On the current page of our journey into the history of jazz music we concentrate on pre Large Band age jazz music history as recorded before 1935. We use this date and classification of this period of jazz for timeline measuring-stick uses only. Though most historians regard the year 1935 as the beginning of the Enormous Band time, it's still a debatable subject as huge band jazz had been recorded as early as the 1920s.

In 1917 the first Dixieland Jass Band cut the 1st recorded jazz records in history. It's a pity the honour couldn't have been bestowed on a real trailblazer of the category. Most jazz historians regard this tiny group as simply a poor copycat band, fortunate to ever have been recorded. Nonetheless , their recordings sold over 1 million copies and enabled jazz to be heard all across the country. Jazz commenced its development in New Orleans where King Oliver, a cornet player that Louis Armstrong idolized, was performing in the early 1900's.

Steamboats using the Mississippi further helped dispersion the sound of jazz as many of the New Orleans jazz bands and musicians performed as entertainment on the boats. In the 1920s the music of jazz commenced to migrate to an enormous band format mixing parts of ragtime, black spirituals, blues, and Western european music. Ben Pollack, Don Redman, Fletcher Henderson and Duke Ellington sported some of the more favored early enormous bands playing hot music. These bands contained growing jazz stars and future giant bandleaders like Coleman Hawkins, Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Red Allen, Roy Eldridge, Benny Carter, and John Kirby. While the previously mentioned musicians were playing large band jazz ; the fondness for the hotel dance bands of the 1920s was also a significant element in the development of the Giant Band age. Paul Whiteman, The California Travelers , Ted Lewis, Jean Goldkette, and Vincent Lopez were a couple of the successful hotel dance bandleaders of the 1920s. Their major sources of money came from playing for dancehall dance crowds and doing radio remote broadcasts in the 1920s and early 1930s. The hot jazz orchestras of the day shortly found the prerequisite of using an "arranger" for their pieces of music. His job became a crucial function in the making of massive band jazz. While tiny group jazz had formerly authorized a group of musicians to fundamentally just "blow," structure became required with giant gatherings of musicians.

Though improvisation in solos was still authorized, the arranger took a written piece of music and allotted varied parts to the different sections in a band and also dictated when solos were to be taken. The large band sounds of The Dorsey Bros , Fletcher Henderson, Taxi Calloway, The Casa Loma Orchestra, and Duke Ellington's orchestra as well as the styling in jazz vocals of The Mills Bros and The Boswell Sisters were all moving toward an "organized" and simple flowing form of jazz which would become known as swing. With this new structure and sound the stage was set for the increase in appreciation of massive band music, played in this new swing style, that took the country by force in the mid 1930s. The idolization of the music increased as Americans invented exciting, new, dances to be done in rhythm with the music. The Savoy Dancehall in Harlem opened its doors in 1926 and later was a focus for swing bands in the Huge Band age.It was here a swing dance style called the Lindy Hop was named, refined, and popularized. Thru the press, thru recordings, and through live radio remote broadcasts the masses were about to learn about this new swing music and dance craze.