and was spread to Chicago and New York City essentially by New Orleans bands by the 1910s. Early Dixieland jazz combined brass band marches, French Quadrilles, ragtime and blues with collective, polyphonic improvisation. It is considered a very happy music although it is the music customarily played for marching funerals closely associated with the South and especially New Orleans. The instrumentation consists of a trumpet, that plays the main melody -- usually with a lot of bounce and flair; the trombone, which plays a counter-melody; the clarinet usually plays in and out independent of the melody; the piano played the chords; and, the tuba which is frequently used in place of a bass but can also be used for solos, and it keeps the rhythm along with the drums. It is usually a 2/4 rhythm or "Ooom pah, Ooom pah". Sometimes, the early Dixieland groups recorded with a banjo or guitar keeping rhythm but the drums were often considered too overpowering for these instruments in live performances. Well-known jazz standard songs from the Dixieland era such as "Basin Street Blues" and "When the Saints Go Marching In" are known even to non-jazz fans. Hot Jazz link between Dixieland and big band swing and lasted about the same length of time as Prohibition (13 years). The combo's personnel expanded and started using, for instance, 2 trumpet players. It is not as polished as swing music. Many of the same musicians evolved from playing in both Dixieland and ragtime bands. Ragtime served as the roots for this category producing musical offshoots such as stride piano, a more improvisational piano style popular in Harlem, New York in the 1920s and 1930s and the finger picking guitar style later referred to as Piedmont Blues. Ragtime infused with blues became hot jazz. One of the great jazz pianists of all time, James P. Johnson was the king of "stride" pianists in the 1920s. Stride piano was largely |