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Jazz Musicians

Humanities 1

During the Jazz era, there were many different figures that help shape the genre into what it is. Some of these people are musicians like Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, and Duke Ellington used their abilities as musicians to revolutionize jazz music. If it weren't for these and many other musicians, today's music would not be what it is today. We will take a look at what these men have done to change the face of music.

Louis Armstrong was a jazz musician during the late 20th century. He started as a cornet player, then switched to trumpet, but at the end of his career he became more of a singer. In the 1920s, Armstrong performed with a number of different musical groups, and began to revolutionize the jazz world by introducing the extended solo. Jazz music was usually played either in highly orchestrated arrangements or in a more loosely structured "Dixieland"-type of music in where no one musician soloed for a while. Musicians everywhere started copying his style. Throughout the 1920s he was one of the most popular musicians in both New York and Chicago.

One of the early jazz musicians was Scott Joplin. Joplin is famed for being a ragtime musician, and he is known for his classic rags for piano, including "Maple Leaf Rag" and "The Entertainer," published from 1899 through 1909. He also had an opera, Treemonisha, published in 1911. Treemonisha was well received in Georgia, and made its way onto on Broadway in 1972. Interest in Joplin and ragtime was stimulated in the 1970s by the use of his music in the Academy Award-winning score to the film The Sting.

Duke Ellington had an enormous impact on the popular music of the late 20th century. Among his more than two thousand songs are such hits as "In A Sentimental Mood," "Sophisticated Lady," "I Got It Bad And That Ain't Good," and "I'm Beginning To See The Light." For almost fifty years he toured the world as a band leader and piano player. Today his recordings remain among the most...