CHICAGO STYLE - Jazz Cafe

About the year 1900, Jazz was born in the streets of old New Orleans. Way down yonder, death was a big deal. The graves were built high above ground, like miniature mausoleums, and the dear departed got a proper send-off, with a marching band pacing solemnly behind the hearse. That’s how good old Satchmo - the legendary Louis Armstrong, godfather of the art - started out, jamming and riffing on his cornet over the improvised lines of clarinet, trombone and tuba, getting more inventive and playful with each passing year…

Meanwhile the Riverboats, those fine old baroque paddle steamers, kept on plying up and down the Mississippi. They were floating saloon bars, and with his coming of age, about 1920, Satch and his boss King Oliver got on board to entertain. Some of the passengers disembarked at Memphis, which would see the Birth of the Blues; most went on to Chicago, to find work in the stockyards and meat packing plants. King and Louis managed to find fame and fortune in the hotels and Speakeasy joints run by the likes of Al Capone, and jazz became Chicago Style.

So what changed between Dixie and the Windy City? First, on the boat or in the speakeasy the music was a show not a parade, and instead of marching the jazzmen would be seated on stage. This allowed the addition of large instruments like piano and double bass to fill out the sound, and a full kit of drums instead of just a military snare and chest-mounted bass drum.

Another thing was the way the players interacted with eachother. On the streets of N’Orleans they would all play in chorus, playfully interweaving lines to show off their ingenuity and skill. Up in Chicago, though, the rules changed, and apart from shared opening and closing choruses, each melodic instrument would take its turn to play a featured solo.

The third and perhaps most revolutionary change was the emergence of non-African-Amerian players. The original jazzmen like Satch and King came out of the South (“Dixie”), after the dissolution of slavery, and all had African ancestry. Up in Chicago - at the time America’s biggest and most prosperous city - young players of European origin were hip to the crazy new music, and wanted in on the act. One of the biggest emerging stars was Bix Beiderbecke, like Satchmo a cornet lead man, who was the son of German immigrants. Bud Freeman, Eddie Condon, and Jimmy MacPartland were others in the same vein. The Chicago style roared on throughout the Twenties - they called it “The Jazz Age” - and on into the Thirties, when the bands got bigger, and Swing arrived. Have fun at our Sunday Jazz Cafe Chicago Style on the 25th of May