The Blues of the Jazz Age The 1920’s in America were a time of freedom and spiritual expression. We had just emerged victorious from the first World War and artistic and technological advances were taking place all over the nation. Times were often difficult during the industrial age so the working men and women played just as hard as they worked. The work days were long and the jobs demanding; workers needed their time to relax and have some fun. Rich and vibrant music flowed from the deep south carrying a message of defiant reactions to life’s struggles. This new message was known as the blues. The Blues were a way of letting off steam for the working class of America; it was a chance for them to dance, let loose and just have fun. The …show more content…
In the year 1920, a black female singer by the name of Mamie Smith released the first blues song ever recorded called “Crazy Blues,” a song that tells the tale of a couple splitting up and the blues that come along with it. This song introduced a new style of musical freedom to an expanding, young and free audience: " 'Crazy Blues' kickstarted the Jazz craze” ("The Formation of Modern Mass Culture"). The blues became very popular among young men and women who, as Ed Kopp stated “loved to feel a new form of freedom on the dance floor” (Kopp). Early blues songs were often about sex and so it was despised and ignored largely by the white community; however it soon became about the everyday blues and struggles that everyone could associate with. Because of this, the blues grew into a national sensation that breathed life into the Harlem Renaissance. From the Harlem Renaissance emerged many great innovative musicians including Duke Ellington, Chick Webb, and jazz soloists that many are familiar with today such as Louis Armstrong, the most important figure in the history of jazz, and Bix Beiderbecke, a great young jazz musician who died of alcoholism at the age of twenty-eight. The jazz soloists of this time represented a new-found freedom and expression through a musical