The Gift
1917-1924

After world war one the story of jazz became the story of two cities Chicago and New York and of two great artists Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington whose lives and music would span almost three quarters of a century.

James Reece Europe was another historic figure in the history of jazz. Before the war he had been an orchestra leader to high society new York, a great achievement in itself for a colored band leader, he would go on to captivate America along with a white married dancing couple “The Castles” who became the acceptable face to ragtime dancing and music making famous a new dance “the foxtrot” to his most celebrated song “the Memphis blues”. But with the first world war an all black regiment was created and he was handpicked to be its band leader. They introduced France and the world to his new sound of incorporating jazz into infectious syncopated ragtime music. The Europeans had never heard a marching band sound like that before.

Historical and sociological milestones influenced the evolution of jazz like the emergence of a more assertive black cultural identity born in reaction to crimes of violence and discrimination occurring ever more regularly after the end of the war and the backlash to the unenforceable laws of prohibition. Speakeasies flourished and for the first time women could be found drinking alongside the men, work was plentiful and profitable for the jazz musician, the jazz age had arrived.

The music was still a novelty and it would take some greats to deepen the emotion, broaden the appeal and turn it into art. One such hero was Duke Ellington. Born of comfortable middle class parents this prolific composer earned his name the Duke for his debonair style, always dressed to the nines he transcended the boundaries that defined the times, black white, rich poor, to enthrall all America and beyond with his genius.

Jazz may have been around for 30 years but Louis Armstrong would come to define it. Born to humble beginnings in a poor area of new Orleans known as the battleground, Little Louise loved his home town and grew up idolising Papa Joe Oliver and succeeded him in his band as head trumpeter when he moved to chicago. Waves of black people were taking this trip to escape the oppression and the poverty of the deep south and in 1922 Louis Armstrong left New Orleans to join King Oliver in Chicago. Soon King and Little Louis had the city at their feet. In 1923 King Oliver and his creole jazz band cut a record, the first recording of Louis Armstrong, “chimes blues”. And it is said that the first solo codified what jazz was to become for the next 25 years, Armstrong’s genius was to make it personal, and the lesson, to tell a story with your instrument and to take the listeners with you on a journey.

The Harlem renaissance was an assertion of black pride in New York’s black community before the great recession. The musical heroes of Harlem at the time were masters of the stride piano playing technique. These piano players or ticklers engaged in musical duels or cutting contests but the masters of this orchestral rhythmic style were Willy the lion Smith and James P. Johnson who wrote the tune that would define the jazz age “the charleston”. Rent parties were a regular occurrence where music blared all night, musicians jammed and dueled and for a small cover charge patrons could drink and dance and the proceeds kept the tenants with a roof over their heads.

In 1923 Ellington moved to Harlem, to the centre of glamour and to his heroes of the stride piano playing that he loved. He was absorbing all these influences, the ragtime popular throughout the country, the blues drenched New Orleans style of Sidney Bechet and Louis Armstrong and the stride piano playing of Harlem and soon it was all reflected in his band culminating in getting the resiliency in the club Kentucky and with new member James Buber Miley, growling a muted trumpet in the style of king oliver, Ellington threw out the sweet music for the hot stuff.

The Chicago style was coined from the music of the Austin high gang. Five white high school kids who had fallen in love with the sound of those early recordings, like those of the new Orleans rhythm kings. They were the first of a wave of white kids who would seek out King Oliver and Armstrong in the  south side clubs to learn this new music. Until this time it was still a black music for a black audience but this new generation were eager to absorb it and make it there own. These pioneers added a northern agitated sound that blended with the new Orleans style.

Paul Whitman was a classical violinist until he discovered jazz. He wanted to orchestrate jazz, and broaden its appeal and he succeeded. Fletcher Henderson was the other king of the bandstands in the famous club Roseland he soon got tired of playing the polite music for white audiences and coaxed Louis Armstrong to new york, nearly as soon as he arrived he started influencing all the musicians in the city with his rhythmic, New Orleans blues drenched style which gave the music a new feel that people would soon call swing.

Our Language
1924-1929

Born in New Orleans and growing up in Chicago and new york by the mid 20s jazz was on the move. Bands were on the road all over the country, records and radio took the sound to places where bands could not go and the blues had now fused with jazz and become an industry. In 1925 Little Louis returned to Chicago,  to the dreamland cafe. While recording the “heebies jeebies” Armstrong tells the story of dropping the sheet music and starting to sing what he would normally play on his trumpet, scat singing was born and another fad swept Chicago.

Bessie smith was the voice of the poor black community. She sang the blues for the nation and lived the life she sang about. A powerful character with a powerful ability to express the human condition.

Bix beiderbecke was the first of the white musicians to match his black contemporaries. In the mid 20s he joined a band called the gold kid orchestra, their greatest hit “singing the blues” was a landmark that proved that jazz was an art form for anybody to contribute to.

Sidney bechet was the other undisputed genius of jazz but his confrontational personality always seemed to have him in trouble and by the mid twenties he still hadn’t been recorded despite already being a giant. He had lived in France and England but was asked to leave both, and had toured extensively around every far flung corner of Europe.

Benny Goodman was the ninth child of a poor Jewish family in Chicago who learned to play the clarinet as a child to help support his family. The sacrifice of his father and his tragic death combined with the hardships of his childhood cemented in him a work ethic that would power his meteoric rise in the hearts of America. Another son of Jewish immigrants was Artie Shaw who was determined to be a musician, he played clarinet, learning from willie the lion smith in harlem where he found his voice.

Ethel waters was a street kid born in New York’s red light district, she became a most influential blues singer whose light clear voice and sang a soft insinuation but reached popularity singing popular music from tin pan alley infusing those songs with her blues heritage.

In “dead mans blues” Jelly Roll Morton successfully proved that jazz could be written down and composed without losing the spontaneity of the new Orleans sound. He formed a band called the red hot peppers and sold sheet music and made a reasonable living for a time.

Paul Whiteman, though not a through and through jazz man, couldn’t hire black musicians so he sought out the finest white musicians which included Bix Beiderbecke for a time before alcoholism took him. His tragedy is an unusual one, he was a victim of segregation, society wasn’t ready to see black and white musicians playing together and Bix died unfulfilled never having recorded or performed live with musicians that matched or outclassed him.

Prohibition Harlem had now become home to more than 500 speakeasies the most famous of which was The Cotton Club, a cabaret of black performers for white audiences. When Duke Ellington got the job as the band leader his sound was a revelation, hot, sexy and exotic and playing behind some racy shows it got the unfortunate name of jungle music. But when cbs started broadcasting the show live n 1927 the duke was reaching all corners of America over the airwaves.

Between 1925 and 1928 in a series of recordings with studio bands called called the hot fives,the hot sevens and the savoy ballroom five, Louis Armstrong cemented jazz as an art form, playing alongside his wife and lifelong friends from New Orleans he assured the future of jazz as a soloist rather than an ensemble music, he affirms that the blues tonality is going to be the lifeblood of jazz, and he invents swing, he creates modern time.

While headlining in the sunset in Chicago pianist Earl Hines and Louis Armstrong cut a record “west end blues” Armstrong was recognised as the first solo genius of jazz and that song came to encapsulate America in the moments before the depression.

The True Welcome
1929-1934

1929 saw the stock market crash and the biggest crisis hit America since the civil war and marked  an end to the hedonistic and indulgent jazz age. Black America was hit hardest and nowhere was this more apparent than in the contrast of renaissance and depression ravaged Harlem. Providing welcome respite from the hardships of the time something was incubating in the local clubs like the savoy ballroom. This episode is one of the most relevant to us swing enthusiasts and it opens with a lovely interview with Norma Miller, a dancer who with the late great Frankie manning pioneered the lindy hop. Named after the great aviator of the day Charles Lindbergh, the lindy hop was the latest dance craze beginning to take hold in Harlem.. She describes what it was like to grow up with this cultural revolution happening outside her door. She had lived behind the savoy ballroom, known as the home of happy feet, and it was a palace of dance, a melting pot where people from all walks of life would try to out dance one another. This touching interview can be read in its entirety here.

In 1929 Louis Armstrong was much loved in black communities but he still hadn’t reached white audiences but he was coaxed to new york where all that would change. It took some time to book a gig outside of black clubs but eventually he got his chance to play for a show on Broadway called hot chocolate where he brought down the house every night playing the music written for the show buy the stride piano player Fats Waller. He was singing now and he was forced to centre stage from the bandstand and it became evident that he was a born performer. Now he was changing the singing in popular music. He started singing the pop songs of the day from tin pan alley and making them his own, bringing swinging to singing, improvising the vocal like he was playing his trumpet. He had become a star. In Harlem young men took to carrying large handkerchiefs because he always had one on stage to mop his brow.

 

In this video, in his own words, we hear the Frankie Manning story, the great man is more of a god to us lindy hoppers, for his place in history and more recently for his role in the lindy revival of the 80s and 90s. He is sadly missed since his passing in 2009, we love you Frankie wherever you are. A transcript of the entire interview can be viewed here, In his own words Frankie describes his birthplace of Jacksonville, Florida and its connection with the baptist church, he describes what a swing is and the evolution of the lindy hop to this new sound, we hear about the savoy, its two battling bandstands and of Chick Webb the resident band leader who orchestrated the proceedings.

Duke Ellington defied his peoples stereotype, everything about him and his music epitomised grace, style and elegance. His Cotton Club radio show had made him the most famous bandleader in America and when Hollywood gave him the opportunity to showcase his music he took it. His sound was often described as the essence of blues and elegance, of classical music fused with late night sensuality.

Fats Waller, was described as the most popular man in Harlem, a large man with a ferocious appetite for life and living large, but his song writing and piano playing revealed i musically proficient connoisseur who swung so hard he barely needed an accompaning band.

In stark contrast to the jazz age now musicians found it hard to get work and into this came John Hammond the first critic and historian, he took it on himself to document and promote his anonymous heroes. The industry, now shrinking, was still closed to blacks and Hammond, securing a deal with a British company. found and recorded the talent, Count Bassie, Coleman Hawkins, Fletcher Henderson, Billie Holiday, Teddi Wilson, Charlie Christan and Benny Goodman would all see their careers advance with his help.

1933 saw prohibition repealed but the former speakeasies could not compete with the new corner liquor stores that were a cheaper alternative. In white only Roseland The Fletcher Henderson Orchestras popularity continued to grow but after Roseland closed they  would often travel to Harlem to battle Chick Webb’s band and play for integrated audiences. The driven Benny Goodman would get his opportunity too, inspired by Chick Webb and Fletcher Henderson he was determined to put together a real jazz band and play something better than the sweet music he was employed to play on the only mass media of the time radio.1n 1934 his band was booked for a 3 hour radio programme for Saturday nights called “lets dance”. Buying Fletcher Henderson’s arrangements the Benny Goodman band would set itself apart with songs like “king porters stomp”. A white band leader was now playing the type of music that had only been played in Harlem and all the doors were open for him. Soon “lets dance” became the centre that young people would plan their Saturday nights around. Benny convinced Fletcher Henderson to rearrange some popular music for this new broader audience

Art Tatum, from Ohio, was almost blind but his ear for piano playing and the speed of his hands were renowned, he influenced the way musicians improvised when he arrived in Harlem and quickly set about beating all the best piano players in cutting contests.

The Duke Ellington band was on the road all the time and the Dukes music had evolved far beyond “the jungle music” as it had been coined at the time  that had made him famous, they embodied this multi styled chic and wowed audiences with songs like “it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing” with their new singer Ivie Anderson.

In 1933 Louis Armstrong took a hiatus at the height of international fame, in 1935 he returned to Chicago but couldn’t find work, he had made enemies of powerful men with mob connections who had tried to exploit him for profit, the man who had invented modern time hit hard times.

In 1935 Benny Goodman‘s radio show was cancelled and desperate to keep the band together he went on a tour ending in Los Angeles. Most of America hadn’t heard swing and Goodman was right to worry. travelling in a convoy of cars across country they were greeted with disappointed dancers who wanted waltzes and more familiar music but that unexpectedly changed in Los Angeles when in a new nightclub called the Palomar ballroom they were greeted by thousands of people waiting to hear them. The next morning Benny Goodman was famous.The sounds of swing that had started with Louis Armstrong and had been nurtured in the dance halls of Harlem were now echoing across the country, the swing era was about to begin.

Pure Pleasure
1935-1937

Jazz is primarily dance music and in 1936 swing came as close as ever to being Americas popular music. Benny Goodman’s success in Los Angeles brought swing out of the bars and clubs and into the matinees where high school kids could enjoy it and they turned out in droves at the record store, shooting him to first second and third in the charts within months of the now infamous Palomar gig. When he returned to New York for 2 Weeks of daytime engagements he was greeted by throngs of teenagers and adults alike in scenes that would fortell the mania to come with stars like Elvis and The Beatles. Benny Goodman had overnight transformed what was essentially a cult music into a national pastime.

In the swing era Louis Armstrong finally got back into the limelight thanks to an alliance with a new manager Joe Glazer, but Armstrong never received the recognition he deserved, as one contemporary critic described swing music and what Goodman popularised as Louis Armstrong orchestrated.

In the wake of Goodman’s success the big band orchestra was at a popular zenith, the soundtrack to Hollywood movies and with the radio bringing it into peoples living rooms dancers took to the floor again en mass, dancing to the huge number of big bands benefiting from the success, Jimmy Lunceford, Earl Hynes, Benny Carter and  Charlie Barnett all had orchestras and diaries filled with engagements.

Jimmy Lunceford had one of the best big bands of the time, he had great soloists but he added a showmanship and work ethic that kept dancers on the floor.

Tommy Dorsey‘s orchestra was hugely popular, his band could play both sweet and sentimental, popular music and jazz and his trumpet playing style was more like singing at times, but he was notoriously difficult to work with.

Glen Miller favoured vocals and his straight laced style was very appealing to middle America and became almost iconic, in the years to come they would turn out hit after hit.

Artie Shaw was Benny Goodman’s greatest rival his innovation was to integrate chamber music into his jazz style, a lyrical clarinetist, being serious minded he disliked the fame and the dancers but his most famous song “begin the begin” became an albatross around his neck and in 1939, a victim of his own success he disbanded his orchestra.

Cab Calloway, who replaced duke Ellington in the cotton club was a singing band leader with buckets of personality who was hugely popular, he was a style icon and even brought out his own swing dictionary.

Swing was a big industry but the pressures of such a large payroll kept bands on the road all year round, living and playing hard was the order of the day.

Although you had white bands and black bands the story of jazz is not one of color. From the beginning black and white musicians had played together in late night jam sessions, Benny Goodman himself had spent his early in Harlem learning all he could and for years musicians of all creeds had recorded together, but it took The Benny Goodman Trio with black piano player Teddy Wilson, to break the taboo of performing for live audiences and alongside Gene Krupa on drums and later vibraphone player Lionel Hampton they became a quartet that changed musical and cultural history.

Chick Webb was a drummer and a hunchback dwarf who from childhood had suffered from tuberculosis of the spine. From 1927 he led a band at the savoy ballroom that became one of the outstanding groups of the swing period. His drum Kit had to be nailed down to prevent it flying of the bandstand with the force of his wailing. Frankie and Norma beautifully retell the night that 4000 supporters turned up for when Benny Goodman challenged him in the savoy. They, of course, are convinced that Chick out swung Benny that night.

The Velocity of Celebtation
1937-1939

There was a pressure that came with commercial success to play for the wider audience and some jazz fans thought that the orchestra was too regimented and didn’t give the musician enough freedom to express themselves. By the the late 30s big band swing music was 70% of the music industry. John Hammond was one who felt that jazz was becoming a victim of its own success, until he heard Count Basie from Kansas city and decided he must share that sound with the world. In the black dance halls in the middle of the country a new music was being born and it was pulsing stomping and infused with the blues, performed by musicians who had proved themselves in all night cutting contest. Count Basie was the man to epitomise this style and introduce “stomp” to America.

By the late 30s the saxophone was becoming a prominent instrument in jazz. Coleman Hawkins was most responsible for this transformation. Discovered by the band leader Fletcher Henderson he loved to prove the Sax’s versatility in cutting contests. Lester Young was another hero of the sax who loved musical battles but they couldn’t have been more different. He was a sweet and lyrical player and his music was a reflection of himself.

Like New Orleans at the turn of the century and like Chicago in the 20s, Kansas city in the 30s was a wide open city, a frontier of vice where a musician with talent was always sure of work. Kansas city jazz was characterised by a joyous beat, syncopated conversations between the reed and the brass reminiscent of the call and response of the sanctified church and a fondness for the sax. Unlike commercial big band jazz this was built around musical ideas or riffs that were rarely written down but that afforded the opportunity for the musicians to improvise all night long.

In the huge amount of clubs providing the soundtrack to the late night madness were greats like Lester Young, Hot Lips Page, Joe Jones, James McShan, Sweets Edison, Mary Lou Williams and of course Count Basie and his Barron’s of rhythm. Kansas city was a mecca for musicians and blues was their common language. Basie played piano, characterised more by what he didn’t play as much as what he did, he reminded jazz of the importance of space and time, his rhythm section became famous, “one o’clock jump” became their signature song even though it was only an improvisation that had happened to go out over the radio. Unlike Chick Webb and Benny Goodman, Basie’s songs had no formal arrangements they just had to swing, the act of willful participation. Mary Lou Williams was a Kansas city piano player who was both lyrical and blues orientated and with the stride style she was the first woman to break through, playing and arranging for Andy kirk, and writing for Louis Armstrong.

A year after Chick Webb had cut Benny Goodman’s band to pieces Count Basie got his chance in the savoy, coincidentally on the same night Benny Goodman was making history on the other side of town by winning over polite society in Carnegie hall but hurried over after the show to catch the fight. The winner would be much disputed for years to come. Count Basie was taking New York by storm and when they got the residency of their own club they fast became the most swinging band in town. It was the summer of 1938 and at the famous door there was a joyous alternative to commercial swing.

In 1939 Mary Lou Williams told John Hammond, the self appointed scout of jazz, of a new talent. Without telling Benny Goodman he sent Charlie Christian to join the band. He moved Benny so much he was hired on the spot, he played the amplified guitar. Meanwhile Chick Webb was looking for a vocalist to achieve some of his contemporaries success in the wider world and he found Ella Fitzgerald, her flawless sense of intonation, girlish voice and ferocious sense of swing rocketed the Chick Webb orchestra with Ella Fitzgerald into the charts and commercial success. At 19 she was billed as the first lady of swing, but Chick Webb’s lifelong frailty finally caught up with him, and shortly after achieving his dreams, his childhood spinal tuberculosis was aggravated and he died on June 16th 1939, he was 30 years old. His band stayed together and changed there name to the Ella Fitzgerald orchestra.

Billie holiday sang the blues and lived the hard life she sung about, despite a small range she sang a little behind the beat with a feeling that was unmistakable. In jazz everybody is telling a story, and nobody could convey the human heart quite like Billie Holiday, she played with Count Basie’s band for a time where she met her lifelong friend and musical soul mate Lester Young whose sax accompaniment was flawless but in 1938 she left for Artie Shaw’s band that too was unfulfilling and America still wasn’t ready for a black singer with a white band so she returned to the more intimate clubs of new york city that she loved. On one occasion a poet gave her a poem about a lynching and asked her to sing it, “strange fruit” was the first protest jazz song, and a milestone in jazz history

In 1939 Duke Ellington embarked on a tour of Europe where he soon realised that there he wasn’t the duke he was the king. Within months of his triumphant return Europe was at war. The world was changing and so was jazz, when “body and soul” was recorded by Coleman Hawkins in 1939,  nothing quite like it had ever been heard before, his innovation was to never play the melody for  two whole choruses, instead one musical variation after another flowed from his sax. It was the inspiration for a new generation to take jazz in a new direction, but it would have to wait until the war was over to gain recognition

Dedicated to Chaos
1940-1945

In 1939 Charlie Parker hopped a train to new york to make the big time, a sax player his innovation was to find a new way to play a solo, not to the melody but to the underlying chords. By 1940 the recession was lifting but the the war in Europe threatened to engulf the world and the draft was in place, jazz would be enlisted to become a symbol of democracy.

But among some musicians there was a hunger for more freedom than the regimented big band allowed, Mintons Playhouse in Harlem attracted a huge underground following. Mintons served free food and drink to jamming musicians, in the house band were two powerful innovators piano player Thelonious Monk and drummer Kenny Clark spurring soloists with kicks and accents. Regulars included Mary Lou Williams, Charlie Parke, Coleman Hawkins, Drew Barry, Mil Hilton, Charlie Christian, Roy Eldridge and Dizzie Gillespie.

Dizzie Gillespie was an experimenter, excitable and unpredictable, so much so that Cab Callaway kicked him out of his band, but at Mintons he was free to experiment, and it was here that Dizzie met Charlie Parker the alto sax player from Kansas city.

When the second world war started band leaders became soldiers of music, jazz became a symbol of democracy and freedom where Jewish men from humble beginnings like Benny Goodman could achieve anything. Swing songs became the anthem of war time America. In the war years the duke reached the height of his popularity. He had carte blanche from the record label, a weekly radio show where he helped to sell war bonds  and with a new right hand man in Billy Strayhorne, who would become a lifelong collaborator writing great songs like “take the a train”. The duke kept his band together and on the road through the war years. “Cottontail” was a song that typified the streak in the 40s when everything he wrote seemed to be a masterpiece that dancers loved.

When the second world war started band leaders became soldiers of music, jazz became a symbol of democracy and freedom where Jewish men from humble beginnings like Benny Goodman could achieve anything. Swing songs became the anthem of war time America. In the war years the duke reached the height of his popularity. He had carte blanche from the record label, a weekly radio show where he helped to sell war bonds  and with a new right hand man in Billy Strayhorne, who would become a lifelong collaborator writing great songs like “take the a train”. The duke kept his band together and on the road through the war years. “Cottontail” was a song that typified the streak in the 40s when everything he wrote seemed to be a masterpiece that dancers loved.

In 1942 Charlie Parker joined Dizzie Gillespie in the Earl Hines band, this afforded them the opportunity to play together constantly and develop a completely new style that even some of there band mates couldn’t keep up with. But a two year strike on making records would keep this secret for a while longer. Soon after Parker and Gillespie enter the studio to create an explosion of their own. The tune is called Ko Ko, the sound will soon be called “bebop,” and once Americans hear it, jazz will never be the same.

The black community in America were beginning to lose patience, while many fought bigotry abroad in segregated army regiments and endured it at home. Jazz musicians, with there nice clothes and life on the road felt this most and began calling each other man at least in part in response to being called boy.

On April 21st 1943 the doors of the savoy ballroom were padlocked, military and city authorities had claimed that enlisted men had contracted venereal diseases, the real reason Harlem residents maintained was that black and whites had not just danced together but gone home together as well. Race riots broke out all over the north over jobs and housing and Harlem developed a reputation as a dangerous place where jazz fans hesitated to venture.

By this time the heart of jazz had moved to 52nd street., there were seven cellar clubs on that one block. Patrons could hear every type of jazz emanating from the venues, old New Orleans jazz, swing, blues  and the new experimental jazz of Dizzie Gillespie. It was a favorite haunt of servicemen but the combination of race and alcohol meant that there was often trouble. Billie holiday was the Queen of the street and the venues were intimate, “you felt like the musicians were playing just for you” one patron remembers.

Overseas Jazz was the sound of the resistance not only because it was American but also because it was created by black people and flew in the face of the racist government trying to take control of Europe. Occupied Paris became a centre of a jazz renaissance not seen since the 20s, they looked to there homegrown heroes to feed their insatiable appetite. Django Reinhardt was one such hero who was the toast of France in the war years, he was born in a gypsy encampment in Belgium and a master of the guitar he incorporated his gypsy roots and the sound of the violin of Stephane Grapelle in their band The Quintet of The Hot Club of France. The iconic sound that they made together was completely original and a revelation. Jazz was in direct contradiction to Nazism but in Germany it couldn’t be squashed, swing kids defied the gestapo and played smuggled jazz records, listened to allied radio and met in secret for dances musicians like Django Reinhardt continued to play despite a Nazi ban and jazz for the Germans as much as the rest of the world was a beacon of hope.

Risk
1945-1955

The postwar years bring America to a level of prosperity unimaginable a decade before, but the Cold War threat of nuclear annihilation makes these anxious years as well. In jazz, this underlying tension will be reflected in the broken rhythms and dissonant melodies of bebop, and in the troubled life of bebop’s biggest star, Charlie Parker.

Nicknamed “Bird,” Parker was a soloist whose ideas and technique were as overwhelming for musicians of his generation as Louis Armstrong’s had been a quarter-century before. He is idolized — his improvisations copied, his risk-all intensity on stage imitated, and his self-destructive lifestyle adopted as a prerequisite for inspiration. Parker’s example helps bring a narcotics plague to the jazz community, and when he dies, wasted by heroin at age 34, drugs are as much a part of his legacy to jazz as the genius of his music. But Parker was not the only bebop innovator. His longtime partner, Dizzy Gillespie, tried to popularize the new sound by adding showmanship and Latin rhythms, he tried in vain to coax the dancers back with his own bebop big band but the popularity had shifted from the soloist musician to singers like Frank Sinatra. The big bands struggled to survive and the musicians took to playing smaller clubs with no space for the swingos. Meanwhile pianist Thelonius Monk infuses it with his eccentric personality to create a music all his own. Except for jazz initiates, however, few people were listening. Teens now swoon for pop singers and dance to rhythm and blues.

The swing era may have come to an end but there is always music to dance to being created. Louis Armstrongs allstars formed and continued to play his brand of swing and kept that accessible brand of jazz alive in mainstream popular music. for another 25 years. Artists like louis Jordan play rhythm and blues for the people, taking the simplest and most crowd pleasing sounds of big band he made hit after novelty hit to millions of dancing black fans who had once followed jazz.

Searching for a new audience, California musicians create a mellow sound called cool jazz, and Dave Brubeck mixes jazz with classical music to produce a million-seller LP. But one man remains determined to give jazz popular appeal on his own terms, the trumpet player Miles Davis. A one-time Parker sideman who has finally broken heroin’s grip on his career, Davis is moving beyond the cool sound he inspired and stands poised to lead jazz in a new direction.

The Adventure
1956-1960

In the late 1950s, America’s postwar prosperity continues, but beneath the surface run currents of change. Families are moving to the suburbs, watching television has become the national pastime, and baby boomers have begun coming of age. For jazz, it is also a period of transition when old stars like Billie Holiday and Lester Young will burn out while young talents arise to take the music in new directions.

Jazz still has its two guiding lights. In 1956, the first year Elvis tops the charts, Duke Ellington recaptures the nation’s ear with a performance at the Newport Jazz Festival that becomes his best-selling record ever. The next year, Louis Armstrong makes headlines when he condemns the government’s failure to stand up to racism in Little Rock, Arkansas, risking his career while musicians who dismissed him as an Uncle Tom remain silent.

Meanwhile, new virtuosos emerge to push the limits of bebop: saxophone colossus Sonny Rollins; jazz diva Sarah Vaughan; and the drummer Art Blakey, whose Jazz Messengers will become a proving ground for young musicians over the next forty years. But the leading light of the era is Miles Davis — a catalyst constantly forming new groups to showcase different facets of his stark, introspective sound; a popularizer whose lush recordings with arranger Gil Evans expand the jazz audience; and a cultural icon whose tough-guy charisma comes to define what’s hip.

As the turbulent Sixties arrive, however, two saxophonists take jazz into uncharted terrain. John Coltrane explodes the pop tune My Favorite Things into a kaleidoscope of freewheeling sound, while Ornette Coleman challenges all conventions with a sound he calls “free jazz.” Once again, the music seems headed for new adventures, but now, for the first time, even musicians are starting to ask, Is it still jazz?

A masterpiece by Midnight
1960-2001

During the Sixties, jazz is in trouble. Critics divide the music into “schools” – Dixieland, swing, bebop, hard bop, modal, free, avant-garde. But most young people are listening to rock ‘n’ roll. Though Louis Armstrong briefly outsells the Beatles with Hello Dolly, most jazz musicians are desperate for work and many head for Europe, including bebop saxophone master, Dexter Gordon.

At home, jazz is searching for relevance. During the Civil Rights struggle, it becomes a voice of protest. Before his early death, the avant-garde explorer John Coltrane links jazz to the Sixties quest for a higher consciousness with his devotional suite, A Love Supreme. And Miles Davis, after conquering the avant-garde with a landmark quintet, combines jazz with rock ‘n’ roll by using electric instruments to launch a wildly popular sound called Fusion.

In the 1970s, jazz loses the exuberant genius of Louis Armstrong and the transcendent artistry of Duke Ellington, and for many their passing seems to mark the end of the music itself. But in 1976, when Dexter Gordon returns from Europe for a triumphant comeback, jazz has a homecoming, too. Over the next two decades, a new generation of musicians emerges, led by trumpeter Wynton Marsalis – schooled in the music’s traditions, skilled in the arts of improvisation, and aflame with ideas only jazz can express. The musical journey that began in the dance halls and street parades of New Orleans at the start of the 20th century continues. As it enters its second century, jazz is still brand new every night, still vibrant, still evolving, and still swinging.