With the title Early Jazz, I'm basically using the approximate dates of early-recorded jazz: 1916-1934 (or so). As many people know, New Orleans Music in the early part of the 1900s didn't really have a name. By the time it was recorded it had changed already several times. "Hot" & unmannered--that was the way real jazz fans wanted it. As quickly as jazz spread on rails and records in the early years, it spread even more quickly with radio broadcasts. Yet regardless of their musicality at the time, the Don Redman/Fletcher Henderson, Clarence Williams and even early Ellington bands were mostly premonitions of the organized sounds and changing rhythms which were to be activated for the next decade and beyond.

     The Swing Era is more or less a musical calendar, spreading out the likes of Henderson, Hines & Ellington into the mid-to-late 30s. Also with the help of the new ideas from the Territory Bands pinnacled by the Moten/Basie KC rhythms and riffs, aiding & adding propulsion. Goodman, Shaw, Lunceford, Webb, and the Dorseys took the music to both white and black general audiences. Swing supplied the impetus to be rebelled against (Bebop) and a lot of the foundation for much of the solid jazz played after the big band breakups of the mid-to-late 40s. [Much of the so-called West Coast jazz of the 50s owes as much to Swing as it does to Bebop, if not more. (E.g. Shorty Rogers, Gerry Mulligan, Barney Kessel, Bob Brookmeyer)]

      The Bebop on 78s listings is really as much of a technological comment as a historical marker. By the beginning of the 1950s the L.P. held sway with musicians, the industry and most record buyers. Certainly, the usefulness of blowing for 20 minutes on one tune at a record date appealed to jazz musicians, like no other. (Perhaps save "classical" composers.) So this is really about the way the music was recorded & played back, and not so much about the music itself. Unlike the breaks between New Orleans/ Chicago jazz and the Swing Era and then Bebop, the "break" between Bebop and say, Hardbop, is less apparent, if not non-existent in the same terms. The Modern Jazz category is simply most of the jazz music recorded for L.P.s, tape and compact discs since circa. 1953-54. I know that this is still huge category and in its present form can be unwieldy. (In the case of CDs, when I thought of it, I tried to double-list artists whose music might span two categories, but I hope not to the point of confusion.) I will probably give several artists their own markers as the online collection grows. (Ellington comes to mind).

        Modern Traditional jazz that continued/continues to be played in the roots & spirit of Early Jazz. Many may wrongly think of this as only "Dixieland" jazz. That's certainly part of it, but I'm really referring to all of the early style, traditional jazz recorded throughout jazz history. The jazz music that went against the more "organized" efforts of bigger bands, tighter arrangements & solo spots. Which is why you'll see Eddie Condon 30s dates included, as well as some 40s boogie-woogie on up to Lu Waters, George Lewis, Don Ewell, Bob Wilber and the likes of the Stomp Off label. I'm not dictating, only sorting.

        Modern Big Band is somewhat similar. I'm really dealing with "tradition-oriented" big bands. Basically stuff that would probably be able to trace it's roots back to big band swing. I generally don't include Gil Evans(*), George Russell or the Hieroglyphics Ensemble, but do include Gerald Wilson, Bob Florence, Billy May and Woody Herman. Vocals are perhaps the least fair and the most understood as a category. Often it's as much about the song as it is about the singer. The words, the voice, the style…it's just separate.

Latin Jazz is in reference to the jazz music steeped in mainly Cuban and Puerto Rican rhythms.

(*) I know, he arranged for Claude Thornhill.