ipl-logo

Bessie Smith And Billie Holiday: The Rise In Jazz Music

487 Words2 Pages

The Jazz Age was a period of time from the 1920s-1930s. African Americans were often given most of the credit to the birth of Jazz music, but both black and white Americans were responsible for its huge rise in popularity. The rise in jazz music coincidentally came with the rise of radio broadcasting and recording technology.
Female Musicians such as Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday started making music at this age, paving the way for future female musicians.
Bessie Smith started her career in 1923. She worked with other Jazz musicians during her career, some being Sidney Bechet who was a saxophonist, and Fletcher Henderson & James P. Johnson who were pianists. Smith worked with Johnson to record one of her most famous songs, “Backwater Blues”. …show more content…

He had a difficult childhood, where his father was a factory worker, who abandoned the family after Armstrong’s birth. His mother, who seemed to turn to prostitution many times, often left him with his grandmother. Armstrong was forced to leave school in the fifth grade to start working. His first job was to collect junk and deliver coal for a family. The family he worked for, the Karnofskys, often encouraged him to sing and invited him over for meals. By the end of his teens, Armstrong had fired his stepfather’s gun in the air during a New Years’ Eve celebration and was arrested on the spot. He was sent to the Coloured Waif’s Home for Boys. There, he started a love for music. When the home released him in 1914, he immediately started dreaming about a life of making music. Although he still worked on odd jobs selling newspapers and hauling coal to the city’s famed red-light district, Armstrong started earning a reputation of a fine blues player. Joe King Oliver, one of the greatest cornet players in town, began mentoring him, showing him the pointers of the horn and occasionally used him and his musical talent as a sub. In 1918, a few things happened to change his life. He married a woman named Daisy Parker, who was a

More about Bessie Smith And Billie Holiday: The Rise In Jazz Music

Open Document