One night around 1897 they say Buddy Bolden stood up in a New Orleans Dance Hall and played the first hot blues. It was not until 1917 that the Original Dixieland Jazz Band made the first jazz recording. By 1927, after becoming the popular hit music of the Jazz Age, what we now call Classic Jazz was giving way to a new type of hot music-big band Swing.
This book tells the story of the hectic thirty years during which the basic jazz of Buddy Bolden developed into Classic Jazz and then passed into History. It uncovers the music of the twenty hidden years before first the recordings began to appear. It is also the saga of the first jazz bands, their struggle to adapt to the changing demands of their audiences and the impetus they gave to the roaring twenties.
