A BRIEF HISTORY OF JAZZ
Simply put, the music of the Tri-State Jazz Society is jazz played in the style of
its originators and their disciples. You may also hear it referred to as "Traditional
Jazz", or "Trad Jazz" or even "Trad" for short. Yet another designation for this
music is "New Orleans-style" jazz. It's also been referred to as "Dixieland jazz."
Jazz, America's original art form, began in New Orleans in the late 19th century.
Like its most famous culinary invention, the music of New Orleans at this time was
a "gumbo" of musical disciplines: Field hollers and work songs from the cotton fields
of the Deep South, African-American Sanctified Church music from uptown New Orleans,
European classical forms familiar to the French-Creole population of downtown New
Orleans (known today as the French Quarter), piano rags from the Midwest, blues from
the Mississippi delta, American military marches and more. All these elements were
stirred into a musical pot and served up as what soon became known as jazz. By the
turn of the 20th century, jazz could be heard all over still-segregated New Orleans,
performed by both black and white bands. New Orleans musicians, hired to perform
on paddlewheel riverboat cruises on the Mississippi River and its tributaries, spread
the music to Memphis, Saint Louis, Kansas City, and Chicago.
By way of phonograph records, the popularity of jazz became nation-wide, then spread
to Europe. The first recordings of jazz came in 1917 in New York City, from a New
Orleans band, "The Original Dixieland Jass Band," whose popularity in their time,
both in New York City and in London, England, would have rivaled that of the Beatles
some 50 years later.
Jazz's very first hero, however, was the legendary and un-recorded Buddy Bolden,
whose powerful style had a deep impression on a very young trumpeter named Louis
Armstrong. Later, Armstrong, after an apprenticeship in King Oliver's Creole Jazz
Band, would go on to become jazz's first virtuoso and, ultimately, America's "Ambassador
to the World." Other early influential jazz musicians include its first composer
of note, Jelly Roll Morton, the fiery soprano saxophonist Sidney Bechet (both Creoles
from New Orleans) and the lyrically creative Bix Beiderbecke, a white cornetist from
Davenport, Iowa.
As jazz continued to evolve, through the 1920s, '30s and '40s, and especially with
the advent of what we now call "modern" jazz around 1945, it became common to distinguish
the older forms of jazz described above with the term "Dixieland" and then "traditional"
jazz. Since this time, there have been many great jazz musicians who have dedicated
their careers to preserving the older style as a part of American history and culture.
In the 1940s and '50s, such musicians included Eddie Condon, Bobby Hackett, Wild
Bill Davison, Lu Watters and Turk Murphy. And, down in New Orleans, the music thrived
where it continued to be performed by colorful characters with colorful names like
Sharkey Bonano, Wingy Manone and the world-famous Al Hirt and Pete Fountain.
Today, the music continues to be preserved in the performances of musicians and bands
all over the United States and throughout the world. Jazz-themed cruises occur regularly
and jazz festivals draw thousands almost every week around the country and in Europe.
Local jazz societies such as the Tri-State Jazz Society have been formed, dedicated
to the preservation of this "traditional" jazz by sponsoring concerts and other events.
Traditional jazz is exciting, fun, danceable and eminently accessible to listeners
of all generations, young and old. Tri-State Jazz Society extends its invitation
to all to "Try it ... you'll LIKE it!"
- Ed Wise
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ed Wise is a professional jazz musician and educator residing in New Orleans. He
currently is on faculty at Loyola University, teaching jazz bass, jazz combo, pop
and commercial music bass and music theory. His knowledge of traditional jazz comes
from residing in its birth-place, New Orleans, for almost two decades, where he has
performed with Pete Fountain, Al Hirt, Tim Laughlin, Connie Jones and a host of other
Crescent City trad jazz musicians. He lived in Philadelphia for 8 years after Hurricane
Katrina, from 2005 until his return to New Orleans in 2013. While in Philly, he served
on the board of directors for Tri-State Jazz Society for several years
