Early Jazz History

Jazz is one of the most dynamic forms of music, having started in New Orleans with blues and ragtime around the 1900. Jazz was not heard at concerts around the nation. Jazz was heard in the small bars and “honky tonks” of the poor New Orleans neighborhoods. Now the idea of jazz being a secluded and limited from the rest of the nation and world is preposterous to musicians today because of the way Jazz has permeated our entire society. Jazz has changed so much since its inception and that is evident in the differences between famous jazz musicians of our era and the ones before it. The best way to document jazz’s most notable changes is through the similarities and differences in the musicians from past and present. In essence, How do early jazz musicians affect modern jazz musicians? To answer the question we will use one very notable musician from jazz’s early stages
(1900’s-1950’s) and one very notable musician from the stages thereafter.
For comparison’s sake I chose Louis Armstrong (1901-1971) as an ambassador for jazz’s early stages and Wynton Marsalis (1961-) for jazz’s later stages seeing as they both come from the same ethnic background and geographic location. To analyze the differences in jazz we must first isolate the variable by ruling out differences in the two subjects of our study. To do this we will inspect the biographies of our subjects. Following our study of our subjects we will dive into music that Armstrong has played, that Marsalis has played, and music that they have both played looking for the subtle changes that has occurred over jazz’s long history. To begin with, we’ll take a look at Louis Armstrong. Mr. Armstrong was born on August 4th 1901 (despite claims he was born on July 4th 1900) to William Armstrong and Mary Ann (or “Mayann” as she was more affectionately called) Albert in a poor New Orleans suburb known as Storyville. The only decently paying work in Storyville was prostitution and, seeing as William left shortly after Louis was born, Mayann had to work as a sex
worker to make ends meet for Louis and his sister. To shelter them from the horribleness of her work Mayann eventually sent Louis and his sister to live with their paternal grandmother, Josephine Armstrong. Years later Armstrong joined his mother on the other side of Storyville, where she did her work. Louis took odd jobs and moved around school-wise until he landed at the Waif’s Home for Colored Boys in early 1912 after discharging a revolver filled with blanks at a New Year's celebration. He did well in Waif’s Home and in 1913 joined the “Waif’s Home Brass Band” playing a number of instruments before landing on the cornet. He played under Peter Davis gaining a mild understanding of classical literature and reading before moving back in with Mayann and his sister Beatrice. From there he started hauling coal by day and playing his trumpet by night. Eventually as the war ended Louis moved to playing full time where he was really looking forward to a career in music. While the setting of bars and brothels aren’t always the best way to get noticed as real talent, Armstrong was recognized by a man named Fate Marble who invited Armstrong to come play for the river boat he worked on. This river boat started in New Orleans and worked it’s way up to Chicago. Armstrong, along with the rest of the boat’s band, would play nightly entertainment for the white folk who donned the boat. Armstrong did this for a while until being noticed by the famous Joe Oliver. From there he started making it big in Chicago with “King Oliver's Creole Band”. This was the inception of his professional jazz career.