Changes from ragtime to jazz began to appear on recording from around 1914. Many ensemble ragtime performances were played with violin and seemed well planned out, for example some recordings by James Reese Europe's Society Orchestra. By 1919, bands were improvising breaks within multiple strain compositions, exemplifying the growing influence of the New Orleans style. In 1917, the Original Dixieland Jazz Band made the first ever jazz recordings; Livery Stable Blues and Dixie Jass Band One Step. MUSICAL EXAMPLE. They were a white band from New Orleans, and achieved popularity from playing at Schiller's café in Chicago and Reisenweber's Restaurant in New York. The group brought the New Orleans style to national prominence, and were probably the first U.S. band to generate mass popularity and make its members stars.
Jelly Roll Morton travelled around America from 1907 to 1923 playing both in bands and solo, reaching Chicago by 1914 and settled there in 1922. He recorded mostly his own compositions in this city, including many ensemble recordings with the Red Hot Peppers in which he showed a deft awareness of the balance between improvisation and arrangement. This gift ensured that he still remains today one of the best composer-arrangers in early jazz. Morton played many different styles, for example rags, blues, as well as selections from light opera, popular songs, and dances. He claimed to have invented Jazz in 1902, being one of the first pianists to transform ragtime into a more linear jazz style. The artist’s solo work demonstrates his brilliant ability to separate the rhythms of his hands, sometimes beginning to fuse Latin music with jazz. Morton’s Grandpa’s Spells with the Red Hot Peppers, is one of the finest early jazz recordings, using breaks throughout and ingeniously mixing various combinations of his players to give the arrangement a wide range of textures. The piece consists of nine 16 bar strains, with a short introduction and coda. There are two solo strains featuring clarinet solos, and other strains which vary the featuring of some other instruments. The piece is a prime example of Morton’s development of solo ragtime playing, using a ragtime structure with a C strain modulating to the subdominant, to more complex band arrangements with the use of improvisation, a feature to gain greater popularity in the expansion of Jazz. Stride pianists also maintained a close connection to the ragtime form and performance practice.
Inevitably the roles of different instruments within a band changed over time, due to the changing and developing of the players' talents. The cornet usually carried the melody; however it was eclipsed by the trumpet in the 1920s. In the traditional collective improvisational style of New Orleans, the trombone would play countermelodies, bass pitches and harmony, often sliding between notes. Many early New Orleans clarinettists were readers of music rather than improvisers; however they developed a more blues-based style of playing which was to become part of the New Orleans tradition. Most of the musicians played the normal B flat clarinet, although some players preferred the E flat soprano, favoured by some older clarinettists. A bass instrument was regularly used in ragtime groups from the 1890s, with players often doubling on tuba for marching bands, and string bass for 'sit-down' groups. The bass was originally bowed, as this was typical of New Orleans string bands. Generally the bass provided the basic harmonic accompaniment of roots and fifths of chords. The New Orleans bassists usually played on the first and fourth beats of the 4/4 meter but occasionally marked all four beats or used stop time. The bass was not always used in early bands, for example in several King Oliver and Original Dixieland Jazz Band recordings, the piano and banjo supply the bass notes. Similar to the bass, the guitar and banjo were primarily accompanying instruments, on which the player normally strummed every four beats or syncopated the meter by playing on beats 2 and 4 of the bar. One of the best known New Orleans banjo-guitarists was Johnny St. Cyr, who recorded with both Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton. The drum kit evolved when players organised marching band instruments so they could all be played by an individual percussionist. Some early players used a foot pedal with a drum twice the size of bass drums used today. The bass drum marked the first and third beats of a 4/4 meter, sometimes all four beats to coincide with the bass instrument. Wood-blocks and cowbells were often attached to the bass drum for additional sound effects. Ragtime drumming was often heavily influenced by military patterns, and these patterns were taken over by early jazz drummers. Lastly, the piano supplied another accompaniment in a jazz band, often consisting of bass notes and chords, which together provided a backup rhythm.
The closing of the red light district of New Orleans; Storyville, in 1917, reduced employment opportunities for the musicians there, causing them to leave. Many musicians also left earlier however, such as the Original Creole Band and Sidney Bechet, leaving in New Orleans in 1914 to play in cities such as Chicago, New York and Paris. Chicago was the most appealing of all the American cities, as it offered the most employment opportunities, and was easy to reach at the end of the railway line. The legacy of New Orleans jazz is a long lasting one, with the style of music still being played today. There are entire periodicals devoted to Dixieland, and various players that specialise in the style continue to find work.
The departure of New Orleans jazz musicians was part of a widespread trend known as the Great Migration, in which many blacks left their rural life in the South for a more urban life in the North. The most compelling reason behind the migration was the availability of fair wage jobs cities had to offer. As a result of this nearly half a million black citizens moved north between 1916 and 1919, the largest internal migration in America's history. Between 1910 and 1920, more the 65, 000 blacks emigrated from the southern states of Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas and Texas, to Chicago alone. Many northern cities developed black sections, as whites refused to live amongst them. The presence of the black people changed the entertainment industry across the country, for example in Chicago the entertainment community responded earnestly to the demand for black music. Cabarets and nightclubs emerged along the South Side and created a new urban nightlife full of music for listening and dancing. Chicago's 'black and tan' clubs allowed more interracial mingling than did the clubs in New York, allowing whites to take in the nightlife and white musicians to hear the black bands, an important factor in the development of Jazz.
The performance opportunities Chicago had to offer attracted many New Orleans musicians, and they were able to transplant their music to much more sophisticated venues. They adapted to the urbane musical professionalism of Chicago, and the higher level of musical competition led to the creation of distinct ensembles with their own stylistic arrangements, as well as the development of individual improvisational skill. The competition in Chicago required a higher level of virtuosity from the players than ever before, and up-tempo compositions were expected, for people to dance to. The beginning of the 1920s, show a general shift from melodic to harmonic improvisation. At the beginning of the decade 'improvised solos' sometimes adhered to the melody of the composition, occasionally embellishing it. By the end of the 20s, soloists were developing improvisational techniques that reflected the harmonic framework of the composition.
Between the years 1920 and 1930, great soloists began to emerge as leaders, or members of different jazz ensembles. Some of the4se players included Louis Armstrong, a trumpeter with an unwavering grasp of swing, and some of the best improvisational skills a jazz musician had ever had, with very high range and fine tone. His improvisations were dramatic and they broke away from the original melody, influencing many jazz ensembles to use more virtuosic individual solos in their arrangements. Other important soloists were clarinettist Sidney Bechet and cornetist Bix Beiderbecke, who specialised in middle range rather than Armstrong's high notes. Leaders were beginning to use bigger ensembles than previously, such as Louis Armstrong's Hot Fives and Hot Sevens, with which he recorded the famous 'West End Blues', and the 'Savoy Blues'. This use of bigger ensembles and more complex arrangements lead and influenced certain trends in the next era of the development of Jazz.
