With Prohibition, the constitutional amendment that forbade the sale
of alcoholic beverages, the legal saloons and cabarets were closed;
but in their place hundreds of speakeasies appeared, where patrons
drank and were entertained by musicians. The presence of dance venues
and the subsequent increased demand for accomplished musicians meant
more artists were able to support themselves by playing professionally.
As a result, the numbers of professional musicians increased, and
jazz--like all the popular music of the 1920s--adopted the 4/4 beat
of dance music.
A third nineteenth-century invention, radio, came into its own in the
1920s, after the first public radio station in the U.S. began broadcasting
in Pittsburgh in 1922. Radio stations proliferated at a remarkable rate,
and with them, the popularity of jazz. Jazz became associated with
things modern, sophisticated and decadent. The second decade of the
new century, a time of technological marvels, flappers, flashy automobiles,
organized crime, bootleg whiskey and bathtub gin, would come to be known
as the Jazz Age.
Through a few recordings aimed at black audiences,
Louis Armstrong made
the first decisive change in jazz. He played with the usual New Orleans
march combo, in which everyone improvised simultaneously. But he was
an extraordinary improviser, capable of creating endless variations on
the initial melody. Armstrong also popularized scat, an improvisational
vocal technique in which nonsensical syllables or words are sung or
otherwise vocalized, often as part of a call-and-response interaction
with other musicians onstage. His unique, gravely voice and innate
sense of swing made scat an instant hit. Jazz became a solo form, and
big bandleaders -- perhaps, most notably,
Cab Calloway -- and,
later, trumpeter
Dizzy Gillespie and vocalists like
Ella Fitzgerald, jumped
on the scat bandwagon. Instrumentally and vocally, Armstrong became the
most celebrated and imitated jazz artist of his time.
In the early 1920s, popular music was still a mixture of things--current
dance numbers, novelty songs, show tunes. "Businessman's bounce music,"
as one horn player put it. But musicians with steady jobs, playing with
the same companions, were able to go far beyond that. The Ellington band
at the Cotton Club and the various Kansas City groups that became the
Count Basie band date from this period.
Over time, social strictures regarding racial segregation began to
relax in entertainment. White bandleaders, who tended to mold the
music more to orthodox rhythms and harmony, began to recruit black
musicians. In the mid-1930s,
Benny Goodman hired pianist
Teddy Wilson, vibraharpist
Lionel Hampton, and guitarist
Charlie Christian to join
small groups. During this period, the popularity of swing (genre) and
big band music was at its height, making stars of such men as
Glenn Miller and
Duke Ellington. Swing,
the popular music of its time, covered a broad spectrum from "sweet"
to "hot" bands, with the jazz content varying across the range.
A development of swing known as "jumping the blues" anticipated
rhythm and blues and rock and roll in some respects. It involved
the use of small combos instead of big bands and a concentration on
up-tempo music using the familiar blues chord progressions. One brief
variation, known as boogie-woogie, used a doubled rhythm--that is, the
rhythm section played "eight to the bar," eight beats per measure
instead of four.
'Big' Joe Turner, a Kansas
City singer who worked in the 1930s with Swing bands like Count Basie's,
became a boogie-woogie star in the 1940s and then in the 1950s was one
of the first innovators of rock and roll, notably with his song
"Shake, Rattle and Roll". Another jazz founder of rock and roll was
saxophonist
Louis Jordan.
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