History of Jazz Music
Jazz music may not be in your tape or CD collection, but it should be! Let’s take a look back at how jazz originated. The early development of jazz begins in the city of New Orleans. As a port city, it brought in all different kinds of cultures and music. With the combination of sounds from the Caribbean and Mexico, and brass bands galore, New Orleans had a perfect blend to develop a new sound. From this combination came the famous jazz sounds of Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton.
From New Orleans, the jazz musicians traveled North to Chicago in the early 1920’s. It seems like a long time ago, but really it was a time that most of your grandparents were around for. The reason these musicians ended up in Chicago or the “Windy City” was because many of the jazz clubs in New Orleans closed down. As people began recording their music and selling it, jazz gained wider recognition across America.
Spreading like wildfire, jazz dug its roots deeply into the soil of many cities such as New York and Kansas City. In New York the first piano style became incorporated into the rich brassy sounds of jazz. During this time in the 1920’s, people were experimenting with a style of jazz that involved large orchestras. Fletcher Henderson put together one such band that appeared at the Cotton Club in New York in 1923. The great Louis Armstrong began playing with them, which would eventually bring the jazz era into the swing era.
As jazz evolved, it became very danceable. From the sporadic jazz notes spurted out to tightly arranged music, bloomed the Swing or Big Band period. You might be familiar with what swing sounds like, because it is coming back into style. Bands like Big Bad Voodoo Daddy are working from the original sounds of the great Benny Goodman and others.
So much music that we listen to today comes from the first sounds of jazz. Artists of all different kinds of music borrow ideas from jazz legends to use in their songs. If you’ve never listened to jazz, give it a try. You might be surprised at how much you like it!
