Like America's anthropological history, we seem to ignore a lot of things about our musical history. We have it categorized into nice little digestible chunks and yet it is woefully incomplete to the point of being dysfunctional because we discard or ignore that which doesn't fit but must be accounted for nonetheless. When I tell people that we know more about European music from 300 years ago than we do about America's at the turn of the century or that bluegrass did not descend from Irish, English or Celtic music, people cite internet sources to dispute this. Of course, many internet sources simply copy one another (often word-for-word) so these can hardly be called authoritative. One idiot writes something that may or may not have any truth to it and everyone else copies and pastes it as though it is indisputable.

A lot of factors are at play—racism, new technologies giving rise to an uncertain future, copyright laws or lack of, etc. No one can deny the black influence in America's music—would, in fact, be very foolish to do so—but this has come at the expense of some of the early white singers, songwriters and musicians of the era around 1890 to about 1920. How much do we owe to them? We really can't say.

We know that the first jazz band to record was the Original Dixieland Jass Band out of New Orleans in 1917. They were white. Sometimes the charge of racism is leveled to explain this. Why not a black band—surely there were plenty? Jazz historian, Ed Love, who hosts a very long-running PBS jazz radio program on WDET in Detroit, stated that a Creole of color named Freddie Keppard was contacted in 1916 to record jazz before ODJB but since jazz recording was uncharted waters, Keppard felt that other musicians would hear his playing and steal his style and take credit for it and so turned down the offer which then went to ODJB. But is this the whole story? Was ODJB, for example, anywhere on par with Keppard's band? We have the recordings but, of course, recording quality being what it was (there wasn't even electrical recording technology in 1917), we can't be certain how good they truly were.

The band's cornetist, Nick LaRocca, even went so far as to claim that New Orleans jazz was invented by white musicians and that blacks "had nothing to do with it." Many historians of jazz have puzzled over this statement which is an incredible one to be sure. Was he tired of hearing about how jazz was a black invention as though whites had nothing to do with it and sought to turn the tables by making one incredible statement to counter another or was he dead serious and honestly believed what he stated?

Indeed, when we look back through the photographic evidence, we see white jazz bands in New Orleans quite early—Stalebread Lacoume's Razzy Dazzy Spasm Band from 1906, Happy Schilling's band from 1915, The Jazzola Six from 1918, etc. Names integral to early jazz keep turning up—Johnny Bayersdorffer, Bud, Joe, Deacon and Freddie Loyacano, Alfred and Manuel Mello, Monk Hazel, Tony Parenti, Alfred, Julian and Papa Jack Laine, Sharky Bonano, Abbie, Richie and George Brunies, Leon Roppolo, Johnny De Droit—all very influential men who undoubtedly played jazz at a time when whites are often marginalized in the histories regarding the development of that genre. And this is only in New Orleans.

What characterizes jazz in contrast to regular society dance band of that era? In a word "swing." Jazz swung in a way that set it apart from other popular music of the period. I'm going to assume the reader knows what is meant by swing so I'm not going to launch into an analysis of the term as that would be a thread in itself. By the 20s, jazz was generally classified in three ways: sweet, corn and swing. Sweet jazz was ordinary dance band fare slightly jazzed up, i.e. it had a bit of swing to it. Paul Whiteman's band from that period was an example of sweet jazz. Corn jazz was popular among the college set. It was really a subset of sweet jazz but had a bit more swing to it. I love corn jazz personally. Paul Tremaine's 1929 recording "Four-Four Rhythm" is corn as is Lou Weimers' Gold and Black Aces "Merry Widow's Got a Sweetie Now." This is the kind of stuff one sees in old footage being sung by guys in the big fur coats or letter sweaters holding megaphones. Hillbilly skits were popular with corn and Kay Kyser's band was a continuation of corn into the big band era. Swing jazz is a bit more nebulous as some say it didn't exist in terms of songs but only in terms of interpretation. I don't know if I agree with that. Kid Ory's "Savoy Blues" seems to me to be purely swing jazz. There really isn't any other way to play it. The Hot Five being a good example of the swing sub-genre as well as Jelly Roll Morton's 1926 Victor recordings. But regardless, swing jazz simply pulled out the stops and went full-tilt on the swing.