The earliest form of jazz originally arose in the cultural crossroads of New Orleans around the turn of the 20th century. The typical New Orleans jazz combo might feature a trumpet or cornet playing a melodic lead, with a trombone providing harmonies and a clarinet playing countermelody, and a steady rhythm section consisting of various combinations of piano, banjo, guitar, bass and tuba. The style was directly descended from the marching brass bands that performed at the city’s parades and funerals. Unlike the related style of Dixieland, New Orleans jazz tends to emphasize ensemble playing and group improvisation.
Around the turn of the century, cornetist Buddy Bolden formed what’s generally considered to be the first New Orleans jazz band. That group, which played an improvisation-heavy variation on ragtime, became extremely popular locally but was never recorded. In the 1920s, though, New Orleans jazz musicians began recording prolifically, helping to popularize the style internationally. One of the first New Orleans jazz players to gain fame was Louis Armstrong, who would emerge as one of jazz’s most influential musicians and one of the world’s most beloved entertainers.
Many of the African-American musicians who built New Orleans jazz—including Armstrong, Kid Ory, Sidney Bechet, King Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton, whose “Jelly Roll Blues” became the first piece of jazz music to be published in 1915—launched their careers playing in the bars and brothels of the city’s red-light district of Storyville. In the decades since, New Orleans’ jazz traditions have lived on in the work of such Crescent City sons as Wynton and Branford Marsalis and Harry Connick Jr., and in the ongoing work of such veteran acts as the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. Meanwhile, the classic original recordings of Louis Armstrong and his contemporaries continue to gain new listeners around the globe.
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