So what do you know about music history when it comes to Jazz?

Here's what I've recently learned (correct me if I'm wrong) but after Count Basie's big band (early 40's), jazz was born.

There were 3 categories; jump jazz, soul jazz, funk jazz. Other versions came after but when it started this was it.

body know anything else?


It would be helpful because I really think everyone should know their history. Also there is so much music from our past that receive zero attention, Jazz is only one style of music.

Thanks in advance to anybody who posts.

I'm glad we're discussing some jazz now!

Anyway, I'm no jazz expert, but I believe that, in rough chronological order, there were various kinds of trends:

the "big band" era

the "swing era"

the "hard bop" era

the "west coast cool" era

the "free jazz" era

the "electro-jazz"/"fusion" era

the "smooth jazz" era (ugh!)

now, it seems we are slowly seeing another "nu jazz" era blending the better elements of jazz, electronica, acid and hip-hop.

There are probably loads of gaps in that summary, so someone else should feel free to fill them in.

I thought Jazz started with Buddy Bolden, Jellyroll Morton & King Oliver? Basie just popularized the genre.

I have always found it very interesting that jazz is considered by those with classical music leanings as common rubbish and lazy music, when the reality is that jazz is as vibrant and exciting a music form as classical and the fact that much of jazz is freeform is more inspiring to me than a lot of the scripted classical works.

sinisterpentatonic said:

It started in New Orleans, shortly after the abolition of slavery. And you are indeed correct!

Jazz is America's classical music and it is indigenous to the United States. Jazz has respect as a viable and long lasting artform. From jump to jive, swing to big band, acid to be-bop, it's constantly morphing yet embedded in the American imagination.

Some of my favorite Jazz artists (instrumentalists/singers) include:

Miles Davis
The Miles Davis Quintet
Ella Fitzgerald (her voice is still amongst the most beautiful I've ever heard)
Cab Calloway
Duke Ellington
Jack DeJohnette ("Third World Anthem" is amazing.)
Sarah Vaughn
Billie Holiday
Nancy Wilson
Lena Horne
Louis Armstrong

O.K., O.K. so now I learned something.

What about "soul-jazz" and "funk-jazz"?

It seems to me that funk started here (along with a ton of other kinds of music) and James Brown just popularized it.

Wrong again?

Have you seen the PBS documentary series? Very cool stuff.

Slave2daGroove said:

Personally, i feel funk started with the blues (as with most american music) but I can go back and listen to some ol' blues stuff B.J.B (before James brown) and I find myself bumping my head like I'm listening to some mothership connection type of shit.

People think that Larry Graham was the first bass player to pop the strings on a bass, when actually Willie dixon was doing it way back when. I guess what I'm trying to say is that "Funk" is the evolution of the blues.

What about Storyville?

Im actually interested lately in jazz electronic.. like glitch noises and such.. anyone got any recomendations for it?

Slave2daGroove said:

... a trumpet player named Buddy Bolden is credited as being the inventor of funk jazz... back around the turn of the century 1800/1900 ...

Sdldawn said:

You have to pick up Jan Jenilik's "Scape" all jazz-loops and very glitchy.

also as far as jazzy electronica goes, you can't go wrong with "Cinematic Orchestra's "Everyday"

I've recently been turned on to the group "Flanger" some cool shit! though I don't own anything by them.

other groups that you might be interested in are Nuspirit Helsinki, Jazzanova, Mr. Scruff, St. Germain, Clifford Gilberto, animals on wheels, yesterday's quintet, Tortoise, Isotope217.

Alot of this stuff you can hear samples of at amazon.com.

Sdldawn said:

Also Prefuse73 is someone to look out for, I wouldn't call them jazzy but they are downtempo and glitchy, alot of thier beats are closer to hip-hop (without the vocals). I love both of their albums.

I guess I should say keep an eye on the Warp label, cuz they seem to be on the cutting edge with artist spearheading this genre, such as Boards of Canada and Autechre.

VinaBlue said:

Only bits and pieces.

Ken Burns really did his research, maybe that's next on the list.

PistolGripPump said:

Although no one knows when jazz music was "invented," a good starting point is when cornetist Buddy Bolden ,formed his first band in 1895. The first important name in jazz history, Bolden's career has long been buried in legend, but Donald Marquis' definitive book, -In Search of Buddy Bolden, successfully pieced together a factual and coherent biography. Bolden left school in 1890, learned cornet, and originally played dance music. Because he never recorded (a legendary 1898 cylinder has never been found), one can only guess how Bolden sounded, but according to reports he was very blues-oriented. He was the most popular musician in New Orleans by 1900, and an influence on later cornetists, but by 1906 he was slowly going insane. The following year, Bolden was committed to Jackson Mental Institute where he remained completely forgotten for his final 24 years
[This message was edited Mon Dec 8 13:28:56 PST 2003 by Slave2daGroove]

Slave2daGroove said:

Yeah, I read that book that was mentioned, though alot of it seems to be based on lore or myth. I remember reading in there that you could hear him blowing his trumpet a mile away.

What you might want to research is Congo Square, supposedly that's where everything began.

There's so much to cover when it comes to Jazz, but it didn't start with Count Basie, and it existed before the 1940s. Since its earliest years there have been many different styles of jazz

Jazz as we know it today springs from Louis Armstrong, aka POPS. He's the one that changed its style by making the soloist the focal point from that point on. He's also the first to scat sing on recordings.

sinisterpentatonic said:

Thanks! Thirsty for knowledge like a man in the desert.

And as far as Ken Burns goes, don't rely on him alone.

He collaborated with Wynton Marsalis on his documentary, and it shows.

When it came to jazz fusion, a style that Wynton detests, Burns' documentary skipped over a TON of information about the genre and it's wide ranging participants.

Supernova said:

Thanks for pointing this out.While I leared alot while watching the documentary,I couldnt help but feel that some music and musicians were sort of glossed over.Herbie Hancock was barely mentioned at all and I feel that his Bluenote albums are an essential part of any Jazz collection.
Admittedly, Im still a novice when it comes to Jazz and couldnt begin to debate the merits of the various styles over the years , but I like what sounds good to me:

Hancock
Miles Davis
Louis Armstrong
Ella Fitzgerald
Freddy Hubbard
John Coltrane
Dave Brubeck

...just to name a few...

Supernova said:

Supernova said:

I didn't see it, but I heard they left out Sun Ra! and if I heard it right, Ornette Coleman!

MrTation said:

I don't know anything about Freddy Hubbard (unless I heard his music and didn't know it was him). What should I get?

sinisterpentatonic said:

Now that I think about it, I don't remember seeing anything about them on it either.

Jazz, type of music first developed by African Americans around the first decade of the 20th century that has an identifiable history and distinct stylistic evolution. Jazz grew up alongside the blues and popular music, and all these genres overlap in many ways. However, critics generally agree about whether artists fall squarely in one camp or another.


Characteristics

Since its beginnings jazz has branched out into so many styles that no single description fits all of them accurately. A few generalizations can be made, however, bearing in mind that for all of them, exceptions can be cited.

Performers of jazz improvise within the conventions of their chosen style. Typically, the improvisation is accompanied by the repeated chord progression of a popular song or an original composition. Instrumentalists emulate black vocal styles, including the use of glissandi (sliding movements that smoothly change the pitch), nuances of pitch (including blue notes, the “bent” notes that are played or sung slightly lower than the major scale), and tonal effects such as growls and wails.

In striving to develop a personal sound, or tone color (an idiosyncratic sense of rhythm and form and an individual style of execution), performers create rhythms characterized by constant syncopation (the placing of accents in unexpected places, usually on the weaker beat) and by swing.

Swing can be defined as a sensation of momentum in which a melody is alternately heard together with, then slightly at variance with, the regular beat. Written scores, if present, are often used merely as guides, providing structure within which improvisation occurs. The typical instrumentation begins with a rhythm section consisting of piano, string bass, drums, and optional guitar, to which may be added any number of wind instruments. In big bands the wind instruments are grouped into three sections: saxophones, trombones, and trumpets.

Although exceptions occur in some styles, most jazz is based on the principle that an infinite number of melodies can fit the chord progressions of any song. The musician improvises new melodies that fit the chord progression, which is repeated again and again as each soloist is featured, for as many choruses as desired.

Although pieces with many different formal patterns are used for jazz improvisation, two formal patterns in particular are frequently found in songs used for jazz. One is the AABA form of popular-song choruses, which typically consists of 32 measures in ¹ meter, divided into four 8-measure sections: section A, a repetition of section A, section B (the “bridge” or “release,” often beginning in a new key), and a repetition of section A. The second form, with roots deep in African American folk music, is the 12-bar blues form. Unlike the 32-bar AABA form, blues songs have a fairly standardized chord progression.

Origins

Jazz is rooted in the mingled musical traditions of African Americans. These include traits surviving from West African music; black folk music forms developed in the Americas; European popular and light classical music of the 18th and 19th centuries; and later popular music forms influenced by black music or produced by black composers. Among the surviving African traits are vocal styles that include great freedom of vocal color; a tradition of improvisation; call-and-response patterns; and rhythmic complexity, both in the syncopation of individual melodic lines and in the conflicting rhythms played by different members of an ensemble. Black folk music forms include field hollers, rowing chants, lullabies, and later, spirituals and blues (see African American Music).

European music contributed specific styles and forms: hymns, marches, waltzes, quadrilles, and other dance music, as well as light theatrical music and Italian operatic music. European music also introduced theoretical elements, in particular, harmony, both as a vocabulary of chords and as a concept related to musical form. (Much of the European influence was absorbed through private lessons in European music, even when the black musicians so trained could only find work in seedy entertainment districts and on Mississippi riverboats.)

Black-influenced elements of popular music that contributed to jazz include the banjo music of the minstrel shows (derived from the banjo music of slaves), the syncopated rhythmic patterns of African-influenced Latin American music (heard in southern U.S. cities), the barrelhouse piano styles of tavern musicians in the Midwest, and the marches played by black brass bands in the late 19th century.

Near the end of the 19th century, another influential genre emerged. This was ragtime, a composed music that combined many elements, including syncopated rhythms (from banjo music and other black sources) and the harmonic contrasts and formal patterns of European marches. After 1910 bandleader W. C. Handy took another influential form, the blues, and broke its strict oral tradition by publishing his original blues songs. (Favored by jazz musicians, Handy’s songs found one of their greatest interpreters in the 1920s in blues singer Bessie Smith, who recorded many of them.)

The merging of these multiple influences into jazz is difficult to reconstruct because it occurred before the existence of recording, which has provided valuable documentation. Of course, individual musicians had varying backgrounds and few people were directly exposed to all of these influences. For example, most jazz artists were and are city dwellers and might have only known rural black forms indirectly.


History

Most early jazz was played in small dance bands or by solo pianists. Besides ragtime and marches, the repertoire included all kinds of popular dance music and blues. The bands typically played at picnics, weddings, parades, and funerals. Characteristically, the bands played dirges on the way to funerals and lively marches on the way back. Blues and ragtime had arisen independently just a few years before jazz and continued to exist alongside it, influencing the style and forms of jazz and providing important vehicles for jazz improvisation.

New Orleans Jazz

Shortly after the turn of the 20th century, the earliest fully documented jazz style emerged and centered in New Orleans, Louisiana. In this style the cornet, trumpet, or violin carried the melody, the clarinet played florid countermelodies, and the trombone played rhythmic slides and sounded the root notes of chords or simple harmonies. Below this basic trio the guitar or banjo sounded the chords, along with a piano, if available; a string bass (or tuba for marching parades) provided a bass line; and drums supplied the rhythmic accompaniment. In theory, these roles were the same as in other kinds of music—it was the addition of improvisation, along with elements of other black music such as blues and ragtime, that made jazz unique.

A musician named Buddy Bolden appears to have led some bands that influenced early jazz musicians, but this music and its sound have been lost to posterity. Although some jazz influences can be heard on a few early phonograph records, not until 1917 did a jazz band record. This band, a group of white New Orleans musicians called The Original Dixieland Jazz Band, created a sensation overseas and in the United States. Among the band’s many successors, two groups emerged in the early 1920s that were particularly celebrated: the New Orleans Rhythm Kings and the Creole Jazz Band, the latter of which was led by cornetist King Oliver, an influential stylist. The series of recordings made by Oliver’s band are often considered the most significant jazz recordings by a New Orleans group. Other leading New Orleans musicians included trumpeters Bunk Johnson and Freddie Keppard, soprano saxophonist and clarinetist Sidney Bechet, drummer Warren “Baby” Dodds, and pianist and composer Jelly Roll Morton. The most influential jazz musician nurtured in New Orleans, however, was King Oliver’s second trumpeter, Louis Armstrong.

Armstrong’s Impact

Armstrong was a dazzling improviser, technically, emotionally, and intellectually. He and his generation changed the format of jazz by bringing the soloist to the forefront, and within his recording groups, the Hot Five and the Hot Seven, he demonstrated that jazz improvisation could go far beyond simply ornamenting the melody—he created new melodies based on the chords of the initial tune. He also set a standard for later jazz singers, not only by the way he altered the words and melodies of songs, but also by improvising without words, like an instrument. This form of vocal improvisation is known as scat singing.

Chicago and New York City

For jazz, the 1920s was a decade of great experimentation and discovery. Many New Orleans musicians, including Armstrong, migrated to Chicago, Illinois, influencing local musicians and stimulating the evolution of the Chicago style. This style was derived from the New Orleans style but emphasized soloists, often added saxophone to the instrumentation, and usually produced tenser rhythms and more complicated textures. Instrumentalists working in Chicago or influenced by the Chicago style included trombonist Jack Teagarden, banjoist and guitarist Eddie Condon, drummer Gene Krupa, and clarinetist Benny Goodman. Also active in Chicago was Bix Beiderbecke, whose lyrical approach to the cornet provided an alternative to Armstrong’s bravura trumpet style. Many Chicago musicians eventually settled in New York City, another major center for jazz in the 1920s.

Jazz Piano

Another vehicle for the development of jazz in the 1920s was piano music. The Harlem section of New York City became the center of a highly technical, hard-driving solo style known as stride piano. The master of this approach in the early 1920s was James P. Johnson, but it was Johnson’s protégé Fats Waller—a talented vocalist and entertainer as well—who became by far the most popular performer of this idiom.

A second piano style to develop in the 1920s was boogie-woogie. A form of blues played on the piano, it consists of a short, sharply accented bass pattern played repeatedly by the left hand while the right hand plays freely, using a variety of rhythms. Boogie-woogie became especially popular in the 1930s and 1940s. Leading boogie-woogie pianists included Meade Lux Lewis, Albert Ammons, Pete Johnson, and Pine Top Smith.

The most brilliant pianist of the 1920s, comparable to Armstrong in sheer innovation and present on some of his most influential recordings, was Earl “Fatha” Hines, a Chicago-nurtured virtuoso considered to possess a wild, unpredictable imagination. His style, combined with the smoother approach of Waller, influenced most pianists of the next generation—notably Teddy Wilson, who was featured with Goodman’s band in the 1930s, and Art Tatum, who performed mostly as a soloist and was regarded with awe for his virtuosity and sophisticated harmonic sense.

The Big-Band Era

Also during the 1920s, large groups of jazz musicians began to play together, after the model of society dance bands. These were the so-called big bands, which became so popular in the 1930s and early 1940s that the period was known as the swing era. One major development in the emergence of the swing era was a rhythmic change that smoothed the two-beat rhythms of some early bands into a more flowing four beats to the bar. Musicians also developed the use of short melodic patterns, called riffs, in call-and-response patterns. To facilitate this procedure, orchestras were divided into instrumental sections, each with its own riffs, and opportunities were provided for musicians to play solos.

The development of the big band as a jazz medium was strongly influenced by the achievements of Duke Ellington and Fletcher Henderson. Henderson’s arranger, Don Redman, and later Henderson himself, introduced written jazz scores that were widely admired for their effort to capture the quality of improvisation that characterized the music of smaller ensembles. To achieve this improvisation, Redman and Henderson were aided by gifted soloists such as tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins and by Armstrong, who played in Henderson’s band during 1924 and 1925.

Ellington led a band at the Cotton Club in New York City during the late 1920s. Continuing to direct his orchestra until his death in 1974, he composed colorful experimental concert pieces ranging in length, from the three-minute “Ko-Ko” (1940) to the hourlong Black, Brown, and Beige (1943), as well as songs such as “Solitude” and “Sophisticated Lady.” More complex than Henderson’s music, Ellington’s music made his orchestra a cohesive ensemble, with solos written for the unique qualities of specific instruments and players. Other black bands that were popular among musicians and audiences were led by Jimmie Lunceford, Chick Webb, and Cab Calloway.

A different style of big-band jazz was developed in Kansas City, Missouri, during the mid-1930s and was epitomized by the band of Count Basie. Originally assembled in Kansas City, Basie’s band reflected that region’s emphasis on improvisation, keeping the prepared passages relatively short and simple. The wind instruments in his band exchanged ensemble riffs in a free, strongly rhythmical interplay, with pauses to accommodate instrumental solos. Basie’s tenor saxophonist Lester Young, in particular, played with a rhythmic freedom rarely apparent in the improvisations of soloists from other bands. Young’s delicate tone and long, flowing melodies, laced with an occasional avant-garde honk or gurgle, opened up a whole new approach, just as Armstrong’s trumpet and cornet playing had done in the 1920s.

Other trendsetters of the late 1930s were trumpeter Roy Eldridge, electric guitarist Charlie Christian, drummer Kenny Clarke, and vibraphonist Lionel Hampton. Jazz singing in the 1930s became increasingly flexible and stylized. Ivie Anderson, Mildred Bailey, Ella Fitzgerald, and, above all, Billie Holiday were among the leading singers. Europeans also became more active in jazz during this time. Christian, for example, was influenced by Belgian guitarist Django Reinhardt, whose brilliant recordings were available in the United States.

For the second part of the article:
http://encarta.msn.com/en.../Jazz.html

Supernova said:

Freddie was unbelievable back in the day! As far as his own stuff goes, check out the album "Red Clay." It's funky, bluesy, jazzy, and everything in between. The version I have even has the band doing a rendition of John Lennon's "Cold Turkey." Also check out some of Herbie Hancock's early records as they had Freddie doing some of his best playing!

sinisterpentatonic said:

Soul JAzz came about in the late 50's/early 60's. Guys like Horace Silver and Jimmy Smith were playing a strain of jazz that was really influenced by soul and especially gospel music (particularly Smith who was the father of modern jazz organ). It was a pretty small subgenre but there was some real good music that came out of it.

Funk jazz was more Miles Davis' baby if it's what I think you're thinking of. As the 60's wore on, jazz musicians started turning to people like James Brown and Sly Stone for inspiration, particularly Miles. They started writing tunes that were based more on rhythm section grooves than chord progressions like they had been doing in the past.

rdhull said:

Storyville was a red light district in New Orleans where Jelly Roll Morton among others got jobs playing jazz in parlors of brothels.

Supernova said:

Wynton Marsalis is a great player but he definitely has his own agenda as far as jazz history goes, a pretty revisionist one at that if you ask me. They didn't even mention Bill Evans!