The Benny Goodman Quartet: Lionel Hampton, vibraphone; Teddy Wilson, piano; Benny Goodman, clarinet; and Gene Krupa, drums; in Busby Berkeley’s 1937 film, Hollywood Hotel.
(MaxJazz/Lebrecht Music & Arts)
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Charlie Parker, 1949.
(JazzSign/Lebrecht Music & Arts)
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Duke Ellington Orchestra: Kay Davis, singer; Al Sears, saxophone; Junior Raglin, bass, Ray Nance trumpet, and trombonist Tricky Sam Nanton; 1945.
(JazzSign/Lebrecht Music & Arts)
Article
Mark Tucker and Travis A. Jackson
The term conveys different although related meanings: 1) a musical tradition rooted in performing conventions that were introduced and developed early in the 20th century by African Americans; 2) a set of attitudes and assumptions brought to music-making, chief among them the notion of performance as a fluid creative process involving (group) improvisation; and 3) a style characterized by melodic, harmonic, and timbral practices derived from the blues and African American religious musics, cyclical formal structures, and a supple approach to rhythm and phrasing known as swing.
Historians and critics using studies of concert music and literature as models have often portrayed the development of jazz as a narrative of progress. Their accounts suggest that jazz started as unsophisticated dance music but grew into increasingly complex forms, gradually gaining prestige and becoming recognized around the world as an art. Over that same period, the attitudes of cultural and institutional gatekeepers toward the music changed dramatically. In ...
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Joe “King” Oliver (standing with trumpet) leads the Creole Jazz Band from New Orleans, including Louis Armstrong (kneeling with trumpet), 1923.
(Lebrecht Music & Arts)
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The Original Dixieland Jazz Band: Henry Ragas, Larry Shields, Eddie Edwards, Nick La Rocca, and Tony Spargo, 1917.
(JazzSign/Lebrecht Music & Arts)
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Sarah Vaughan, 1946.
(Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, William P. Gottlieb Collection, LC-USZ62-89643)
