Unit 12: Early American Jazz

Jazz in Chicago and New York in the 1920s

Jazz did establish a foothold in California, but it flourished in Chicago and New York. In the early 1920's, Chicago emerged as the creative center for jazz. While New York had its musicians, especially in the predominantly African American district called Harlem, it was still the South Side of Chicago that was the most active and creative jazz venue. When Joe Oliver opened in Lincoln Gardens in 1922 with his King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band, jazz began to take

Joe Oliver	Oliver's Creole Jazz Band

W.C Handy

on new characteristics distinctive of the Chicago style. This became quite evident when Louis Armstrong left his job with a riverboat orchestra to join Oliver's band in Chicago with the Dodds brothers, Johnny on clarinet and Warren (known as "Baby") on drums. The pianist at the time was Lil Hardin, soon to become Louis' wife. Neither Oliver himself nor any of these musicians were actually Creole (white or mixed descendants of French or Spanish settlers who speak a special language derived from French).

Lil Hardin, Armstrong's Wife

Louis Armstrong

In Chicago, the music was played at a faster tempo than was usually the case with New Orleans style jazz. The idea of a break—a pause in the rhythmic background—was pre-arranged, and opportunities for individual instruments to play a solo chorus or two against a background of other muted instruments were also pre-planned. This was the beginning of the arranged musical piece as distinct from ensemble improvisation.

Louis Armstrong was born in New Orleans in 1901. He learned to play the cornet when he spent a few years in his early teens in a reform school, the consequences of a boyish prank. After an apprenticeship in several bands in New Orleans, where he acquired the nickname "Satchelmouth" or just plain "Satchmo", he was asked by Joe Oliver to join his orchestra in Chicago. Although Armstrong was in Chicago only two years, he set the style that was identified with Chicago, and which enthralled so many young, predominantly white musicians.

But Armstrong himself left Chicago in 1924 for New York with his new wife, Lil Hardin, to play with Fletcher Henderson's orchestra. The several years in New York were immensely productive for Armstrong. Recording opportunities were greater there. So, in addition to his work with Henderson's orchestra, he participated in small groups to record music. These small groups would frequently accompany blues singers during performances or recordings. During the 1920's the famous Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, who began her career in minstrel shows, dominated the scene, soon to be replaced by the even more musically talented Bessie Smith, whose sobriquet was "Empress of the Blues." Blues vocals were always poignant, frequently laced with ironic humor, and sometimes risque through the use of double entendre lyrics. But "St. Louis Blues", probably the most famous of the Armstrong-Smith recordings, is hardly raucous, having been composed by W.C. Handy, whose lyrics never offended anyone' sensitivities.

Fletcher Hhenderson	Gertrude Rainey
Bessie Smith	W.C.Handy

Armstrong organized, with the help of his wife, several of his friends into the recording groups known as the Hot Five and the Hot Seven to make a justly

Hot Five

Dancing in the Roaring Twenties

famous series of recordings for the Okeh Recording company. These recordings represent the origin of the frenetic Chicago style of jazz, reflecting the Roaring Twenties life in Chicago. The Dodds brothers, members of the Hot Five and Hot Seven, also recorded in small groups in Chicago, notably with (white) trumpeter Natty Dominique, but these recordings are still in the mode of the earlier New Orleans style—more relaxed and lyrical.

At this time, 1926, Armstrong also recorded his famous "scat singing", vocalizing nonsense syllables in tune with the music. In 1927 the Pittsburg born pianist Earl Hines joined him for a long lasting collaboration. Hines himself had developed a trumpet style of playing the piano: octaves with the right hand and stabbing the keyboard leading to a percussive brassy sound. He was musically inventive and his playing surprised other musicians who often thought he had lost his way while playing. His solo recording late in 1928 of "A Monday Date" exhibits an inventiveness that was years ahead of his time. Before returning to play with Armstrong in 1947, Hines led his own band in Chicago, which included at different times many famous jazz figures.

Armstrong continued to play and record during the 1930's, both in America and in Europe. France, especially, was most receptive to this new American style of music. The newer, swing bands of the late 1930's and early 1940's eclipsed Armstrong's trumpet, but with the New Orleans revival in the late 1940's and with his motion picture appearances, particularly with the popular Bing Crosby, Armstrong once again shone brightly as America's foremost jazz musician.

Bing Crosby performing

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