Jazz Improvisation Research Paper

For this analysis on Louis Armstrong’s West End Blues, I am going to concentrate on Louis Armstrong and how influential he was in the birth of Swing. He was extremely innovative in the way he played his instrument. Louis Armstrong had a brilliant trumpet sound. His power, range, and his rhythmic approach are all trademarks of his playing in the 1920s and 1930s. West End Blues is still considered one of the most influential and classic pieces in the Jazz Industry. I will explain why by breaking down the song utilizing the five elements of music; form, harmony, texture, melody, and rhythm.

The second generations of Jazz musicians were some like Joe “King” Oliver, Kid Ory, and Jelly Roll Morton. These people formed a small band and started to reshape the way the original Jazz music was played. They have made it into a different style with more complications and twists and turns. And so it became known as “Hot Jazz”. King Oliver found a young artist by the name of Louis Armstrong. He soon grew to become the greatest Jazz musician anyone has known. He is still a big star in the world today. By the 20th Century, African-American musical styles became the dominant force.

Louis Armstrong was the greatest of all Jazz musicians. Armstrong defined what it was to play Jazz. His amazing technical abilities, the joy and spontaneity, and amazingly quick, inventive musical mind still dominate Jazz to this day. Only Charlie Parker comes close to having as much influence on the history of Jazz as Louis Armstrong did. Like almost all early Jazz musicians, Louis was from New Orleans. He was from a very poor family and was sent to reform school when he was twelve after firing a gun in the air on New Year's Eve. At the school he learned to play cornet. After being released at age fourteen, he worked selling papers, unloading boats, and selling coal from a cart. He didn't own an instrument at this time,

If one was to go out into the street, walked up to a random stranger and asked them if they knew who Louis Armstrong was, chances are that they would be able to answer you correctly. Louis Armstrong (Aug 4th, 1901 - Jul 6th, 1971) was an American trumpeter, composer, singer and occasional actor who became one of the most influential figures in jazz. His career spanned many decades, from the 1920s to his death in 1971, and many different eras in jazz. He first came to prominence in the 1920s as a trumpeter and cornet player with no technique as well as being very skilled in scat singing, Armstrong was a foundational influence in jazz, influencing many later jazz artists as well as shifting the focus of the music from collective improvisation to solo performance.With his very well-known and recognizable gravelly voice, a technique that was later named “crooning”, Armstrong was an incredibly influential singer, demonstrating great dexterity as an improviser by bending the lyrics and melody of a song for expressive purposes on demand. Renowned for his charming and incredibly charismatic stage presence and voice almost as much as for his trumpet and/or cornet playing, Armstrong 's influence extends far beyond jazz music, and by the end of his career in the early 1970s at his death, he was widely regarded as a deep and profound influence on popular music in general. Armstrong was one of the first very popular

Louis Armstrong learned at a young age, not to let negative views direct your life. At the age of seven he worked for a Jewish family, and noticed how the whites treated them. It was not just the blacks in the early 1900’s that dealt with racial issues. But Louis saw one thing that left a long time mark on him. Many of the Blacks wanted Pity, but this family of Jews he worked for, did not, they made their way. This was something Louis would carry with him the rest of his life. Louis Armstrong’s influence was the style, structure, and joy of his art. It is something that can be seen in many musicians that listened to him. Listen to a Miles Davis cd, and you will hear the Great Satchmo. Yes it is Miles Davis, but the influence of Louis is there to be heard. Many of the musicians today you will also hear Louis’s influence, and not only in Jazz, Swing, Blues, but in any form. Louis Armstrong’s influence is one of the most powerful that has ever been, and may ever be.

Many people knew Louis Armstrong as the “first real genius of jazz”(Shipton 26). He was born in New Orleans, Louisiana on August 4, 1901. Louis was the illegitimate son of William Armstrong and Mary Est “Mayann” Albert. He was abandoned by his father, a boiler stoker, shortly after his birth and was raised by his paternal grandmother. Then, at the age of five, he was returned to the care of his mother, who at the time worked as a laundress. Together with his mom, they moved to a better area of New Orleans. This is where Armstrong first fell in love with music; he would listen to people playing any chance that he would get(Tirro). He would attend parades, funerals, churches and go to cheap cabarets to be able to hear some of the greats play

Vol. 82, no. 1. Winter 2002. p. 24. Online: EBSCOHost. Santiago Canyon College Library. August 6, 2017.

Louis was born in New Orleans where he grew up and learned to play the trumpet. He also learned to sing. Because of his long improvised solos, he inspired jazz so that long solos became an important part of jazz pieces and performances. (Cayton, 462) Armstrong was the king of jazz trumpet players. The new style that he created gave a voice-like quality to his horn. (Hakim, 58) Although Jazz was very popular itself, a majority of the fans and listeners were younger people. Flappers were commonly known during this time. They danced to the jazz music with a whole new style.

From their time of birth, no two people could have seemed less likely to cross paths than Bix Beiderbecke and Louis Armstrong. Coming from radically different backgrounds, both musicians drew upon their influences to make music that revolutionized jazz, creating two separate legacies interwoven among each other in the peak of jazz popularity. Both Beiderbecke and Armstrong used their trumpets and their unique styles of playing, ranging from hot jazz to cool jazz, to fuel political, cultural, and social movements, inspiring individuals inside and outside of the jazz profession.

His contributions “ended one jazz era and started a new one” (Louis). Armstrong contributed to jazz by incorporating his own style of music. He was a soloist who played the cornet, trumpet, and sung. He created the Blues scale and incorporated a new feeling called the “Bleusy” feeling to Jazz. Bleusy was different from of music because it was being expressed more than the music itself. His work was also improvised, which means that he did not have a planned piece to play if he was performing. The pieces he played were made up on the spot which makes his pieces more expressive and in the moment. He turned jazz into an individual improvisation which did not break away from the ensemble. While swaying from the standard jazz form, he also transformed jazz from polyphony to solos. One of his most famous songs “Hotter Than That”

Jazz is a music genre that has complex characteristics and history of development and thus many musicians and scholars face troubles in defining what jazz is. In general, jazz is believed to have born in New Orleans. Jazz developed for the pleasure of the social dancers. According to the “Understanding Jazz: What Is Jazz?” of John F. Kennedy center for the Performing Arts, Jazz was created mainly by Afro-Americans, and had elements of European and Afro-American culture. Also, it emphasizes few elements of Jazz, which are swing-feel, syncopation, and improvisation. These different culture and elements of jazz may be explained by how jazz

At the mention jazz music, that person will first think of is likely to be a great figure with a clown image, nicknamed Satchmo. The man was Louis Armstrong. He is a husky singer, often with a trumpet in his hand. He played dramatic works of simple structure in Orleans jazz style and with the accompaniment of Dick jazz music. Each of the books on jazz music will mention his name. Louis Armstrong was to jazz music what Bach is to classical music, Presley is to rock music (Berrett 230). This essay will have an introduction of the king of jazz music -- Louis Armstrong and his great influence on jazz history.

Nps.gov states that some of the greatest musician in America History has come from the jazz side of the world. Artist such as Louis Armstrong, Billy Holiday and Jelly “Roll” Morton, pave the way for jazz to reach its height as it did in the early 20’s with the upbeat tempo and smooth classical sound. These artist brung a unique sound to jazz that was not there. Louis Armstrong contribute to jazz is so remarkable, he played the trumpet like no other. His sound was so soothing to the ears. When you think about jazz, Louis Armstrong is one of the first names most people relate to jazz. Jelly “Roll” Morton was probably the most influence artist there is. An innovative piano stylist and composer, began his odyssey outside of New Orleans as early as 1907. He continue his work throughout the 1920’s and was mainly consider the reason of the swing era.

With the installation of the Miles Davis Quintet, Davis picked up where his late forties sessions left off. Eschewing the rhythmic and harmonic complexity of the prevalent bebop, Davis was given space to play long, legato and essentially melodic lines, where he would begin to explore modal music, his lifelong obsession. Modal jazz is a new venture for jazz both harmonically and structurally, it no longer used the chord progressions of standard tunes as the basis for improvisation replaced by a succession of scales on which the performer improvised instead (Kingman, 1990:390). Davis had definitely gone a long way in his trumpet playing since collaborating with Parker. No longer dependant on bebop phrasing, he chose a minimalist approach instead. Ornate phrasing gave way to a smattering of tones. He was also utilizing a Harmon mute, sometimes adding reverb, which had a whisper effect and personalised his sound. Elements of texture and silence between notes were becoming more dominant (Kirker, 2005:2). By 1958, he had freed himself by using modal scales and slower moving harmonies. “Milestones” portrayed this example as

I was also inspired by what I learned and I used this concept in my own art practice such as my hip-hop dancing and comedy comic story writing. Having classes with Hip-Hop MC, rapper and choreography artist is a very important experience that helps me to understand improvisation practically. They asked us to interact with their live performance in the way of translating the objective condition like the sound we made into their own language of rap and dance movement. We were learning improvisation by viewing the process of improvisation as improvisers just like these artists.