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Jazz Roots

Jazz is the first American music style to affect music in the rest of the World. From ragtime and brass bands to gospel choirs and blues, jazz's many roots are recognized almost everywhere in the United States.

The city of New Orleans was heavily involved in the early development of jazz. A port city with a well-established black population, was ready for the development of new form of music at the turn of the century. Brass bands marched in numerous parades and played to comfort families during funerals. Home to great clarinetists Johnny Dodds, Jimmy Noone and Sidney Bechet and the first great cornetist, Joe "King" Oliver and future star, Louis Armstrong.

Chicago became the focal point for jazz in the early 1920s when New Orleans musicians found their way north after clubs in the Storyville area of New Orleans were closed. Jazz began to gain wider notice as recordings sold throughout America. Chicago was a magnet for musicians in the Mid-West. Famous musicians that moved to Chicago were Earl Hines, Johnny Dodds, Louis Armstrong and King Oliver.

New York City contributed to jazz in many ways. The first piano style to be incorporated into jazz was developed from ragtime and was popular in New York. The city was also the center of the music publishing business. James Reese Europe experimented with a style of jazz that involved large orchestras. Many of his early recordings were considered ragtime, though his later recordings in 1919 clearly show jazz improvisation. In the 1920s, New York City had two orchestras that would eventually greatly affect jazz history. Fletcher Henderson unit featured future jazz stars Coleman Hawkins and Don Redman but it wasn't until Henderson brought Louis Armstrong from Chicago to play with his group that the band began to develop into a full-fledged jazz group.

Duke Ellington moved to New York from Washington, DC in the early twenties and began to develop the skills as an arranger and composer which brought to him great fame. Another transplanted New Orleans pioneer, Clarence Williams, had a hand in organizing many early jazz and blues recordings in New York. In the late twenties, the jazz center of the United States moved from Chicago to New York City as many musicians did also.

During the twenties and thirties Territory Bands played jazz in smaller United States cities. In the late twenties, Bennie Moten's Band acquired members of Walter Page's Blue Devils which were formed in Oklahoma City. This group later evolved into the Count Basie Orchestra.

As jazz evolved, white musicians like Benny Goodman added black arrangements. Jazz began to move into the Swing or Big Band period. Large black and white jazz bands toured the United States filling the radio airwaves with swing. Great African American bands during the swing era were Jimmy Lunceford, Chick Webb, Mills Blue Rhythm, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Andy Kirk's Clouds of Joy. It was also a time when vocalists came to the forefront led by such as Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and Fats Waller.

References:

Samuel B. Charters and Leonard Kundstadt, Jazz: A History of the New York Scene,, (New York: Da Capo, 1981)

Gunther Schuller, Early Jazz : Its Roots and Musical Development, (New York: Oxford, 1986)