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114-479: The New Orleans Rhythm Kings ( NORK ) were one of the most influential jazz bands of the early to mid-1920s. The band included New Orleans and Chicago musicians who helped shape Chicago jazz and influenced many younger jazz musicians. They composed and recorded several jazz standards such as " Bugle Call Rag ", " Milenburg Joys", " Farewell Blues ", and " Tin Roof Blues ". The 1954 pop song " Make Love to Me "

228-788: A Walk of Fame near the site of Gennett's Richmond, Indiana, recording studio. The Gennett Walk of Fame is located along South 1st Street in Richmond at the site of the Starr Piano Company and embedded in the Whitewater Gorge Trail, which connects to the longer Cardinal Greenway Trail. Both trails are part of the American Discovery Trail , the only coast-to-coast, non-motorized recreational trail. The Foundation convened its National Advisory Board in January, 2006, to choose

342-713: A recording studio in Manhattan , New York City . Throughout the 1920s, the Manhattan studio saw artists such as Bailey's Lucky Seven, the Original Memphis Five under the pseudonym Ladd's Black Aces, and in November 1924, Louis Armstrong and the Red Onion Jazz Babies . In 1921, the label set up a second studio on the grounds of the piano factory in Richmond under the supervision of Ezra C.A. Wickemeyer, who would manage

456-621: A "special relationship to time defined as 'swing ' ". Jazz involves "a spontaneity and vitality of musical production in which improvisation plays a role" and contains a "sonority and manner of phrasing which mirror the individuality of the performing jazz musician". A broader definition that encompasses different eras of jazz has been proposed by Travis Jackson: "it is music that includes qualities such as swing, improvising, group interaction, developing an 'individual voice', and being open to different musical possibilities". Krin Gibbard argued that "jazz

570-617: A 1954 pop song by Jo Stafford , using the New Orleans Rhythm King's music from the 1923 jazz standard "Tin Roof Blues", became a number 1 hit. Anne Murray and B. B. King also recorded "Make Love to Me". Jo Stafford's recording of "Make Love to Me" was number 1 for three weeks on the Billboard chart and number 2 on the Cashbox chart. The ODJB and the NORK were the two leading white bands of

684-578: A budget label for tunes previously released on Gennett. Many of the recording artists used pseudonyms , such as the Seven Champions for Bailey's Lucky Seven, Skillet Dick and His Frying Pans for Syd Valentine and His Patent Leather Kids - a Black Indiana jazz trio, and the Hill Top Inn Orchestra for Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians. Some Champion artists were not informed that their recordings were reissued under pseudonyms. Gennett issued

798-476: A contingent of white jazz bands that emerged from 1915 to the early 1920s. These bands, perhaps the best-known of which was the Original Dixieland Jazz Band , attempted to imitate the fast virtuosic style of their black counterparts. "The relatively small inner circles of acute jazz listeners in the 1920s recognized that black musicians played better, more mature, and more confident jazz". Despite

912-467: A drum made by stretching skin over a flour-barrel. Lavish festivals with African-based dances to drums were organized on Sundays at Place Congo, or Congo Square, in New Orleans until 1843. There are historical accounts of other music and dance gatherings elsewhere in the southern United States. Robert Palmer said of percussive slave music: Usually such music was associated with annual festivals, when

1026-564: A few early electrically recorded masters recorded in the Autograph studios in Chicago in 1925. These recordings were exceptionally crude, and like many other Autograph issues can be easily mistaken for acoustic masters. Gennett began serious electrical recording in March 1926, using a process licensed from General Electric which was found to be unsatisfactory. Although the quality of the recordings taken by

1140-456: A form of folk music which arose in part from the work songs and field hollers of African-American slaves on plantations. These work songs were commonly structured around a repetitive call-and-response pattern, but early blues was also improvisational. Classical music performance is evaluated more by its fidelity to the musical score , with less attention given to interpretation, ornamentation, and accompaniment. The classical performer's goal

1254-410: A limited melodic range, sounding like a field holler, and the guitar accompaniment was slapped rather than strummed, like a small drum which responded in syncopated accents, functioning as another "voice". Handy and his band members were formally trained African-American musicians who had not grown up with the blues, yet he was able to adapt the blues to a larger band instrument format and arrange them in

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1368-742: A move which allowed the label to capture Midwestern and Southern artists. Their locality also led to their recordings being appealing to Black individuals and other rural peoples who were largely neglected by the leading New York labels. Some call the Richmond studio the "cradle of recorded jazz." Gennett recorded early jazz musicians Jelly Roll Morton , Bix Beiderbecke , The New Orleans Rhythm Kings , King Oliver 's band with Louis Armstrong , Lois Deppe's Serenaders with Earl Hines , Hoagy Carmichael , Duke Ellington , The Red Onion Jazz Babies , The State Street Ramblers, Zack Whyte and his Chocolate Beau Brummels, Alphonse Trent and his Orchestra and many others. Many of these jazz artists, such as Morton,

1482-460: A multi- strain ragtime march with four parts that feature recurring themes and a bass line with copious seventh chords . Its structure was the basis for many other rags, and the syncopations in the right hand, especially in the transition between the first and second strain, were novel at the time. The last four measures of Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag" (1899) are shown below. African-based rhythmic patterns such as tresillo and its variants,

1596-540: A new agreement to license the RCA Photophone recording process. The company also introduced an improved record biscuit which was adequate to the demands imposed by the electric recording process. The improved records were identified by a newly designed black label touting the "New Electrobeam" process. Recordings were not limited to music. In 1923, orator and statesman William Jennings Bryan traveled to Richmond to record portions of his 1896 Cross of Gold speech, which

1710-478: A new flavor to recorded jazz. NORK and ODJB were not the first white jazz bands (there were many others that played around Chicago and New Orleans ), but they were some of the first to make recordings, and the New Orleans Rhythm Kings was one of the first white jazz bands to make mixed-race recordings (with Jelly Roll Morton , a creole ). Jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in

1824-455: A novelty act, the NORK sought to distance themselves from the popular image of jazz as a novelty and instead marketed it as a genuine musical genre . The third recording session occurred after Mares and Roppolo had spent some time playing in a small band in New York City . They returned to Chicago and scheduled another session with Gennett Records as the New Orleans Rhythm Kings. This session

1938-509: A pitch which he called a 'jazz ball' "because it wobbles and you simply can't do anything with it". The use of the word in a musical context was documented as early as 1915 in the Chicago Daily Tribune . Its first documented use in a musical context in New Orleans was in a November 14, 1916, Times-Picayune article about "jas bands". In an interview with National Public Radio , musician Eubie Blake offered his recollections of

2052-652: A popular music form. Handy wrote about his adopting of the blues: The primitive southern Negro, as he sang, was sure to bear down on the third and seventh tone of the scale, slurring between major and minor. Whether in the cotton field of the Delta or on the Levee up St. Louis way, it was always the same. Till then, however, I had never heard this slur used by a more sophisticated Negro, or by any white man. I tried to convey this effect ... by introducing flat thirds and sevenths (now called blue notes) into my song, although its prevailing key

2166-926: A second series of discs at the Richmond studio. Approximately 30,000 people gathered with Richmond residents to view over 6,000 Klan members participate in a parade. Although the Gennett family was not involved in the Richmond klavern , historian Leonard Moore estimates one of every three native-born white Protestant male in Richmond was a member during this time. Gennett also recorded early blues and gospel music artists such as Thomas A. Dorsey , Sam Collins , Jaybird Coleman , as well as early hillbilly or country music performers such as Vernon Dalhart , Bradley Kincaid , Ernest Stoneman , Fiddlin' Doc Roberts , and Gene Autry . Blues artists from Chicago , such as Georgia Tom Dorsey , Big Bill Broonzy , and Scrapper Blackwell , recorded in Richmond. The label preserved several rare varieties of traditional Kentucky music thanks to

2280-576: A significant bias that only black musicians could play "real" jazz, white bands such as the New Orleans Rhythm Kings and the Original Dixieland Jazz Band emerged and were successful, especially in their recordings. " Livery Stable Blues " recorded by the ODJB in 1917 personified the vaudevillian style that white audiences sought in jazz: choppy, comedic, almost poking fun at itself with its animal sounds. The New Orleans Rhythm Kings, however, brought

2394-437: A sustained note will have both a 'sharp' sign and a 'flat' sign above it, indicating a progression from one pitch variation to the other, in the order given." Earlier in the same chapter, Sudhalter described the full band's sound in their first Gennett recordings: "The notion of tunefulness implies particular attention to the aesthetics of sound. The tutti passages on ' Farewell Blues ', with their echoes of railroad whistles,

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2508-453: A time. The Birmingham, Alabama store, in July and August 1927 under the direction of recording engineer Gordon Soule, which attracted many Southern country blues artists such as Jaybird Coleman and Johnny Watson under the name Daddy Stove Pipe . The Birmingham studio also recorded William Harris, an early Mississippi Delta blues player. From September to November 1927, portable sound equipment

2622-454: Is a construct" which designates "a number of musics with enough in common to be understood as part of a coherent tradition". Duke Ellington , one of jazz's most famous figures, said, "It's all music." Although jazz is considered difficult to define, in part because it contains many subgenres, improvisation is one of its defining elements. The centrality of improvisation is attributed to the influence of earlier forms of music such as blues ,

2736-663: Is a fundamental rhythmic figure heard in many different slave musics of the Caribbean, as well as the Afro-Caribbean folk dances performed in New Orleans Congo Square and Gottschalk's compositions (for example "Souvenirs From Havana" (1859)). Tresillo (shown below) is the most basic and most prevalent duple-pulse rhythmic cell in sub-Saharan African music traditions and the music of the African Diaspora . Tresillo

2850-548: Is a reminder of "an oppressive and racist society and restrictions on their artistic visions". Amiri Baraka argues that there is a "white jazz" genre that expresses whiteness . White jazz musicians appeared in the Midwest and in other areas throughout the U.S. Papa Jack Laine , who ran the Reliance band in New Orleans in the 1910s, was called "the father of white jazz". The Original Dixieland Jazz Band , whose members were white, were

2964-486: Is heard prominently in New Orleans second line music and in other forms of popular music from that city from the turn of the 20th century to present. "By and large the simpler African rhythmic patterns survived in jazz ... because they could be adapted more readily to European rhythmic conceptions," jazz historian Gunther Schuller observed. "Some survived, others were discarded as the Europeanization progressed." In

3078-439: Is notable because of the participation of famed jazz pianist and arranger Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton . Morton was a Creole from New Orleans, and though he identified strongly with the white "French" side of being Creole, he was generally viewed by society as black (though he was fairly light-skinned and could sometimes "pass" as Latin-American ) and therefore was subjected to many of the same social pressures as other blacks of

3192-437: Is to play the composition as it was written. In contrast, jazz is often characterized by the product of interaction and collaboration, placing less value on the contribution of the composer, if there is one, and more on the performer. The jazz performer interprets a tune in individual ways, never playing the same composition twice. Depending on the performer's mood, experience, and interaction with band members or audience members,

3306-605: The African-American communities of New Orleans , Louisiana , in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues , ragtime , European harmony , African rhythmic rituals, spirituals , hymns , marches , vaudeville song, and dance music . Since the 1920s Jazz Age , it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music . Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes , complex chords , call and response vocals , polyrhythms and improvisation . As jazz spread around

3420-620: The Atlantic slave trade had brought nearly 400,000 Africans to North America. The slaves came largely from West Africa and the greater Congo River basin and brought strong musical traditions with them. The African traditions primarily use a single-line melody and call-and-response pattern, and the rhythms have a counter-metric structure and reflect African speech patterns. An 1885 account says that they were making strange music (Creole) on an equally strange variety of 'instruments'—washboards, washtubs, jugs, boxes beaten with sticks or bones and

3534-612: The Dixieland jazz revival of the 1940s, Black musicians rejected it as being shallow nostalgia entertainment for white audiences. On the other hand, traditional jazz enthusiasts have dismissed bebop, free jazz, and jazz fusion as forms of debasement and betrayal. An alternative view is that jazz can absorb and transform diverse musical styles. By avoiding the creation of norms, jazz allows avant-garde styles to emerge. For some African Americans, jazz has drawn attention to African-American contributions to culture and history. For others, jazz

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3648-562: The Ku Klux Klan . Other estimates suggest forty to fifty percent of non- Catholic white men were members of the Richmond klavern. Throughout the 1920s, Gennett pressed vanity records for the Ku Klux Klan with red labels and gold KKK lettering, often listing performers such as the "100 percent Americans." Klan members politicized hymns with new lyrics, such as "Onward Christian Klansman" for "Onward Christian Soldiers" as well as custom songs such as "Daddy Swiped Our Last Clean Sheet and Joined

3762-767: The Midwest , such as the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra , traveled to Richmond to record. Gennett also recorded groups such as Gonzalez's Mexican Band, the Hawaiian Guitars, the National Marimba Orchestra, and the Italian Degli Arditi Orchestra. Temporary recording studios were sometimes set up in various Starr Piano Company stores or other buildings. Their downtown Cincinnati , Ohio store recorded West Virginian singer David Miller for

3876-512: The 1919 Gennett and Okeh recording of Creole clarinetists Achille Bauquet in Jimmy Durante 's New Orleans Jazz Band. After their engagement at the Friar's Inn ended, the New Orleans Rhythm Kings were largely scattered and disorganized. They re-formed periodically to make recordings, with significant member turnover (Roppolo and Mares were more or less the leaders and constants of the group), but

3990-451: The 1950s, many women jazz instrumentalists were prominent, some sustaining long careers. Some of the most distinctive improvisers, composers, and bandleaders in jazz have been women. Trombonist Melba Liston is acknowledged as the first female horn player to work in major bands and to make a real impact on jazz, not only as a musician but also as a respected composer and arranger, particularly through her collaborations with Randy Weston from

4104-468: The 21st century, such as Latin and Afro-Cuban jazz . The origin of the word jazz has resulted in considerable research, and its history is well documented. It is believed to be related to jasm , a slang term dating back to 1860 meaning ' pep, energy ' . The earliest written record of the word is in a 1912 article in the Los Angeles Times in which a minor league baseball pitcher described

4218-555: The Black middle-class. Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre, which originated in African-American communities of primarily the Deep South of the United States at the end of the 19th century from their spirituals , work songs , field hollers , shouts and chants and rhymed simple narrative ballads . The African use of pentatonic scales contributed to

4332-460: The Caribbean. African-based rhythmic patterns were retained in the United States in large part through "body rhythms" such as stomping, clapping, and patting juba dancing . In the opinion of jazz historian Ernest Borneman , what preceded New Orleans jazz before 1890 was "Afro-Latin music", similar to what was played in the Caribbean at the time. A three-stroke pattern known in Cuban music as tresillo

4446-425: The Friar's Inn. For the session Mares got Brunies, Roppolo, Stitzel, and Pollack together to release a record as the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, the first time the name had been used since it had referred to Bee Palmer's travelling vaudeville act. The group's recordings demonstrate a more serious, crafted style than that of the then-famous Original Dixieland Jazz Band (ODJB). While the ODJB advertised their music as

4560-486: The Friars Society Orchestra name are on disk A of the four-CD Gennett Jazz set issued by JSP Records (JSP926). In 2019 Rivermont Records released a two-CD set featuring new transfers by Doug Benson. Using newly developed restoration technology, Benson stabilized the intermittent speed fluctuations that affected records from the band's 1922 session as Friar's Society Orchestra. Compositions and arrangements by

4674-666: The General Electric process was quite good, there were many customer complaints about poor wear characteristics of the electric process records. The composition of the Gennett biscuit (record material) was of insufficient hardness to withstand the increased wear that resulted when the new recordings with their greatly increased frequency range were played on obsolete phonographs with mica diaphragm reproducers. The company discontinued recording by this process in August 1926, and did not return to electric recording until February 1927, after signing

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4788-668: The Ku Klux Klan." These private pressings never appeared in Gennett catalogs and were shipped directly to Klan headquarters in Indianapolis after the Klan paid for the records. Some of D.C. Stephenson 's speeches were recorded by the label. Ironically, Richmond had a large gathering of Ku Klux Klan members in Glen Miller Park followed by a parade on October 5, 1923, the same day King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band, with Louis Armstrong, recorded

4902-453: The New Orleans Rhythm Kings continue to be played by "traditional jazz" or Dixieland bands all over the world today. Some of their famous compositions and contributions to the jazz repertory include " Bugle Call Rag ", " Milenburg Joys", " Farewell Blues ", "Angry", "Baby", "Discontented Blues", "She's Crying for Me", "Oriental", "I Never Knew What a Girl Could Do", "Everybody Loves Somebody Blues", and " Tin Roof Blues ". " Make Love to Me ",

5016-581: The Rhythm Kings, and Oliver's band were popular at the Lincoln Gardens and the Friar's Inn nightclubs and had been sent by train to rural Richmond by Chicago, Illinois Starr Piano store manager and talent scout Fred Wiggins. Gennett notably was among the first to record people of color and racially integrated sessions, despite over twenty percent of Wayne County 's white male population being members of

5130-658: The Starlight Roof at the famed Waldorf-Astoria Hotel . He entertained audiences with a light elegant musical style which remained popular with audiences for nearly three decades from the 1930s until the late 1950s. Jazz originated in the late-19th to early-20th century. It developed out of many forms of music, including blues , ragtime , European harmony , African rhythmic rituals, spirituals , hymns , marches , vaudeville song, and dance music . It also incorporated interpretations of American and European classical music, entwined with African and slave folk songs and

5244-521: The Starr Piano Company sold some Gennett masters, and the Gennett and Champion trademarks to Decca Records . Jack Kapp of Decca was primarily interested in jazz, blues and old time music items in the Gennett catalog which he thought would add depth to the selections offered by the newly organized Decca. Kapp attempted to revive the Gennett and Champion labels between 1935 and 1937 specializing in bargain pressings of race and old-time music with but little success. The Starr record plant soldiered on under

5358-584: The U.S. Female jazz performers and composers have contributed to jazz throughout its history. Although Betty Carter , Ella Fitzgerald , Adelaide Hall , Billie Holiday , Peggy Lee , Abbey Lincoln , Anita O'Day , Dinah Washington , and Ethel Waters were recognized for their vocal talent, less familiar were bandleaders, composers, and instrumentalists such as pianist Lil Hardin Armstrong , trumpeter Valaida Snow , and songwriters Irene Higginbotham and Dorothy Fields . Women began playing instruments in jazz in

5472-671: The Whitewater River - had a six-story phonograph and manufacturing and record-pressing facility. The early issues were vertically cut in the phonograph record grooves, using the hill-and-dale method of a U-shaped groove and sapphire ball stylus, but they switched to the lateral cut method in April 1919. Gennett Records rarely paid artists upfront. Some were paid a flat fee, from $ 15–50 per session, while Black artists received even less. Most artists signed royalty contracts that promised one penny for each copy or side sold. Gennett first set up

5586-408: The all white New Orleans Rhythm Kings was history in the making: it is an early example of mixed race recordings. Mares and Roppolo went on to conduct two more recording sessions in New Orleans as the New Orleans Rhythm Kings in 1925 before the group dissolved altogether and its members went their separate ways. A significant period of time after NORK disbanded, several record labels began reissuing

5700-443: The arrangement by ear and then committing it to memory) and an ability to improvise . In many other cases the musicians could read music, but white audiences were so captivated by the improvisational ability that they were convinced was inherent in black musicians that the musicians would memorize the arrangement beforehand and appear to improvise to cater to the expectations of white audiences. The New Orleans Rhythm Kings represents

5814-425: The band's material. The first revival was by Riverside Records , which reissued NORK's Gennett recordings. The second reissue was from Milestone Records . Both of these reissues were important in keeping NORK's music commercially available and boosting their visibility to critics and historians. In the 1990s Milestone released the band's Gennett sides on compact disc. Six of the first eight recordings for Gennett under

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5928-552: The blues are undocumented, though they can be seen as the secular counterpart of the spirituals. However, as Gerhard Kubik points out, whereas the spirituals are homophonic , rural blues and early jazz "was largely based on concepts of heterophony ". During the early 19th century an increasing number of black musicians learned to play European instruments, particularly the violin, which they used to parody European dance music in their own cakewalk dances. In turn, European American minstrel show performers in blackface popularized

6042-415: The budget Champion label until halting activities altogether in 1934. Throughout the 1930s, Fred Wiggins sold thousands of metal discs, which would be worth millions after Gennett's rise to fame, for scrap money, likely to make payroll for Starr Piano employess. At this time, the only product Gennett Records produced under its own name was a series of recorded sound effects for use by radio stations. In 1935,

6156-522: The carefully arranged interludes and fadeout ending on Schoebel's unusual 'Discontented Blues', bespeak rehearsal and behind-the-scenes work aimed at achieving a polished and varied band sound. Nothing on any record by a black band of the early '20s is anywhere near as aesthetically venturesome. At its roots, New Orleans jazz (which influenced Chicago jazz) represented an assimilation of Southern black traditions carried over from their African heritage mixed with white European traditions. The instrumentation

6270-525: The coming of the Second World War, the War Production Board in March 1942 declared shellac a rationed commodity, limiting record manufacturers to 70% of their 1939 shellac usage. Newly organized record labels were forced to purchase their shellac from existing companies. Joe Davis purchased the Gennett shellac allocation, some of which he used for his own labels, and some of which he sold to

6384-462: The day, but their musical styles were very different. As opposed to the short, choppy style of the ODJB, NORK played more legato pieces. Leon Roppolo 's famous clarinet sound gave the band its characteristic, bluesy feel. Richard M. Sudhalter, in his book Lost Chords: White Musicians and Their Contributions to Jazz , wrote that "Three takes of ' Tin Roof Blues ' exist, three opportunities to listen to Roppolo's mind at work, arranging and rearranging

6498-401: The day. In 1923 the country was still largely racially segregated , as were jazz bands. White bands were beginning to spring up attempting to imitate the "hot" jazz style that the black musicians played, but rarely did any racial mixing occur in a professional setting (In a non-professional setting, however it was becoming more and more common). Jelly Roll Morton's participation in recording with

6612-541: The development of blue notes in blues and jazz. As Kubik explains: Many of the rural blues of the Deep South are stylistically an extension and merger of basically two broad accompanied song-style traditions in the west central Sudanic belt: W. C. Handy became interested in folk blues of the Deep South while traveling through the Mississippi Delta. In this folk blues form, the singer would improvise freely within

6726-532: The earliest recordings by Louis Armstrong , King Oliver , Bix Beiderbecke , and Hoagy Carmichael . Its roster also included Jelly Roll Morton , Blind Lemon Jefferson , Charley Patton , and Gene Autry . Gennett Records was founded in Richmond, Indiana , by the Starr Piano Company in 1917. By the late 1930s, the label had produced more than 16,000 masters . The company had produced early recordings under

6840-506: The early 1920s, drawing particular recognition on piano. When male jazz musicians were drafted during World War II, many all-female bands replaced them. The International Sweethearts of Rhythm , which was founded in 1937, was a popular band that became the first all-female integrated band in the U.S. and the first to travel with the USO , touring Europe in 1945. Women were members of the big bands of Woody Herman and Gerald Wilson . Beginning in

6954-480: The education of freed African Americans. Although strict segregation limited employment opportunities for most blacks, many were able to find work in entertainment. Black musicians were able to provide entertainment in dances, minstrel shows , and in vaudeville , during which time many marching bands were formed. Black pianists played in bars, clubs, and brothels, as ragtime developed. Ragtime appeared as sheet music, popularized by African-American musicians such as

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7068-556: The entertainer Ernest Hogan , whose hit songs appeared in 1895. Two years later, Vess Ossman recorded a medley of these songs as a banjo solo known as "Rag Time Medley". Also in 1897, the white composer William Krell published his " Mississippi Rag " as the first written piano instrumental ragtime piece, and Tom Turpin published his "Harlem Rag", the first rag published by an African-American. Classically trained pianist Scott Joplin produced his " Original Rags " in 1898 and, in 1899, had an international hit with " Maple Leaf Rag ",

7182-469: The first 10 inductees. The inductees are selected from: classic jazz , old-time country , blues , gospel (African-American and Southern), American popular song, ethnic, historic/spoken, and classical, giving preference to the first five categories. The consensus selection for the first inductee in the Gennett Walk of Fame was Louis Armstrong. The first ten inductees were: A second set of ten nominees

7296-459: The first jazz group to record, and Bix Beiderbecke was one of the most prominent jazz soloists of the 1920s. The Chicago Style was developed by white musicians such as Eddie Condon , Bud Freeman , Jimmy McPartland , and Dave Tough . Others from Chicago such as Benny Goodman and Gene Krupa became leading members of swing during the 1930s. Many bands included both Black and white musicians. These musicians helped change attitudes toward race in

7410-415: The first written music which was rhythmically based on an African motif (1803). From the perspective of African-American music, the "habanera rhythm" (also known as "congo"), "tango-congo", or tango . can be thought of as a combination of tresillo and the backbeat . The habanera was the first of many Cuban music genres which enjoyed periods of popularity in the United States and reinforced and inspired

7524-459: The green or blue Starr Records label as early as 1915. The new Gennett label was named after Harry, Fred, and Clarence Gennett, brothers and joint managers, and was an attempt to distinguish the label from its parent company and widen distribution beyond Starr piano stores. Early record pressings were outsourced but by October 1917, Starr Valley - home to the Starr Piano manufacturing campus along

7638-476: The group never played all together again. They went their separate ways: Paul Mares continued to play music, releasing a record in 1935 and ran the P&;M New Orleans Barbeque with his wife in the late 1930s. Leon Roppolo was (and always had been) mentally unstable and spent the last years of his life in and out of institutions until his early death in 1943, though he managed to keep playing music as best he could. Most of

7752-430: The group's engagement at the Friar's Inn, which lasted 17 months beginning in 1921. During this time the group performed as the Friar's Society Orchestra. While at the Friar's Inn, the group attracted the interest not only of fans but of other musicians. The cornetist Bix Beiderbecke , who had been sent to school in Chicago by his parents in the hopes of removing him from jazz influences, regularly attended their shows and

7866-405: The group, the clarinetist Leon Roppolo , was playing on riverboats in Chicago with Elmer Schoebel, Jack Pettis, Frank Snyder, George Brunies, the banjoist Louis Black and (possibly) Paul Mares. Mares, ready to move on from riverboat life, found the group an engagement at the Friar's Inn , a club owned by Mike Fritzel. The bassist Arnold Loyocano joined forces with the growing band, and thus began

7980-532: The habanera rhythm and cinquillo , are heard in the ragtime compositions of Joplin and Turpin. Joplin's " Solace " (1909) is generally considered to be in the habanera genre: both of the pianist's hands play in a syncopated fashion, completely abandoning any sense of a march rhythm. Ned Sublette postulates that the tresillo/habanera rhythm "found its way into ragtime and the cakewalk," whilst Roberts suggests that "the habanera influence may have been part of what freed black music from ragtime's European bass". In

8094-609: The idea to a friend, the trumpet player Paul Mares , who immediately took the opportunity. "So I says Paul, I says, Abbie don't want to go to Chicago and I'm kind of leery, I'm afraid", George recalled. "Paul says, 'man, give me that wire. I'll go.' So Paul went up [to Chicago] and introduced himself to Ragbaby Stevens and Ragbaby liked him… and Paul got the railroad fare from his father and sent me $ 60". George Brunies packed his trombone and set off to join Mares in Chicago, playing gigs and going to after-hours clubs with Mares. At one such club

8208-424: The influences of West African culture. Its composition and style have changed many times throughout the years with each performer's personal interpretation and improvisation, which is also one of the greatest appeals of the genre. By the 18th century, slaves in the New Orleans area gathered socially at a special market, in an area which later became known as Congo Square , famous for its African dances. By 1866,

8322-455: The instruments of jazz: brass, drums, and reeds tuned in the European 12-tone scale. Small bands contained a combination of self-taught and formally educated musicians, many from the funeral procession tradition. These bands traveled in black communities in the deep south. Beginning in 1914, Louisiana Creole and African-American musicians played in vaudeville shows which carried jazz to cities in

8436-567: The late 1950s into the 1990s. Jewish Americans played a significant role in jazz. As jazz spread, it developed to encompass many different cultures, and the work of Jewish composers in Tin Pan Alley helped shape the many different sounds that jazz came to incorporate. Jewish Americans were able to thrive in Jazz because of the probationary whiteness that they were allotted at the time. George Bornstein wrote that African Americans were sympathetic to

8550-539: The late 1950s, using the mode , or musical scale, as the basis of musical structure and improvisation, as did free jazz , which explored playing without regular meter, beat and formal structures. Jazz-rock fusion appeared in the late 1960s and early 1970s, combining jazz improvisation with rock music 's rhythms, electric instruments, and highly amplified stage sound. In the early 1980s, a commercial form of jazz fusion called smooth jazz became successful, garnering significant radio airplay. Other styles and genres abound in

8664-874: The many top players he employed, such as George Brunies , Sharkey Bonano , and future members of the Original Dixieland Jass Band . During the early 1900s, jazz was mostly performed in African-American and mulatto communities due to segregation laws. Storyville brought jazz to a wider audience through tourists who visited the port city of New Orleans. Many jazz musicians from African-American communities were hired to perform in bars and brothels. These included Buddy Bolden and Jelly Roll Morton in addition to those from other communities, such as Lorenzo Tio and Alcide Nunez . Louis Armstrong started his career in Storyville and found success in Chicago. Storyville

8778-413: The melody was stated briefly at the beginning and most of the piece was improvised. Modal jazz abandoned chord progressions to allow musicians to improvise even more. In many forms of jazz, a soloist is supported by a rhythm section of one or more chordal instruments (piano, guitar), double bass, and drums. The rhythm section plays chords and rhythms that outline the composition structure and complement

8892-679: The music internationally, combining syncopation with European harmonic accompaniment. In the mid-1800s the white New Orleans composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk adapted slave rhythms and melodies from Cuba and other Caribbean islands into piano salon music. New Orleans was the main nexus between the Afro-Caribbean and African American cultures. The Black Codes outlawed drumming by slaves, which meant that African drumming traditions were not preserved in North America, unlike in Cuba, Haiti, and elsewhere in

9006-578: The music of New Orleans with the music of Cuba, Wynton Marsalis observes that tresillo is the New Orleans "clavé", a Spanish word meaning "code" or "key", as in the key to a puzzle, or mystery. Although the pattern is only half a clave , Marsalis makes the point that the single-celled figure is the guide-pattern of New Orleans music. Jelly Roll Morton called the rhythmic figure the Spanish tinge and considered it an essential ingredient of jazz. The abolition of slavery in 1865 led to new opportunities for

9120-408: The newly formed Capitol Records . Harry Gennett intended to use the funds from the sale of his shellac ration to modernize this pressing plant after Victory, but there is no indication that he did so. Gennett sold decreasing numbers of special purpose records (mostly sound effects, skating rink, and church tower chimes) until 1947 or 1948, and the business then faded away. Brunswick Records acquired

9234-460: The northeastern United States, a "hot" style of playing ragtime had developed, notably James Reese Europe 's symphonic Clef Club orchestra in New York City, which played a benefit concert at Carnegie Hall in 1912. The Baltimore rag style of Eubie Blake influenced James P. Johnson 's development of stride piano playing, in which the right hand plays the melody, while the left hand provides

9348-596: The northern and western parts of the U.S. Jazz became international in 1914, when the Creole Band with cornettist Freddie Keppard performed the first ever jazz concert outside the United States, at the Pantages Playhouse Theatre in Winnipeg , Canada. In New Orleans, a white bandleader named Papa Jack Laine integrated blacks and whites in his marching band. He was known as "the father of white jazz" because of

9462-544: The old Gennett pressing plant for Decca. After Decca opened a new pressing plant in Pinckneyville, Illinois , in 1956, the old Gennett plant in Richmond, Indiana, was sold to Mercury Records in 1958. Mercury operated the historic plant until 1969 when it moved to a nearby modern plant later operated by Cinram . In September 2007, the Starr-Gennett Foundation began to honor the most important Gennett artists on

9576-445: The other members of the NORK also kept successful musical careers after the group dissolved. In 1922 the group released the first of several records for Gennett Records , located in Richmond, Indiana. Gennett's studio was next to a railroad track, which was cursed by many frustrated musicians whose recording sessions were disturbed by the rattling trains. In the first session at Gennett, the Friars Society Orchestra (the name under which

9690-403: The pair met some of their future bandmates, the drummer Frank Snyder, the pianist Elmer Schoebel , and the saxophonist Jack Pettis. The name "New Orleans Rhythm Kings" did not initially refer to this group but rather was the name of a group under the direction of Bee Palmer , a vaudeville performer. Palmer's group did not last, but within several months of the breakup of the band, a member of

9804-470: The performer may change melodies, harmonies, and time signatures. In early Dixieland , a.k.a. New Orleans jazz, performers took turns playing melodies and improvising countermelodies . In the swing era of the 1920s–40s, big bands relied more on arrangements which were written or learned by ear and memorized. Soloists improvised within these arrangements. In the bebop era of the 1940s, big bands gave way to small groups and minimal arrangements in which

9918-495: The period 1820–1850. Some of the earliest [Mississippi] Delta settlers came from the vicinity of New Orleans, where drumming was never actively discouraged for very long and homemade drums were used to accompany public dancing until the outbreak of the Civil War. Another influence came from the harmonic style of hymns of the church, which black slaves had learned and incorporated into their own music as spirituals . The origins of

10032-454: The perspective of other musical traditions, such as European music history or African music. But critic Joachim-Ernst Berendt argues that its terms of reference and its definition should be broader, defining jazz as a "form of art music which originated in the United States through the confrontation of the Negro with European music" and arguing that it differs from European music in that jazz has

10146-414: The pieces of his elegiac little statement. He begins all three on his high G (concert F), ends all three on the same two-bar resolution. But the differences in between, matters of tone , dynamics , and shading as much as specific notes, are spellbinding. "This solo, in each of its three variants, contains many 'bent' notes, the exact pitches of which resist attempts at formal notation. In certain cases….

10260-487: The plight of the Jewish American and vice versa. As disenfranchised minorities themselves, Jewish composers of popular music saw themselves as natural allies with African Americans. The Jazz Singer with Al Jolson is one example of how Jewish Americans were able to bring jazz, music that African Americans developed, into popular culture. Benny Goodman was a vital Jewish American to the progression of Jazz. Goodman

10374-459: The post-Civil War period (after 1865), African Americans were able to obtain surplus military bass drums, snare drums and fifes, and an original African-American drum and fife music emerged, featuring tresillo and related syncopated rhythmic figures. This was a drumming tradition that was distinct from its Caribbean counterparts, expressing a uniquely African-American sensibility. "The snare and bass drummers played syncopated cross-rhythms ," observed

10488-672: The pre-jazz era and contributed to the codification of jazz through the publication of some of the first jazz sheet music. The music of New Orleans , Louisiana had a profound effect on the creation of early jazz. In New Orleans, slaves could practice elements of their culture such as voodoo and playing drums. Many early jazz musicians played in the bars and brothels of the red-light district around Basin Street called Storyville . In addition to dance bands, there were marching bands which played at lavish funerals (later called jazz funerals ). The instruments used by marching bands and dance bands became

10602-537: The prominent styles. Bebop emerged in the 1940s, shifting jazz from danceable popular music toward a more challenging "musician's music" which was played at faster tempos and used more chord-based improvisation. Cool jazz developed near the end of the 1940s, introducing calmer, smoother sounds and long, linear melodic lines. The mid-1950s saw the emergence of hard bop , which introduced influences from rhythm and blues , gospel , and blues to small groups and particularly to saxophone and piano. Modal jazz developed in

10716-535: The recording was released) recorded eight songs: "Panama", " Tiger Rag ", and " Livery Stable Blues ", representing the New Orleans jazz standbys; the original compositions " Oriental", "Discontented Blues", and " Farewell Blues "; and a never-released Original Dixieland Jazz Band song, "Eccentric". Paul Mares scheduled another two-day recording session at Gennett later, but the band had recently dissolved somewhat, moving in different directions following their stint at

10830-410: The rhythm and bassline. In Ohio and elsewhere in the mid-west the major influence was ragtime, until about 1919. Around 1912, when the four-string banjo and saxophone came in, musicians began to improvise the melody line, but the harmony and rhythm remained unchanged. A contemporary account states that blues could only be heard in jazz in the gut-bucket cabarets, which were generally looked down upon by

10944-552: The slang connotations of the term, saying: "When Broadway picked it up, they called it 'J-A-Z-Z'. It wasn't called that. It was spelled 'J-A-S-S'. That was dirty, and if you knew what it was, you wouldn't say it in front of ladies." The American Dialect Society named it the Word of the 20th Century . Jazz is difficult to define because it encompasses a wide range of music spanning a period of over 100 years, from ragtime to rock -infused fusion . Attempts have been made to define jazz from

11058-444: The soloist. In avant-garde and free jazz , the separation of soloist and band is reduced, and there is license, or even a requirement, for the abandoning of chords, scales, and meters. Since the emergence of bebop, forms of jazz that are commercially oriented or influenced by popular music have been criticized. According to Bruce Johnson, there has always been a "tension between jazz as a commercial music and an art form". Regarding

11172-423: The studio from August 1921 to mid-1927. The bulk of the labels productions came out of the Richmond studio, which was 125 feet (38 m) long and 30 feet (9.1 m) wide with a control room separated by a double pane of glass. For sound proofing, a Mohawk rug was placed on the floor and drapes and towels were hung on the wall. Gennett was one of the few companies to have a recording facility outside of New York,

11286-734: The supervision of Harry Gennett through the remainder of the decade by offering contract pressing services. For a time the Starr Piano Company was the principal manufacturer of Decca records, but much of this business dried up after Decca purchased its own pressing plant in 1938 (the Newaygo , Michigan, plant that formerly had pressed Brunswick and Vocalion records). In the years remaining before World War II , Gennett did contract pressing for New York-based jazz and folk music labels, including Joe Davis , who briefly produced records on Gennett, Beacon, and Joe Davis labels that were pressed in Starr Valley. With

11400-500: The twice-daily ferry between both cities to perform, and the habanera quickly took root in the musically fertile Crescent City. John Storm Roberts states that the musical genre habanera "reached the U.S. twenty years before the first rag was published." For the more than quarter-century in which the cakewalk , ragtime , and proto-jazz were forming and developing, the habanera was a consistent part of African-American popular music. Habaneras were widely available as sheet music and were

11514-566: The use of tresillo-based rhythms in African-American music. New Orleans native Louis Moreau Gottschalk 's piano piece "Ojos Criollos (Danse Cubaine)" (1860) was influenced by the composer's studies in Cuba: the habanera rhythm is clearly heard in the left hand. In Gottschalk's symphonic work "A Night in the Tropics" (1859), the tresillo variant cinquillo appears extensively. The figure was later used by Scott Joplin and other ragtime composers. Comparing

11628-494: The work of talent scouts Dennis Taylor and, eventually, one of Taylor's recruits the Fiddlin' Doc Roberts , recording more Kentucky musicians than any other state. Taylor brought hundreds of Kentucky musicians to Richmond between 1925 and 1931, including Asa Martin , Marion Underwood, and Charlie Taylor. Many early religious recordings were made by Homer Rodeheaver , early shape note singers and others. Classical ensembles around

11742-569: The world, it drew on national, regional, and local musical cultures, which gave rise to different styles. New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass band marches, French quadrilles , biguine , ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation . However, jazz did not begin as a single musical tradition in New Orleans or elsewhere. In the 1930s, arranged dance-oriented swing big bands , Kansas City jazz (a hard-swinging, bluesy, improvisational style), and gypsy jazz (a style that emphasized musette waltzes) were

11856-498: The writer Robert Palmer, speculating that "this tradition must have dated back to the latter half of the nineteenth century, and it could have not have developed in the first place if there hadn't been a reservoir of polyrhythmic sophistication in the culture it nurtured." African-American music began incorporating Afro-Cuban rhythmic motifs in the 19th century when the habanera (Cuban contradanza ) gained international popularity. Musicians from Havana and New Orleans would take

11970-493: The year's crop was harvested and several days were set aside for celebration. As late as 1861, a traveler in North Carolina saw dancers dressed in costumes that included horned headdresses and cow tails and heard music provided by a sheepskin-covered "gumbo box", apparently a frame drum; triangles and jawbones furnished the auxiliary percussion. There are quite a few [accounts] from the southeastern states and Louisiana dating from

12084-492: Was European ( trumpets , trombones , etc.), while the melodic ideas and unconventional (at least, in the context of classical music ) rhythms and musical forms were born from the ring shouts and country blues styles of black slaves . The very first jazz bands were mostly black and played for black audiences, though the genre progressively got picked up by white audiences too. Many of the musicians were unable to read music but instead relied heavily on head arrangements (learning

12198-436: Was an American record company and label in Richmond, Indiana , United States, which flourished in the 1920s and produced the Gennett, Starr, Champion, Superior, and Van Speaking labels. The company also produced some Supertone , Silvertone , and Challenge records under contract. The firm also pressed, under contract, records for record labels such as Autograph, Rainbow , Hitch, Our Song, and Vaughn. Gennett produced some of

12312-433: Was based on their music for "Tin Roof Blues". The New Orleans Rhythm Kings in its earliest stages was the creation of the drummer Mike "Ragbaby" Stevens, solely in that he sent the first telegram to Albert Brunies about going to Chicago to form a band and find better gigs than New Orleans had to offer. Albert "Abbie" Brunies and his younger brother, the trombonist George Brunies , were initially hesitant but suggested

12426-433: Was major ... , and I carried this device into my melody as well. The publication of his " Memphis Blues " sheet music in 1912 introduced the 12-bar blues to the world (although Gunther Schuller argues that it is not really a blues, but "more like a cakewalk"). This composition, as well as his later " St. Louis Blues " and others, included the habanera rhythm, and would become jazz standards . Handy's music career began in

12540-402: Was often allowed to perform with the band. The group recorded a series of records for Gennett Records in 1922 and 1923. On July 17 and 18 1923, they were joined by the pianist and composer Jelly Roll Morton . These sessions with Morton have sometimes been incorrectly called the first mixed- race recording session; while they are noteworthy, early examples, there were earlier instances such as

12654-464: Was released in 1924. In the 1930s, Harry Gennett, Jr. became involved in the recording business and roamed the country in the Gennett recording truck producing sound effects. The Gennett catalog of sound recordsings would be sold by mail to radio stations and filmmakers. The label was hit severely by the Great Depression in 1930. It cut back on record recording and production and only maintained

12768-601: Was set up in the Hotel Lowry in St. Paul, Minnesota where primarily Swedish, German, and Polish folk music was recorded. Temporary studios were set up in Chicago from November–December 1927 and February–April 1928. By the late 1920s, Gennett was pressing records for more than 25 labels worldwide, including budget disks for the Sears catalog. In 1926, Fred Gennett created Champion Records as

12882-445: Was shut down by the U.S. government in 1917. Cornetist Buddy Bolden played in New Orleans from 1895 to 1906. No recordings by him exist. His band is credited with creating the big four: the first syncopated bass drum pattern to deviate from the standard on-the-beat march. As the example below shows, the second half of the big four pattern is the habanera rhythm. Gennett Records Gennett Records ( / dʒ ə ˈ n ɛ t / )

12996-529: Was the leader of a racially integrated band named King of Swing. His jazz concert in the Carnegie Hall in 1938 was the first ever to be played there. The concert was described by Bruce Eder as "the single most important jazz or popular music concert in history". Shep Fields also helped to popularize "Sweet" Jazz music through his appearances and Big band remote broadcasts from such landmark venues as Chicago's Palmer House , Broadway's Paramount Theater and

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