Jazz Music Bands of the 1920s

The orchestra founded by jazz legend Count Basie continues to perform today.

Set against the backdrop of a new prosperity that saw many Americans buying their first cars and refrigerators and streaming to theaters to see movies with sound, jazz took hold of the nation in the 1920s. The blending of ragtime, blues and Negro spirituals in New Orleans at the turn of the 20th century created a new musical genre that soon spread throughout the country as African American musicians migrated away from the South.

Chicago Jazz Bands

The Chicago jazz scene grew from the Great Migration, which saw large numbers of African Americans leave the southern U.S. for northern cities. New Orleans native Joe "King" Oliver brought the fiery, improvisational style of music called hot jazz to Chicago in 1922. King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band was a regular act at the South Side's Lincoln Gardens with a young Louis Armstrong on the trumpet. Fellow New Orleans composer and pianist Jelly Roll Morton also arrived in Chicago in 1922 and formed the Red Hot Peppers. The band recorded singles such as "Black Bottom Stomp" and "The Pearls", which, according to author and film producer Ken Burns, display a combination of traditional jazz improvisation and rehearsed composition uncommon for the time. Iowa native Bix Biederbecke, who preferred Chicago's jazz clubs to studying for school and was expelled, joined the Wolverine Orchestra in 1924. Biederbecke contributed to 13 of the 15 records that the popular band of white musicians made for the Gennett label that year, but his career was cut short by alcoholism and he died in 1931 at the age of 28.

Harlem Jazz Bands

African-American artists, writers and musicians converged in the New York neighborhood of Harlem in the 1920s, a period known as the Harlem Renaissance. Fletcher Henderson, who wanted to be a chemist, changed his career path and the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra served as the house band for the Roseland Ballroom for ten years. Henderson lured Louis Armstrong to Harlem in 1924 and Armstrong briefly played with Henderson's band before returning to Chicago. The Savoy Ballroom, with its block-long dance floor and two bandstands, opened in 1927. The Savoy featured bands such as the Chick Webb Orchestra, which would be Ella Fitzgerald's vehicle to stardom in the 1930s, and Fess Williams and His Royal Flush Orchestra, who recorded the hot jazz hit, "Hot Town," in 1929. The Cotton Club, owned by mobsters and open only to whites, was the home of Duke Ellington and his Cotton Club Orchestra. By the end of the 1920s, Ellington's band was heard regularly on radio and film and in 1999, Ellington was posthumously awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his contributions to American music.

Kansas City Jazz Bands

Kansas City in the 1920s was a beacon for jazz bands with its mix of speakeasies, nightclubs and dance halls. The historic neighborhood of 18th and Vine was known as the city's center for jazz and today is home to the American Jazz Museum. One of the first Kansas City bands to earn national acclaim was the Coon Sanders Nighthawks Orchestra, which broadcast its music over WDAF radio and took requests from listeners via Western Union telegram. Walter Page's Blue Devils moved to Kansas City from Oklahoma and made two recordings there in 1929. One of those records, "Squabblin," featured pianist Bill "Count" Basie, who later joined the rival Benny Moten Jazz Orchestra before starting his own band that continues to perform today.

Female Jazz Bands

Although breaking into jazz was not easy for women, female bands were part of the jazz scene in the 1920s, particularly in jazz blues, which blurs the boundary between the genres. Lovie Austin's Blues Serenaders, led by jazz pianist Lovie Austin, was a prolific recording band in the 1920s and frequently backed solo acts, including blues legends Ma Rainey and Ida Cox. Bandleader Bobbie Grice and her group, the Fourteen Bricktops, a band of 14 redheaded musicians, toured nationally in the 1920s and Bobbie Howell's American Syncopators included trumpeter Dolly Jones, later known as Dolly Hutchinson, who was one of the first women to make a jazz record.

References

• National Park Service: Jazz Origins in New Orleans, 1895-1927
• "Jazz: A History of America's Music;" Geoffrey C. Ward & Ken Burns; 2000
• NPR: Jazz Profiles from NPR Women In Jazz, Part 1
• A History of Jazz Before 1930: The Red Hot Jazz Archive
• University of Oklahoma: The Ladies of Jazz, Swing and Beyond (PDF)
• Indiana Memory Collection: The Bricktops at Bass Lake

Resources

• PBS: 1920s Jazz