1900-1920 - Ragtime & Blues People came to North America from Europe and also from Africa. European music was centered ON the beat while African rhythms were OFF-beat (syncopated).
European-style marching band music (ON the beat)
African-style rhythms (OFF the beat)
When these styles were mixed together in North America, a new kind of music was born: Ragtime. Scott Joplin was known as the King of Ragtime because he wrote a lot of really popular songs like "Maple Leaf Rag" and "The Entertainer."
Blues was a kind of African-American folk music about how hard life is. It usually had a sway to it and followed a 12-bar pattern as the home note moved like this: 1 1 1 1 / 4 4 1 1 / 5 4 1 1
1920's-1940's - Jazz & Gospel Jazz was all about improvising, which means making up parts of the song as you go. Jazz combined the off-beat rhythms of ragtime, the relaxed sway of the blues, and the instruments from marching bands and orchestras to create something totally new.
Early jazz bands usually had just one of each instrument. Louis Armstrong was the best-known jazz musician in these early days. He was a great trumpet player and had a unique voice. Watch how the musicians take turns improvising, and how the song is different each time they perform it:
In the 1930's and 1940's, jazz bands grew bigger, so they were more like jazz orchestras. This kind of jazz was called "big band" or "swing music." Duke Ellington was the leader of one of these "big bands."
Here's a faster performance of the same song, but this time with the famous jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald. She was an expert at scat (singing with sounds instead of words, using your voice like an instrument).
Ella Fitzgerald was known as the First Lady of Song," "The Queen of Jazz," and "Lady Ella."
Gospel music is church music where people sing with lots of feeling. Gospel has the looseness of blues music and sometimes the 12-bar blues pattern. One or two people sing separate from the group, playing around with the tune like in a jazz band.
1940's-1950's - Bluegrass & Rockabilly Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys made a new style of music that mixed folk instruments like fiddle, banjo and guitar with the 12-bar blues pattern while improvising like jazz musicians. The music was usually played fast. When other groups started playing this kind of music, it was called "bluegrass music" because it was like The Blue Grass Boys.
Earl Scruggs was the banjo player in Bill Monroe's band for a while. He later left to start his own band and is one of the most famous banjo players ever. He had a 3-finger picking style that is now called "Scruggs style" picking. Here are two old performances and one newer one:
Rock and Roll arrived in the 1950's. At first, rock was like 12-bar blues but faster and with electric guitar and drums. We call this early kind of rock and roll rockabilly music. Some of the people who made this music famous were Bill Haley, Chuck Berry, Johnny Cash, Buddy Holly and the Crickets, and Elvis Presley, the king of rock and roll.