Famous Jazz Musicians of the 1920s
On a winter evening in 1928, an audience at New York’s Cotton Club sat listening to a slim bandleader at the piano, his band spread across the bandstand in white tie and tails. The leader was Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington, and the music — sophisticated, bluesy, witty, and unmistakably American — was, in the judgment of many listeners, the most distinctive jazz being played anywhere in the world. Across town, in a small recording studio, a cornetist named Louis Armstrong was laying down “West End Blues,” a three-minute recording that scholars still regard as one of the most important in the history of the art form. The 1920s produced an extraordinary concentration of genius in American popular music, and the figures profiled here are the most important of them all. The wider history of their music is told in the history of jazz music, and the venues they played are described in Harlem nightclubs in the 1920s.
Louis Armstrong (1901–1971)
Louis Armstrong is, by almost universal agreement, the most important figure in jazz history. Born in poverty in New Orleans on August 4, 1901, Armstrong spent time at the Colored Waif’s Home for Boys, where he learned to play the cornet. He was taken under the wing of Joe “King” Oliver (1881–1938), the leading New Orleans cornetist. In 1922, Armstrong followed Oliver to Chicago and played second cornet in Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band for two formative years.
In 1924, Armstrong married Lillian Hardin (1898–1971), the pianist in Oliver’s band, who pushed him to form his own group. He began recording under his own name for Okeh in 1925, first with the Hot Five (with Hardin on piano, Johnny Dodds on clarinet, Kid Ory on trombone) and, from 1927, with the Hot Seven. The 1920s recordings — “Cornet Chop Suey,” “Struttin’ With Some Barbecue,” “Heebie Jeebies,” “Potato Head Blues,” “West End Blues” — are the foundation of the jazz tradition. The 1928 “West End Blues” in particular is widely regarded as a turning point; the two opening choruses, in which Armstrong plays 19 measures of unaccompanied improvisation, are among the most celebrated passages in 20th-century music. Armstrong also helped invent scat singing on the 1926 recording of “Heebie Jeebies.” The 1920s were Armstrong’s most innovative decade; he was only 27 when the decade ended.
Duke Ellington (1899–1974)
Edward Kennedy Ellington was born in Washington, D.C., on April 29, 1899, and was nicknamed “Duke” as a child for his elegant manners. He learned piano in a middle-class Black household, took up ragtime and stride, and was running bands in Washington by his late teens. He moved to New York in 1923 and by 1927 had assembled the band that would become the most acclaimed in the jazz world.
In December 1927, Ellington’s orchestra began a residency at the Cotton Club in Harlem that would last until 1931. The Cotton Club engagement made Ellington a national figure. The band’s radio broadcasts from the club were heard across the country, and the recordings — “East St. Louis Toodle-Oo” (1927), “Black and Tan Fantasy” (1927), “Creole Love Call” (1927), “The Mooche” (1928) — established the Ellington sound: a sophisticated blend of blues, jazz, and what Ellington called “jungle” effects. The band’s most important soloists were the trumpeter Bubber Miley (1903–1932), the trombonist Joe “Tricky Sam” Nanton (1904–1946), and the baritone saxophonist Harry Carney (1910–1974), who would remain with Ellington for the rest of his life. Ellington’s music is part of the wider Harlem Renaissance.
Bessie Smith (1894–1937)
Bessie Smith, the “Empress of the Blues,” was the most popular blues singer of her era. Born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 1894, Smith was discovered by Ma Rainey (1886–1939), who mentored her on the TOBA vaudeville circuit. In 1923, Smith signed with Columbia Records and recorded “Downhearted Blues” with the pianist Clarence Williams. The record sold 800,000 copies in its first six months, becoming one of the best-selling blues records of the 1920s.
Smith’s 1920s recordings — “Tain’t Nobody’s Biz-ness If I Do,” “St. Louis Blues” (with Louis Armstrong), “Empty Bed Blues,” “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out” — defined the classic blues. She was the highest-paid Black entertainer of the 1920s, earning fees that the white press often noted with amazement. Smith continued to record and perform through the early 1930s, but the Depression devastated the blues market, and her career declined. She died in a car accident in Clarksdale, Mississippi, on September 26, 1937.
Bix Beiderbecke (1903–1931)
Leon Bix Beiderbecke was a cornetist from Davenport, Iowa, whose delicate, lyrical tone made him the first important white jazz soloist. Largely self-taught, Beiderbecke sat in with the Wolverines of Chicago in the early 1920s and joined Jean Goldkette’s orchestra before moving to the most prestigious gig in white jazz, the Paul Whiteman Orchestra. His 1927 recording of “Singin’ the Blues” (with Frankie Trumbauer on C-melody saxophone) was a critical and commercial success and is regarded as one of the finest jazz records of the decade.
Beiderbecke struggled with alcohol, and the combination of touring, performing, and drinking destroyed his health. He died in his apartment in Queens, New York, on August 6, 1931, at the age of 28. The flappers who loved his music mourned him as a romantic figure, and his influence on later white jazz musicians — including Hoagy Carmichael and the young Benny Goodman — was enormous. The broader context of the flapper era is treated in the flapper movement.
Fletcher Henderson, King Oliver, and the Bandleaders
Fletcher Henderson (1897–1952) was, after Ellington, the most important Black bandleader of the 1920s. A Georgia-born, Harvard- and Columbia-educated pianist, Henderson built the most influential Black big band in New York, with a residency at the Roseland Ballroom from 1924. His arranger, Don Redman (1900–1964), wrote the arrangements that established the big-band format. Henderson’s band was a training ground: Louis Armstrong was a member in 1924–1925, Coleman Hawkins the lead tenor saxophonist, and Benny Carter, Chu Berry, and Lester Young all passed through in the 1930s.
Joe “King” Oliver (1881–1938) was the leading New Orleans cornetist of the 1910s and Armstrong’s mentor. His Creole Jazz Band, which moved to Chicago in 1918, was one of the most important early jazz ensembles. Oliver’s 1923 recordings with Armstrong — “Chimes Blues,” “Weather Bird Rag,” “Canal Street Blues” — are early jazz classics. Oliver’s career declined in the 1930s, and he died in poverty in Savannah, Georgia, in 1938.
The Women of the Blues
The other major women of 1920s jazz were Ma Rainey (1886–1939), the “Mother of the Blues,” whose 1920s recordings established many of the conventions of the female blues; Ethel Waters (1896–1977), whose 1925 recording of “Dinah” and Broadway work in shows like Blackbirds of 1928 made her one of the highest-paid Black entertainers of the decade; Ida Cox (1896–1967); Alberta Hunter (1895–1984); Sippie Wallace (1888–1986); and Billie Holiday (1915–1959), who was just beginning to sing in the Harlem clubs at the end of the decade.
The Pianists and Other Bandleaders
The piano tradition of the 1920s was led by James P. Johnson (1894–1955), the stride piano master from New Brunswick, New Jersey, who composed “Charleston” in 1923 for the Broadway show Runnin’ Wild. Johnson invented the original piano style that would influence Fats Waller (1904–1943), Art Tatum, Thelonious Monk, and virtually every jazz pianist who came after. Waller’s own 1929 recording of “Ain’t Misbehavin’” became one of the best-selling records of the year. Jimmie Lunceford (1902–1947) built one of the tightest big bands of the 1930s from a base in Memphis. Cab Calloway (1907–1994) took over the Cotton Club band after Ellington and would soon record “Minnie the Moocher” (1931), one of the best-selling records of the early 1930s.