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Jump blues
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Jump blues is an up-tempo blues usually played by small groups and featuring horns. Jump blues was very popular in the 1940s and was called rock and roll in the 1950s.
Jump evolved from big bands such as those of Lionel Hampton and Lucky Millinder. These early 1940s bands produced musicians such as Louis Jordan, Jack McVea, Earl Bostic, and Arnett Cobb.
Blues and jazz were part of the same musical world, with many accomplished musicians straddling both genres.
Jump blues, or simply "jump," was an extension of the boogie craze.
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Encyclopedia
Jump blues is an up-tempo blues usually played by small groups and featuring horns. Jump blues was very popular in the 1940s and was called rock and roll in the 1950s.
Jump evolved from big bands such as those of Lionel Hampton and Lucky Millinder. These early 1940s bands produced musicians such as Louis Jordan, Jack McVea, Earl Bostic, and Arnett Cobb.
Blues and jazz were part of the same musical world, with many accomplished musicians straddling both genres.
Jump blues, or simply "jump," was an extension of the boogie craze. Jump bands such as the Tympany Five, which came into being at the same time as the boogie woogie revival, achieved maximum effect with an eight-to-the-bar boogie style.
Lionel Hampton recorded a stomping big band blues, "Flying Home," in 1942. Featuring a choked, screaming tenor sax performance, the song was a hit in the "race" category. Both Hampton and Jordon combined the popular boogie woogie rhythm, a grittier version of swing-era saxophone styles as exemplified by Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster, and playful, humorous lyrics or verbal asides laced with jive talk.
As this urban, jazz-based music became more popular, both bluesmen and jazz musicians who wanted to "play for the people" began favoring a heavy, insistent beat. This music appealed to black listeners who no longer wished to be identified with "life down home."
Jump accomplishes with three horns and a rhythm section what a big band does with an ensemble of sixteen. The tenor saxophone is the most prominent instrument in jump. Jump groups, employed to play for jitterbugs at a much lower cost than big bands, became very popular with agents and ballroom owners. Saxophonist Art Chaney said "[w]e were insulted" when an audience wouldn't dance.
Jump was enormously popular in the Forties and early Fifties through artists such as Louis Jordan, Big Joe Turner and Wynonie Harris.
Jump blues was relabeled rock and roll in the 1950s. It was revived in the 1980s by artists such as Joe Jackson and Brian Setzer and is performed today by bands like "MoPac and The Blue Suburbans" and "Mitch Woods and His Rocket 88s." Contemporary swing bands such as Lavay Smith, Steve Lucky & The Rhumba Bums Featuring Miss Carmen Getit and Stompy Jones also include many classic jump blues numbers in their repertoire, writing original songs in this style as well. (See also Swing Revival.)
See also
External links
- Lindy Hop
- Swing and Jump Blues Guitar
- Short History of Jump Blues
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