| Part of the Roaring Twenties | |
Carter and King Jazzing Orchestra in 1921, Houston, Texas
| |
| Date | 1920s–1930s |
|---|---|
| Location | United States |
| Participants | Jazz musicians and fans |
| Outcome | Popularity of Jazz music in the United States |
The Jazz Age was a period in the 1920s and 1930s in which jazz music and dance styles rapidly gained nationwide popularity in the United States. The Jazz Age's cultural repercussions were primarily felt in the United States, the birthplace of jazz. Originating in New Orleans as a fusion of African and European music, jazz played a significant part in wider cultural changes in this period, and its influence on popular culture continued long afterward. The Jazz Age is often referred to in conjunction with the Roaring Twenties, and in the United States it overlapped in significant cross-cultural ways with the Prohibition Era. The movement was largely affected by the introduction of radios nationwide. During this time, the Jazz Age was intertwined with the developing cultures of young people. The movement also helped start the beginning of the European Jazz movement. American author F. Scott Fitzgerald is widely credited with coining the term, first using it in his 1922 short story collection titled Tales of the Jazz Age.
Background
Jazz music
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, United States, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and developed from roots in blues and ragtime.
New Orleans provided a great opportunity for the development of jazz
because it was a port city with many cultures and beliefs intertwined. While in New Orleans, jazz was influenced by Creole music, ragtime, and blues.
Jazz is seen by many as "America's classical music". In the beginning of the 20th century, dixieland jazz developed as an early form of jazz. In the 1920s, jazz became recognized as a major form of musical expression. It then emerged in the form of independent traditional
and popular musical styles, all linked by the common bonds of
African-American and European-American musical parentage with a
performance orientation.
From Africa, jazz got its rhythm, "blues", and traditions of playing or
singing in one's own expressive way. From Europe, jazz got its harmony
and instruments. Both used improvisation, which became a large part of
jazz.
Louis Armstrong brought the improvisational solo to the forefront of a piece. Jazz is generally characterized by swing and blue notes, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation.
Prohibition
Prohibition in the United States
was a nationwide constitutional ban on the production, importation,
transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages from 1920 to 1933.
In the 1920s, the laws widely were disregarded, and tax revenues
were lost. Well-organized criminal gangs took control of the beer and
liquor supply for many cities, unleashing a crime wave that shocked the
U.S. This prohibition was taken advantage of by gangsters, led by Al Capone earning $60 million from illegally selling alcohol. The resulting illicit speakeasies
that grew from this era became lively venues of the "Jazz Age", hosting
popular music that included current dance songs, novelty songs and show
tunes.
By the late 1920s, a new opposition mobilized across the U.S.
Anti-prohibitionists, or "wets," attacked prohibition as causing crime,
lowering local revenues, and imposing rural Protestant religious values
on urban America. Prohibition ended with the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment,
which repealed the Eighteenth Amendment on December 5, 1933. Some
states continued statewide prohibition, marking one of the latter stages
of the Progressive Era.
Prohibition and organized crime's effects on the popularity of jazz
Prohibition and organized crime
in the 1920s and 30s fueled the popularity of jazz through speakeasies
and records (in which jobs were provided by organized crime). There were
many speakeasies providing a large number of jobs for jazz musicians
run by organized crime. The sheer amount of speakeasies that popped up
over time indicates jazz popularity growth. The fact that important
organized crime leaders appreciated jazz music (especially Al Capone)
and gave jazz musicians jobs indicates a growth in popularity of jazz.
Also, the fact that the records of African American jazz in a time of
segregation brought jazz to white people, leading some to listen and
play it, shows a huge growth in popularity of jazz. Finally, the
lucrative nature of speakeasies and other organized rackets demonstrates
in part the popularity of jazz. Overall, Prohibition created the want
for alcohol that later created speakeasies and an environment where jazz
fit in (countercultural). Organized crime made a business of this and
jazz skyrocketed into popularity.
Speakeasies/records
Formed as a result of the eighteenth amendment,
speakeasies were places (often owned by organized criminals) where
customers could drink alcohol and relax, or speak easy. Jazz was played
in these speakeasies as a countercultural type of music to fit in with
the illicit environment and events going on. Jazz artists were therefore
hired to play at speakeasies. Al Capone, the famous organized crime
leader, gave jazz musicians previously living in poverty a steady and
professional income. A Renegade History of the United States states "The
singer Ethel Waters fondly recalled that Capone treated her 'with
respect, applause, deference, and paid in full.'"
Also from A Renegade History of the United States, "The pianist Earl
Hines remembered that 'Scarface [Al Capone] got along well with
musicians. He liked to come into a club with his henchmen and have the
band play his requests. He was very free with $100 tips.'" The illegal culture of speakeasies lead to what were known as "black and tan" clubs which had multiracial crowds.
Jazz legends Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington were both invited to
play at white only clubs though they were both African American. Jazz
was also shared to the white public through records. White jazz master
Bix Beiderbecke learned jazz from records. He was a Cornet player with
an unorthodox style of playing.
There were many speakeasies, especially in Chicago and New York. New
York had, at the height of Prohibition, 32,000 speakeasies.
At speakeasies, both payoffs and mechanisms for hiding alcohol were
used. Charlie Burns, in recalling his ownership of several speakeasies
employed these strategies as a way to preserve he and Jack Kriendler's
illegal clubs. This includes forming relationships with local police and
firemen. Mechanisms that a trusted engineer created include one that
when a button was pushed, tongue blocks under shelves of liquor would
drop, making the shelves drop back and liquor bottles fall down a chute,
break, and drain the alcohol through rocks and sand. An alarm also went
off if the button was pushed to alert customers of a raid. Another
mechanism used by Burns was a wine cellar with a thick door flush with
the wall. It had a small almost unnoticeable hole for a rod to be pushed
in to activate a lock and open the door.
Rum running/bootlegging
As
to where speakeasies obtained alcohol, there were rum runners and
bootleggers. Rum running in this case was the organized smuggling of
liquor by land or sea into the U.S.. Decent foreign liquor was high end
alcohol during prohibition, and William McCoy
had some of the best of it. Bill McCoy was in the rum running business,
and at certain points of time was ranked among the best. To avoid being
caught, he sold liquor just outside the territorial waters of the
United States. Buyers would come to him to pick up his booze as a
precaution for McCoy. McCoy's liquor specialty was selling high quality
whiskey without diluting the alcohol.
Bootlegging was making and or smuggling alcohol around the U.S.. As
selling the alcohol could make plenty of money, there are several major
ways this was done. One strategy used by Frankie Yale and the Genna
brothers gang (both involved in organized crime) was to give poor
Italian Americans alcohol stills to make alcohol for them at $15 per
day's work.
Another strategy was to just buy liquor from rumrunners. Racketeers
would also buy closed breweries and distilleries to then hire former
employees to make alcohol. Another person famous for organized crime
named Johnny Torrio partnered with two other mobsters and legitimate
brewer Joseph Stenson to make illegal beer in a total of nine breweries.
Finally, some racketeers stole industrial grain alcohol and redistilled
it to sell in speakeasies.
Organized crime
Organized
crime, which is generally self explanatory, is crime on a large scale
with leadership and rank. Organized crime ran speakeasies and generally
supported jazz. Piero Scaruffi
states, "The gangsters who ruled the city [Chicago] were protectors of
music, that was a necessity for their gambling, alcohol and prostitution
rackets." The gangsters relied on the music and the musicians relied on
the gangsters for income. Scaruffi also notes, "When jazz musicians
arrived in Chicago, they were often employed by gangsters. Their first
audience was the mob [mafia]." As mentioned earlier, Al Capone
was an organized crime leader who appreciated jazz and used it as
entertainment in his rackets. Capone made a large sum of money running
these rackets, and jazz played a substantial role in them. So, the fact
that at one point, Al Capone was earning an estimated $100 million per
year from his rackets shows that jazz's popularity was growing. Even in
1930, Capone owned 6,000 speakeasies and made more than $6 million a
week. Overall, the nightclub environment and featured jazz artists lead to millions in profits for the heads of organized crime.
History
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. The year also saw the first recording by Bessie Smith, the most famous of the 1920s blues singers. Chicago, meanwhile, was the main center developing the new "Hot Jazz", where King Oliver joined Bill Johnson. Bix Beiderbecke formed The Wolverines in 1924.
The same year, Louis Armstrong joined the Fletcher Henderson dance band
as featured soloist, leaving in 1925. The original New Orleans style
was polyphonic, with theme variation and simultaneous collective
improvisation. Armstrong was a master of his hometown style, but by the
time he joined Henderson's band, he was already a trailblazer in a new
phase of jazz, with its emphasis on arrangements and soloists.
Armstrong's solos went well beyond the theme-improvisation concept, and
extemporized on chords, rather than melodies. According to Schuller, by
comparison, the solos by Armstrong's bandmates (including a young Coleman Hawkins), sounded "stiff, stodgy," with "jerky rhythms and a grey undistinguished tone quality." The following example shows a short excerpt of the straight melody of "Mandy, Make Up Your Mind" by George W. Meyer and Arthur Johnston (top), compared with Armstrong's solo improvisations (below) (recorded 1924). (The example approximates Armstrong's solo, as it does not convey his use of swing.)
Top:
excerpt from the straight melody of "Mandy, Make Up Your Mind" by
George W. Meyer & Arthur Johnston. Bottom: corresponding solo
excerpt by Louis Armstrong (1924).
Armstrong's solos were a significant factor in making jazz a true
20th-century language. After leaving Henderson's group, Armstrong formed
his virtuosic Hot Five
band, which included instrumentalist's Kid Ory (trombone), Johnny Dodds
(clarinet), Johnny St. Cyr (banjo), and wife Lil on piano, where he
popularized 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,
premiered by Whiteman's Orchestra. By the mid-1920s, Whiteman was the
most popular bandleader in the U.S. His success was based on a "rhetoric
of domestication" according to which he had elevated and rendered
valuable a previously inchoate kind of music.
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'
Band in Chicago (who opened in The Grand Terrace Cafe there in 1928).
All significantly influenced the development of big band-style swing
jazz. By 1930, the New Orleans-style ensemble was a relic, and jazz belonged to the world.
Several musicians grew up in musical families, where a family
member would often teach how to read and play music. Some musicians,
like Pops Foster, learned on homemade instruments.
Urban radio stations played African-American jazz more frequently
than suburban stations, due to the concentration of African Americans
in urban areas such as New York and Chicago. Younger demographics
popularized the black-originated dances such as the Charleston as part
of the immense cultural shift the popularity of jazz music generated.
Swing in the 1920s and 1930s
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, Harry James, Jimmie Lunceford, Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw.
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 complex "important" music.
Over time, social strictures regarding racial segregation began
to relax in America: white bandleaders began to recruit black musicians
and black bandleaders white ones. In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman hired
pianist Teddy Wilson, vibraphonist Lionel Hampton and guitarist Charlie Christian to join small groups. In the 1930s, Kansas City Jazz as exemplified by tenor saxophonist Lester Young marked the transition from big bands to the bebop influence of the 1940s. An early 1940s style known as "jumping the blues" or jump blues used small combos, uptempo music and blues chord progressions, drawing on boogie-woogie from the 1930s.
Radio
The
introduction of large-scale radio broadcasts enabled the rapid national
spread of jazz in 1932. The radio was described as the "sound factory."
Radio made it possible for millions to hear for free the
music—especially people who never attended expensive, distant big city
clubs.
These broadcasts originated from clubs in leading centers such as New
York, Chicago, Kansas City, and Los Angeles. There were two categories
of live music on the radio: concert music and big band dance music. The
concert music was known as "potter palm" and was concert music by
amateurs, usually volunteers. Big band dance music is played by professionals and was featured from nightclubs, dance halls, and ballrooms.
Musicologist Charles Hamm
described three types of jazz music at the time: black music for black
audiences, black music for white audiences, and white music for white
audiences.
Jazz artists like Louis Armstrong originally received very little
airtime because most stations preferred to play the music of white
American jazz singers. Other jazz vocalists include Bessie Smith and Florence Mills.
In urban areas, such as Chicago and New York, African-American jazz was
played on the radio more often than in the suburbs. Big-band jazz, like
that of James Reese Europe and Fletcher Henderson in New York, attracted large radio audiences.
Elements and influences
Youth
Young
people in the 1920s used the influence of jazz to rebel against the
traditional culture of previous generations. This youth rebellion of the
1920s went hand-in-hand with fads like bold fashion statements (flappers), women that smoked cigarettes, a willingness to talk about sex freely, and new radio concerts. Dances like the Charleston,
developed by African Americans, suddenly became popular among the
youth. Traditionalists were aghast at what they considered the breakdown
of morality.
Some urban middle-class African Americans perceived jazz as "devil's
music", and believed the improvised rhythms and sounds were promoting
promiscuity.
Role of women
With women's suffrage—the right for women to vote—at its peak with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment
on August 18, 1920, and the entrance of the free-spirited flapper,
women began to take on a larger role in society and culture. With women
now taking part in the work force after the end of the First World War
there were now many more possibilities for women in terms of social life
and entertainment. Ideas such as equality and open sexuality were very
popular during the time and women seemed to capitalize on these ideas
during this period. The 1920s saw the emergence of many famous women
musicians, including Bessie Smith. Bessie Smith also gained attention
because she was not only a great singer but also an African-American
woman. She has grown through the ages to be one of the most well
respected singers of all time. Singers such as Billie Holiday and Janis Joplin were inspired by Bessie Smith.
Lovie Austin (1887–1972) was a Chicago-based bandleader, session musician (piano), composer, singer, and arranger during the 1920s classic blues era. She and Lil Hardin Armstrong often are ranked as two of the best female jazz blues piano players of the period.
Piano player Lil Hardin Armstrong was originally a member of King
Oliver's band with Louis, and went on to play piano in her husband's
band the Hot Five and then his next group called the Hot Seven
It was not until the 1930s and 1940s that many women jazz singers, such
as Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday were recognized as successful
artists in the music world.
Another famous female vocalist, dubbed "The First Lady of Song," Ella
Fitzgerald was the one of the more popular female jazz singers in the
United States for more than half a century. In her lifetime, she won 13
Grammy awards and sold over 40 million albums. Her voice was flexible
and wide-ranging. She could sing ballads, jazz, and imitate every
instrument in an orchestra. She worked with all the jazz greats,
including Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra,
Dizzy Gillespie and Benny Goodman.
These women were persistent in striving to make their names known in
the music industry and to lead the way for many more women artists to
come.
African American influence
The birth of jazz is credited to African Americans.
But it was modified to become socially acceptable to middle-class white
Americans. Those critical of jazz saw it as music from people with no
training or skill.
White performers were used as a vehicle for the popularization of jazz
music in America. Although jazz was taken over by the white middle-class
population, it facilitated the mesh of African American traditions and
ideals with white middle-class society.
The migration of African Americans from the American South
introduced the culture born from a repressive, unfair society to the
American north where navigating through a society with little ability to
change played a vital role in the birth of jazz.
Some famous black artists of the time were Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Count Basie.
Beginnings of European jazz
As
only a limited number of American jazz records were released in Europe,
European jazz traces many of its roots to American artists such as
James Reese Europe, Paul Whiteman, and Lonnie Johnson,
who visited Europe during and after World War I. It was their live
performances which inspired European audiences' interest in jazz, as
well as the interest in all things American (and therefore exotic) which
accompanied the economic and political woes of Europe during this time. The beginnings of a distinct European style of jazz began to emerge in this interwar period.
British jazz began with a tour by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band in 1919. In 1926, Fred Elizalde
and His Cambridge Undergraduates began broadcasting on the BBC.
Thereafter jazz became an important element in many leading dance
orchestras, and jazz instrumentalists became numerous.
This style entered full swing in France with the Quintette du Hot Club de France,
which began in 1934. Much of this French jazz was a combination of
African-American jazz and the symphonic styles in which French musicians
were well-trained; in this, it is easy to see the inspiration taken
from Paul Whiteman since his style was also a fusion of the two. Belgian guitarist 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 were steel stringed guitar, violin, and double bass. Solos
pass from one player to another as guitar and bass form the rhythm
section. Some researchers believe Eddie Lang and Joe Venuti pioneered the guitar-violin partnership characteristic of the genre, which was brought to France after they had been heard live or on Okeh Records in the late 1920s.
Criticism of the movement
During
this time period, jazz began to get a reputation as being immoral, and
many members of the older generations saw it as threatening the old
cultural values and promoting the new decadent values of the Roaring Twenties.
Professor Henry van Dyke of Princeton University wrote: "... it is not
music at all. It's merely an irritation of the nerves of hearing, a
sensual teasing of the strings of physical passion." The media too began to denigrate jazz. The New York Times
used stories and headlines to pick at jazz: Siberian villagers were
said by the paper to have used jazz to scare off bears, when in fact
they had used pots and pans; another story claimed that the fatal heart
attack of a celebrated conductor was caused by jazz.
Classical music
As
jazz flourished, American elites who preferred classical music sought
to expand the listenership of their favored genre, hoping that jazz
would not become mainstream. Controversially, jazz became an influence on composers as diverse as George Gershwin and Herbert Howells.
