ABSTRACT
With plentiful jobs available, including well-paying jobs for musicians, Chicago became a destination for many black Americans migrating from the South in the 1920s. Many important New Orleans musicians, including Freddie Keppard, Joe Oliver, Louis Armstrong, and Kid Ory, made the move to Chicago.
Jazz in Chicago in the 1920s served as a transition from the New Orleans jazz style to the swing of the 1930s. In addition to the transplanted black New Orleans musicians, a generation of primarily white, Chicago-based musicians became important contributors.
The jazz of Chicago tended to place more focus on the individual soloist, compared with the collective improvisation of New Orleans jazz. The saxophone was much more commonly used, as was the string bass.
Around the same time, New York City's Harlem was becoming an important center of black culture. The Cotton Club, the Savoy Ballroom, and the Apollo Theater featured performers who would help shape the next style of jazz.
Boogie-woogie, a style of piano playing that was different from stride, developed, not in Chicago, but initially in the more rural areas in the mid-1920s. A key ingredient of this blues-inspired style was the repetitive rhythm in the left hand, often referred to as “eight to the bar.”
