1920's Jazz and Dance

 May 23, 1933

The 1920’s were a time of change and freedom.People began taking on a new mindset, America had just one a war, technology was progressing and women were gaining new rights and new roles in society, Women went from having long, elaborate hair and wearing conservative floor length dresses to cutting their hair and adopting short loose garments.  Dances during the 1920’s were very different from the years prior also. Dance’s such as the Charleston required these short, loose dresses to allow the dancer to kick their legs and move around quickly. A new pop culture was in effect, one that was seen as provocative and scandalous by the older generations, and the new dance crazes of the era were playing a huge part.

Improvisation is what made jazz, and later scat, different from previous styles of music. Just like the popular dances of the decade allowed the performer to have a huge amount of freedom and deviate from the set norm, jazz did the same thing by allowing the musician to interpret the music anyway they wanted to.

Bessie Smith was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee on April 15, 1894. She began to sing at a young age and in 1923 signed a contract with Columbia Records. One of her early recordings, “Downhearted Blues” was very popular and sold over 800,000 copies making her one of the most successful jazz musicians of the time.

Born on August 4, 1901, in New Orleans, Louisiana, he helped introduce and make scat popular and is probably the best known jazz musician of all time. In 1924, he made his first recordings as a band leader with his Hot Five,and later his Hot Seven. His best known songs of the 1920’s were “Ain’t Misbehaving” and “Heebie Jeebies”.

He was born in 1890 in New Orleans to a Creole family and learned classical piano and guitar at a young age. He was one of the pioneers of jazz and is considered to be one of the best composers of that era. He formed a group called Jelly Roll Morton's Red Hot Peppers and demonstrated that a jazz band could be both spontaneous and organized at the same time. His biggest hit was The Black Bottom Stomp, recorded in 1926.

Precision dances were popular in Broadway and Hollywood with the most famous dancers being the Russell Markert Girls, later known as the Radio City Rockettes. In this type of dancing an, often large, group of people would assemble and produce an organized and synchronized dance routine. They were similar to flash mobs, in the respect that the individual didn’t need to be good dancer but be able to follow direction well. They weren't very popular on the dance floor because of the amount of organization, precision and choreography that was needed to be put into it to achieve success.

In 1923 when pianist James Johnson composed the song “The Charleston” for the Broadway show Running Wild, the biggest dance craze of the 20’s was started. Named after the city of Charleston, South Carolina, where the African American community had been performing the dance since the late 1890’s, the dance was wild and provocative compared to others of it’s time. The basics of the dance are easy to learn and allowed the performer a huge amount of freedom and artistic creativity. Because of this, it soon became a hit with the young people of the 20’s, especially the flappers.

The Lindy Hop originated during the late 1920’s in Harlem, New York. This partner dance included footwork borrowed from The Charleston and tap dancing and was started from blending African rhythms and movements with European structured ballroom dance.

The most popular version of this dance was performed by Ann Pennington in the 1929 film Happy Days. It blended The Shimmey and bellydancing to create an odd and new type of dance.

This dance was popular among the African American community of  the American South, especially in New Orleans, since the early 1900’s. Ann Pennington is credited with introducing this dance to the Broadway stage in 1927’s George White’s Scandals.

1926: Louis Armstrong records "Heebie Jeebies". It's a huge hit and introduces scat to jazz.

The St. James Infirmary Blues