Closing of the New Orleans red light district, but simple economics

1917 closing of the New Orleans red light district, but simple economics.

The great war in Europe had created an industrial boom, and the musicians

merely followed in the wake of millions of workers moving north to the

promise of better jobs.

LITTLE LOUIS & THE KING

King Oliver moved to Chicago in 1918. As his replacement in the best

band in his hometown, he recommended an 18-year-old, Louis Armstrong.

Little Louis, as his elders called him, had been born on August 4, 1901, in

poverty that was extreme even for New Orleans' black population. His

earliest musical activity was singing in the streets for pennies with a boy's

quartet he had organized. Later he sold coal and worked on the levee.

Louis received his first musical instruction at reform school, where he

spent eighteen months for shooting off an old pistol loaded with blanks on

the street on New Year's Eve of 1913. He came out with enough musical

savvy to take jobs with various bands in town. The first established

musician to sense the youngster's great talent was King Oliver, who tutored

Louis and became his idol.

THE CREOLE JAZZ BAND

When Oliver sent for Louis to join him in Chicago, that city had become

the world's new Jazz center. Even though New York was where the

Original Dixieland Jass Band had scored its big success, followed by the

spawning of the first dance craze associated with the music, the New York

bands seemed to take on the vaudeville aspects of the ODJB's style

without grasping the real nature of the music. Theirs was an imitation

Dixieland (of which Ted Lewis was the first and most successful

practitioner), but there were few southern musicians in New York to lend

the music a New Orleans authenticity.

Chicago, on the other hand, was teeming with New Orleans musicmakers,

and the city's nightlife was booming in the wake of prohibition. By all

odds, the best band in town was Oliver's Creole Jazz Band, especially

after Louis joined in late 1922. The band represented the final great

flowering of classic New Orleans ensemble style and was also the

harbinger of something new. Aside from the two cornetists, its stars were

the Dodds Brothers, clarinetists Johnny (1892-1940) and drummer Baby

(1898-1959). Baby Dodds brought a new level of rhythmic subtlety and

drive to jazz drumming. Along with another New Orleans-bred musician,

Zutty Singleton (1897-1975), he introduced the concept of swinging to the

Jazz drums. But the leading missionary of swinging was, unquestionably,

Louis Armstrong.

FIRST JAZZ ON RECORDS

The Creole Jazz Band began to record in 1923 and while not the first black

New Orleans band to make records, it was the best. The records were

quite widely distributed and the band's impact on musicians was great.

Two years earlier, trombonist Kid Ory (1886-1973) and his Sunshine

Orchestra captured the honor of being the first recorded artists in this

category. However, they recorded for an obscure California company

which soon went out of business and their records were heard by very

few.

Also in 1923, the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, a white group active in

Chicago, began to make records. This was a much more sophisticated

group than the old Dixieland Jass Band, and on one of its recording dates,

it used the great New Orleans pianist-composer Ferdinand (Jelly Roll)

Morton (1890-1941). The same year, Jelly Roll also made his own initial

records.

 JELLY ROLL MORTON

Morton, whose fabulous series of 1938 recordings for the Library of

Congress are a goldmine of information about early Jazz, was a complex

man. Vain, ambitious, and given to exaggeration, he was a pool shark,

hustler and gambler a well as a brilliant pianist and composer. His greatest

talent, perhaps was for organizing and arranging. The series of records he

made with his Red Hot Peppers between 1926 and 1928 stands, alongside

Oliver's as the crowning glory of the New Orleans tradition and one of the

great achievements in Jazz.

LOUIS IN NEW YORK AND BIG BANDS ARE BORN

That tradition, however, was too restricting for a creative genius like Louis

Armstrong. He left Oliver in late 1924, accepting an offer from New

York's most prestigious black bandleader, Fletcher Henderson

(1897-1952). Henderson's band played at Roseland Ballroom on

Broadway and was the first significant big band in Jazz history.

Evolved from the standard dance band of the era, the first big Jazz bands

consisted of three trumpets, one trombone, three saxophones (doubling all

kinds of reed instruments), and rhythm section of piano, banjo, bass (string

or brass) and drums. These bands played from written scores

(arrangements or "charts"), but allowed freedom of invention for the

featured soloists and often took liberties in departing from the written

notes.

Though it was the best of the day, Henderson's band lacked rhythmic

smoothness and flexibility when Louis joined up. The flow and grace of his

short solos on records with the band make them stand out like diamonds in

a tin setting.

The elements of Louis' style, already then in perfect balance, included a

sound that was the most musical and appealing yet heard from a trumpet; a

gift for melodic invention that was as logical as it was new and startling,

and a rhythmic poise (jazzmen called it "time") that made other players

sound stiff and clumsy in comparison.

His impact on musicians was tremendous. Nevertheless, Henderson didn't

feature him regularly, perhaps because he felt that the white dancers for

whom his band performed were not ready for Louis' innovations. During

his year with the band, however, Louis caused a transformation in its style

and, eventually, in the whole big band field. Henderson's chief arranger,

Don Redman, (1900-1964) grasped what Louis was doing and got some of

it on paper. After working with Louis, tenor saxophonist Coleman

Hawkins (1904-1969) developed a style for his instrument that became the

guidepost for the next decade.

While in New York, Louis also made records with Sidney Bechet, and

with Bessie Smith (1894-1937), the greatest of all blues singers. In 1925,

he returned to Chicago and began to make records under his own name

with a small group, the Hot Five. Included were his wife Lil Hardin

Armstrong (1899-1971) on piano, Kid Ory, Johnny Dodds, and guitarist

Johnny St. Cyr. The records, first to feature Louis extensively, became a

sensation among musicians, first all over the United States and later all

over the world. The dissemination of jazz, and in a very real sense its

whole development, would have been impossible without the phonograph.

KING LOUIS

The Hot Five was strictly a recording band. For everyday work, Louis

played in a variety of situations, including theater pit bands. He continued

to grow and develop, and in 1927 switched from cornet to the more

brilliant trumpet. He had occasionally featured his unique gravel voiced

singing, but only as a novelty. Its popular potential became apparent in

1929, when, back in New York, he starred in a musical show in which he

introduced the famous Ain't Misbehavin' singing as well as playing the

great tune written by pianist Thomas (Fats) Waller (1904-1943), himself

one of the greatest instrumentalists-singers-showmen in Jazz.

It was during his last year in Chicago while working with another pianist,

Earl (Fatha) Hines (1903-1983), that Louis reached his first artistic peak.

Hines was the first real peer to work with Louis. Inspired by him, he was

in turn able to inspire. Some of the true masterpieces of Jazz, among them

West End Blues and the duet Weatherbird, resulted from the

Armstrong-Hines union.

THE JAZZ AGE

Louis Armstrong dominated the musical landscape of the 20's and, in fact,

shaped the Jazz language of the decade to come as well. But the Jazz of

the Jazz Age was more often than not just peppy dance music made by

young men playing their banjos and saxophones who had little

understanding of (or interest in) what the blues and/or Louis Armstrong

were about. Still, a surprising amount of music produced by this

dance-happy period contained genuine Jazz elements.

PAUL WHITEMAN - King of Jazz?

The most popular bandleader of the decade was Paul Whiteman

(1890-1967), who ironically became known as the King of Jazz, although

his first successful bands played no Jazz at all and his later ones precious

little. These later bands, however, did play superb dance music, expertly

scored and performed by the best white musicians the extravagant

Whiteman paychecks could attract. From 1926 on, Whiteman gave

occasional solo spots to such Jazz-influenced players as cornetist Red

Nichols, violinist Joe Venuti, guitarist Eddie Lang (1904-1933), and the

Dorsey Brothers' trombonist-trumpeter Tommy (1905-1956) and

clarinetist-saxophonist Jimmy (1904-1957), all of whom later became

bandleaders in their own right.

In 1927, Whiteman took over the key personnel of Jean Goldkette's

Jazz-oriented band, which included a young cornetist and sometime pianist

and composer of rare talent, Bix Beiderbecke (1903-1931). Bix's very

lyrical, personal music and early death combined to make him the first

(and most durable) jazz legend. His romanticized life story became the

inspiration for a novel and a film, neither of them close to the truth.

Bix's closest personal and musical friend during the most creative period of

his life was saxophonist Frank Trumbauer (1901-1956). Fondly known as

Bix and Tram, the team enhanced many an otherwise dull Whiteman

record with their brilliant interplay or their individual efforts.

THE BEIDERBECKE LEGACY

Bix's bittersweet lyricism influenced many aspiring jazzmen, among them

the so-called Austin High Gang, made up of gifted Chicago youngsters

only a few of whom ever actually attended Austin High School. Among

them were such later sparkplugs of the Swing Era as drummers Gene

Krupa (1909-1973) and Dave Tough (1908-1948); clarinetist Frank

Teschemacher (1905-1932); saxophonist Bud Freeman (1906-1991);

pianists Joe Sullivan (1906-1971) and Jess Stacy (b. 1904); and

guitarist-entrepreneur Eddie Condon (1905-1973). Their contemporaries

and occasional comrades-in-arms included a clarinet prodigy named Benny

Goodman (1905-1986); and somewhat older reedman and character, Mezz

Mezzrow (1899-1972), whose 1946 autobiography, Really the Blues,

remains, despite inaccuracies, one of the best Jazz books.

Trumbauer, though not a legend like Bix, influenced perhaps as many

musicians. Among them were two of the greatest saxophonist in Jazz

history, Benny Carter (b.1907) and Lester (Prez) Young (1909-1959).

BLACK & WHITE

A great influence on young Goodman was the New Orleans clarinetist

Jimmie Noone (1995-1944), an exceptional technician with a beautiful

tone. Chicago was an inspiring environment for a young musician. There

was plenty of music and there were plenty of masters to learn from.

Cornetist Muggsy Spanier (1906-1967) took his early cues from King

Oliver. In New York, there was less contact between black and white

players, though white jazzmen often made the trek to Harlem or worked

opposite Fletcher Henderson at the Roseland. When a young Texas

trombonist, Jack Teagarden (1905-1964), came to town in 1928, he

startled everyone with his blues-based playing (and singing), very close in

concept to that of Henderson's trombone star, Jimmy Harrison

(1900-1931). These two set the pace for all comers.

Teagarden, alongside Benny Goodman, worked in Ben Pollack's band.

Pollack, who'd played drums with the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, was

quite a talent spotter and always had good bands. When Henderson

arranger Don Redman took over McKinney's Cotton Pickers in 1929 and

made it one of the bands of the `20s, his replacement was Benny Carter.

Carter could (and still can) write arrangements and play trumpet and

clarinet as well as alto sax. For many years, he was primarily active as a

composer for films and TV; but in the late 1970's, Carter resumed his

playing career with renewed vigor. (Editor's Note-Carter just turned

eighty and is still playing and recording.)

THE UNIQUE DUKE

Another artist whose career spanned more than fifty years is Duke

Ellington (1899-1974). By 1972, he was one of New York's most

successful bandleaders, resident at Harlem's Cotton Club--a nightspot

catering to whites only but featuring the best in black talent.

Ellington's unique gifts as composer-arranger-pianist were coupled with

equally outstanding leadership abilities. From 1927 to 1941, with very few

exceptions and occasional additions, his personnel remained unchanged--a

record no other bandleader (except Guy Lombardo, of all people) ever

matched.

Great musicians passed through the Ellington ranks between 1924 and