I think it's right about time, boys and girls, that I write up a history of jazz! Not being a complete psychopath, I'm going to give you a rundown up until about 1922.
So, where does jazz start? Of course, this question is compelte bollocks - you can't say where it began officially, because no-one really knows. It began in such squallid, anti-social origins that no-one was ever really going to document it at the time. It began in the brothels and whorehouses of New Orleans around the turn of the century where the black and white working class would go to get drunk, consort with women of the night and then dance themselves in a coma to what was the filthiest, dirtiest most provocative and anti-social music ever created.
The biggest myth about jazz in the 1910's was that it was invented by white people. The biggest myth nowadays is that it was invented by black people. The fact is - and this is a fact that will never deny - it was a complete mixture of both. Jazz evolved out of an unholy union of ragtime (black music), marching bands (white music), blues (black music), hillbilly music (white music), spirituals (black music) and parlour music (white music). OK, even that's a bit of a simplification, but I still maintain that trying to racially segregate jazz is pointless and no-one understood this better than the jazz musicians themselves - in the 1920' and 30's, a time when white and black people often couldn't ride a bus together, jazz was the only institution where black and white musicians worked together on completely equal standing. In some ways, jazz is more responsible than any other popular culture for eradicating racial boundaries in society. When it came to jazz, musicians valued skill and coolness above all else and that superceded race. Black, white, jewish, italian, native american, didn't matter as long you could play that thang.
Still, for the sake of interest, I will try and form a history of the evolution of jazz through its practitioners. And of course, the name that comes on everyone's lips when discussing this is Buddy Bolden.
I've already written a lot about Buddy Bolden on the "Funky Butt" page I made earlier, so I won't go into great detail again. Let's just say that Buddy is credited with playing jazz since the late 19th century. The problem arises when you consider that he never made any recordings and no-one is alive who ever heard him play. The only evidence comes from other jazz musicians who heard him play and this is always risky - some guys, like Freddie Keppard and Bunk Johnson who allegedly played with him, claim he invented jazz, other guys like Jelly Roll Morton consider him just a loud ragtime player. When dealing with early jazz, it's soetimes hard to make the difference between jazz and ragtime, so I think it's best that the issue of King Bolden be left moot.
More importantly, we the have the aformentioned Freddie Keppard. Now the history of King Keppard is much more complicated - he inherited the jazz royalty crown from Buddy Bolden after he went mental and around 1906 he started playing in marching band and in various orchestra's. In 1914, he put together the Original Creole Orchestra, perhaps the first jazz band as would recognisable today - he threw out the violins and solidified the cornet, trumpet, clarinet, string bass, banjo, trombone set-up that would be copied by every other jazz band in New Orleans. The band toured around the country presenting, for a lot of people, the first taste of true New Orleans jazz. However, Freddie went and fucked everything up - in 1916 he was offered a chance to record his music. A lot of people think that the lack of early black jazz recordings was due to racism, but that really wasn't the case so much - Freddie refused to record because he was afraid people would steal his style. Therefore, he missed an opportunity to become the first jazz musician - black or white - to record. He did record later in the midd 1920's, but by then his style was no longer edgy. It still represents a good example of the early jazz style though - here's a recording of him playing "Hote Tamale Man" from around 1926:
Now, the evolution of ragtime orchestra's into jazz, as I mentioned in my ragtime post, was a fairly fast and unsurprising events. I mean, if you actually listen to some of them, even as early as the 1910's, the kind of syncopation in them - as well the actual songs played - already predicts jazz in many ways. Take a listen to this recording of "Alabama Bound" from 1910 by Prince's Orchestra - the guy who made the video is very keen to point out that the song was later recorded by Jelly Roll Morton. It was also recorded by Papa Charlie Jackson, Leadbelly, Lonnie Donegan and numerous others. The sound quality's pretty awesome for 1910:
Prince's Orchestra was also the first band to ever record the blues. I'll probably do a post on the group in future, because, along with the Victor Military Band, they were the most cutting edge band of the time.
However, the most important bands of the time were, arguably, those led by James Reese Europe.
More than anyone else, James Reese Europe is resposible for the evolution of ragtime into jazz. Again disputing the claim that black musicians were bound by racism, he made his first recordings in 1914 with his Society Orchestra. It's fascinating to hear - it's not jazz yet, but it's too loud and chaotic for standard ragtime either. Here's his 1914 recording of "Castle House Rag":
Moving to New York in 1903, James Reese Europe honed his skills and put together a succession of various bands including the Clef Club, the Tempo Club and the Society Orchestra. It was around this time that a certain George Gershwin hear him play and was influenced by him. His groups were exceedingly popular - playing at Carnegie Hall and earning a lot of money. He also played in Paris and London. His orchestras at one time numbered 150 musicians and included numerous later important musicians such as Noble Sissle, Eubie Blake, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson and Willie "The Lion" Smith. His most famous band came about as a result of World War 1 - after enlisting in the army, Europe was asked to form a military band. James Reese Europe's Harlem Hellfighters were the first African-American combat unit to set foot on French soil and were hugely popular everywhere they went - they were the first taste that Europe (the place, that is) got of Jazz, spreading the music around France, Germany, Italy and Britain, astonishing all that heard them. Their sound by this point had evolved into something which sounded more like jazz in the modern sense, albeit not quite as we know it today. Here's a recording from 1919 of "How You Gonna Keep Em Down On The Farm?":
The Harlem Hellfighters and James Reese Europe were memorably portrayed in the beginning of the film "Stormy Weather" from 1943, itself a biopic of band member, Bill Robinson, playing himself in the film. It's a bit overgenerous in the actual jazziness of the band, but otherwise pretty accurate and cool. James Reese Europe was sadly murdered by one of his drummers in 1919 and has passed from most people's memories. Which is sad, because he probably had more influence on the popularity and evolution of jazz - outside of New Orleans - than anyone else and he held in the highest esteem by those who knew and worked with him.
Now, turning our attention back to New Orleans, Jelly Roll Morton published the "Original Jelly Roll Blues" in 1915, the first published authentic jazz composition. Again, I'm not going into great detail on this since I already wrote a post on it, so let's move on to the big one.
The first authentic jazz recording was "Livery Stable Blues" by the Original Dixieland Jass Band in 1917:
This is commonly held up as the first jazz recording and I won't dispute this really - although some of James Reese Europe's music at the time was "jazzy" the ODJB were the real thing. Real jazz - with countermelodies, improvisation, blues influence etc. - by real New Orleans musicians. White guys, of course, which is where the controversy lies - the bandleader Nick LaRocca cost the band a lot of credibility by claiming that he invented jazz and devaluing the black influence on the music. Bytheway, they spelt jazz "jass" originally and it wasn't until a few years later that "jazz" became the common spelling. The band grew out of an earlier, unrecorded band led by Papa Jack Lalaine, which was a mixed, interracial band and thus renders LaRocca's claims even more ridiculous. The band was already deemed passed the sell-by date by the 1920's and they are given little cred beyond the fact that they were the first group. This is a bit unfair - although they were somewhat amateurish sounding compared the great early 20's jazz bands like the New Orleans Rhythm Kings and King Oliver's Creole Band, they were still genuine jazz musicians and were among the first people to record popular jazz standards like "Tiger Rag" and the quintessential jazz anthem, "Darktown Strutters Ball":
So, I guess the next important milestone would be the first African-American jazz musicians to record. Well, if we again ignore the jazz-like music being put out by James Reese Europe, we have to actually wait until the 1920's. Freddie Keppard, like I said, ruin his chance in 1916. The only other examples I can think of would be piano rolls by the likes of James P. Johnson which date back as early as 1917. However, these were mostly rags and, although more advanced from earlier ragtime, not really significantly jazzy enough to point out.
In 1920, Mamie Smith released the first African-American vocal blues record, "Crazy Blues" on which she was backed up by her Jazz Hounds. If you want you can list this as the first black jazz record. It really comes down to a matter of opinion. For me, personally, I have to back to James P. Johnson again.
James P. Johnson was the father of Harlem Stride Piano, a style of jazz piano which evolved out of ragtime in Harlem, New York in the 1910's. It will require a post of its own in the near future. Suffice to say, in 1921 James P. Johnson recorded his famous composition "Carolina Shout" in both a solo piano recording (not a piano roll) and in a full jazz band form. Both of these I credit as the first jazz recordings by an African-American artist. I can't seem to find a good link to the band version, but here's the piano version:
I will put up the band version once I can get a good link to it. The final "first" I need to mention is Kid Ory's Creole Orchestra and their recording of "Ory Creole Trombone" from 1922, the first recordings a black New Orleans jazz band. This is actually usually held up as the first African-American jazz recording rather than "Carolina Shout" and I put this down to lack of knowledge rather than anything else. It was the wildest jazz recording ever made up to that point and Kid Ory was later famous for playing with Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton - he should also be famous for being one of the very few jazz originators not to go mad, alcoholic and die penniless; he became very popular during the Dixieland revival of the 1940s and retired in the 1960's on a Hawaiian island. I can't seem to find the original "Ory's Creole Trombone" recording - youtube is crap for early jazz - but here's the 1940's recording he made of the same song. It rocks mercilessly:
So, that's JAZZ! Of course, it evolved much more beyond this point and there is far, FAR more to talk about in the 1920's, but seeing as how I'm not getting paid for writing this, I would have to be mad to write anymore now. Madder, that is.
Just about everyone I have mentioned on this post can be found public domain here:
http://www.archive.org/details/78rpm
You don't even have to feel oh so guilty about robbing some poor, innocent executive!
Jang Deuce, cruds!
