J
azz developed as a convergence of multiple cultures. The most important fac-tor was the importation of African slaves to a world dominated by warring Eu-ropean colonists—particularly the French, Spanish, and English. In striving to keep African musical traditions alive, the slaves eventually found ways to blend them with the abiding traditions of Europe, producing hybrid styles in North and South America unlike anything in the Old World. Miraculously, jazz and other forms of African American music, including spirituals, blues, and ragtime, overcame subjugation to assume dominant roles in American music.The miracle crystallized in New Orleans, a port city that assimilated many mu-sical infl uences; by the early twentieth century, it was home to a new blues-based, highly rhythmic, and improvisational way of playing music. New Orleans produced jazz’s fi rst great composers, bandleaders, instrumentalists, and teachers, as well as Louis Armstrong, the genius whose unique skills and temperament spurred the
This late nineteenth-century poster of Primrose and West’s Big Minstrels shows that the com-pany offered two productions: black performers on the left, white performers on the right. Both would have appeared onstage in blackface.
Mamie Smith and Her Jazz Hounds, 1922. Note teenager Coleman Hawkins, on the right, playing an alto saxophone instead of his usual tenor.
Paul Whiteman, baton raised at the upper right, leads his elephantine orchestra on one of the elaborate sets built for the movie revue The King of Jazz, 1930.
PAR T II
1843
■ Virginia Minstrels perform in New York: beginning of minstrelsy.
1861–65
■ Civil War
1871
■ Fisk Jubilee Singers begin performing.
1877
■ Reconstruction ends.
■ Thomas Edison invents the phonograph.
1878
■ James Bland writes “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny.”
1880
■ John Philip Sousa takes over U.S. Marine Band, popularizing brass bands throughout the country.
1884
■ Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn published in England, in the U.S. a year later.
1886
■ Statue of Liberty dedicated in New York harbor.
1893
■ Chicago World’s Fair; Scott Joplin performs on the Midway.
1894
■ Jim Crow laws adopted in Southern states.
1896
■ Ernest Hogan’s “All Coons Look Alike to Me”
published.
■ Supreme Court, in Plessy v. Ferguson, allows
“separate but equal” segregation of facilities.
1897
■ First ragtime pieces published.
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acceptance of jazz around the world. Armstrong had been nurtured by a strong tra-dition, from the fi rst important jazz musician, Buddy Bolden, to his own mentor, King Oliver, who summoned Armstrong to Chicago to join the Creole Jazz Band.
Armstrong transformed jazz from a provincial African American folk music into an art focused less on community tradition than on the achievements of excep-tional individuals. Before Armstrong, jazz had won the hearts of classical compos-ers who reckoned it as a resource for “serious” music. After him, a generation of instrumentalists and composers proved that jazz was more than a resource: it was an emotionally and intellectually complete art in its own right. This generation included the most prolifi c and characteristic of American composers, Duke Elling-ton, and such powerful performers as vocalist Bessie Smith, saxophonist Coleman Hawkins, and cornetist Bix Beiderbecke. By the early 1930s, jazz had traveled the world, making converts everywhere.
1898
■ Clorindy, or the Origin of the Cakewalk popularizes the cakewalk.
■ Spanish-American War
1899
■ Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag” published.
1900
■ Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams published.
1903
■ Wright brothers make fi rst fl ight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
■ W. E. B. DuBois’s The Souls of Black Folk published.
1904
■ Ma Rainey hears the blues for the fi rst time in St.
Louis.
■ Saxophones fi rst manufactured in U.S.
1905
■ Buddy Bolden at his peak in New Orleans.
■ Robert Abbott founds the Chicago Defender.
■ Einstein proposes his theory of relativity.
1906
■ San Francisco earthquake kills 700.
1907
■ Pablo Picasso paints Les demoiselles d’Avignon.
1909
■ Henry Ford establishes assembly line to produce Model Ts.
■ National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) founded.
1910
■ Bert Williams becomes fi rst black to star in Ziegfeld’s Follies.
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50 ■ CHAPTER 3 THE ROOTS OF JAZZ
Two legends of New Orleans: trumpet player Freddy Keppard and soprano saxophonist Sidney Bechet, in Chicago, 1918.
The infl uential blues singer and guitarist Blind Willie McTell and his wife and occasional per-forming partner, Kate McTell, Atlanta, 1940.
Members of New York’s music world gathered in Atlantic City, N.J., for the opening of the Vincent Youmans show Great Day: left to right, unknown, songwriter Harold Arlen, Fletcher Henderson (behind the wheel), trumpet player Bobby Stark, singer Lois Deppe, composer Will Marion Cook (standing), trumpet player Rex Stewart. Outside the Globe Theater, 1929.
PAR T II
1910s
■ Vernon and Irene Castle and James Reese Europe popularize dances like the turkey trot and cakewalk.
1912
■ James Reese Europe performs in Carnegie Hall.
■ W. C. Handy’s “Memphis Blues” published.
■ Sinking of the Titanic.
1913
■ Igor Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring premieres in Paris, causing a riot.
1914
■ World War I begins in Europe.
■ Charlie Chaplin makes his fi rst short fi lms.
1915
■ D. W. Griffi th’s Birth of a Nation released, to cheers and protests.
■ Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis published.
1916
■ Wilbur Sweatman records “Down Home Rag.”
1917
■ Original Dixieland Jazz Band makes fi rst jazz recording; beginning of Jazz Age.
■ U.S. enters World War I.
■ Great Migration begins in earnest.
■ Bolsheviks take power in the Russian Revolution.
1918
■ World War I ends.
1919
■ Prohibition (18th Amendment) becomes law.
■ Chicago White Sox throw the World Series.
1920s
■ Pianists (James P. Johnson, Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, Art Tatum) hit their stride in New York.
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The midtown Cotton Club, 1938. Imagine a show featuring bandleader Cab Calloway and dancer Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, plus dinner, for $1.50.
John Philip Sousa brought military music to the concert stage.
1920
■ Mamie Smith’s “Crazy Blues” becomes fi rst “race”
recording hit.
■ Paul Whiteman establishes his name with
“Whispering.”
1921
■ First commercial radio broadcast.
■ Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle’s Shuffl e Along premieres on Broadway.
■ Arnold Schoenberg writes fi rst twelve-tone piece of music.
1923
■ First wave of black jazz recordings: King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, Bessie Smith.
1924
■ Premiere of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue at Paul Whiteman’s “Experiment in Modern Music”
concert.
■ Fletcher Henderson Orchestra opens at the Roseland Ballroom, hiring Louis Armstrong.
1925
■ Armstrong begins recording with his Hot Five.
■ Development of electrical recording.
■ The New Negro published, launching Harlem Renaissance.
1926
■ Jelly Roll Morton and His Red Hot Peppers make electrical recordings.
1927
■ Duke Ellington opens at the Cotton Club.
■ Bix Beiderbecke records “Singin’ the Blues.”
■ Bing Crosby introduced on Paul Whiteman recordings.
■ The Jazz Singer, fi rst talking picture, released.
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Th e fi rst question we must address is: what kind of music is jazz? In 1987, the U.S. Con-gress passed a resolution declaring jazz a “valuable national American treasure,” but the full text sums up the confusion sown by the music’s contradictory qualities. Jazz is an
“art form,” brought to the American people through well-funded university courses and arts programs; but it is also a “people’s music,” a bubbling upward from the aspirations of ordinary folk. It’s “an indigenous American music” but also international, having been
“adopted by musicians around the world.” Although jazz is a “unifying force” that erases ethnic gulfs, it is nevertheless a music that comes to us “through the African American experience.”
Th ere are three diff erent categories that situate jazz within our society. Th e fi rst is jazz as an art form. Jazz has been called “America’s classical music,” and it can now be found in the heart of the cultural establishment, whether in concert halls, television docu-mentaries, or university curricula. While thinking of jazz as an art seems particularly appropriate for today, there has been reason to do so throughout its long history. Jazz has always been created by skillfully trained musicians, even if their training took place outside the academy. Th eir unique music demands and rewards the same respect and care traditionally brought to classical music.