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Some Jazz Artists of Importance In the History of Jazz
Crest
By the late 1920s and early ’30s, jazz musicians were transforming hundreds of well-crafted songs for Broadway musicals (written mainly by Jewish immigrants and their progeny, who had fled persecution in Europe and Russia) into what would later be known as jazz standards.
Composers and band leaders such as Duke Ellington were writing brilliant pieces for the jazz orchestra. Historically, most of the great innovators in jazz have been African Americans: Louis Armstrong, Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Miles Davis.
By the late 1930s, with the success of swing-era big-bands lead by the Dorsey brothers, Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, and others, jazz was the most popular musical genre in America, eclipsing “square” interpretations of Broadway show tunes.
Mainstream Genre
At the end of World War II, the popularity of jazz was starting to decline. The advent of bebop sustained a healthy interest in jazz well into the 1950s, after which several other emergent genres took the spotlight. Today, jazz remains a solid mainstream genre, showing no signs of fading away.
Jazz brought improvisation back from near-extinction in Western music. Improvisation combines the creation of music with the performance of music. The hallmark of jazz is that the performer composes while performing—improvises— although the performer follows some sort of model or form (see Section 7.9.2).