100 Years Of Jazz In One Small Blog

Music Director & 100 Years Of Jazz In 99 Minutes Concert Producer Richard Pite Takes Us On A Whirlwind Tour Of Jazz History.

2000 – 2015:  

Jazz has never been more varied or diverse.  So many different styles come under the jazz heading that listeners often wonder where the boundaries are.  What started off as a music that grew out of the melting pot of New Orleans at the turn of the century has now turned into a music of the world and because almost all the musicians who play it and the audiences who listen to it have access to everything on YouTube and Spotify every style is thrown into the mix and the barriers and boundaries have come down.  The big names include the Scandinavian trio EST, Americans Bad Plus and Diane Krall and from the UK Polar Bear and JamieCullum.

(Visit our 100 years Of Jazz In 99 Minutes concert pages.)

1980s - 2000:  

The 100 Years Of Jazz In 99 Minutes Band - Less Georgina Jackson

At the start of the 80’s many of jazz’s great names from the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s are still performing but by 2000 many have gone and a new generation replaces them and radically changes the music once again.  At the forefront of the new wave are jazz rappers and hip hoppers like Gang Starr and A Tribe Called Quest.  Continuing the more recognisably jazzy styles are new stars Joshua Redman, Roy Hargrove and Christian McBride and championing the jazz legacy of Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong is the trumpeter, bandleader and composer Wynton Marsalis.  In the UK at the start of the 80’s there is a jazz revival with musicians Courtney Pine and Loose Tubes leading the way.

1960–1979:  

Work Song (1961) - from 100 Years Of Jazz In 99 Minutes

Performed By The Jazz Repertory Company at Boisdale Of Canary Wharf

The beginning of the 1960s heralds the jazz of Ornette Coleman - a radically new approach which delights the young hipsters and horrifies the rest!  Then the 60’s get ever more radical – particularly the musicians who are caught up in the civil rights campaign in America and the more extreme revolutionary black politics -musicians such as JohnColtrane, Archie Shepp, Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, and Max Roach encapsulate this era.  Miles Davis launches the jazz-rock of the 70’s with his album Bitches Brew.  Over the next decade Herbie Hancock, Weather Report, Donald Byrd, Freddie Hubbard bring the music popularity with rhythms borrowed from dance clubs mixed with the rhythms of the world.   In the UK jazz musicians such as Stan Tracey and Tubby Hayes become international stars.

1940-1959:  

It Don't Mean A Thing (1931) - from 100 Years Of Jazz In 99 Minutes

Performed By The Jazz Repertory Company at Boisdale Of Canary Wharf

WWII - During the war whilst the dancers in America and the UK are still jiving to the big bands a new music is developing in the clubs of New York.  It’s called Be-Bop and its three biggest names are Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Thelonius Monk.  The music is difficult to play and doesn’t appeal to dancers but its importance in jazz history is immense.  After the popularity of swing the audience declines for the new jazz and rhythm and blues and later rock ‘n’ roll takes up the slack and brings the dancers back on to the floor.  In the 1950’s there is cool jazz from Chet Baker, jazz in strange time such as Take 5 by Dave Brubeck and an increasing influence of Latin American rhythms on modern jazz.

1920-1939: 

Cake Walkin' Baby (1924) - from 100 Years Of Jazz In 99 Minutes

Performed By The Jazz Repertory Company at Boisdale Of Canary Wharf

The Roaring 20s and the emergence of the first big stars in jazz and the greatest of them all, Louis Armstrong.  Other important names from the 1920s are Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington, Sidney Bechet and Bix Beiderbecke – the first white jazz star who played in the most successful band of the 1920’s, the Paul Whiteman Orchestra.  The 1930s saw the emergence of the Swing Era when jazz was at its most commercially successful – many thousands of dancers would go and see the greatest names of the day, Artie Shaw, Jimmy Lunceford, Glenn Miller and Cab Calloway.  The music business was still racially segregated but the King of Swing, Benny Goodman, began to change all that when he featured both black and white musicians on stage together for the first time.

1900-1919: 

The Original Dixiland Jazz Band 

At the turn of the century Ragtime was the new sensation in America and it soon spread throughout Europe too.  The most famous Ragtime composer was ScottJoplin but the biggest Ragtime hit came in 1911 with Irving Berlin’s Alexander’s Ragtime Band.  New Orleans was the birthplace of jazz – the unschooled black musicians would take popular songs, opera, polkas, ragtime and other styles and play them by ear and play around with the melodies.  Both black and white bands existed from the earliest days but they were strictly segregated – the most legendary name in this era was the black trumpeter Buddy Bolden but he never made a record.  The first jazz record was made by a white band called The Original Dixieland Jazz Band and it was released in 1917. 

The Jazz Repertory Company Concert Showreel

See our full list of concerts here.

A History Of Drummers In Film & An Irksome Example Of Health & Safety

In Anne Billson’s excellent round up of drummers on film in the Telegraph she mentioned Gene Krupa nifty matchbox percussion in a nightclub scene with Barbara Stanwyck in Ball of Fire.   

Matchbox Boogie - Gene Krupa

Ball Of Fire, 1941

Back in 2009 when I put on the Krupa centenary concert at Cadogan Hall we wanted to reproduce this scene so in rehearsal I got out the matchbox and proceeded to play it with two matchsticks (this is actually more difficult than you’d think because of modern matchboxes having no rough striking surfaces so sandpaper had to be attached). 

Gene Krupa Centenary Concert At Cadogan Hall

The Jazz Repertory Company

Within seconds one of the hall’s staff appeared and said that there was no way he was going to allow us to do this.  I explained that the two matches would be lit for about two seconds and then blown out by me, but he wasn’t having any of it.   

Gene Krupa On Drums

This made me whine on to him for much too long about how in the history of British cinema up until 40 years ago a large percentage of the audience would have been happily puffing away and in all that time not one cinema burned down. (I was possibly wrong about this – does anybody know of any instances where cigarettes caused a cinema to go up in smoke?).

Richard Pite On Drums

Pete Long suggested an excellent compromise.  We introduce the number, issue a health and safety warning and explain we couldn’t exactly reproduce the scene in the film and then I donned hard hat, safety glasses, orange visibility jacket and waved two torches around during the feature.  I’m pleased to say it got a laugh (and also allowed me to rant on in pubs for a long while after about “elf and safety gone mad” – an essential part of the conversational repertoire of a grumpy old git).

Richard Pite On Drums

The post script was that at the Purcell Room the following year we did actually get grudging permission to go ahead and do the routine with the matchbox but I was so nervous about setting the esteemed venue on fire I couldn’t get the bloody matches to light.

A list of our www.jazzrep.co.uk concerts can be found here and our showreel is below.