However, jazz gained a wide audience when white orchestras adapted or imitated it, and became legitimate entertainment in the late 1930s when Benny Goodman led racially mixed groups in concerts at Carnegie Hall. Show tunes became common vehicles for performance, and, while the results were exquisite, rhythmic and harmonic developments were impeded until the mid-1940s. The blues, vocal and instrumental, was and is a vital component of jazz. With the passing of time, New Orleans jazz declined greatly by the 1970s. However it began to enjoy a bit of renaissance in the 1980s when Wynton Marsalis, who originally played hard bop and post bop, began to explore his roots.
Juan Blandino 3214 – 0193 November 10th, 2009 “Vaudeville Shows” Throughout the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century, many forms of music and events came and went to help create the music today that soothes the soul and replenish the spirits. You may know it to be called jazz. But in order to fully appreciate the tunes of jazz, we must look at the history in which it is derived from. One of the main influences that helped jazz come to its still popular form today were vaudeville shows. Vaudeville was a popular form of theatre in the early nineteenth century that incorporated a variety of acts that ranged from acrobatics, comics and sketches and most importantly, musicians and singers.
The Jazz Age helped to revive many peoples’ American dream. The music brought along with it a new social structure. The Jazz Age thrived in conjunction with the newly prospering post war America. When the music began to fill the streets of New York and Chicago, so did the people and opulence. Fitzgerald is able to intertwine stories from the past to help show a comparison of the way things were to the way they are now.
New crazes came along, and new kinds of music. But ragtime continued to be performed and recorded, and it clearly had a major influence on early jazz greats such as "Jelly Roll" Morton, and on early jazz styles such as Dixieland and "Harlem Stride" jazz piano. As jazz went on to develop other styles, ragtime faded and was nearly forgotten.” But some enthusiasts who were exploring the roots of jazz began a ragtime revival in the 1940's. The revival gained momentum very slowly until, in 1973, the movie ‘The Sting’ reintroduced ragtime to the general public. Classic rags, particularly Joplin's “The Entertainer’, became once again a part of the standard band and piano repertoire.
If you have ever heard the original versions of “Take The “A” Train”, “It Don’t Mean A Thing…”, “Satin Doll”, or “Stompin At The Savoy”, and the long list of jazz hits goes on and on, then you have undoubtedly had the pleasure of listening to one of the greatest composers and musicians that has ever lived. If you have heard those works performed live by the originator, then you have sat amongst greatness. Many great names come to mind when jazz is mentioned but there is one that leads the crowd and has left a legacy that will not soon be forgotten. While his birth certificate may read Edward Kennedy Ellington, he is more commonly known through out the world as “Duke”. He was born on 29 April 1899 to mother Daisy Kennedy Ellington and
Jazz which began as ragtime and blues was a very popular style in the clubs. “Dance wars” and “Jazz-a-thons” were the big thing for the Harlem nightlife at the time (Haskins, 1984) Though The Cotton Club had many bands and famous singers play there, its most famous band was Duke Ellington and the Washingtonians. They broke tradition by being the first band that was not from the area. Though all bands of the time were breaking tradition by being black (Haskins, 1984). The band brought the club to its peak.
By 1943 he began a series of annual concerts at Carnegie Hall, which was an indication of how much jazz was now accepted in prestigious western classical concert venues. Ellington used this opportunity to write longer and more ambitious works in several movements, like the epic musical history of African-American life, Black, Brown and Beige. Between 1927 and 1931 the Ellington Orchestra played its most famous residency. At the Cotton Club in Harlem, the band backed ‘jungle’ dance-theatre routines in a variety of shows, part of a new popular interest in African-American culture later known as the Harlem Renaissance. During the Cotton Club years, the Ellington band
Sheretta Williams Art March 15, 2013 Jazz History What does the word Jazz actually mean? It means a style of music, native to America, characterized by a strong but flexible rhythmic understructure with solo and ensemble improvisations on basic tunes and chord patterns and, more recently, a highly sophisticated harmonic idiom. Jazz can be known by distinguishing features. First it points out the lesser beats in the bar or club second and fourth; it is similar to the music that is traditional that points out the 1st and 3rd beat. Next thing is the syncopation through short and strong rhythmic phases.
Thus these sessions resulted in some of the most important masterpieces of early jazz, of which West End Blues is arguably the best known. Other important recordings include Basin Street Blues, Tight Like This, Saint James Infirmary, and Weather Bird. In the last named, only Armstrong and Hines are present, turning an old rag number into a tour-de-force of inspired musical runs as the trumpet and piano playfully come together, draw apart to compete, and come together again, over several
Hamidi Brown Jazz History 2/24/13 Swing Era It never occurred to me that so many great influential musicians emerged during the swing era. Coleman Hawkins was the first musician I read about, His recording of “Body and Soul” emerged him to the forefront of national jazz, as referred to on (p.259). Hawkins worked in Europe with Benny Carter, Django Reinhardt, and others before he returned to the US. Soon after Hawkins was finish recording “Body and Soul” World War II began. Some of Hawkins ideas were seen as transitional, but many Americans loved his double time outburst over the chorus pattern, usually performed by Louis Armstrong 20 years earlier.