ABSTRACT
The beginnings of jazz were very much a product of this mixing - a combination of the African musical traditions of the black ex-slaves, which we traced and the European classical musical interests of the Creoles. The chapter began to 'jazz' up the marches by playing them in a more African-inclined style. The process of change from brass band music into the earliest jazz is best shown by looking at one of the first New Orleans jazz musicians. Jazz bands were employed to work in the dance halls and cabarets, while in the brothels ragtime blues and jazz pianists were particularly popular. The earliest New Orleans jazz was recorded in Chicago in the 1920s and explains how the musicians moved north to Chicago. Jazz historians have sometimes given a false picture by suggesting that the blues was only important in terms of its influence on the development of jazz.
