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Joe "King" Oliver

Joe "King" Oliver

Joe "King" Oliver, (December 19, 1885 – April 8, 1938) was a bandleader and jazz musician. Joe "King" Oliver was born in Abend, Louisiana near Donaldsonville, and moved to New Orleans in his youth. Oliver played cornet in the New Orleans brass bands and dance bands and also in the city's red-light district, Storyville. The band he co-led with trombonist Kid Ory was considered New Orleans' hottest and best in the 1910s. Oliver achieved great popularity in New Orleans across economic and racial lines, and was in demand for playing jobs from rough working class black dance halls to white society debutante parties. According to an interview at the Tulane's Hogan Jazz Archive with Oliver's widow Stella Oliver, in 1919 a fight broke out at a dance where Oliver was playing, and the police arrested Oliver and the band along with the fighters. This made Oliver decide to leave the Jim Crow South. After travels in California, by 1922 Oliver was the jazz "King" in Chicago (see: Jazz royalty), with King Oliver and his Creole Jazz Band performing at the Royal Gardens (later renamed the Lincoln Gardens). Virtually all the members of this band had notable solo careers. Personnel was Oliver on cornet, his protegé Louis Armstrong, second cornet, Baby Dodds, drums, Johnny Dodds, clarinet, Lil Hardin, (later Armstrong's wife) on piano, Honore Dutray on trombone, and Bill Johnson, bass and banjo. Recordings made by this group in 1923 demonstrated the serious artistry of the New Orleans style of collective improvisation or Dixieland music to a wider audience. In the mid and late 1920s Oliver's band transformed into a hybrid of the old New Orleans style jazz band and the nationally popular larger dance band, and was christened "King Oliver & His Dixie Syncopators". Oliver started to suffer from gum disease which started to diminish his playing abilities, but remained a popular band leader through the decade. Unfortunately, Oliver's business acumen was less than his musical ability. A succession of managers stole money from him. He demanded more money for his band than the Savoy Ballroom was willing to pay, and lost the gig. In similar fashion, he lost the chance for an engagement at New York City's famous Cotton Club when he held out for more money; young Duke Ellington took the job and subsequently catapulted to fame. The Great Depression was harsh to Oliver; he lost his life savings when a Chicago bank collapsed, as he struggled to keep his band together on a series of hand-to-mouth gigs until the band broke up and Oliver was stranded in Savannah, Georgia, where he worked as a janitor and died in poverty.

Oliver's Music

As a player, Oliver was strongly interested in altering his horn's sound. He pioneered in the use of mutes, including the plumber's plunger, derby hat, and bottles and cups in the bell of his horn. His recording "WaWaWa" with the Dixie Syncopators can be credited with giving the name wah-wah to such techniques. Although Oliver performed mostly on cornet, the instrument is virtually identical to the trumpet. Some think that Oliver should be on the historical list of the greatest jazz trumpet innovators: Buddy Bolden, Oliver, Armstrong, Roy Eldridge, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis. Oliver was also noted as a composer, having written Armstrong's early hit, "Dippermouth Blues", as well as "Sweet Like This", "Canal Street Blues", and "Doctor Jazz", the latter virtually the theme song of Jelly Roll Morton, a frequent collaborator. Louis Armstrong nicknamed Oliver calling him "Papa Joe". Oliver gave Armstrong the first cornet that Louis was to own. Armstrong called Oliver his idol and inspiration all his life. In Armstrong's autobiography, "Satchmo - My Life in New Orleans", he writes about Oliver:
It was my ambition to play as he did. I still think that if it had not been for Joe Oliver, Jazz would not be what it is today. He was a creator in his own right.

Quotation

:Hello, Central, give me Doctor Jazz :He's got what I need, I say he has

External links

[http://www.redhotjazz.com/kingo.html Joseph Oliver at RedHotJazz.com]

Discography

King Porter, December 1924, recorded in Chicago, Illinois Tom Cat, December 1924, recorded in Chicago, Illinois Oliver, King Oliver, King Oliver, King Oliver, King Oliver, King Oliver, King Oliver, King Oliver, King

December 19

December 19 is the 353rd day of the year (354th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 12 days remaining.

Events


- 324 - Licinius abdicates his position as Roman Emperor.
- 1187 - Pope Clement III elected
- 1732 - Benjamin Franklin publishes Poor Richard's Almanack
- 1777 - George Washington's army goes into winter quarters at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania
- 1828 - John C. Calhoun pens South Carolina Exposition and Protest, protesting the Tariff of 1828.
- 1835 - Toledo Blade newspaper begins publishing.
- 1842 - United States recognizes the independence of Hawaii
- 1912 - William H. Van Schaick, captain of the steamship General Slocum which killed over 1,000 people was pardoned by President Taft after 3 1/2 years in Sing Sing prison .
- 1916 - The Battle of Verdun ended.
- 1928 - First autogiro flight in the United States
- 1945 - Austria becomes a republic for the second time, the first having been founded in 1918 and interrupted by the Austro-fascist dictatorship from 1934 onwards and the Nazi invasion of Austria in 1938.
- 1946 - Ho Chi Minh attacks French in Hanoi
- 1961 - The Indian Army invades the Portuguese province of Estado da India Portuguesa (Portuguese State of India) which will become part of India.
- 1962 - Nyasaland secedes from Rhodesia and Nyasaland
- 1963 - Zanzibar received its independence from the United Kingdom to become a constitutional monarchy under the sultan.
- 1965 - Prisoners Ronald Ryan and Peter Walker escape from Pentridge Prison, Melbourne. During the escape a guard is killed. Ryan would hang for his death, in 1967.
- 1972 - Apollo 17, the last manned lunar flight, returns to Earth.
- 1974 - Australian Prime Minister, Harold Holt is pronounced dead.
- 1974 - The Altair 8800, the first personal computer, goes on sale
- 1978 - John Wayne Gacy is arrested for the killings of 33 boys and young men
- 1980 - Anguilla is made a dependency of the United Kingdom separate from Saint Kitts and Nevis
- 1982 - In Venezuela, the storage tanks of an oil-fired power plant catches fire killing 154 people.
- 1984 - The United Kingdom and People's Republic of China sign the Sino-British Joint Declaration, which handed Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty in 1997.
- 1988 - Lawn darts are banned from sale in the United States.
- 1997 - A Silkair Boeing 737-300 crashes into the Musi River, in Sumatra, Indonesia killing 104
- 1997 - Titanic (the highest-grossing movie ever as of 2005) opens in U.S. theaters.
- 1998 - The U.S. House of Representatives passes articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton over the Lewinsky scandal.
- 2000 - The Leninist Guerrilla Units attack a party office of the far-right MHP in Istanbul, Turkey. One MHP member is killed and several wounded.
- 2001 - The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, the first film in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, opens in theaters.
- 2001 - A new world-record high barometric pressure of 1085.6 hPa (32.06 inHg) is set at Tosontsengel, Hövsgöl Aymag, Mongolia.
- 2001 - The Argentine economic crisis burst into street riots after the announcement by the economy minister of the measures of holding back the bank deposits.

Births


- 1554 - Philip William, Prince of Orange (d. 1618)
- 1683 - King Philip V of Spain (d. 1746)
- 1699 - William Bowyer, English printer (d. 1777)
- 1714 - John Winthrop, American astronomer (d. 1779)
- 1813 - Thomas Andrews, Irish chemist (d. 1885)
- 1852 - Albert Abraham Michelson, German-born physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1931)
- 1865 - Minnie Maddern Fiske, American actress (d. 1932)
- 1885 - Joe "King" Oliver, American musician (d. 1938)
- 1888 - Fritz Reiner, Hungarian conductor (d. 1963)
- 1894 - Ford Frick, baseball commissioner (d. 1978)
- 1901 - Rudolf Hell, German inventor (d. 2002)
- 1903 - George Davis Snell, American geneticist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1996)
- 1906 - Leonid Brezhnev, Soviet politician (d. 1982)
- 1907 - Jimmy McLarnin, Irish boxer (d. 2004)
- 1910 - Jean Genet, French writer (d. 1986)
- 1915 - Edith Piaf, French singer and actress (d. 1963)
- 1918 - Professor Longhair, American musician (d. 1980)
- 1923 - Gordon Jackson, Scottish actor (d. 1990)
- 1925 - Tankred Dorst, German dramatist
- 1927 - James Booth, English actor and writer (d. 2005)
- 1929 - Bob Brookmeyer, American musician
- 1933 - Cicely Tyson, American actress
- 1934 - Al Kaline, baseball player
- 1935 - Bobby Timmons, American jazz pianist (d. 1974)
- 1940 - Phil Ochs, American singer and songwriter (d. 1976)
- 1941 - Maurice White, American musician
- 1944 - Richard Leakey, British anthropologist
- 1944 - Alvin Lee, English musician
- 1946 - Stan Smith, American tennis player
- 1946 - Robert Urich, American actor (d. 2002)
- 1960 - Mike Lookinland, American actor
- 1961 - Eric Allin Cornell, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
- 1961 - Matthew Waterhouse, British actor
- 1961 - Reggie White, American football player (d. 2004)
- 1963 - Jennifer Beals, American actress
- 1964 - Arvydas Sabonis, Lithuanian basketball player
- 1965 - Chito Martinez, Belizean baseball player
- 1969 - Kristy Swanson, American actress
- 1971 - Tiffany Towers, Canadian actress
- 1972 - Alyssa Milano, American actress
- 1972 - Warren Sapp, American football player
- 1974 - Jake Plummer, American football player
- 1974 - Ricky Ponting, Australian cricketer
- 1975 - Olivier Tebily, Ivory Coast footballer
- 1980 - Jake Gyllenhaal, American actor
- 1980 - Marla Sokoloff, American actress
- 1988 - George Sarell, British musician
- 1989 - Dario, the bahii

Deaths


- 401 - Pope Anastasius I
- 1075 - Edith of Wessex, queen of Edward the Confessor of England
- 1327 - Agnes of France, Duchess of Burgundy
- 1370 - Pope Urban V (b. 1310)
- 1737 - James Sobieski, Crown Prince of Poland (b. 1667)
- 1741 - Vitus Bering, Danish-born explorer (b. 1681)
- 1745 - Jean-Baptiste van Loo, French painter (b. 1684)
- 1749 - Francesco Antonio Bonporti, Italian priest and composer (b. 1672)
- 1751 - Louise of Great Britain, queen of Frederick V of Denmark (b. 1724)
- 1807 - Friedrich Melchior, baron von Grimm, German writer (b. 1723)
- 1819 - Sir Thomas Fremantle, English naval officer and politician (b. 1765)
- 1848 - Emily Brontë, English author (b. 1818)
- 1915 - Alois Alzheimer, German neuroscientist (b. 1864)
- 1932 - Yoon Bong-Gil, Korean resister against Japanese occupation (executed) (b. 1908)
- 1939 - Hans Langsdorff, German naval officer (b. 1894)
- 1953 - Robert Millikan, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1868)
- 1967 - Harold Holt, seventeenth Prime Minister of Australia (b. 1908)
- 1968 - Norman Thomas, American socialist (b. 1884)
- 1989 - Stella Gibbons, English author (b. 1902)
- 1996 - Marcello Mastroianni, Italian actor (b. 1924)
- 1999 - Desmond Llewelyn, Welsh actor (b. 1914)
- 2003 - Peter Carter-Ruck, British lawyer
- 2003 - Hope Lange, American actress (b. 1941)
- 2004 - Herbert C. Brown, English-born chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1912)
- 2004 - Renata Tebaldi, Italian soprano (b. 1922)

Holidays and observances


- Feast of Saint Boniface
- National Unity Day, declared in 1979 by President Jimmy Carter in honor of the American hostages being held in Tehran, Iran

Fictional Events


- 2003 - the events of the fictional docu-drama The Day Britain Stopped take place.

External links


- [http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/december/19 BBC: On This Day] ---- December 18 - December 20 - November 19 - January 19 -- listing of all days ko:12월 19일 ms:19 Disember ja:12月19日 simple:December 19 th:19 ธันวาคม

April 8

April 8 is the 98th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (99th in leap years). There are 267 days remaining in the year.

Events


- 217 - Roman emperor Caracalla is assassinated (and succeeded) by his Praetorian Guard prefect, Marcus Opellius Macrinus
- 1203 - Congress in Bilino Polje, where Ban Kulin officially declared his allegiance to the Catholic Church and denounced the heresy.
- 1730 - Shearith Israel, the first synagogue in New York City, is dedicated.
- 1742 - The first performance of George Frideric Handel's oratorio The Messiah, in Dublin.
- 1767 - Ayutthaya kingdom fell to Burmese invaders.
- 1820 - The Venus de Milo is discovered on the Aegean island of Melos.
- 1832 - Black Hawk War: Around 300 United States 6th Infantry troops leave Jefferson Barracks, St. Louis to fight the Sauk Native Americans.
- 1893 - First recorded college basketball game occurs in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania when the Geneva College Covenanters defeated the New Brighton YMCA.
- 1895 - The United States Supreme Court declared income tax to be unconstitutional in Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co.
- 1899 - Martha Place becomes the first woman to be executed in an electric chair.
- 1904 - France and the United Kingdom sign the Entente cordiale.
- 1904 - Longacre Square in Midtown Manhattan is renamed Times Square after The New York Times.
- 1910 - The Los Angeles Motordome opened near Playa del Rey, California.
- 1913 - The Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified requiring direct election of Senators.
- 1916 - In Corona, California, auto racer Bob Burman crashed through a crowd barrier at the last Boulevard Race, killing himself, his mechanic and a track policeman, and badly injuring five spectators.
- 1918 - World War I: Actors Douglas Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplin sell war bonds on the streets of New York, New York's financial district.
- 1929 - Indian Independence Movement At Delhi Central Assembly, Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt threw handouts, and bombs in a corridor not to cause injury and courted arrest.
- 1935 - The Works Progress Administration is formed when the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935 becomes law.
- 1942 - World War II: Siege of Leningrad - Soviet Union forces open a much-needed railway link to Leningrad.
- 1945 - At the POW camp at Flossenbürg, pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer is hanged.
- 1952 - In a radio address to the nation from the White House, President Harry S. Truman calls for the seizure of all steel mills in the United States in order to prevent a nationwide strike.
- 1953 - Mau Mau leader Jomo Kenyatta is convicted by Kenya's British rulers.
- 1967 - In Vienna, Austria, Sandie Shaw wins the twelfth Eurovision Song Contest for the United Kingdom singing "Puppet on a String".
- 1971 - a 6 pound meteorite struck the home of Robert and Wanda Donahue in Wethersfield, Connecticut
- 1974 - At the Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, Hank Aaron breaks baseball great's Babe Ruth's record by hitting his 715th home run.
- 1975 - Frank Robinson of the Cleveland Indians manages his first game as major league baseball's first African American manager.
- 1975 - Vietnam War: After spending a week in South Vietnam, U.S. Army Chief of Staff Frederick Weyand gives a report to the U.S. Congress that South Vietnam will fall without additional military aid.
- 1985 - Bhopal disaster: India files suit against Union Carbide for the disaster which killed an estimated 2,000 and injured another 200,000.
- 1986 - Clint Eastwood is elected mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California receiving 72% of the vote (voter turnout was also doubled over the previous mayoral election).
- 1987 - Los Angeles Dodgers executive Al Campanis resigns amid great controversy over racially-charged remarks he had made while on Nightline.
- 1989 - South Africa In Johannesburg, the Progressive Federal Party, Independent party, National Democratic Movement and the force of "Ontevrede Afrikaners" or dissatisfied Afrikaners merged to form the Democratic Party.
- 1990 - Twin Peaks premieres.
- 1992 - Retired tennis great Arthur Ashe announces to the world that he has AIDS, acquired from blood transfusions during one of his two heart surgeries.
- 1994 - Body of Kurt Cobain discovered in his Washington home.
- 1999 - Haryana Gana Parishad, a political party in the Indian state of Haryana, merges with the Indian National Congress.
- 2000 - A U.S. Marine Corps V-22 Osprey crashes during landing at Marana, Arizona killing 19.
- 2002 - Ed McMahon files a US$20 million lawsuit against his insurance company and others regarding a toxic mold infecting McMahon's Beverly Hills, California home.
- 2004 - Darfur conflict: The Humanitarian Ceasefire Agreement is signed by the Sudanese government and two rebel groups.
- 2004 - The famous Japanese economist and former professor at Waseda University graduate school Kazuhide Uekusa was arrested on the escalator of JR Shinagawa Station because of trying to peep under a high school girl's skirt with his hand mirror.
- 2005 - Funeral of Pope John Paul II

Births


- 563 BC - Gautama Buddha, Indian religious leader (d. 483 BC)
- 1320 - King Peter I of Portugal (d. 1367)
- 1533 - Claudio Merulo, Italian composer (d. 1604)
- 1541 - Michele Mercati, Italian physician and gardener (d. 1593)
- 1605 - King Philip IV of Spain, (d. 1665)
- 1641 - Henry Sydney, 1st Earl of Romney, English statesman (d. 1704)
- 1692 - Giuseppe Tartini, Italian composer (d. 1770)
- 1859 - Edmund Husserl, Austrian philosopher (d. 1938)
- 1865 - Charles W. Woodworth, American entomologist (d. 1940)
- 1868 - King Christian IX of Denmark (d. 1906)
- 1874 - Stanisław Taczak, Polish general, commander-in-chief of the Greater Poland Uprising (d.1960)
- 1875 - King Albert I of Belgium (d. 1934)
- 1889 - Sir Adrian Boult, English conductor (d. 1983)
- 1892 - Mary Pickford, Canadian actress and studio founder (d. 1979)
- 1904 - John Hicks, English economist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1989)
- 1905 - Helen Joseph, South African anti-apartheid activist (d. 1992)
- 1905 - Erwin Keller, German field hockey player
- 1911 - Melvin Calvin, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1997)
- 1911 - Emil Cioran, Romanian philosopher and essayist (d. 1995)
- 1912 - Alois Brunner, Austrian Nazi
- 1912 - Sonja Henie, Norwegian figure skater (d. 1969)
- 1914 - María Félix, Mexican actress (d. 2002)
- 1918 - Betty Ford, First Lady of the United States
- 1919 - Ian Smith, Prime Minister of Rhodesia
- 1921 - Franco Corelli, Italian tenor (d. 2003)
- 1923 - George Fisher, American cartoonist (d. 2003)
- 1923 - Edward Mulhare, Irish actor (d. 1997)
- 1926 - Jürgen Moltmann, German theologian
- 1928 - John Gavin, American actor and U.S. Ambassador to Mexico
- 1929 - Walter Berry, Austrian bass-baritone (d. 2000)
- 1929 - Jacques Brel, Belgian singer and composer (d. 1978)
- 1930 - Carlos Hugo of Bourbon-Parma, Duke of Parma, French-born fascist
- 1933 - Fred Ebb, American composer (d. 2004)
- 1934 - Kurokawa Kisho, Japanese architect
- 1938 - Kofi Annan, Ghanian United Nations Secretary General, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize
- 1940 - John Havlicek, American basketball player
- 1941 - Vivienne Westwood, English fashion designer
- 1943 - Michael Bennett, American dancer, choreographer, and theater director (d. 1987)
- 1943 - Miller Farr, American football player
- 1946 - Catfish Hunter, baseball player
- 1946 - Tim Thomerson, American actor
- 1947 - Tom DeLay, American politician
- 1947 - Robert Kiyosaki, American investor, businessman, and writer
- 1947 - Larry Norman, American singer and songwriter
- 1949 - John Madden, English director
- 1949 - Brenda Russell, American singer and songwriter
- 1954 - Gary Carter, baseball player
- 1955 - Barbara Kingsolver, American novelist
- 1960 - John Schneider, American actor
- 1963 - Julian Lennon, English musician and singer
- 1963 - Alec Stewart, English cricketer
- 1964 - Biz Markie, American rapper and disc jockey
- 1966 - Robin Wright Penn, American actress
- 1966 - Mazinho, Brazilian football player
- 1968 - Patricia Arquette, American actress
- 1971 - Chino XL, American rapper
- 1972 - Paul Grey, American bassist (Slipknot)
- 1973 - Bobby Ologun, Nigerian television performer and martial artist
- 1977 - Mark Spencer, computer programmer
- 1979 - Alexi Laiho, Finnish guitarist and singer (Children of Bodom)
- 1980 - Manuel Ortega, Austrian singer
- 1980 - Katee Sackhoff, American actress
- 1982 - Judy Star, Canadian actress

Deaths


- 217 - Caracalla, Roman Emperor (b. 186)
- 956 - Gilbert of Chalon, Duke of Burgundy
- 1143 - John II Comnenus, Byzantine Emperor (b. 1087)
- 1364 - King John II of France (b. 1319)
- 1461 - Georg Purbach, German mathematician and astronomer (b. 1423)
- 1492 - Lorenzo de Medici, ruler of Florence (b. 1449)
- 1586 - Martin Chemnitz, Lutheran reformer and theologian (b. 1522)
- 1587 - John Foxe, English writer (b. 1516)
- 1691 - Carlo Rainaldi, Italian architect (b. 1611)
- 1697 - Niels Juel, Danish admiral (b. 1629)
- 1704 - Hiob Ludolf, German orientalist (b. 1624)
- 1704 - Henry Sydney, 1st Earl of Romney, English statesman (b. 1641)
- 1725 - John Wise, English clergyman (b. 1652)
- 1848 - Gaetano Donizetti, Italian composer (b. 1797)
- 1920 - Charles Tomlinson Griffes, American composer (b. 1884)
- 1931 - Erik Axel Karlfeldt, Swedish writer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1864)
- 1936 - Robert Bárány, Austrian physician, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1876)
- 1938 - Joe "King" Oliver, American musician (b. 1885)
- 1950 - Vaslav Nijinsky, Polish-born ballet dancer (b. 1890)
- 1965 - Lars Hanson, Swedish actor (b. 1965)
- 1973 - Pablo Picasso, Spanish artist (b. 1881)
- 1978 - Ford Frick, baseball commissioner
- 1981 - Omar Bradley, U.S. general (b. 1893)
- 1984 - Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa, Russian physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1894)
- 1990 - Ryan White, American activist (b. 1971)
- 1991 - Per Yngve "Dead" Ohlin, Norwegian musician (black metal)
- 1992 - Daniel Bovet, Swiss-born pharmacologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1907)
- 1993 - Marian Anderson, American contralto (b. 1897)
- 1996 - Ben Johnson, American actor (b. 1918)
- 1994 - Kurt Cobain, lead singer of niverna
- 1997 - Laura Nyro, American singer and composer (b. 1947)
- 2000 - Claire Trevor, American actress (b. 1910)
- 2002 - Maria Felix, Mexican actress (b. 1914)
- 2003 - Anita Borg, American computer scientist (b. 1949)
- 2004 - Bruce Edwards, golf caddy (b. 1954)

Holidays and observances


- Worldwide Roma Nation Day

External links


- [http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/april/8 BBC: On This Day]
- [http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/20050514.html The New York Times: On This Day] ----- April 7 - April 9 - March 8 - May 8 -- listing of all days ko:4월 8일 ms:8 April ja:4月8日 simple:April 8 th:8 เมษายน

Bandleader

A bandleader is the director of a band of musicians. The term is most commonly used with a group that plays either a popular music dance band or a big band, such as one which plays swing music. Most bandleaders also were performers with their own band. Some shifted The bandleader role was dependent on a variety of skills, not just musicianship. A bandleader needed to be a music director, promoter, and performer. In general the bands were named after their bandleaders. Some bands have continued operating under their bandleaders names long after the death of the original bandleader. Noted United States bandleaders and their instruments include:
- Count Basie - piano
- Les Brown - saxophone
- Cab Calloway - singer
- Jimmy Dorsey - saxophone
- Tommy Dorsey - trombone
- Duke Ellington - piano
- Benny Goodman - clarinet
- Woody Herman - clarinet
- Glenn Miller - trombone
- Arthur Pryor - trombone
- B.A. Rolfe - trumpet
- Artie Shaw - clarinet
- John Philip Sousa - violin, flute, cornet, baritone, trombone and alto horn
- Paul Whiteman - violin British band leaders included:
- Bert Ambrose
- Acker Bilk - clarinet
- Gary Barlow
- Billy Cotton
- Fred Elizalde
- Ted Heath - trombone
- Spike Hughes
- Jack Hylton Italian band leaders included:
- Pippo Barzizza
- Renato Carosone - pianoforte
- Gorni Kramer
- Mantovani German Bandleaders
- Bert Kaempfert
- James Last - bass
- Max Raabe - singer
-

Jazz

Jazz is a musical art form originally developed by African Americans from around the turn of the 20th century. It is characterized by blue notes, syncopation, swing, call and response, polyrhythms, and improvisation sometimes in jam sessions. As the first original art form to emerge from the United States of America, jazz has been described as "America's Classical Music".

History

Roots of jazz

Jazz has roots in African American music traditions, including spirituals, blues and ragtime, stemming ultimately from West Africa, western Sahel, and New England's religious hymns and hillbilly music, as well as in European military band music. After originating in African American communities near the beginning of the 20th century, jazz gained international popularity by the 1920s. Since then, jazz has had a profoundly pervasive influence on other musical styles worldwide. Today, various jazz styles continue to evolve. The word jazz itself is rooted in American slang, probably of sexual origin, although various alternative derivations have been suggested. According to University of Southern California critical studies professor Todd Boyd, the term originated from slang for sexual intercourse because its earliest musicians found employment in New Orleans brothel parlors. Lacking an attentive audience, the musicians began to play for each other and their performances achieved esthetic complexity not evident in ragtime. At the root of jazz is the blues, the folk music of former enslaved Africans in the U.S. South and their descendants, heavily influenced by West African cultural and musical traditions, that evolved as black musicians migrated to the cities. According to Pulitzer Prize-winning African American composer and classical and jazz trumpet virtuoso Wynton Marsalis:
Jazz is something Negroes invented, and it said the most profound things -- not only about us and the way we look at things, but about what modern democratic life is really about. It is the nobility of the race put into sound ... jazz has all the elements, from the spare and penetrating to the complex and enveloping. It is the hardest music to play that I know of, and it is the highest rendition of individual emotion in the history of Western music.
 Early jazz influences found their first mainstream expression in the marching band and dance band music of the day, which was the standard form of popular concert music at the turn of century. The instruments of these groups became the basic instruments of jazz: brass, reeds, and drums. Black musicians frequently used the melody, structure, and beat of marches as points of departure; but says "North by South, from Charleston to Harlem," a project of the National Endowment for the Humanities: "...a black musical spirit (involving rhythm and melody) was bursting out of the confines of European musical tradition, even though the performers were using European styled instruments. This African-American feel for rephrasing melodies and reshaping rhythm created the embryo from which many great black jazz musicians were to emerge." Many black musicians also made a living playing in small bands hired to lead funeral processions in the New Orleans African-American tradition. These Africanized bands played a seminal role in the articulation and dissemination of early jazz. Traveling throughout black communities in the Deep South and to northern big cities, these musician-pioneers were the Hand helping to fashion the music's howling, raucous, then free-wheeling, "raggedy," ragtime spirit, quickening it to a more eloquent, sophisticated, swing incarnation. For all its genius, early jazz, with its humble, folk roots, was the product of primarily self-taught musicians. But an impressive postbellum network of black-established and -operated institutions, schools, and civic societies in both the North and the South, plus widening mainstream opportunities for education, produced ever-increasing numbers of young, formally trained African-American musicians, some of them schooled in classical European musical forms. Lorenzo Tio and Scott Joplin were among this new wave of musically literate jazz artists. Joplin, the son of a former slave and a free-born woman of color, was largely self-taught until age 11, when he received lessons in the fundamentals of music theory from a classically trained German immigrant in Texarkana, Texas. Also contributing to this trend was a tightening of Jim Crow laws in Louisiana in the 1890s, which caused the expulsion from integrated bands of numbers of talented, formally trained African-American musicians. The ability of these musically literate, black jazzmen to transpose and then read what was in great part an improvisational art form became an invaluable element in the preservation and dissemination of musical innovations that took on added importance in the approaching big-band era.

The United States music scene at the start of the 20th century

By the turn of the century, American society had begun to shed the heavy-handed, straitlaced formality that had characterized the Victorian era. Strong influence of African American music traditions had already been a part of mainstream popular music in the United States for generations, going back to the 19th century minstrel show tunes and the melodies of Stephen Foster. Public dance halls, clubs, and tea rooms opened in the cities. Curiously named black dances inspired by African dance moves, like the shimmy, turkey trot, buzzard lope, chicken scratch, monkey glide, and the bunny hug eventually were adopted by a white public. The cake walk, developed by slaves as a send-up of their masters' formal dress balls, became the rage. White audiences saw these dances first in vaudeville shows, then performed by exhibition dancers in the clubs. The popular dance music of the time was not jazz, but there were precursor forms along the blues-ragtime continuum of musical experimentation and innovation that soon would blossom into jazz. Popular Tin Pan Alley composers like Irving Berlin incorporated ragtime influence into their compositions, though they seldom used the specific musical devices that were second nature to jazz players—the rhythms, the blue notes. Few things did more to popularize the idea of hot music than Berlin's hit song of 1911,"Alexander's Ragtime Band," which became a craze as far from home as Vienna. Although the song wasn't written in rag time, the lyrics describe a jazz band, right up to jazzing up popular songs, as in the line, "If you want to hear the Swanee River played in ragtime...."

The early New Orleans "jass" style

A number of regional styles contributed to the early development of jazz. Arguably the single most important was that of the New Orleans, Louisiana area, which was the first to be commonly given the name "jazz" (early on often spelled "jass"). The city of New Orleans and the surrounding area had long been a regional music center. People from many different nations of Africa, Europe, and Latin America contributed to New Orleans' rich musical heritage. In the French and Spanish colonial era, slaves had more freedom of cultural expression than in the English colonies of what would become the United States. In the Protestant colonies African music was looked on as inherently "pagan" and was commonly suppressed, while in Louisiana it was allowed. African musical celebrations held at least as late as the 1830s in New Orleans' "Congo Square" were attended by interested whites as well, and some of their melodies and rhythms found their way into the compositions of white Creole composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk. In addition to the slave population, New Orleans also had North America's largest community of free people of color, some of whom prided themselves on their education and used European instruments to play both European music and their own folk tunes. According to many New Orleans musicians who remembered the era, the key figures in the development of the new style were flamboyant trumpeter Buddy Bolden and the members of his band. Bolden is remembered as the first to take the blues — hitherto a folk music sung and self-accompanied on string instruments or blues harp (harmonica) — and arrange it for brass instruments. Bolden's band played blues and other tunes, constantly "variating the melody" (improvising) for both dance and brass band settings, creating a sensation in the city and quickly being imitated by many other musicians. By the early years of the 20th century, travelers visiting New Orleans remarked on the local bands' ability to play ragtime with a "pep" not heard elsewhere. Characteristics which set the early New Orleans style apart from the ragtime music played elsewhere included freer rhythmic improvisation. Ragtime musicians elsewhere would "rag" a tune by giving a syncopated rhythm and playing a note twice (at half the time value), while the New Orleans style used more intricate rhythmic improvisation often placing notes far from the implied beat (compare, for example, the piano rolls of Jelly Roll Morton with those of Scott Joplin). The New Orleans style players also adopted much of the vocabulary of the blues, including bent and blue notes and instrumental "growls" and smears otherwise not used on European instruments. Key figures in the early development of the new style were Freddie Keppard, a dark Creole of color who mastered Bolden's style; Joe Oliver, whose style was even more deeply soaked in the blues than Bolden's; and Kid Ory, a trombonist who helped crystallize the style with his band hiring many of the city's best musicians. The new style also spoke to young whites as well, especially the working-class children of immigrants, who took up the style with enthusiasm. Papa Jack Laine led a multi-ethnic band through which passed almost all of two generations of early New Orleans white jazz musicians (and a number of non-whites as well).

Other regional styles

Meanwhile, other regional styles were developing which would influence the development of jazz.
- African-American minister Rev. Daniel J. Jenkins of Charleston, South Carolina, was an unlikely figure of far-reaching importance in the early development of jazz. In 1891, Jenkins established the Jenkins Orphanage for boys and four years later instituted a rigorous music program in which the orphanage's young charges were taught the religious and secular music of the day, including overtures and marches. Precocious orphans and defiant runaways, some of whom had played ragtime in bars and brothels, were delivered to the orphanage for "salvation" and rehabilitation and made their musical contributions, as well. In the fashion of the Fisk Jubilee Singers and Fisk University, the Jenkins Orphanage Bands traveled widely, earning money to keep the orphanage afloat. It was an expensive enterprise. Jenkins typically took in approximately 125 – 150 "black lambs" yearly, and many of them received formal musical training. Less than 30 years later, five bands operated nationally, with one traveling to England — again in the Fisk tradition. It would be hard to overstate the influence of the Jenkins Orphanage Bands on early jazz, scores of whose members went on to play with jazz legends like Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton and Count Basie. Among them were the likes of trumpet virtuosos Cladys "Cat" Anderson, Gus Aitken and Jabbo Smith.
- In the northeastern United States, a "hot" style of playing ragtime developed. While centered in New York City, it could be found in African-American communities from Baltimore to Boston. Some later commentators have categorized it after the fact as an early form of jazz, while others disagree. It was characterized by rollicking rhythms, but lacked the distinctly bluesy influence of the southern styles. The solo piano version of the northeast style was typified by such players as noted composer Eubie Blake, the son of slaves, whose musical career spanned an impressive eight decades. James P. Johnson took the northeast style and around 1919 developed a style of playing that came to be known as "stride." In stride piano, the right hand plays the melody, while the active left hand "walks" or "strides" from upbeat to downbeat, maintaining the rhythm. Johnson influenced later pianists like Fats Waller and Willie Smith. : The top orchestral leader of the style was James Reese Europe, and his 1913 and 1914 recordings preserve a rare glimpse of this style at its peak. It was during this time that Europe's music profoundly influenced a young George Gershwin, who would go on to compose the jazz-inspired classic "Rhapsody in Blue." By the time Europe recorded again in 1919, he was in the process of incorporating the influence of the New Orleans style into his playing. The recordings of Tim Brymn give later generations another look at the northeastern hot style with little of the New Orleans influence yet evident.
- In Chicago at the start of the 1910s, a popular type of dance band consisted of a saxophone vigorously ragging a melody over a 4-square rhythm section. The city soon fell heavily under the influence of waves of New Orleans musicians, and the older style blended with the New Orleans style to form what would be called "Chicago Jazz" starting in the late 1910s.
- Along the banks of the Mississippi around Memphis, Tennessee to Saint Louis, Missouri, another band style developed incorporating the blues. The most famous composer and bandleader of the style was the "Father of the Blues," W.C. Handy. While in some ways similar to the New Orleans style (Bolden's influence may have spread upriver), it lacked the freewheeling improvisation found further south. Handy, indeed, for many years denounced jazz as needlessly chaotic, and in his style improvisation was limited to short fills between phrases and considered inappropriate for the main melody.

The national spread of ‘jass’ music

A number of educated "colored" New Orleanians left the South due to increasingly restrictive Jim Crow laws, at first heading mostly to California. One of these was musician Bill Johnson, who thought a good New Orleans-style band would have commercial possibilities out West. Johnson sent for some of the city's best hot musicians, including Freddie Keppard, to join him at the start of the 1910s, forming the Original Creole Orchestra. A vaudeville promoter caught the band playing to enthusiastic crowds in between rounds at a boxing match and booked the band to tour the nation on the Pantages Circuit. The members of the Creole Orchestra wrote their colleagues back home that hot New Orleans musicians could make much better money playing their style up North and out West than they could at home, encouraging many to start spreading the style around the nation. Chicago was one of the first cities to embrace the new style, and from some accounts it was here that the New Orleans style was first popularly christened "jass." Back in New Orleans, it was called by such names as "ratty music", "hot music," or simply "ragtime" (Sidney Bechet often continued to call his music "ragtime" as late as the 1950s). The style was so different from the ragtime and dance music of the rest of the nation, that a new name was needed to distinguish it. Apparently, the first band billed as playing "jass" was that of trombonist Tom Brown. The term "jass" was rude sexual slang, related either to the term "jism" or to the jasmine perfume popular among urban prostitutes. One group that followed the Original Creoles and Tom Brown to Chicago went North in 1916 as "Stein's Dixie Jass Band." These veterans of the Papa Jack Laine bands made their way to New York City the following year, calling themselves "The Original Dixieland Jass Band." In New York, they had an opportunity to record phonograph records. The discs, recorded as a novelty, were a surprise national hit, and "jass" quickly became a national craze. It was in New York where "jass" became "jazz" in the late 1910s, purportedly because mischievous people were making a habit of scratching out the "J"s on posters, which then, unfortunately, advertised "ass band"s.

Jazz in the 1920's

phonograph records Two disparate, but important, inventions of the second half of the nineteenth century quietly had set the stage for jazz to capture the spotlight in American popular music by the 1920s. George Pullman's invention of the sleeping car in 1864 brought a new level of luxury and comfort to the nation's railways; and Thomas Edison's invention, in 1877, of the phonograph record made quality music accessible to virtually everyone. Pullman's ingenious, rolling sleeping quarters provided employment to legions of African-American men, who criss-crossed the nation as sleeping car porters; and by the second decade of the twentieth century, the Pullman Company employed more African-Americans than any single business concern in the United States. But Pullman porters were more than solicitous, smiling faces in smart, navy blue uniforms. The most dapper and sophisticated of them were culture bearers, spreading the card game of bid whist, the latest dance crazes, regional news, and a heightened sense of black pride to cities and towns wherever the railways reached. Many porters also shared, traded and even sold "race records" to augment their income, speeding artistic innovations to musicians eager to hear the latest; spreading among the general public an awareness of and appreciation for this rapidly evolving musical form; and, in the process, putting jazz on the fast track to first U.S., then worldwide, acclaim. With Prohibition, the constitutional amendment that forbade the sale of alcoholic beverages, the legal saloons and cabarets were closed; but in their place hundreds of speakeasies appeared, where patrons drank and musicians entertained. The presence of dance venues and the subsequent increased demand for accomplished musicians meant more artists were able to support themselves by playing professionally. As a result, the numbers of professional musicians increased, and jazz—like all the popular music of the 1920s—adopted the 4/4 beat of dance music. Another nineteenth-century invention, radio, came into its own in the 1920s, after the first commercial radio station in the U.S. began broadcasting in Pittsburgh in 1922. Radio stations proliferated at a remarkable rate, and with them, the popularity of jazz. Jazz became associated with things modern, sophisticated, and decadent. The third decade of the new century, a time of technological marvels, flappers, flashy automobiles, organized crime, bootleg whiskey, and bathtub gin, would come to be known as the Jazz Age.

Key figures of the decade

flappers King Oliver was "jazz king" of Chicago in the early 1920s, when Chicago was the national hub of jazz. His band was the epitome of the New Orleans hot ensemble jazz style. Unfortunately, his band's recordings were little heard outside of Chicago and New Orleans, but the ensemble was a powerful influence on younger musicians, both black and white. Sidney Bechet was the first master jazz musician to take up what previously often had been dismissed as a novelty instrument, the saxophone. Bechet helped propel jazz in more individualistic personality- and solo-driven directions. In this last point, Bechet was joined by a young protege of King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, who was to become one of the major forces in the development of jazz. Armstrong was an extraordinary improviser, capable of creating endless variations on a single melody. Armstrong also popularized scat singing, an improvisational vocal technique in which nonsensical syllables or words are sung or otherwise vocalized, often as part of a call-and-response interaction with other musicians onstage. His unique, gravely voice and innate sense of swing made scat an instant hit. Arguably, Bix Beiderbecke was both the first white and the first non-New Orleanian to make major original contributions to the development of jazz with his legato phrasing, bringing the influence of classical romanticism to jazz. Paul Whiteman was the most commercially successful bandleader of the 1920s, billing himself as "The King of Jazz." Sacrificing spontaneous improvisation for the sake of elaborate written arrangements, Whiteman claimed to be "making a lady out of jazz." Despite his hiring Bix and many of the other best white jazz musicians of the era, later generations of jazz lovers have often judged Whiteman's music to have little to do with real jazz. Nonetheless, his notion of combining jazz with elaborate orchestrations has been returned to repeatedly by composers and arrangers of later decades. It was Whiteman who commissioned Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue," which was debuted by Whiteman's Orchestra. Fletcher Henderson led the top African American band in New York City. At first he wished to follow the lead of Paul Whiteman, but after hiring Louis Armstrong to play in his band, Henderson realized the importance of the improvising soloist in developing jazz bands. Henderson's arrangements would play a significant role in the development of the Big Band era in the following decade. Young pianist and bandleader Duke Ellington first came to national attention in the late 1920s with his tight band making many recordings and radio broadcasts. Ellington's importance would grow in the coming decades.

1930s to 1950s

While the solo became more important in jazz, popular bands became larger in size. The Big band became the popular provider of music for the era. Big bands varied in their jazz content; some (such as Benny Goodman's Orchestra) were highly jazz oriented, while others (such as Glenn Miller's) left little space for improvisation. Most were somewhere inbetween, having some musicians adept at jazz solos playing with section men who kept the rhythm and arrangements going. However even bands without jazz soloists adopted a sound owing much to the jazz vocabularity, for example sax sections playing what sounded like an improvised variation on a melody (and may have originated as a transcription of one). Key figures in developing the big jazz band were arrangers and bandleaders Fletcher Henderson, Don Redman and the man sometimes deemed the most prolific composer in American history, Duke Ellington. The influence of Louis Armstrong continued to grow. Musicians and bandleaders like Cab Calloway — and, later, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and vocalists like Ella Fitzgerald, jumped on the scat bandwagon. Pop vocalists like Bing Crosby embraced Armstrong's style of improvising on the melody, and U.S. pop singers seldom since have rendered a tune "straight," in the pre-jazz style. In the early 1920s, popular music was still a mixture of things—current dance numbers, novelty songs, show tunes. "Businessman's bounce music," as one horn player put it. But musicians with steady jobs, playing with the same companions, were able to go far beyond that. The Ellington band at the Cotton Club and the various Kansas City groups that became the Count Basie band date from this period. Over time, social strictures regarding racial segregation began to relax in entertainment. White bandleaders, who tended to mold the music more to orthodox rhythms and harmony, began to recruit black musicians. In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman hired pianist Teddy Wilson, vibraharpist Lionel Hampton, and guitarist Charlie Christian to join small groups. During this period, the popularity of swing (genre) and big band music was at its height, making stars of such men as Glenn Miller and Duke Ellington. Swing, the popular music of its time, covered a broad spectrum from "sweet" to "hot" bands, with the jazz content varying across the range. A development of swing in the early 1940s known as "jumping the blues" or jump music anticipated rhythm and blues and rock and roll in some respects. It involved the use of small combos instead of big bands and a concentration on up-tempo music using the familiar blues chord progressions. Drawing largely upon the evolution of boogie-woogie in the 1930s, it used a doubled rhythm—that is, the rhythm section played "eight to the bar," eight beats per measure instead of four. Big Joe Turner, a Kansas City singer who worked in the 1930s with Swing bands like Count Basie's, became a boogie-woogie star in the 1940s and then in the 1950s was one of the first innovators of rock and roll, notably with his song "Shake, Rattle and Roll". Another jazz founder of rock and roll was saxophonist Louis Jordan.

Development of bebop

The next major stylistic turn came in the 1940s with bebop, led by such distinctive stylists as the saxophonist Charlie Parker (known as "Yardbird" or "Bird"), Bud Powell and Dizzy Gillespie. This marked a major shift of jazz from pop music for dancing to a high-art, less-accessible, cerebral "musician's music." Thelonious Monk, while too individual to be strictly a bebop musician, was also associated with this movement. Bop musicians valued complex improvisations based on chord progressions rather than melody. Hard bop moved away from cool jazz, incorporating influences from soul music, gospel music, and the blues. Hard bop was at the peak of its popularity in the 1950s and 1960s, and was associated with such figures as Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Art Blakey and Charles Mingus. Later, bebop and hard bop musicians, such as trumpeter Miles Davis, made more stylistic advances with modal jazz, where the harmonic structure of pieces was much more free than previously, and was frequently only implied -- by skeletal piano chords and bass parts. The instrumentalists then would improvise around a given mode of the scale.

Latin jazz

Main article: Latin jazz Latin jazz has two varieties: Afro-Cuban and Brazilian. Afro-Cuban jazz was played in the U.S. directly after the bebop period, while Brazilian jazz became more popular in the 1960s and 1970s. Afro-Cuban jazz began as a movement after the death of Charlie Parker. Notable bebop musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie and Billy Taylor started Afro-Cuban bands at that time. Gillespie's work was mostly with big bands of this genre. While the music was influenced by such Cuban and Puerto Rican musicians as Tito Puente and, much later, Arturo Sandoval, there were many Americans who were drawing upon Cuban rhythms for their work. Brazilian jazz is, in North America at least, nearly synonymous with bossa nova, a Brazilian popular style which is derived from samba with influences from jazz as well as other 20th-century classical and popular music. Bossa is generally slow, played around 80 beats per minute or so. The music uses straight eighths, rather than swing eighths, and also uses difficult polyrhythms. The best-known bossa nova compositions are considered to be jazz standards in their own right. The related term jazz-samba essentially describes an adaptation of bossa nova compositions to the jazz idiom by American performers such as Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd, and usually played at 120 beats per minute or faster. Samba itself is actually not jazz but, being derived from older Afro-Brazilian music, it shares some common characteristics.

Free jazz

Main article: Free jazz Free jazz, or avant-garde jazz, is a subgenre that, while rooted in bebop, typically uses less compositional material and allows performers more latitude in what they choose to play. Free jazz's greatest departure from other styles is in the use of harmony and a regular, swinging tempo: Both are often implied, utilized loosely, or abandoned altogether. These approaches were rather controversial when first advanced, but have generally found acceptance — though sometimes grudgingly — and have been utilized in part by other jazz performers. There were earlier precedents, but free jazz crystalized in the late 1950's, especially via Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor, and probably found its greatest exposure in the late 1960s with John Coltrane, Archie Shepp, Albert Ayler, Sun Ra, Pharoah Sanders, Sam Rivers, Leroy Jenkins, Don Pullen and others. While perhaps less popular than other styles, free jazz has exerted an influence to the present. Peter Brötzmann, Michael Schulz, Ken Vandermark, William Parker, Derek Bailey and Evan Parker are leading contemporary free jazz musicians, and musicians such as Coleman, Taylor and Sanders continue to play in this style. Keith Jarrett has been prominent in defending free jazz from criticism by traditionalists in recent years.

Jazz and rock music: jazz fusion

Main article: Jazz fusion Jazz fusion With the growth of rock and roll in the 1960s, came the hybrid form jazz-rock fusion, again involving Davis, who recorded the fusion albums In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew in 1968 and 1969 respectively. Jazz was by this time no longer center stage in popular music, but was still breaking new ground and combining and recombining in different forms. Notable artists of the 1960s and 1970s jazz and fusion scene include: Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock and his Headhunters band, John McLaughlin and the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Al Di Meola, Jean-Luc Ponty, Sun Ra, Soft Machine, Narada Michael Walden (who would later enjoy huge success as a music producer), Wayne Shorter, Jaco Pastorius, the Pat Metheny Group and Weather Report. Some of these have continued to develop the genre into the 2000s.

Recent developments

The stylistic diversity of jazz has shown no sign of diminishing, absorbing influences from such disparate sources as world music and avant garde classical music, including African rhythm and traditional structure, serialism, and the extensive use of chromatic scale, by such musicians as Ornette Coleman and John Zorn. Beginning in the 1970s with such artists as Keith Jarrett, Paul Bley, the Pat Metheny Group, Jan Garbarek, Ralph Towner, and Eberhard Weber, the ECM record label established a new chamber-music aesthetic, featuring mainly acoustic instruments, and incorporating elements of world music and folk music. This is sometimes referred to as "European" or "Nordic" jazz, despite some of the leading players being American. However, the jazz community has shrunk dramatically and split, with a mainly older audience retaining an interest in traditional and "straight-ahead" jazz styles, a small core of practitioners and fans interested in highly experimental modern jazz, and a constantly changing group of musicians fusing jazz idioms with contemporary popular music genres. The latter have formed such styles as acid jazz which contains elements of 1970s disco, acid swing which combines 1940s style big-band sounds with faster, more aggressive rock-influenced drums and electric guitar, and nu jazz which combines elements of jazz and modern forms of electronic dance music. Exponents of the "acid jazz" style which was initially UK-based included the Brand New Heavies, James Taylor Quartet, Young Disciples, and Corduroy. In the United States, acid jazz groups included the Groove Collective, Soulive, and Solsonics. In a more pop or smooth jazz context, jazz enjoyed a resurgence in the 1980s with such bands as Pigbag and Curiosity Killed the Cat achieving chart hits in Britain. Sade Adu became the definitive voice of smooth jazz. There have been other developments in the 1980s and 1990s that were less commercially oriented. Many of these artists, notably Wynton Marsalis, called what they were doing jazz and in fact strove to define what the term actually meant. They sought to create within what they felt was the tradition, creating extensions of small and large forms initially pioneered by such artists as Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. In the case of Wynton Marsalis these efforts met with critical acclaim. Others musicians in this time period - although clearly within the tradition of the great spontaneous composers such as Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Fats Navarro and many others – choose to distance themselves from the term jazz and simply define what they were doing as music (this in fact was suggested by the great composer Duke Ellington when the term jazz first began to be popular). Alternatively they created their own names for what they were doing (such as M-Base). Many of these artists agree with the creative guitarist Jean-Paul Bourelly who feels that "You shouldn't categorize according to styles of music, you should categorize in terms of creative levels". These musicians feel that rhythm is the key for further progress in the music. Bourelly, similar to M-Base, believes that the rhythmic innovations of James Brown and other Funk pioneers can provide an effective rhythmic base for spontaneous composition. However, the ideas of these musicians go far beyond simply playing over a funk groove, extending the rhythmic ideas in a way analogous to what had been done with harmony in previous times. Some of the musicians involved in the approach called M-Base even view this as Rhythmic Harmony. Others, like Wynton Marsalis, disagree with this point of view, preferring instead to retain the rhythmic base of swing for creating their music. However, all of these artists participate in spontaneous composition and only differ in creative focus and what could be called groove emphasis. With the rise in popularity of various forms of electronic music during the late 1980s and 1990s, some jazz artists have attempted a fusion of jazz with more of the experimental leanings of electronica (particularly IDM and Drum and bass) with various degrees of success. This has been variously dubbed "future jazz", "jazz-house" or "nu jazz". The more experimental and improvisional end of the spectrum includes Scandinavia-based artists such as pianist Bugge Wesseltoft, trumpeter Nils Petter Molvær (who both began their careers on the ECM record label), and the trio Wibutee, all of whom have gained their chops as instrumentalists in their own right in more traditional jazz circles. The Cinematic Orchestra from the UK or Julien Loureau from France have also gained praise in this area. Toward the more pop or pure dance music end of the spectrum of nu jazz are such proponents as St Germain and Jazzanova, who incorporate some live jazz playing with more metronomic house beats. In the 2000s, "jazz" hit the pop charts and blended with contemporary Urban music through the work of artists like Norah Jones, Jill Scott, Jamie Cullum, Erykah Badu, Amy Winehouse and Diana Krall and the jazz advocacy of performers who are also music educators (such as Jools Holland, Courtney Pine and Peter Cincotti). Some of these new styles may be light on improvisation, a key characteristic of jazz. However, their instrumentation and rhythms are similar to other jazz music, and the label has stuck.

Improvisation

Peter Cincotti Jazz is often difficult to define, but improvisation is unquestionably a key element of the form. Improvisation has been since early times an essential element in African and African-American music and is closely related to the pervasiveness of call and response in West African and African-American cultural expression. The exact form of improvisation has changed over time. Early folk blues music often was based around a call and response pattern, and improvisation would factor into the lyrics, the melody, or both. Part of the Dixieland style involves musicians taking turns playing the melody while the others make up counter lines to go with it. By the Swing era, big bands played carefully arranged sheet music, but the music often would call for one member of the band to stand up and play a short, improvised solo. Finally, in bebop, improvisation takes center stage, as almost the entire focus of the music is on clever, improvised solos, with little attention given to the melody, or "head", of each piece. As previously noted, later styles of jazz, such as modal jazz, abandoned the strict notion of a chord progression, allowing the individual musicians to improvise more freely within the context of a given scale or mode. The best-known example of this is the classic Miles Davis album Kind of Blue. When a pianist or guitarist improvises chords while a soloist is playing, it is called comping or vamping (also see ostinato).

See also


- American Jazz Museum
- Cool (aesthetic)
- Jazz standard
- Swing (genre)
- Thirty-two-bar form

References


- Ken Burns, Geoffrey C. Ward: Jazz - A History of America´s Music. Alfred A. Knopf, NY USA. 2000. or: The Jazz Film Project, Inc.

External links


- [http://northbysouth.kenyon.edu/1998/music/rhythm/rhythm.htm The Influence of Africa: Syncopation, Call and Response and Timbre]
- [http://www.darmstadt.de/kultur/musik/jazz/us.htm Jazz Institute Darmstadt — Europe's largest public research archive on jazz]
- [http://www.jazzservices.org.uk/ Jazz in the United