Jazz music began its origin in the early 1900’s in the auspicious city of New Orléans. Over the course of decades, it developed an assortment of complex styles with the introduction of scat singing, be-bopping, traditional jazz, jiving, down-to-earth funk, and the powerful, exciting, boogie-woogie. Today jazz lovers come in droves wanting not only to explore and experience the music, but also to be able to reach out and embrace those who have the same fervor of rhythm flowing through their veins. Therefore, it is not surprising when one combines that enthusiasm and zeal when logging on to Twitter by vicariously hooking up and tweeting with some fabulous and gifted jazz professionals. 

Cassandra Wilson is a true jazz musician and vocalist that produces, writes, and is talented enough to win two Grammy Awards. Her distinctive sounds incorporate her jazz tunes producing characteristic rhythms of both folk and blues. With approximately 4,050 followers, you are sure to want to be among them.

Another great jazz figure you will want to be sure to tweet with is composer and pianist Chick Corea. He has achieved jazz greatness in his own right by winning the Grammy’s 16 times and being a noted Hall of Famer. He has been pivotal in the jazz scene since the mid 60’s when he began his solo career. His tweeting followers are over 19,000 and growing, proving this renowned pianist knows his jazz. 

Michael Bublé attributes his interest in jazz to listening to his grandfather’s collection of jazz records at the tender age of five. He has sold millions of albums, acquired numerous Juno awards, and won three Grammys. Not only does he have a whopping 860,000+ followers, but Michael is a die-hard hockey fan as well.

Herbie Hancock was born in 1940, and he personifies jazz. He is a bandleader, composer, keyboardist and pianist. He has a list of firsts the length of your arm including the initiation of synthesizers into jazz and his involvement in the “post-bop” reverberation. It‘s been stated that his jazz extemporization is a distinctive mingle of blues, jazz, and contemporary classical music that generates a matchless style. It is of no surprise that this amazing one-of-a-kind jazz tweeter has over 25,000 followers.

For any jazz aficionado, it is not just tweeting with the musicians but also with the makers. One such music maker is Marsalis Music, based out of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded by reputed jazz musician, Branford Marsalis, over a decade ago, its roster includes bands such as Claudia Acuña, Joey Calderazzo, the iconic Harry Connick Jr. and more. Marsalis Music has a solid foundation in not only the United States but internationally as well.

Put a group of talented jazz musicians together, and they’re likely to turn out a wonderfully improvised and harmonious sound. Given the long and varied history of jazz music, that same group might be less likely to agree on a list of the greatest jazz musicians of all time. Still, a few names would be likely to crop up again and again in any discussion of the all-time greats.

The first name to come up would likely be Louis Armstrong. A jazz trumpeter from New Orleans, “Satchmo,” as he was nicknamed, would show up at the top of most lists. Born in 1901, Louis grew up in a jazz-soaked city and learned to play the cornet. His talent would catapult him to a long career. Often credited for influencing the emphasis on solo performance in jazz, Armstrong is still seen by many as the greatest jazz player of all time. He also helped make “scat” singing popular, a vocal improvisation that relies on nonsense syllables and sounds rather than words.

Armstrong himself was mentored by Joe “King” Oliver, a bandleader and cornet player who composed jazz tunes still played today, including “Canal Street Blues.” King actually gave Armstrong his first cornet. Given Armstrong’s ultimate legacy, it’s hard not place Oliver on a list of jazz greats, but he’d likely belong there anyway for his own creative contributions, including the use of mutes to alter the sound of horns.

Born just two years before Armstrong was Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington, arguably the best jazz composer ever, and certainly one of the most innovative and creative composers in American musical history. Ellington was a pianist who became a hugely popular bandleader. He is remembered especially for the years his band played at the famous Cotton Club in Harlem. The 1930s and 40s were a golden age for radio, so Ellington’s music had a wide influence. Although he refused to be categorized and played music that was widely influenced by many genres, including classical, Ellington’s place in the jazz pantheon can’t be denied.

Although jazz music originated within the African American community, its creative energy soon transported it to other communities where musicians of other backgrounds learned from the pioneers and put their own stamp on the sound. the “King of Swing”, Benny Goodman, was born into a large family of Russian-Jewish immigrants in Chicago. His early music lessons at synagogue combined with what he learned from traveling New Orleans clarinetists. It wasn’t long before Goodman was an accomplished clarinetist himself. He’s remembered not only for his amazing music but for leading one of the first racially-integrated bands.

Riding on the shoulders of these early greats was Miles Davis, born in 1926. An accomplished bandleader and trumpeter, he became known for his influence on the developing directions of jazz in the middle of the 20th century, especially bebop and cool jazz. Davis was considered a great musician and innovator.

Jazz was created by mixing genres of music together, taking the best things from each one, compiling them and then creating the new style. Jazz goes back to the early part of the 20th century. The African Americans’ jazz tradition has been a part of history for over 100 years. Jazz is created by improvising notes and making up a melody or line of notes while playing.

Jazz started back in the days of slavery, when they would sing to pass the time while they were working. They sung many types of songs including hymns and follow-along songs. One person would sing a line and the others would follow. The combination of the two types of music became the first Jazz songs.

Jazz became widely available when radios and record players were invented. Kids started listening to it and embracing the music. Big Band Swing Jazz also emerged and became the most popular music during the 30′s and 40′s.

New Orleans is the founding city for Jazz. People of all different cultures came to the city looking for money and fortune bringing with them their own musical traditions as well. Jazz clubs are going strong in it’s birth cities including New Orleans, Chicago and New York.

True Jazz music is not written down on paper. It is an emotion, a feeling unlike any other, that has to come out whether on an instrument or thru voice. 

Jazz Milestones
1895 – first Jazz band formed
1917 – first Dixieland Band came together
1920 – introduction to chord symbols
1929-1945 – beginning and end of the Swing era
1936 – Jazz was first integrated
1943 – Jazz was played in first concert hall
1954 – started winning awards for instrumental music
1959 – Improv steps in and expands record sells
1969 – Miles Davis was the first to sell 500,000 copies of his record.
1972-1979 – beginning of loft playing
1984 – A new generation gets a backward look at real Jazz.
1991 – Jazz is classified as an institution.
1993 – Jazzmen became pop stars.
1995 – reviving of the Impulse Record Label
2003 – Jazz was declared a national treasure by the president.
2008 – Grammy for Jazz album was won
2009 – 50th anniversary of Jazz
2012 – April 30th became International Jazz Day.

Jazz is a true part of history. It will live on forever in our institutions and art. Many artists have became famous, such as Satchmo, Miles Davis and Louis Armstrong, just to name a few.

This blog is focused on the many great Tweeps on Twitter who love jazz, Blip jazz, and spread jazz. There’s a very large (and growing) network of people who actively promote jazz on Twitter — the music, the musicians, and the venues. This is an attempt to bring more focus to those efforts, as we continue to fill the gap created by the lack of support for jazz from the music industry and the mainstream media.

If you have any ideas or suggestions for this blog or for the #TwitterJazzNetwork!

UPDATE: The_Jazz_Lawyer suggested adding a Twitter feed with a search on ‘jazz’. Great idea.

UPDATE 2: The search in the Twitter feed has been changed to ‘jazzlives’ — too many irrelevant tweets in the timeline when the search was set to ‘jazz’.

UPDATE 3: Because of an unfortunate email I received about setting the Twitter feed to search for the phrase ‘jazzlives’, I have now set it to search for TwitterJazzNetwork. Most tweets with that tag will appear in the feed.

Thanks to those of you reading this blog. This is my attempt to get people together — the people who love jazz deeply and promote it passionately on Twitter. I’ve seen jazz tweeps create new jazz fans, and I’ve seen the impact that tweeting and retweeting can have on attendance at jazz shows. I am eager to find more ways for us to share and connect through our mutual love for jazz.

I am not a writer, and this blog is in need of bloggers. If you tweet about jazz and feel inspired to say something here, I would love for you to contribute.

This morning I set up a Digg account and submitted a bunch of blog posts and articles by jazz tweeps. This is a great way to get more exposure for jazz-related content as Digg can have a huge impact on search-engine ranking.

If you already have a Digg account, please consider submitting content from the many jazz writers and bloggers among us, or Digging-up jazz-related content that’s already been submitted.

Here’s the profile I set up, with the content I’ve submitted: digg.com/users/DCJazzShows. I wanted to submit more content but I reached my limit (set for new users.)

From The Digg Effect:

Getting to the front page of Digg leads to a such traffic surge that it has been known to cripple web servers. Thousands of Digg users instantly flock to the source site as soon as a story hits Digg’s front page, causing traffic to spike on web sites well higher than usual levels.

Our little Digg experiment is going well so far. In one day we’ve got a crew of 8 jazz tweeps Digging-up jazz content there, with quite a few articles, photos, and videos submitted.

If you have a Digg acount, please check out some of the content that’s been submitted, or add some new jazz-related content (and it’s fine to submit your own articles or blog posts.

I’m taking the lead here to attempt a “round-robin” style post and get responses from as many of the folks connected to the TwitJazzNet community. As both a musician and writer, I’m always interested in hearing what music is turning people on of late — not a new concept in blogging certainly, but given the breadth of our group, I thought we might come up with a interesting list. So here is your assignment:

Question #1: Since January 1st, 2010, you’ve probably been exposed to some jazz you’ve never heard before, new or old. Name the one recording you’ve heard since the beginning of the year (in the last two months) that has ignited or re-ignited your passion for jazz the most.

I’m hoping that we are able to come up with a nice group of responses — I know it will be hard to pick just one, but it’s only in the last two months.

Here are the details:

Please limit your response to one or two sentences – it can be longer than a Tweet, but in the hopes that I’ll get more than a few responses, I’d like them to be short.

You can send your responses to me via email  or through Twitter if you wish.

If there is someplace we can link so people can hear the music you are talking about, feel free to include that as well.

Please also include your real name and contact information – we are building our list of TwitJazzNet folks and it would be nice to get your information consolidated for our own internal use.

Anything I missed? Ah, a deadline! Since I’ll be switching us over to our new domain tonight, I’d love to get everything in before the day is over – how about we say no later than noon Wednesday on the West Coast? If it’s looking wimpy, I’ll extend Enjoy all!

UPDATE: Feel free to post in the comments, too! I’ll assemble everything together for the response post…