Overview
Chicago jazz musicians continued to gravitate to New York, owing largely to the sheer magnitude of the Big Apple and the opportunities it presented. In this lesson, we will learn more about important musicians, their performing talents, and members of the orchestras they established.
In the 1920s and 1930s, Chicago and New York were not the only cities where jazz was emerging and evolving. Its rapid spread meant that nearly every metropolitan area in the United States had its own burgeoning jazz scene.
There were, however, a few cities where jazz was particularly nurtured and performance opportunities were more abundant than in others. In this section we will see how Kansas City was one of those cities, possibly the only one that could rival New York and Chicago in the early 1930s, and look at the early careers of Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Mary Lou Williams, three musicians who displayed enormous gifts as instrumentalists, bandleaders, composers, and arrangers.
Objectives
Upon completion of this lesson, you will be able to do the following:
- Appreciate Benny Goodman’s contribution to the popularization of swing music in America
- Recognize Kansas City's importance as a center for jazz during the swing era
- Identify musicians associated with Count Basie and their contributions to jazz
- Identify Count Basie's use of call and response in his band's arrangements
- Define riff
- Define head arrangement
- Recognize the contributions to jazz of Mary Lou Williams
- Recognize the contributions of Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald to vocal jazz and popular song
Kansas City
Prohibition in the United States (1920 to 1933) presented economic opportunities — most of them illegal — that were met in a host of different ways by enterprising people and institutions. Organized crime got its big start during these years, and many municipal governments turned a blind eye to the goings on. These were the Roaring 20s. Money was plentiful, booze was flowing, and jazz was playing for the crowds.
Then came the Great Depression (1929 to early 1940s), which devastated most areas of the country and curtailed performance opportunities for many professional jazz musicians. But as Prohibition continued, some cities — particularly those with a good measure of political corruption — promoted the vices that would allow them to withstand even the most severe economic downturn the nation had seen. Kansas City was just such a city, a thriving Mecca for the nightlife — and for jazz!
In 1958, Ella Fitzgerald became the first African-American woman to win a Grammy Award ("Best Jazz Performance" and "Best Female Pop Vocal Performance").
