Ragtime

Ragtime is a style of composed piano music that flourished from the 1890s to about 1915. It was
developed primarily by African American pianists who traveled in the Midwest and south playing in
saloons and dance halls. Not long after it originated, ragtime became a nationally popular style that
reached millions of people. Although the forms of ragtime are derived from European marches and
dances, its rhythms are rooted in African American folk music.
Early jazz musicians often used ragtime melodies as a springboard for their improvisations. The
syncopations, steady beat, and piano style of ragtime were an important legacy for jazz.
a composer and pianist whose father had been a slave. Joplin was trained in “classical” music and
wrote a ballet and two operas, as well as many piano rags, the term often used for a ragtime
composition. Joplin’s most famous piano pieces include Maple Leaf Rag and The Entertainer.

Blues
Among the most important foundations of jazz is a type of music known as blues. The term refers
both to a form of vocal and instrumental music and to a style of performance. Blues grew out of
African American folk music, such as work songs, spirituals, and the field hollers of slaves. Exactly
when blues originated is uncertain, but by around the 1890s it was sung in rural areas of the south.
The original “country blues,” usually performed with guitar accompaniment, was not standardized in
form or style.
A blues stanza is set to a harmonic framework that is usually twelve bars in length. This
harmonic pattern, known as twelve-bar blues, involves only three basic chords: tonic (I), subdominant
(IV), and dominant (V). The specific ordering of these chords can be outlined as follows: tonic (4
bars)—subdominant (2 bars)—tonic (2 bars)—dominant (2 bars)— tonic (2 bars). Here is how the
three-line stanza is set to this chord progression.

New Orleans Style

From about 1900 to 1917, jazz developed in several American cities, but the major center was
New Orleans—the home of such important jazz musicians as Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton, Joseph
“King” Oliver, and Louis Armstrong. Around the turn of the century, New Orleans was a major port
and a thriving cultural and commercial center with a cosmopolitan character. Its diverse population
included people of African, French, Spanish, Portuguese, English, Italian, and Cuban ancestry.
Band music—including early jazz—was heard at picnics, parades, and political meetings and in
dance halls. African American bands often played jazz during funeral processions. Jazz in New
Orleans style (or Dixieland) was typically played by a small group of five to eight performers. The
melodic instruments, or front line, included the cornet (or trumpet), clarinet, and trombone. The
front-line players would improvise several contrasting melodic lines at once, producing a kind of
polyphonic texture. This collective improvisation was the most distinctive feature of New Orleans
jazz. Each instrument had a special role. The cornet was the leader, playing variations of the main
melody. Above the cornet, the clarinet wove a countermelody, usually in a faster rhythm. The
trombone played a bass line that was simpler than the upper lines, but melodically interesting,
nevertheless. The syncopations and rhythmic independence of the melodic instruments created a
marvelous sense of excitement. The front-line instruments were supported by a rhythm section that
clearly marked the beat and provided a harmonic foundation over which the soloists could improvise.
This section usually included drums, chordal instruments (banjo, guitar, piano), and a single-line low
instrument (plucked bass or tuba).
Swing
A new jazz style called swing developed in the 1920s and flourished from 1935 to 1945, a decade
nicknamed the “swing era.” (In this section, the term swing refers to this specific style rather than to
the rhythmic vitality characteristic of all jazz.)
Swing was played mainly by big bands, whose powerful sound could fill the large dance halls
and ballrooms that mushroomed across the country, particularly after the repeal of prohibition in
1933. There were hundreds of “name” bands—both black and white—such as those of Duke
Ellington, Count Basie, Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, and Benny Goodman (the “king of swing”).
Some bands included such leading musicians as the saxophonists Coleman Hawkins and Lester
Young and featured singers such as Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and Frank Sinatra. During the
1930s and 1940s, big bands were as important as rock groups have been since the 1950s. Swing
became a truly popular music, reaching millions of people. Benny Goodman’s band, for example, was
heard coast to coast on a weekly radio show called Let’s Dance. The kind of music once associated
with honky-tonks and brothels had achieved a new respectability, symbolized by Benny Goodman’s
historic jazz concert at Carnegie Hall in 1938.