Jazz and I have been old friends for a long time, but as much as I enjoy my favorite kind of jazz - swing music - I'm not old enough to actually remember it during its heyday. Its golden age was probably the 1930's, and it was still pretty popular during the war years but by the time I was discovering it there were a lot of newer musical choices around. Still, it was at least visible in the rear-view mirror, and while I was growing up my parents did have old 78's around, so I had to opportunity to be exposed to it.

That's not the case with the music from the 1920's, the era that actually marked the starting point for a lot of the later jazz stars. I can't relate to it personally, and I doubt that either of my parents would have remembered the jazz music of that time. (They would have been very small.) However, I've read about it and listened to a lot of recordings from the era, and it is absolutely a rich storehouse of fascinating musical history.

It seems to me that there were actually parallel musical stories being written at the time. One was that of the early black jazz musicians from New Orleans, New York, Chicago and other cities. Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and others were making a lot of great music and attracting some attention — but at that time they were largely unrecognized by mainstream America, which instead loved the music of Paul Whiteman.

Most of the country was still humming tunes from World War I or before, and preferred the "sweet bands" — large groups that usually included a string section and played comfortable music. Still, things were changing, and part of the reason for that might have been that it was an exciting time. Speakeasies, flappers, and a booming post-war economy were all signs of the time, and the music soon began to reflect that. It became known as the jazz age and smart bandleaders knew they had to adapt.

Whiteman's orchestra had been popular for a long time and in 1924 had featured a type of jazz by showcasing George Gershwin on the piano, doing his newly commissioned work, "Rhapsody In Blue". Whiteman, who had always employed some of the best musicians, now began adding those more attuned to the new "hot" music. At one time or another, Whiteman featured the Dorsey brothers, Jack Teagarten, Bunny Berigan, and a cornetist destined to become a legend, Bix Beiderbecke.