Chicago style

a style of jazz flourishing in Chicago esp. in the early 1920s, constituting a direct offshoot of New Orleans style, and differing from its predecessor chiefly in the diminished influence of native folk sources, the greater tension of its group improvisation, the increased emphasis on solos, and the regular use of the tenor saxophone as part of the ensemble.

[1940-45]

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▪ jazz

      approach to jazz group instrumental playing that developed in Chicago during the 1920s and moved to New York City in the '30s, being preserved in the music known as Dixieland. Much of it was originally produced by trumpeter Jimmy McPartland, tenor saxophonist Bud Freeman (Freeman, Bud), clarinetist Frank Teschemacher, and their colleagues in imitation of the New Orleans Rhythm Kings (originally the Friar's Society Orchestra, including Leon Rappolo, Paul Mares, George Brunis, and others), a white New Orleans band playing at Chicago's Friar's Society.

      Though much like New Orleans style, Chicago style can sometimes be differentiated by its greater emphasis on individual solos, a less relaxed feeling, and a somewhat smaller reliance on elements of 19th-century black ethnic music. Comparisons between the two forms are difficult because little New Orleans style was recorded before 1923, by which time both the black and the white New Orleans bands had already been in Chicago long enough to influence each other as well as the Chicago audience; this ruled out the existence of recorded examples illustrating how New Orleans black bands originally differed from New Orleans white bands and how all differed from the native Chicago bands during their 1920s Chicago residence. These styles employed simple accompanying rhythms (often just a chord on each beat by piano, guitar, or banjo, with bass and drums) and improvised counterlines among the melody instruments (trumpet, clarinet, trombone, saxophone, and occasionally violin). Some choruses contained mutual embellishments, whereas most had some sort of solo in the foreground while backgrounds were partly or completely worked out by the musicians who were not soloing. The degree of complexity seems to have depended primarily on the particular interests of the leader. For example, Jelly Roll Morton (Morton, Jelly Roll), a black leader from New Orleans, worked out elaborate arrangements for his Chicago record dates, yet Louis Armstrong (Armstrong, Louis), another black New Orleans native, did not. Similarly, some recordings by the Austin High Gang, as McPartland and his fellow white players were often called, are quite elaborate, yet others by them are informal.

      For decades, the Chicago style was kept alive through the work of Eddie Condon.

Additional Reading

Chicago style is depicted in the autobiographies by Eddie Condon, We Called It Music (1947, reissued 1992); Milton “Mezz” Mezzrow (Mezz Mezzrow) and Bernard Wolfe, Really the Blues (1946, reprinted 1990); and Bud Freeman, You Don't Look Like a Musician (1974).

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