Chicago Style

     In the 1920s Chicago played a definitive role in creating the foundation of modern jazz. During the Great Migration, Chicago functioned as a major receiving city for jazz musicians from the south. New Orleans provided a good place to give birth to jazz but it couldn’t contain the powerful new music. But Chicago was ready to accept jazz culturally and economically. The World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893 represented the cultural and racial diversity and powerful economic power of Chicago. The significant point is that it was Chicago not New York that hosted the World’s Fair. The biggest difference between Chicago and New Orleans lie in the economic scale. According to Gioa, sidemen in Chicago could earn $40 a week while ones in New Orleans could just earn $1.5 to $2.5. Without this economic power of Chicago, jazz wouldn’t have flourished in Chicago.

     It goes without saying that this economic power was basically based on white society as D. J. Travis says “without white power one cannot earn big bucks in music world.”(p75). The “white power” usually meant gangsters, including the infamous Al Capone who flourished in the 1920s in Chicago. The criminal industry like speakeasies, ballrooms, and nightspots developed as a result of Prohibition; Lincoln Garden in Chicago, the Cotton Club in New York. As these show, jazz was closely connected to the audience’s dancing. It was these gangsters who hired many jazz musicians to make them play in their clubs. It is no doubt that jazz’s prosperity owed a lot to their economic power. Chicago was segregated during the1920s not only socially but musically; Black and white couldn’t play together and the place where they played was separated (downtown for white, South Side for black).

     While King Oliver and Armstrong had a powerful influence on other players in Chicago, new jazz style known as the stride piano was born and flourished in Harlem during the1920s. The development of the stride piano coincided with an increasing number of the rent parties. While the audience in Chicago was mainly the mob in the early 1920s, one in the stride piano was ordinary people. Unlike Chicago Style, Harlem stride piano had the closeness between players and the audience in a rather small environment like apartment house separate from criminals.

     While Harlem jazz style is represented by the stride piano, Chicago style is characterized as jazz of a soloist which is symbolized by Louis Armstrong. His emergence in Chicago jazz put an end to New Orleans jazz tradition which is characterized as the collective sound.  In Chicago style I can find more luxurious, sweet, and sophisticated sound which was influenced by the urban city, the gangsters’ prosperity, and the economic boom after World War I. The interesting thing is that the emergence of Armstrong as a soloist (musical independence) coincided with the emergence of black economy (economic independence) in Chicago. So his strong individualism sound seemed to represent the black society. It is noteworthy that white jazz movement represented by Beiderbecke and Austin High Gang emerged also during 1920s in Chicago, following Armstrong and King Oliver.  They imitated Armstrong and Oliver’s sound to make their own sound. So the Chicago style can also be defined as the mixture of black jazz, white jazz, and dance music.

     Chicago jazz’s significance lies in its influence on New York jazz; Armstrong had a great influence on Fletcher Henderson band and Benny Goodman, who came to represent New York jazz. Two big mainstream of jazz bumped into each other in New York so that new jazz style could bloom as a form of Swing jazz.