Jazz from New Orleans to swing

At the start of the 20th century New Orleans was a port city like no other: French, then Spanish before becoming American, it mixed people from Europe, Africa and the Caribbean. On Sundays in the 19th century enslaved Africans could gather in Congo Square to dance and drum. The city had brass bands that paraded at funerals and festivities, ragtime pianists, blues singers, churches. Out of this mixture came jazz.

New Orleans: collective improvisation

Around 1900 the cornet player Buddy Bolden was already famous for his power and his free style of playing; no recording of him survives. The city's bands formed around a small team: the trumpet (or cornet) plays the melody, the clarinet weaves arabesques above, the trombone slides countermelodies below; behind them banjo, tuba (or double bass), piano and drums keep the rhythm. Everyone improvises at the same time around the tune: this is collective improvisation. In 1917 the Original Dixieland Jass Band, a group of white New Orleans musicians, cut the first jazz record in New York.

Louis Armstrong: the soloist takes the crown

Born in New Orleans in 1901, Louis Armstrong joined King Oliver's band in Chicago in 1922. Between 1925 and 1928, with his small groups, the Hot Five and Hot Seven, he transformed jazz: instead of collective improvisation, a soloist takes the floor and builds a chorus like a story, with a brilliant tone and a sense of rhythm that set the standard. He also popularised scat, singing on meaningless syllables. His trumpet introduction to West End Blues (1928) remains a model for every jazz musician.

Swing: written or played?

What sets jazz apart is swing: eighth notes are not equal but played "long-short", roughly like a triplet with the first two notes tied, with accents on beats 2 and 4. The score shows ordinary eighth notes; the ear hears something closer to the second bar:

M:4/4
L:1/8
Q:1/4=120
K:C
"^written" C D E G A G E D | "^played" (3:2:2C2D (3:2:2E2G (3:2:2A2G (3:2:2E2D |]

Harlem, stride and the big bands

In the 1920s jazz moved north, to Chicago and then New York. In Harlem the stride pianists (James P. Johnson, Fats Waller, then the virtuoso Art Tatum) turned the ragtime left hand into a swing machine; the lesson Jazz and popular music at the piano shows how it works. From 1927 Duke Ellington led the band at the Cotton Club; he composed for the particular sound of each of his musicians and made the big band a true composer's instrument.

In the 1930s America danced to the big bands: this was the swing era. A big band had about fifteen musicians divided into sections: saxophones, trumpets, trombones, and the rhythm section (piano, guitar, double bass, drums). Arrangers such as Fletcher Henderson set the sections talking to each other with riffs, short repeated figures, in call and response. Here is a riff in that spirit, written for this lesson:

M:4/4
L:1/8
Q:1/4=150
K:C
"C6" z2 G A c2 A G- | G4 z4 | "C6" z2 G A c2 A G- | G2 E2 z4 |
"F7" z2 A _B c2 _B A- | A4 z4 | "C6" z2 G A c2 A G- | G2 E2 C4 |]

Count Basie and his band from Kansas City relied on a light swing and irresistible riffs; Benny Goodman, the "King of Swing", brought jazz to New York's Carnegie Hall in January 1938; Chick Webb launched the singer Ella Fitzgerald; Billie Holiday invented an intimate way of singing songs. In France guitarist Django Reinhardt and violinist Stéphane Grappelli founded the Quintette du Hot Club de France in 1934: this was the birth of Gypsy jazz.

What to listen for

• New Orleans: trumpet, clarinet and trombone improvising together, banjo and tuba, an old recording sound.
• The 1920s: solos coming to the fore, scat singing, stride piano.
• Swing: a big band, sections answering each other in riffs, a double bass walking on all four beats, music made for dancing.

Listening list

• Louis Armstrong, Hot Five and Hot Seven (1925–1928), West End Blues.
• Duke Ellington, recordings from the 1930s and 1940s.
• Count Basie, Benny Goodman at Carnegie Hall (1938), Coleman Hawkins, Body and Soul (1939).
• Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli, recordings of the Quintette du Hot Club de France.