[Tradjazz] Traditional Jazz

[GeoHunt1 at aol.com]

To Billy Grant:

You brought up the subject of "Traditional Jazz" or, for lazy people, "Trad 
Jazz".  I can't resist answering this one even though you are going to get 100 
different definitions.  What the heck, read then all and you will be an expert 
on the subject - and just as confused as all the rest of us.

TRADITIONAL JAZZ

Traditional jazz is the type of music that first evolved in Buddy Bolden's 
Band in New Orleans, LA.  Traditional Jazz was first identifiable as an unique 
musical art form in the circa of 1905.  Musicians in that Buddy Bolden Band, 
and other New Orleans musicians who heard it, took that type (or style) of music 
to other bands in which they played.  It spread rapidly to all the numerous 
dance halls and bordellos in the great crescent city of New Orleans.

Traditional Jazz is the same as some experts call New Orleans Jazz.  It is 
sometimes defined as being much like the Dixieland Jazz we hear today, except it 
was almost all ensemble playing, with solos being very rare.  Traditional 
Jazz was not heard outside of New Orleans (except a few New Orleans bands playing 
on the Colored Vaudeville Circuit) until 1917, when there was a mass exodus 
of Traditional Jazz musicians from New Orleans due to World War I, the US Navy 
and local New Orleans politics.  Most New Orleans musicians, including the 
Traditional Jazz exponents traveled the US for a while and then settled in 
Chicago.  Smaller numbers got to Los Angeles and New York in that 1917 to 1922 era.

The most famous Traditional Jazz musicians in that 1905 to 1917 New Orleans 
era were Buddy Bolden, Joe Oliver, Kid Ory, Bunk Johnson, Freddie Keppard, 
Johnny Dodds, Tommy Ladnier, and Jelly Roll Morton.  Joe Oliver was definitely the 
"King" of New Orleans Traditional Jazz when he left New Orleans in 1918, and 
continued to be Joe "King" Oliver when he took over the South side of Chicago.

When Joe "King" Oliver telegraphed the kid he remembered from New Orleans, 
Louis Armstrong, to come join his band in Chicago, the era of Traditional Jazz 
was over.  For the first time the front line was more than three instruments 
(cornet {or trumpet}, clarinet and trombone), and more importantly, the band had 
forsaken ensemble playing for the "instrumental solo rotation".  Of course, 
Louis Armstrong was great at that; he was ready to take over as the "King" of 
New Orleans jazz horn soloists from his mentor, Joe Oliver.

It is ironic, we always say that the black New Orleans Traditional Jazz 
musicians influenced the white high school musicians (Jimmy McPartland, Bud 
Freeman, Frank Teschemacher, Joe Sullivan, Jimmy Lannigan, Dave Tough, Gene Krupa, 
George Wettling, Muggsy Spanier, Eddie Condon and Bix Beiderbecke) from Chicago 
in their style of playing jazz, but the school kids from Chicago also 
influenced Joe Oliver, et al, from New Orleans to play many more solos and fewer 
ensembles.

So the way New Orleans jazz musicians played their jazz from its inception 
around 1905 until a little after their 1917 to 1920 mass exodus from New 
Orleans, maybe about 1923, is defined as New Orleans Traditional Jazz.  After that, 
even the jazz of the most famous New Orleans jazz musicians of the time (1923) 
changed, and that was the end of Tradition Jazz as played by its originators. 

Certainly, jazz musicians came along later, figured out what traditional jazz 
sounded like, and played that kind of music.  That was a major fete, because 
little or none of the originators playing Traditional Jazz was recorded.  The 
"latter day saints" had to beg the old time musicians, when a few were 
together, to play Traditional Jazz so they could hear it and learn to play it 
themselves.  

Those white Chicago high school kids, who went to the South side to hear 
those black New Orleans musicians play, then got together themselves to play jazz. 
 It was a little different, having a lot more solos for one thing, and it 
became known as Chicago Jazz.  If you want one phrase to describe all jazz up to 
this time (about 1929) you can just call it Dixieland Jazz.  That is a good 
"umbrella" term to cover all jazz from 1905 to 1929.

Traditional Jazz is how jazz music was played in New Orleans (you can also 
call it New Orleans Jazz) from its inception (really evolution) early in the 
20th century (about 1905) through the time when most of the New Orleans musicians 
playing it left New Orleans during and shortly after World War I and until 
they stopped playing that style (about 1923).

That is my conception of "Traditional Jazz", Billy Grant.  Now, you just sit 
back, relax, and read what all the people who disagree with me have to say.

Oh, Billy Grant, if you really wrote in your final exam that Traditional Jazz 
was only played in Britain, you get "FAIL".

Have A Good Life, Billy,

George Hunt

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