Jazz Music Page 1

Jazz Music

Playing or listening to music can be a wonderful way to free our emotions—to make us
happy or sad, or even inspire us to do something. For many people, jazz is the most
liberating form of music there is. It can convey a sense of exhilarating freedom, and touch
us emotionally in a way that few other forms of music can.

NEW ORLEANS

We still do not know a great deal about the early history of jazz. But like the blues it was created by
African-Americans. Certain important features of jazz—such as the use of complicated and unusual
rhythms, call-and-response effects and improvisation—still exist in African music today.

We do know that jazz emerged in New Orleans in the United States, in about 1900. The musical life
of New Orleans was rich and varied. The city is a port on the Gulf of Mexico, and people from the
Caribbean and many different countries passed through, bringing different musical styles with them.
Jazz borrowed from Latin American music as well as European orchestral music from the 18th
century and 19th century that today we call “classical” music.

The earliest jazz musicians improvised new melody lines over blues and ragtime songs and marches.
Jazz bands played at social gatherings, such as picnics, weddings and funerals. In New Orleans jazz,
a cornet or trumpet carried the main melody of a song, while a clarinet added other melodies (which
we call countermelodies). Tubas, string basses and trombones provided rhythm and basic harmony.

CHICAGO AND NEW YORK

In the 1920s and 1930s, many of the most creative jazz players moved to Chicago and New York,
including clarinet player Benny Goodman, drummer Gene Krupa and trombonist Jack Teagarden. By
now, many jazz musicians were introducing more complicated harmonies into their music and
experimenting with new musical ideas.

Louis Armstrong, who moved to Chicago from New Orleans, was the first virtuoso soloist in jazz. He
played with an aggressive sound and did not stick closely to a regular rhythm when he played a solo.
By not restricting himself to a steady beat, his solos had more freedom to them and sounded very
exciting. In the early 1920s, Louis played cornet on some famous recordings by King Oliver and his
Creole Jazz Band.

Rather than singing, Louis sometimes made up his own words and sounds, as a musician might
improvise on an instrument. This style of singing is called scat singing.

Louis helped to create the Chicago style. This type of jazz highlighted soloists, featured more
complicated interplay between the instruments and introduced saxophones.

The cornet player Bix Beiderbecke was another of the most famous jazz musicians of the time. He
played with a pure, sweet-sounding tone.

Today, we usually associate ragtime music with piano players such as Scott Joplin. However, he was
not the only famous jazz piano player. In the 1920s, in New York, Fats Waller was playing stride
piano, an energetic style of playing that demanded great musical skills. In the 1930s and 1940s,
boogie-woogie piano, which was based on the blues, also became very popular.

The most gifted jazz pianist of all time was Art Tatum, who had his heyday in the 1930s and 1940s.
Tatum could play very quickly and very accurately, releasing an astonishing stream of notes when he
performed. Hearing him on the radio, people often thought that two or three pianists must be playing

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at the same time.

SWING AND THE BIG BANDS

During the 1920s, many bandleaders began to feature musicians who played different orchestral
instruments. The groups of musicians assembled by bandleaders such as Fletcher Henderson, Duke
Ellington and Benny Goodman are often referred to as big bands or swing bands.

Duke Ellington was one of the great jazz composers and musical arrangers. He wrote many famous
jazz pieces, including “Take the ‘A’ Train”, “Mood Indigo” and “Creole Love Call”. Duke often wrote
solos to bring out particular qualities in an instrument, or a player.

Count Basie’s big band, originally from Kansas City, was one of the most famous swing bands. Their
style of jazz was based on the blues.

We often refer to the period from the mid-1930s to the early 1950s as the “big band era” or the
“swing era”. During this period, jazz became the dominant form of popular music for the only time in
its history. It cost a great deal of money to pay for such large groups of musicians to tour the
country, however, and the big band era died out after World War II.

In the 1930s and 1940s, several smaller groups began to feature women singers. Ella Fitzgerald and
Billie Holiday were two of the most famous singers of the time.

Although most famous jazz musicians have been American, several great jazz performers have come
from elsewhere. The French violinist Stéphane Grappelli and the Belgian Roma guitarist Django
Reinhardt became celebrated jazz stars in the 1930s, when they played together in a famous band
called the Quintet of the Hot Club, in Paris. Django was the first European to influence American jazz
musicians.

BEBOP AND MUSICAL EXPERIMENTS

The 1940s saw the rise of bebop (or simply bop). This revolutionary style of jazz kept the swing
influences of the big bands, but introduced complicated, unusual harmonies. Bebop musicians such
as the trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie also improvised far more freely than previous musicians, and
sometimes played exceptionally quickly. Because bebop did not feature straightforward melody or
harmony, it did not appeal to as many people as the big bands had.

Charlie Parker, who played the saxophone, was probably the most adventurous of all bebop
musicians. He introduced unusual melodies, which he often played in a rhythm that went against the
rhythm that the rest of his group was playing. Charlie also expanded the range of emotions that
could be aroused in jazz, by creating darker, less pleasant moods with his playing.

A number of famous jazz musicians played with Charlie, including the pianist Thelonious Monk and
the singer Sarah Vaughan.

JAZZ IN THE 1950S

The trumpeter Miles Davis, who played with Charlie Parker early on in his career, was one of the
greatest jazz musicians. He changed his musical style several times during his career. Miles started
off playing bebop but abandoned it for the mellower, sweet sound that he adopted for his album The
Birth of the Cool. This laid-back, softer sound became very popular with jazz musicians on the west
coast of America, such as trumpeter Chet Baker, and became known as West Coast Jazz. On the east
coast of America, however, jazz musicians continued to play the hard-driving bebop.

In contrast to Miles’s sweet, highly melodic style of playing, the saxophonist John Coltrane became

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known for playing astonishingly fast runs of notes. The writer Irma Gitler coined the phrase “sheets
of sound” to describe his style, though Coltrane could also play slow songs with feeling.

Bassist and bandleader Charlie Mingus brought great passion to his music. Charlie pioneered a more
melodic style of double bass playing in jazz. He also hired a number of outstanding jazz musicians to
work with him, many of whom sounded better with Charlie than with anyone else.

In the 1950s, saxophonist Ornette Coleman developed a new variation of jazz, which today we call
free jazz. Although he still kept a swing in the music, Ornette took away harmony instruments from
his groups and often varied the speed of the music in their songs.

THE 1960S TO THE PRESENT

Not all jazz musicians wanted to push jazz into new directions like Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and
Ornette Coleman. In the early 1960s, many jazz musicians introduced Brazilian samba and bossa
nova into their music. This Latin American influence was very popular. Stan Getz and guitarist Charlie
Byrd had a number one album in the US Billboard chart of 1962 with Jazz Samba.

In the 1960s, many jazz musicians became influenced by rock music and funk. They began to use
rock instruments and sometimes introduced a steady rock beat to their music. Miles Davis released
several albums that combined jazz and rock, and developed a style that people usually refer to as
fusion, or jazz rock. In turn, several rock bands took influences from jazz and put them into their
own music.

Many musicians who had worked with Miles in the 1960s went on to play in fusion bands in the
1970s. These included keyboard player Herbie Hancock, guitarist John McLaughlin and pianist Chick
Corea.

A lighter, less rock-based form of jazz also emerged during the 1970s. Jazz musicians such as
guitarist George Benson played a tuneful form of jazz, which became very popular. George had many
hit albums and singles in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

During the late 1980s and 1990s many jazz musicians began to explore earlier styles of jazz for
inspiration. Jazz musicians such as the trumpeter Wynton Marsalis used ideas from classic jazz stars
such as Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington in their music; because of this, we sometimes call the
music they create neo-classic jazz.

Through its use in TV adverts and as background music in films, jazz now reaches a wider audience
than ever before. Today, we use the word jazz to describe a whole range of different musical styles,
which makes it very difficult to say exactly what makes a piece of music jazz. But whatever form it
may now take, there is still a freedom and a depth of feeling in jazz that we can trace all the way
back to its roots at the beginning of the 20th century.

Did you know?

• Although jazz was first played by black musicians, the earliest jazz
recordings were made by a white band-The Original Dixieland Jazz Band-
from New Orleans, which recorded 'Livery Stable Blues' in 1917. The
record sold a million copies.
• Django Reinhardt became one of the greatest jazz guitarists of all time.
His achievements were particularly remarkable because his left hand had
been damaged in a fire in 1928 and he could only use two fingers on that
hand.

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• During his 50-year career, Duke Ellington composed more than 2,000
pieces of music.
• Louis Armstrong's nickname was 'Satchmo'-it was short for 'satchel
mouth'!

Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.