page_title: Dixieland
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Dixieland / History
caption_attribution_description: Jazz band, New Orleans, playing for a Carnival party at a home in the French Quarter. Shown are Chris Clifton, trumpet; Brian O'Connell, clarinet; Les Muscutt, banjo; Chuck Badie, string bass; and Tom Ebert, trombone.
context_page_description: Dixieland, sometimes referred to as hot jazz or traditional jazz, is a style of jazz based on the music that developed in New Orleans at the start of the 20th century.
  One of the first uses of the term "Dixieland" with reference to music was in the name of the Original Dixieland Jass Band. Their 1917 recordings fostered popular awareness of this new style of music.
  A revival movement for traditional jazz began in the late 1940s, formed in reaction to the orchestrated sounds of the swing era and the perceived chaos of the new bebop sounds, Led by the Assunto brothers' original Dukes of Dixieland, the movement included elements of the Chicago style that developed during the 1920s, such as the use of a string bass instead of a tuba, and chordal instruments, in addition to the original format of the New Orleans style. That reflected the fact that virtually all of the recorded repertoire of New Orleans musicians was from the period when the format was already evolving beyond the traditional New Orleans format. "Dixieland" may in that sense be regarded as denoting the jazz revival movement of the late 1930s to the 1950s as much as any particular subgenre of jazz.
context_section_description: The Original Dixieland Jass Band, recording its first disc in 1917, was the first instance of jazz music being called "Dixieland", though at the time, the term referred to the band, not the genre. The band's sound was a combination of African American/New Orleans ragtime and Sicilian music. The music of Sicily was one of the many genres in the New Orleans music scene during the 1910s, alongside sanctified church music, brass band music and blues.
  Much later, the term "Dixieland" was applied to early jazz by traditional jazz revivalists, starting in the 1940s and 1950s. The name is a reference to the "Old South", specifically anything south of the Mason-Dixon line. The term encompasses earlier brass band marches, French Quadrilles, biguine, ragtime, and blues with collective, polyphonic improvisation. While instrumentation and size of bands can be very flexible, the "standard" band consists of a "front line" of trumpet (or cornet), trombone, and clarinet, with a "rhythm section" of at least two of the following instruments: guitar or banjo, string bass or tuba, piano, and drums. Louis Armstrong's All-Stars was the band most popularly identified with Dixieland during the 1940s, although Armstrong's own influence during the 1920s was to move the music beyond the traditional New Orleans style.
  The definitive Dixieland sound is created when one instrument (usually the trumpet) plays the melody or a recognizable paraphrase or variation on it, and the other instruments of the "front line" improvise around that melody. This creates a more polyphonic sound than the arranged ensemble playing of the big band sound or the straight "head" melodies of bebop.
  During the 1930s and 1940s, the earlier group-improvisation style fell out of favor with the majority of younger black players, while some older players of both races continued on in the older style. Though younger musicians developed new forms, many beboppers revered Armstrong and quoted fragments of his recorded music in their own improvisations.
  The Dixieland revival in the late 1940s and 1950s was led by the Assunto brothers' original Dukes of Dixieland, a band known for its virtuoso improvisation and recording history's first stereo record.  The movement brought many semi-retired musicians a measure of fame late in their lives as well as bringing retired musicians back onto the jazz circuit after years of not playing (e.g., Kid Ory and Red Nichols). Many Dixieland groups of the revival era consciously imitated the recordings and bands of decades earlier. Other musicians continued to create innovative performances and new tunes. For example, in the 1950s a style called "Progressive Dixieland" sought to blend polyphonic improvisation with bebop-style rhythm. Spike Jones & His New Band and Steve Lacy played with such bands. This style is sometimes called "Dixie-bop". Lacy went on to apply that approach to the music of Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Duke Ellington, and Herbie Nichols.
caption: A traditionalist jazz band plays at a party in New Orleans in 2005. Shown here are Chris Clifton, on trumpet; Brian O'Connell, on clarinet; Les Muscutt, on banjo; Chuck Badie, on string bass; and Tom Ebert, on trombone.
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