaries. Some of his albums include Brilliant Corners and Thelonious Monk With John Coltrane.
Free Jazz and the Avant Garde Saxophonist Ornette Coleman and trumpet player Don Cherry were pioneers of this music through albums such as The Shape Of Jazz To Come and Free Jazz. The former album, as well as several more recorded with a quartet that also include either Scott LaFaro or Charlie Haden on bass and either Billy Higgins or Ed Blackwell on drums, still retains the basic feel of traditional post bop small group jazz, with alternating soloists over a walking bass line and swinging drum beat. This style is sometimes known as freebop. The album Free Jazz was a more cacophonous affair that featured collective improvisation.
avant garde pianist Cecil Taylor. percussive dissonant
John Coltrane avant garde in the mid 1960's. Albums such as Ascension and Interstellar Space show Coltrane absorbing both Free Jazz and the works of Cecil Taylor He also recorded an album The Avant Garde with Don Cherry that is interesting for its parallels with The Shape Of Jazz To Come and other Ornette Coleman quartet recordings.
Sun Ra avant garde big bands
Fusion
Miles Davis helped usher in the fusion of jazz and rock in the mid to
late 1960's through albums such as Bitches Brew and Jack Johnson.
John McLaughlin high energy group, the Mahavishnu Orchestra
Weather Report
Post Modern Jazz Don Cherry, Charlie Haden, saxophonists Anthony Braxton, David Murray, and Dewey Redman, clarinetist John Carter, pianists Carla Bley and Muhal Richard Abrams, the World Saxophone Quartet, featuring four saxophonists with no rhythm section, and the Art Ensemble Of Chicago, featuring trumpet player Lester Bowie and woodwind player Roscoe Mitchell
Oregon, New Age music
John Zorn and guitarists Sonny Sharrock and Fred Frith, who engaged in a frenetic form of free improvisation sometimes called energy music
neoclassicism. Trumpeter Wynton Marsalis and his brother, saxophonist Branford Marsalis, have achieved much popular success playing music that is based on styles of the 1950's and 1960's
since the mid 1980's M-Base Steve Coleman, Greg Osby, and Gary Thomas, trumpet player Graham Haynes, trombonist Robin Eubanks, bass player Anthony Cox, and drummer Marvin "Smitty" Smith.
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