What was jazz music

Benny Goodman popularized the music for white audiences. Other influential bandleaders were Cab Calloway and Count Basie. One of the greatest jazz vocalists of the s to the s, Billie "Lady Day" Holiday could wrench enormous emotion out of any word in a jazz tune.

She made her first recordings with Benny Goodman but found wider fame with Count Basie's orchestra. Influential bandleader, composer of American standards, and pianist Duke Ellington was a pioneer in the Big Band era, and his band lasted for more than 50 years, based out of New York, though they toured worldwide. He is widely renowned as America's greatest composer.

His career started in the s and extended into the s. Big Bands gave musicians the opportunity to experiment with different approaches to improvisation. While members of a Big Band, saxophonist Charlie Parker and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie began to develop a highly virtuosic and harmonically advanced style known as "bebop," an onomatopoeic reference to the rhythmic punches heard in the music.

Parker and Gillespie performed their music in small ensembles all over the country, and musicians flocked to hear the new direction jazz was taking. Other bebop influencers include Thelonious Monk and Max Roach. One of jazz's most popular singers for 50 years was Ella Fitzgerald, who sold 40 million records in her lifetime and toured the nation widely, leading her own band.

She started her career during the Big Band era but adapted to bebop and other styles, becoming a pioneer in scat singing. Frederick James Brown, American, — , Count Basie , , oil on canvas over wood panel, 80 x 42 inches. Photo: Dan Wayne. This gallery also includes the abstract works Kinetic Abstraction No. Photo: E. Schempf, Kemper Acquisition Fund, Jazz developed in the United States in the very early part of the 20th century. New Orleans, near the mouth of the Mississippi River, played a key role in this development.

The city's population was more diverse than anywhere else in the South, and people of African, French, Caribbean, Italian, German, Mexican, and American Indian, as well as English, descent interacted with one another. African-American musical traditions mixed with others and gradually jazz emerged from a blend of ragtime, marches, blues, and other kinds of music. At first jazz was mostly for dancing. In later years, people would sit and listen to it.

That was about , ; and all the time we played there, people were talking about Freddie Keppard. Freddie, he had left New Orleans with his band and he was traveling all over the country playing towns on the Orpheum Circuit.

At the time, you know, that was something new and Freddie kept sending back all these clippings from what all the newspapermen and the critics and all was writing up about him, about his music, about his band.

And all these clippings were asking the same thing: where did it come from? It seems like everyone along the circuit was coming up to Freddie to ask about this ragtime. Where did it come from? And back at the Twenty-Five these friends of Freddie's kept coming around and showing these clippings, wanting to know what it was all about. It was a new thing then. He was on the north side of town, and I was living on the south side. In other words, he was a Creole and lived in the French part of town.

Canal Street was the dividing line and the people from the different sections didn't mix. The musicians mixed only if you were good enough. But at one time the Creole fellows thought uptown musicians weren't good enough to play with them, because most of the uptown musicians didn't read music. Everybody in the French part of town read music. The funerals in New Orleans are sad until the body is finally lowered into the grave and the reverend says, "ashes to ashes and dust to dust.

Particularly when King Oliver blew that last chorus in high register. Once the band starts, everybody starts swaying from one side of the street to the other, especially those who drop in and follow the ones who have been to the funeral. These people are known as 'the second line', and the may be anyone passing along the street who wants to hear the music. The spirit hits them and they follow along to see what's happening. From about on, there were three types of bands playing in New Orleans.

You had bands that played ragtime, ones that played sweet music, and the ones that played nothin' but blues. A band like John Robichaux's played nothin' but sweet music and played the dirty affairs. A band like the Magnolia Band would play ragtime and work the District All the bands around New Orleans would play quadrilles starting about midnight.

When you did that nice people would know it was time to go home because things got rough after that. You see, New Orleans was very organization-minded.

I have never seen such beautiful clubs as they had there They'd have a great big band. The grand marshal would ride in front with his aides behind him, all with expensive sashes and streamers. It was all over the world, even down in Honolulu and all where American forces went I played on the bill with Caruso. I played on the bills with Jolson. I played on the bills with Eddie Cantor.

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