All About Jazz

     It's all about the jazz, and the 1920's was this genre's golden age! It all started with the beginning of many independent record companies and smaller operations that were not afraid of taking chances on new music and artists that other larger recording companies shied away from.  Some of those risks taken led to some of the greatest early jazz, blues and country performers of the decade.  Although Jazz music, originating from New Orleans, had been around since the early 1900's, it had really begun to spread across the country in the late 'teens.  Black and white musicians from New Orleans moved North towards employment spots, mainly in Chicago.  The large number of speakeasies, or illegal bars and saloons selling alcohol, created plenty of opportunities for young and new musicians to perform in small cabarets, ballrooms, and dance halls. 

     The start of 1922, an independent company in Richmond, Indiana called Gennett Records, began recording jazz groups seen performing in Chicago.  The very first jazz group the company recorded was the New Orleans Rhythm Kings.  Then in 1923, King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band with young Louis Armstrong was recorded, followed by a series of solo piano recordings by Jelly Roll Morton in the same year.  Throughout the next year, Gennett Records also recorded the band The Wolverines, a northern group influenced by the original New Orleans Rhythm Kings and King Oliver's Jazz Band, and featured a newer cornetist Bix Beiderbecke.  At this time another small recording company had opened in Chicago, called Paramount Records, and had began competing with Gennett and Okeh Record company to find the best and newest one-hit-wonder jazz talents.

     By the middle of the decade, jazz musicians had sculpted their skills in collectively improvising their jazz music of the late 'teens and early 20's, and were more often in bands performing popular tunes of the day and taking the occasional solo on their own.  By the mid-to-late 1920's, Chicago's original title as the center of jazz began to dwindle, and New York, already known to be the center of the entire music industry, would become a magnet and draw in many musicians from other and all parts of the nation.  Kansas City had created a haven for jazz musicians by this time, as well, and its many nightclubs, speakeasies, and dance halls were a major part in making the city a hot-spot for musicians.