Before beginning to describe jazz in the twenties, I'd like to tell you
about a unique phenomenon in the development of this music. At the
beginning of the twentieth century the advent of the Edison Cylinder and
later the flat 78 rpm phonograph record made the jazz
phenomenon
possible. In 1917, jazz became the first musical art form
to document it's birth through the process of recording, and the group
responsible for this occasion was the ORIGINAL
DIXIELAND "JASS" BAND (ODJB).
Reguardless of the circumstances surrounding the first recordings of
jazz music, by the early 1920s jazz was ready to take center stage as an
internationally recognized music, and as had been in the case in earlier
decades, it was the
vocalist who dominated the
spotlight.
RACE RECORDS
Probably the most unusual reason for the popularity and success of jazz
and blues singers was the record label's devotion to the production of
race records during the 1920's. Race records were subsidiary labels for
the major recording companies, and were introduced after the release of
Crazy Blues by Mamie Smith, a black blues singer of the '20's. She sold
thousands of copies in the black ghettos of Northern industrial cities
like New York, Detroit and Chicago. Almost immediately a talent search
began. The goal was to find new blues talent as well as to locate some of
the older rural blues artists. These singers, and the New Orleans style
jazz bands (also discovered during the search) were brought to Chicago and
New York to record material for these new labels.
RURAL BLUES
The style known as "rural blues" flourished in the South during the first
two decades of the twentieth century but became much more popular after
race recordings appeared in the '20's. Dominated by men, this style is
probably the oldest form of blues singing we know about.
CLASSIC BLUES
Out of the efforts to secure talent for the newly formed race record
labels of the '20's, there came the recordings known as the "classic
blues."
Usually performed by women, this style of blues seemed much more
sophisticated than it's forerunner the rural blues sung by Mississippi
Delta and North Texas Panhandle males.
For one thing, classic blues singers usually recorded and performed with
jazz rhythm sections backing them. Call and response - which in rural
performances usually took place between the male singer and his guitar -
took place between female vocalists and their top instrumental jazz
player. This meant that the quality of the exchanges were quite high, as
can be evidenced by listening to trumpeters such as Louis Armstrong or Jow
Smith, clarinetist Sidney Bechet or trombonist Jack Teagarden as they
performed back up roles on recordings. The subject matter of the classic
blues was often concerned with the black urban point of view and the
lifestyle of the '20's. The rural style of previous decades was
considered old.
At this point, the unique background and influence of Louis Armstrong, as
both jazz trumpeter and vocalist made an astonishing contribution to jazz
as an art. Armstrong brought his clear, mature understanding and
familiarity with the instrumental style of melodic statement into his
singing with an ease that no one else could begin to match. The results
of his early efforts changed jazz vocals forever.
INSTRUMENTAL JAZZ IN THE 20s
As Louis Armstrong demonstrated scat singing during the 1920s, jazz
shifted from being a music most directly influenced by the human voice to
one in which instrumental performances were viewed as a tool to be
used with skill. It was no longer acceptable to simply blast away at every
tune. Likewise, tone and pitch modifiers became the stock and trade of
every good player as musicians sought to give themselves a competitive
edge. For these reasons, the '20's produced a decade incredibly rich in
tone colors. Trumpet and trombone players played with mutes stuck in the
ends of their horns, with plungers, with hats or hands placed over the
bells of their instruments.
Clarinet players sought to increase their value on the market by
"doubling" on other instruments - and the instrument of choice was the
saxophone. At the beginning of the decade, jazz bands generally featured
only clarinet, while by the middle of the decade bands in Chicago often
had two reed players (A reed is a primitive wind instrument made of a
hollow reed stalk) with one musician performing on clarinet and the other
on alto or tenor sax. By the end of the decade the saxophone actually
replaced the clarinet as the preferred instrument for playing jazz.
In the rhythm section, banjo players played 4-string tenor banjo, ukelele
and mandolin. Drummers used everything from washboards, thimbles to wood
blocks. It was a decade in which the tuba, stand up acoustic bass and
washtub bass all served as the bottom of the rhythm section at one time or
another, depending on whether the musicians performed purely instrumental
jazz or as a back-up band to rural blues singers. Country folk
instruments like the harmonica, violin, jews harp and comb-and-tissue
paper also had brief periods in the limelight.
Pianists played using stride left-hand techniques often learned by
imitating the written music of ragtime. This was particularly useful for
playing the non-blues based popular music of the era. Blues piano, soon
to be called boogie-woogie, was being recorded by the mid-1920s.
Guitarists also tended to learn by imitating and frequently performed in
either a chordal style with single-string fills when playing the blues, or
in the more difficult rag-guitar style which created an "ohm-pah" sound
similar to the stride left-hand of the pianist.
