The majority of most original jazz musicians originated in New Orleans, Louisiana. The original Dixieland Jazz Band made early jazz recordings in 1917. By 1923 New Orleans had lost its geographical importance while new musical concepts were reshaping jazz. Essential to New Orleans jazz ensembles were the frontline of wind instruments that varied themes borrowed from blues, marches, or rags. Later on though, the 1920s witnessed diversity and stylistic upheaval. James P. Johnson, who first recorded in 1921, initiated a school of stride pianists (a style of jazz piano playing in which the right hand plays the melody while the left hand alternates between playing a single note and playing a related chord)
Striding with his left hand between bass notes and chords, Johnson invented swinging, virtuosic rhythmic variations on blues. Johnsons’s followers expanded on his technique to melodic and harmonic improvisations on 32-bar pop songs. In carefully composed recordings with his Red Hot Peppers in 1926, Jelly Roll Morton created complex New Orleans ensemble performances. Although thickly textured interchanges among winds, flourished in opening choruses and in excited climatic final courses, the focus of attention eventually shifted to individual improvisations arrangements for large ensembles. Louis Armstrong became the foremost soloist of the decade. On recordings with his Hot Five and Hot Seven in 1925- 28 he established new standards for trumpeters developing a widely imitated style of melodic formulas. Among his fellow musicians, he was challenged only by Earl Hines-the premier jazz pianist of his time.
Distinctive aspects of new styles in jazz became know as swing. Large ensembles began performing in the 1920s, led by Fletcher Henderson, Bennie Moten, and Walter Page. In New York, Henderson’s musical arranger, Don Redman developed the fundamental principal of big-band orchestration. This included the arrangements of woodwinds in single sections. Redman’s arrangements of 1923-27 varied texture through complicated and quick exchanges between soloists, including Armstrong from 1924-25, and tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins, who soon overtook the predominance of the trumpets in jazz and swing improvisation.
Redman’s arrangements became the staple of Benny Carter and Fletcher Henderson’s jazz ensembles. In 1932, Benny Moten and his ensemble spread the swing style through a series of recordings. Benny Goodman, a clarinetist in Henderson’s ensemble earned the title of “King of swing” through Redman’s arrangements. In 1935, Goodman marked the merge of big-band jazz and popular music. He became the opener for popular performances by such artists as Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and dance band leaders such as Tommy Dorsey, Harry James, Glenn Miller, and Artie Shaw.
Improvisations came from solo pianists and small groups as arrangements came to dominate the scene. Pianists fell into two schools. Some would take the orchestral approach, while others would start playing a style that was rediscovered in the late 30s called boogie-woogie. It was associated to jazz because of is emphasis on the sounds rather than the lyrics. In the early 40s, there were reactions against the commercialization of jazz, which split into 3 styles: New Orleans jazz modified with new swing rhythms, big-band swing, and bebop. bebop was the newest style, which seemed to come out of nowhere in the 1945 quintet recordings of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. Parker stands alone as the most influential improvisor in the history of jazz. In 1947, Gillespie started the first of many modifications of small combo bebop: Afro-Cuban Jazz. His band combined bebop conventions with arranged structures and Latin ostinatos based on duple subdivisions of beats. Teacher-pianist Lennie and Miles Davis separately led cool jazz, the next sub-style of jazz. Soloists in Tristano’s sextant of 1949 played quiet, fast, twisting, chromatic melodies with legato phrasing. His drummer used brushes instead of sticks. The Davis nonet’s (a piece written out for nine musicians) “Birth of the Cool” recordings of 1949-50 moderated tempo, tone color, dynamics, register, accentuation, and balanced improvisation with arrangement. Through the 50s, musicians in California popularized the cool sub-style as West Coast jazz. Some innovators such as Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker improvised contrapuntal melodies in a piano-less quartet. Pianist Dave Brubeck brought meters other than 4/4 to jazz. Still, West Coast jazz lost its vitality in many groups when skilled improvisations became subordinate to demanding written arrangements. In the East, other jazz musicians provided solutions. In 1954-55, drummer Art Blakey and pianist Horace Silver renewed bebop’s links to blues and gospel music. They used pentatonic-based melodies, subordinate progression, and minor-colored harmonies. When alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley’s second quintet debuted, their “funk” acquired the label soul jazz.The music of the Modern Jazz Quartet and of Thelonious Monk extended beyond the area of bebop. In the MJQ, pianist John Lewis and vibraphonist Milt Jackson introduced pre-Classical European forms, concert formalities, and subtlety in dynamics without sacrificing swinging improvisation. Monk replaced ideas in swing riffs, ornamental variations, and motivic work, all modified by a sophisticated sense of rhythmic placement and by a humorously perverse pitch selection that emphasized the most colorful members of the bebop chords.
In the 50s, jazz musicians began to experiment with different styles as to avoid a single-minded concentration on melodic improvisation accompanied by recycling chord progressions. John Lewis and Gunther Schuller advocated the union of Western art music and jazz in a third-stream music. Miles Davis developed a new approach to accompaniment. Accompanying Davis’s muted trumpet and fluegelhorn in recordings from 1957 to 1962 were Gil Evans’s lush arrangements for a big band, expanded to include orchestral music. As a composer, Davis pursued the flamenco sound of an upper chromatic neighbor in melodic, chordal, and sectional relationships. He substituted slow harmonic rhythm, weakly functional chordal oscillations, and bass ostinatos or pedals for the fast-moving chord progressions and walking bass-lines of bebop. Free jazz is the most radical alterative. Although not quite a style (nor free, for that matter) but more of an combination of individual efforts to replace stereotypes with new procedures. Free jazz was exemplified in the 70s and 80s by the Art Ensemble of Chicago.
Jazz has evolved and expanded, and continues to do so. While new styles of jazz have rolled in and took the stage, they have never overshadowed what came before them. All forms of jazz have continued to thrive, and therefor all must be recognized today.