The book "Jazzmen" (1939) claimed New Orleans as the birthplace
of jazz and introduced the legend of Buddy Bolden as the "First Man
of Jazz." Much of the information that the book relied on came from
a highly controversial source: Bunk Johnson. He claimed to have
played with Bolden and that together they had pioneered jazz.
Johnson made many recordings talking about and playing the music
of the Bolden era. These recordings have been treated with
skepticism because of doubts about Johnson's credibility. Using
oral histories, the "Jazzmen" interview notes, and unpublished
archive material, this book confirms that Bunk Johnson did play
with Bolden. This confirmation, in turn, has profound implications
for Johnson's recorded legacy in describing the music of the early
years of New Orleans jazz.
New Orleans jazz was different from ragtime in a number of ways.
It was a music that was collectively improvised, and it carried a
new tonality--the tonality of the blues. How early jazz musicians
improvised together and how the blues became a part of jazz has
until now been a mystery. Part of the reason New Orleans jazz
developed as it did is that all the prominent jazz pioneers,
including Buddy Bolden, Bunk Johnson, Louis Armstrong, Sidney
Bechet, Johnny Dodds, and Kid Ory, sang in barbershop (or barroom)
quartets. This book describes in both historical and musical terms
how the practices of quartet singing were converted to the
instruments of a jazz band, and how this, in turn, produced
collectively improvised, blues-inflected jazz, that unique sound of
New Orleans.
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