Big band ensembles usually consist of 14–16 musicians who play from scored arrangements that incorporate repeated riffs, call and response, improvised solos, and rhythmic breaks. These features distinguish big jazz bands of the 1920s from the collective polyphonic style of the typically seven-member New Orleans jazz ensemble. By the mid-1920s, big bands had begun to establish a performance style that combined syncopated eighth-notes with improvised melodies. This innovation later evolved into what became known as the swing style.

When Southern musicians migrated to Northern cities, the jazz tradition experienced significant changes, evolving in new directions in Chicago, New York, and Kansas City, as well as out west to Los Angeles and San Francisco. Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton was one of the pioneers in the development of this tradition. He was not only an extraordinary pianist and stylist, but also an important composer—one of the earliest and one of the first to present his compositions, with his Red Hot Peppers band, in the mid and late 1920s. Throughout his life, Morton traveled continually, performing throughout the United States.

Jazz on Record

Researchers and fans place considerable emphasis on identifying the first jazz recordings. Recent research indicates that composer and multi-instrumentalist Wilbur Sweatman made the first jazz records (including “Down Home Rag”) in December 1916—before the Original Dixieland Jazz Band recorded. A popular vaudevillian, Sweatman mastered the art of playing three reed instruments simultaneously (long before Rahsaan Roland Kirk) and was a sensation on the stage in the early 20th century and into the jazz age.

Because of their willingness to record, the Original Dixieland Jazz Band (ODJB), made up of white musicians, established a jazz canon with their records in early 1917. They became known as the inventors of the music, which flourished in subsequent years throughout the United States and beyond, causing numerous musicians to form bands and play the standards recorded by the ODJB.

Big bands were not only instantly national, but international as well. Its introduction to France by James Reese Europe’s “Hellfighters” is well known, and jazz bands arrived in the Far East shortly thereafter. A band from the United States performed in Japan as early as 1920, and the written record indicates the new music was prevalent in the Philippines as well as Japan by the early 1920s, just before the King Oliver Creole Jazz Band recorded.

During the early jazz era, orchestras expanded from seven to 16 instrumentalists. Although, as bands increased in size, some larger ones were successful playing without written arrangements, it was more difficult to improvise adequate performances. This resulted in an increased use of written arrangements, unnecessary for smaller New Orleans ensembles.

Eventually, musicians had to adapt to reading and writing arrangements to have sufficient repertoire from which to choose. Some big bands employed “riffs,” or repeated phrases, as essential elements of their style. Different riffs were assigned to various instrumental sections of the orchestra and played against each other; for example, the brass section might carry on a musical dialogue with the reeds. These musical conversations between sections of the band allowed individuals within the group to have an increased backdrop for soloing.

In jazz, it is often difficult to distinguish between blues, popular, and jazz singers. Louis Armstrong, however, was seminal in defining a distinctive jazz vocal style by incorporating scat singing—an improvised technique in which wordless, sometimes nonsensical syllables substitute for an instrument—into his performances. “Heebie Jeebies” was one of the most famous songs that Armstrong popularized with his scat technique in the mid-1920s. Although Armstrong was not the first to actually record scat singing, a few jazz singers in the 1920s adopted his model, incorporating scat singing into their repertoire.