Jazz Put The Sin In Syncopation

American jazz music evolved from a combination of ragtime, blues and march music from the late 1800’s to the early 1920’s.  One only has to listen to the song “All That Jazz” from the movie “Chicago” to hear these influences.  If you listen closely to the jazz music of the early 1920’s you are likely to hear six distinct instruments:  the clarinet, piano, drum, string bass, trombone and tuba.

Early jazz bands, such as those led by Louis Armstrong, Joe “King” Oliver and Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton played their music in and around New Orleans.  Their music became known as Dixieland Jazz.  Dixieland jazz often used banjos in addition to the other six instruments when playing their improvisational melodies.

The first band to ever make a recording of Dixieland jazz music was The Original Dixieland Jazz Band.  Their recording of “Livery Stable Blues” and “Dixie Jazz Band One Step” was released on Feb. 26, 1917 and sold over one million copies.

Early jazz music helped usher in the era of the Roaring Twenties.  It was played in speakeasies, roadhouses and brothels across America.  It was described by Professor Henry Van Dyck of Princeton University, as “not music at all. It is merely an irritation of the nerves of hearing, a sensual teasing of the strings of physical passion. Its fault lies not in syncopation, for that is a legitimate device when sparingly used. But "jazz" is an unmitigated cacophony, a combination of disagreeable sounds in complicated discords, a willful ugliness and a deliberate vulgarity."  Some would even say it caused the moral decay of America’s youth because of the way people began dancing.  To the ladies of the bygone Gibson Girl era, it definitely put the sin in syncopation.