JAZZ

Rip It Up, Issue 21, 1 April 1979, Page 12

JAZZ

Since the introduction of rock & roll in the fifties jazz has taken a secondary role as Youth's cultural music. It's a great shame that jazz has been largely ignored by the young, for great music speaks for itself, regardless of labels; true genius is axiomatic, whether it be Miles Davis, Claude Debussy or Bob Dylan. In the coming months I shall endeavour to introduce to the interested, cynical and sceptical to the world of jazz. Hopefully the ensuing articles won't sound too supercilious or pedantic my aim is not to flaunt the music, merely to point out its merits.

There has been much debate over the origins of jazz. Suffice to say that a syncopated music surfaced in New Orleans at the turn of the century. Basically the music was a fusion of European styles (marches, quadrilles, scherzos etc) and established Negro music forms (blues, gospel, ragtime) European melodies and African rhythms. In 1917 two events were responsible for bringing the music first national and later international fame. The first was the recordings of the while Original Dixieland Jazz Band a tepid variety of jazz to be sure, but the band put the word “jazz” in the public mouth. Later in the year Storyville, New Orleans’ red light district, was closed sending hundreds of unemployed jazz musicians searching the country for work. Chicago, with its abundance of illegal speakeasies, became the new jazz capital. It was there in 1923 that the first memorable jazz recordings were cut by King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band. The Oliver tracks are typical of the New Orleans style: the cornet (Oliver) performing the melody, a second cornet

embellishing it, the clarinet echoing the notes gospel-style, the trombone forming a counterpart to the melody, and the rhythm section laying down a non-syncopated beat. The second cornet player in that band was young Louis Armstrong, who was responsible for the general switch from cornet to trumpet and, in fact, revolutionised the whole jazz sound. In 1925 Armstrong formed his own band The Hot Five who recorded some of the greatest sides ever produced in jazz. Over the next four years The Hot Five (and later Hot Seven) gradually moved away from the polyphony of the New Orleans style to produce the first signs of the individual improvisations that are the jazz trademark. Although in later years Armstrong went on to concentrate on "pop" songs and showmanship his contribution to jazz cannot be over-estimated. Almost all of his recorded material deserves a listen, particularly that recorded before 1945. Armstrong’s greatest contemporary was Jelly Roll Morton, whose band The Red Hot Peppers also made considerable musical advances. Not just a pianist Morton proved to be a seminal force as a composer and arranger, although he was not recognised as such until his final days. Today he is acknowledged as the father of orchestrated jazz. There were other great innovators in the Twenties: Sidney Bechet, the clarinetist who, like Morton, was rediscovered in the late Thirties during the “revivalist movement" when jazz had become a respected music; and Bix Beiderbecke the brilliant white trumpet-player whose work unfortunately is marred by the inferior company he kept. These people played a jazz style that has been dubbed Dixieland, an easily identifiable music due to the emphasis on cornet/trumpet, trombone and clarinet. But elsewhere throughout the Twenties other jazzmen had been experimenting with larger units. By the time the Thirties drew closer jazz was in danger of being forgotten as-a fad. But the big bands of Earl Hines, Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington and a few others made it quite clear that jazz had only just started. RECOMMENDED LISTENING Louis Armstrong Story, Vols 1-4 (Columbia CL 851-4) Sidney Bechet Jazz Classics, Vols 1 & 2 (Blue Note BLP 1201/2) Bix Beiderbecke Story, Vols 1-3 (Columbia CL 844-6) Jelly Roll Morton The Immortal (Milestone MLP 2003) Joe Oliver King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band (EMI PMC 7032) NEXT MONTH: THE COMING OF THE BIG BANDS