Jazz

JAZZ

Black Geniuses

Another musician remarked that no trumpet player could do anything that Louis Armstrong had not already done. Armstrong's contemporaries included pianist-composer Jelly Roll Morton, blues singer Bessie Smith, and orchestra leader-composer Duke Ellington. The innovations and achievements of these and other black musicians in the 1920s proved to be the first widespread fulfillment of black American talent and genius. There were no doubt mute black geniuses in the arts before then who were deprived of the opportunity to utilize their genius. Art requires an audience, an interaction between the maker and the perceiver by means of the work; and artists, however compelling their creative urges, require incomes. Jazz provided black musicians with an art and a cross-racial public during the 1920s. The bootleggers functioned as patrons of American musical culture. The speakeasies were concert halls. The phonograph extended the popularity and the profitability of jazz.

Definitions

The term jazz, current before World War I (variably as jass), was applied to a way of dancing, to a type of music, and as a synonym for sexual inter-course—each meaning being disputably "the original." As music it is characterized by informality, syncopation, and a strong beat, and as dance by liberation from the more inhibited mating rituals that were—and are—traditional social dance. The erotic associations of jazz music were reinforced by its incubation in the brothels and saloons of New Orleans, especially in the Storyville district, closed by the government during World War I. There is disagreement about every aspect of jazz history except for the indisputable fact that it came out of New Orleans.

Dixie

Among the sources of jazz music were the brass marching bands of black New Orleans. Known generally as Dixieland but also called creole jazz because of the French-Spanish-African heritage of its early musicians, the style of jazz that flourished in New Orleans has four beats to the measure and features collective improvisations or, as it became more sophisticated and rehearsed, simulated collective improvisations.

Black and Blue

The blues—derived from "call and response" field-work songs and spirituals—became a major strain of jazz. The melancholy mood was achieved by what were called "blue notes"—flatted thirds and sevenths. W. C. Handy's 1914 "St. Louis Blues" became the most popular and influential blues composition, and a major portion of early or classic jazz was in the blues genre.

Jelly Roll

Nearly all of the great 1920s jazz figures were black. Jelly Roll Morton (Ferdinand La Menthe, 1885—1941), whose pride in the French portion of his ancestry offends some commentators and has diminished his current reputation, claimed that he "invented jazz" around 1902 while playing ragtime piano in a New Or--leans sporting house. A great bragger, he was also a genius and an innovator; critics who accept certain rhythmic intricacies and improvisational flourishes as definitive of jazz find merit in his claim. Other jazz pioneers were cornet players Buddy Bolden, King Oliver, and Bunk Johnson and clarinetist Johnny Dodds. A key event in the evolution of jazz occurred when Louis Armstrong was taught to play the cornet at the New Orleans Colored Waifs Home.

Chicago

From New Orleans, jazz worked its way up the Mississippi, without acquiring respectability. Chicago became the second major venue for jazz; the speakeasies employed jazz musicians, and white patrons became educated by exposure to jazz. Bix Beiderbecke (Leon Bismark Beiderbecke, 1903-1931) probably first heard Armstrong play on a riverboat in Davenport, Iowa, but as a schoolboy he developed his style by listening to the Chicago jazz greats. Beiderbecke was eventually labeled "The Greatest White Trumpet Player"—meaning that he did not threaten Armstrong's supremacy.

Whiteman

Paul Whiteman was the most influential figure in making jazz respectable by moving it from the speakeasies and black dance halls to theaters and cabarets patronized by whites. Promoted as the Jazz King, Whiteman provided smooth arrangements for relaxation and for dancing. The peak of Whiteman's successful efforts to enlarge the appeal of jazz was the 1924 concert for which he commissioned George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. Whiteman's "symphonic jazz" was a long way from the spontaneity of Dixieland.

Swing

In the late 1920s and early 1930s jazz evolved into swing, which replaced improvisation with elaborate arrangements. As arranger and bandleader Fletcher Henderson was a key figure in the transition to swing and the big-band sound. Duke Ellington's 1931 composition "It Don't Mean a Thing If It Aint' Got That Swing" is sometimes credited with giving currency to the term swing.

An American Art

Jazz outlasted the Jazz Age, but during the 1920s it expressed the exuberance of the era. Jazz is regarded as the only art form generated in America, and it has reached a world audience. Change was inevitable as new talents appeared, but jazz has always been dominated by Americans.

Popular Songs

Many of the white songwriters and composers inspired by the innovations of black musicians were Jews, In the melting-pot tradition, American popular music in the 1920s represented a collaboration between Africa and Russia. Russian-born Irving Berlin and George Gershwin, the son of Russian immigrants, adapted black blues and jazz; and Russian-born Al Jolson sang their songs. Gershwin's hugely popular "Swanee" is representative of a cheerfully vulgarized amalgam of American emotions.

Sources:

James Collier, The Making of Jazz: A Comprehensive History (New York: Dell, 1979);

Gunther Schuller, Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968);

Barry Ulanov, A History of Jazz in America (New York: Da Capo, 1972).