1920s and 1930s
Prohibition in the United States (from 1920 to 1933) banned the sale of alcoholic drinks, resulting in illicit speakeasies becoming lively venues of the “Jazz Age“, an era when popular music included current dance songs, novelty songs, and show tunes. Jazz started to get a reputation as being and many members of the older generations saw it as threatening the old values in culture and promoting the new decadent values of the Roaring 20s. From 1919 Kid Ory’s Original Creole Jazz Band of musicians from New Orleans played in San Francisco and Los Angeles where in 1922 they became the first black jazz band of New Orleans origin to make recordings. However, the main centre developing the new “Hot Jazz” was Chicago, where King Oliver joined Bill Johnson. That year also saw the first recording by Bessie Smith, the most famous of the 1920s blues singers.
Bix Beiderbecke formed The Wolverines in 1924. Also in 1924 Louis Armstrong joined the Fletcher HendersonHot Five dance band as featured soloist for a year, then formed his virtuosic band, also popularising scat singing. Jelly Roll Morton recorded with the New Orleans Rhythm Kings in an early mixed-race collaboration, then in 1926 formed his Red Hot Peppers. There was a larger market for jazzy dance music played by white orchestras, such as Jean Goldkette’s orchestra and Paul Whiteman’s orchestra. In 1924 Whiteman commissioned Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, which was premièred by Whiteman’s Orchestra. Other influential large ensembles included Fletcher Henderson’s band, Duke Ellington’s band (which opened an influential residency at the Cotton Club in 1927) in New York, and Earl Hines’s Band in Chicago (who opened in The Grand Terrace Cafe there in 1928). All significantly influenced the development of big band-style swing jazz.
Swing
The 1930s belonged to popular swing big bands, in which some virtuoso soloists became as famous as the band leaders. Key figures in developing the “big” jazz band included bandleaders and arrangers Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Fletcher Henderson, Earl Hines, Glenn Miller, and Artie Shaw.
Swing was also dance music and it was broadcast on the radio ‘live’ coast-to-coast nightly across America for many years. Although it was a collective sound, swing also offered individual musicians a chance to ‘solo’ and improvise melodic, thematic solos which could at times be very complex and ‘important’ music. Included among the critically acclaimed leaders who specialized in live radio broadcasts of swing music as well as “Sweet Band” compositions during this era was Shep Fields.
Over time, social strictures regarding racial segregation began to relax, and white bandleaders began to recruit black musicians. In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman hired pianist Teddy Wilson, vibraphonist Lionel Hampton, and guitarist Charlie Christian to join small groups. An early 1940s style known as “jumping the blues” or jump blues used small combos, up-tempo music, and blues chord progressions. Jump blues drew on boogie-woogie from the 1930s. Kansas City Jazz in the 1930s marked the transition from big bands to the bebop influence of the 1940s.
Beginnings of European jazz
Outside of the United States the beginnings of a distinct European style of jazz emerged in France with the Quintette du Hot Club de France which began in 1934. Belgian guitar virtuoso Django Reinhardt popularized gypsy jazz, a mix of 1930s American swing, French dance hall “musette” and Eastern European folk with a languid, seductive feel. The main instruments are steel stringed guitar, violin, and double bass. Solos pass from one player to another as the guitar and bass play the role of the rhythm section. Some music researchers hold that it was Philadelphia’s Eddie Lang (guitar) and Joe Venuti (violin) who pioneered the gypsy jazz form, which was brought to France after they had been heard live or on Okeh Records in the late 1920s.
