Chicago: Lord of Jazz

            Quantifying a city’s influence on a cultural form such as music is challenging because the debate hinges on a variety of factors: the social, economical, and political climates of the area, the legendary figures of that scene, and the development of the music itself. While New York may have produced more figureheads than Chicago—Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, James P. Johnson, Art Tatum—New York seems a sidestep in the evolution of swing and jazz.

            Jazz’s move from New Orleans to Chicago began with King Oliver, who sparked the first wave of innovation on the jazz formula. He took the group-performance ethos of Storyville jazz and, upon bringing it to Chicago, made it an individual’s medium (1.31 Lecture). King Oliver’s sound transformed the softer, brothel-oriented New Orleans style with a sound that was bigger, brassier, more aggressive, that prominently featured the soloist, and was engineered for Chicago’s decidedly livelier dance pavilions. Improvisation was encouraged, as bands would play well into the night, and the range of jazz was broadened and deepened. Though stride piano, developed in New York, encouraged improvisation, I believe stride acts as an amplifier of previously existing forms, rather than as a brand new element that existed outside of ragtime or jazz (as Gioia suggests of New York on page 106). However, I do acknowledge the dialogic aspect of stride piano as a reaction to and addition to jazz.

            The Chicago Race Riot of 1919 had social and economical ramifications for the following decades, which defined how jazz spread both within and without the city. Segregation between blacks and whites applied to music venues, allowing blacks access to black-only music venues, while whites were allowed to attend any performance they pleased (Gioia 55). The Austin High Gang, a popular all-white jazz group, copped their style from watching King Oliver and Louis Armstrong play in a black neighborhood. The kids lacked the musical maturity or clarity of their influences (Bix Beiderbeck being one of them), their jazz hit “Nobody’s Sweetheart” became a huge hit, selling thousands of records (The Chicagoans 158). As a result, white audiences began listening to and actively seeking jazz, which was previously associated with vices (Lecture 1.31). Thusly, the jazz scene took hold of Chicago and transcended racial boundaries.

            Both Chicago and New York were controlled by the mob scene in the late 1920s, but Chicago ultimately favored jazz musicians. Mobsters controlled jazz musicians in terms of their wages, where they would play, and when they would play. This mutated form of slavery, though highly restrictive, tended to favor Chicago’s jazz musicians more than New York’s, in a roundabout way. Duke Ellington’s received heavy radio play because he signed away fifty percent of the rights to his music to his manager Irving Mills, thereby losing much of his profit (2.12 Lecture). Also, New York had a much higher concentration of Italians, many of who were mobsters that controlled jazz performers (The Jazz Slave Masters 49).