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Early 20th Century Music: Jazz & Blues

By the end of Today you should be able to define the following terms and explain how they relate to
music in the early 20th Century
1. Ragtime
2. Stride Piano
3. Scott Joplin
4. Blues
5. Delta Blues
6. Robert Johnson
7. Skip James
8. Jazz
9. New Orleans Jazz
10. Louis Armstrong
11. Original Dixie Land Jazz Band
12. Gospel & African American Spirituals

What is Jazz?
Jazz is noise
Jass is music that is always different
Jass is an American art form
Jass is revolutionary
Jazz is old
Jazz if new
Jazz is the same as bebob, hip-hop and the blues

Louis Armstrong 1901-1971

Louis Armstrong is jazz. He represents what the music is all

about. Wynton Marsalis
From a New Orleans boys home to Hollywood, Carnegie Hall,
and television, the tale of Louis Armstrongs life and
triumphant six-decade career epitomizes the American
success story. His trumpet playing revolutionized the world of
music, and he became one of our centurys most recognized
and best loved entertainers. Now, thirty years after his death,
Armstrongs work as an instrumentalist and vocalist continue
to have a profound impact on American music. As a black
man living and working in a segregated society, he symbolized
the civil rights struggle that was part of the changing America
in which he lived.
Born in New Orleans on August 4, 1901, Louis Satchmo Armstrong was heir to the poverty suffered by Southern blacks
at the turn of the century. At the age of eleven, Armstrong began to develop an interest in music, harmonizing on street
corners and playing a toy horn. Arrested for disturbing the peace, on New Years Eve, 1913, he was remanded to the New
Orleans Colored Waifs Home for Boys. In and out of the home throughout his teenage years, Armstrong was taken under
the wing of Peter Davis, who taught music there. Under Daviss tutelage, Armstrong joined a band, and his talent
blossomed. He left the Waifs Home in 1914, and began to play the cornet around New Orleans. In 1921, at the invitation
of the great cornetist Joe King Oliver, Armstrong moved to Chicago.
In the 1920s, Armstrong performed with a number of different musical groups, and began to revolutionize the jazz world
with his introduction of the extended solo. Prior to his arrival, jazz music was played either in highly orchestrated
arrangements or in a more loosely structured Dixieland-type ensemble in which no one musician soloed for any
extended period. Musicians everywhere soon began to imitate his style, and Armstrong himself became a star attraction.
His popularity was phenomenal, and throughout the 1920s he was one of the most sought-after musicians in both New
York and Chicago. Armstrongs HOT FIVE and HOT SEVEN recordings remain to this day some of the best loved of the
time.
Throughout the 1930s and 1940s Armstrong maintained one of the most grueling continual tours of all time. He began
playing with the large bands that were popular at the time, but soon realized that his style was better suited to a smaller
ensemble. With the help of manager, Joe Glaser, he formed Louis Armstrong and His All Stars. The band, which had a
rotating cast of all stars, first included Jack Teagarden, Barney Bigard, Earl Hines, and Big Sid Catlett. Though many
believed the 40s marked the beginning of a decline of Armstrongs playing, the recordings bear out his continued technical
proficiency, spirited interpretations, and the depth and soul of his playing during these years.
The 1950s proved to be a regeneration for Armstrong as both a musician and a public figure. Though he had been singing
since his early days in Chicago, it was not until the 1950s that audiences recognized his remarkable skill as a singer as
well. His rough and throaty voice became, almost instantly, the internationally recognized voice of jazz itself. His 1956
recording with Ella Fitzgerald of George Gershwins Porgy and Bess was one of the most popular and best loved duets
of the 1950s. For many, his scat singing was the perfection of a genre just then in its infancy. With his increasing fame,
however, came the criticism of a black community that felt he was not living up to the responsibilities of the times. The late
fifties brought with them the civil rights movement, and many blacks saw Armstrong as an uncle tom, playing for
primarily white audiences around the world. Though adamant that these claims were unjust, Armstrong was then in his
sixties and primarily concerned with continuing to travel and perform.
Armstrong spent the final decade of his life in the same way that he had spent the four previous entertaining audiences
throughout the world. In 1971, he died of a heart attack in New York City. Though the history of jazz is filled with many
exceptional and innovative musicians, it is hard to find any one who has had as profound an influence on the movement
as Louis Armstrong. Armstrongs legacy is more than simply his virtuoso trumpet playing (for which nearly every trumpet
player since seems indebted), but his great formal innovations as well. His commitment to the search for new forms in
jazz and his continued heartfelt performances will remain a major symbol not only of the musical life, but of the entire
cultural life of 20th-century America.

Original Dixieland Jazz Band

The original members of the

Original Dixieland Jazz Band, all
from New Orleans, were Nick
LaRocca (leader and comet), Larry
Shields (clarinet), Eddie Edwards
(trombone), Tony Sbarbaro
(drums), and Henry Ragas (who
was replaced by J. Russel Robinson,
piano). After playing in Chicago in 1916, the five musicians moved to New York
where they enjoyed sensational receptions during their residency at
Reisenweber's Restaurant from January 1917. During the same year, the group
became the first jazz band to make phonograph recordings, and in doing so the
musicians achieved a degree of eminence that was out of proportion to their
musical skills. During the mid-1920s, when the vogue for jazz dancing
temporarily subsided, the group disbanded; it reformed again in 1936, but the
reunion was brief and only moderately successful.
No member of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band was particularly talented as an
improviser, and the group's phrasing was rhythmically stilted; but even so, its
collective vigor had an infectious spirit. When black jazz bands began to record
regularly it soon became apparent that many of them were more adept at jazz
improvising and phrasing than was the Original Dixieland Jazz Band. Detractors
of the band maintain that it merely simplified the music of black New Orleans
groups, and cite specific antecedents for its compositions Tiger
Rag and Sensation Rag. Casual listeners were intrigued by its repertory,
however, which was unlike anything else then on record. The group presented
a new sound rather than a new music; this sound, and the rhythms in which it
was couched, appealed to young dancers, who were eager to break away from
the rigidly formal dance steps of the era.
The most passionate advocate of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band's importance
to jazz history was LaRocca himself, who never ceased claiming that his band
had played a vital role in the "invention" of jazz in New Orleans during the
early years of the 20th century. The fact that there is no evidence to support
LaRocca's contention has caused many jazz devotees to ignore the merits of
the band's music. But it is indisputable that the group played a major part in
popularizing the dixieland style of jazz throughout the USA and Europe.

Skip James Delta Blues