Jazz By Decade: 1900-1910

By Jacob Teichroew, About.com Guide
Jazz was still in its pupal stage in the first decade of the 20th century. Some of the first jazz icons, trumpeters Louis Armstrong and Bix Beiderbecke, were born in 1901 and 1903, respectively.

They were most likely exposed to ragtime music, a blending of blues, John Phillip Sousa-like marches, and a complex centuries-old dance called the quadrille. Pianist Jelly Roll Morton helped bring the style into the limelight by performing virtuosic and partly improvised rags in brothels in New Orleans.
Soon ragtime music by Morton, Scott Joplin, and others was disseminated across the country by sheet music publishers such as W.C. Handy, who was also a composer and bandleader. However, around this period, sheet music began to lose it’s primacy in the spread of musical culture with the development of piano rolls and the phonograph record.

Handy also helped the saxophone, which had been created as a military marching band instrument, shed its novelty status by including it in his dance band arrangements. Trumpeter Buddy Bolden began arranging blues and ragtime music for brass instruments, paving the way for early jazz. He was one of the first prominent improvisers, although there are no surviving recordings of his playing. In 1907 he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and he spent the rest of his life off of the stage, and in a mental institution.

In a matter of years, jazz began to capture the nation’s attention. Improvisation became a featured element of the music, and dance halls began to fill with audiences eager to hear the hot new music.
http://jazz.about.com/od/historyjazztimeline/a/JazzByDecade1900.htm