Chicago became the focal point for jazz in the early 1920s when New Orleans musicians found their way north after clubs in the Storyville area of New Orleans were closed. Jazz began to gain wider notice as recordings made in the Windy City sold throughout America. Chicago seemed to be an attraction for musicians in the Mid-West. Famous musicians who received attention for their work they did in Chicago were Earl Hines, Johnny Dodds, Louis Armstrong and King Oliver.
New York City was another contributor to the richness of jazz in many ways. The first piano style to be incorporated into jazz was stride, which developed from ragtime and was popular in New York. The city was also the center of the music publishing business. Also in New York, James Reese Europe experimented with a style of jazz that was involved in large orchestras. Many of his early recordings were considered ragtime, though, in 1919, his later recordings clearly show the creativeness of jazz. In the 1920s, New York City had two pioneering orchestras that would eventually greatly affect jazz history. Fletcher Henderson put together a band that first appeared at the Cotton Club in New York in 1923. His band included artists such as Coleman Hawkins and Don Redman. But it was not until Henderson brought Louis Armstrong from Chicago to play with his group that the band began to develop into a full-fledged jazz group. The thing that they were not aware of was that their band would end up helping to lead the future musicians in the swing era.
Duke Ellington moved to New York from Washington, DC in the early twenties and began to develop the skills of a composer which brought to him the great fame he enjoyed throughout his career. Another pioneer from New Orleans, Clarence Williams, had a hand in organizing many early jazz and blues recordings in New York. In the late twenties, the jazz center of the United States moved from Chicago to New York City, and many musicians followed.
During the twenties and thirties there were many groups known as Territory Bands playing jazz in smaller United States cities. In the late twenties, Kansas City's Bennie Moten Band acquired members of Walter Page's Blue Devils, which were formed in Oklahoma City. This group later evolved into the Count Basie Orchestra. Some other cities with up-and-coming jazz scenes were St. Louis, Memphis, and Detroit.
As jazz evolved, highly arranged dance music became normal. When white musicians like Benny Goodman added jazz to their life, the Swing or Big Band period began. Large African American and white jazz bands toured the United States, filling the radio airwaves with swing, a term which became equal with jazz. Great African American bands during the swing era were Jimmy Lunceford, Chick Webb, Mills Blue Rhythm and Andy Kirk's Clouds of Joy. It was also a time when vocalists began to come about. It was led by such favorites as: Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and Fats Waller.
Eve Berliner, an editor of Eve’s Magazine said, "It came out of the dark heart of America, the aura, the smoke-filled essence of jazz, the music of joy, abandon, yearning. New cadences, accents, pulsations. Nights of improvisation and hot rapturous jazz. New York's 52nd Street, Swing Street, the mecca. It was to be William P. Gottlieb who would capture with his own instrument, the camera, the soul of this jazz, its voices, its prophets, its players, Bill who would become the chronicler of the golden age."
