Hey guys,

This is a question that has come up on the past couple of exam papers for AS Level Music. More fully:

Why were jazz recordings of the 1920s important to the development of jazz?

Our teacher has been really blasé about the Section C area of the paper this year which is all the essay writing which involves the music history and comparisons, we're all feeling a bit stressed and hoping that we can blag our way through the questions. There are three trumpet pieces on the syllabus this year (Trumpet Concerto Haydn, Summertime Davis/Evans and Hotter Than That Armstrong) so we're guessing that there'll be a comparison question to do with those three.

Anyway, I'm a bit stuck as to what to write for the above question so any help would be appreciated. I've tried googling and other such resources to no such luck. Wiki has let me down for the first time!

Thanks in advance, Daley.

Well, I suppose you'd want to look at important figures from that age - e.g. Armstrong's scat singing; Duke Ellington's influence; Sidney Bechet popularising the saxophone.

The commercialisation of jazz? Through the popularisation offered by by the new wide availability of the radio. And of course, because so little jazz was written down, the availability of recordings in this era was crucially important to the development of jazz, providing some kind of historical record of the era.

I don't really know the definitive answer to this question, but what occurs to me is that it enabled developing jazz musicians to study and transcribe the recorded solos of artists they wished to emulate.

Thanks for your replies. The exam is tomorrow morning so let's just hope that this particular topic won't appear.

Jazz recordings of the 1920's were important as it was the first time that Jazz, as it had been given the name of, was actually being recorded! It was a fantastic opportunity to allow for Jazz memories to be stored, and also provided an opportunity for more people to hear it, thus spreading "the word" so to speak and also allowing Jazz to progress from one level to the next...in the sense that people could learn by their mistakes and improve, or try something else. Thank god they recorded in the 20's!

I know your exam was a few days ago, and it's not an essay, but thats the idea in a nutshell.