London, which long has sworn to shake off the fever, but still is jazzingJazz in Britain is usually said to have begun with the British tour of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band in 1919.
By the early 1930s, music journalism in Britain, notably through the Melody Maker, had created an appreciation of the importance of the leading American jazz soloists and was beginning to recognise the improvising talents of some local musicians.
Louis Armstrong played residencies in London and Glasgow in 1932, followed in subsequent years by the Duke Ellington Orchestra and Coleman Hawkins.
[7] In 1948, a group of young musicians including John Dankworth and Ronnie Scott, focused on the Club Eleven in London, began a movement toward "modern jazz" or Bebop.
Significant instrumentalists in this early movement were trumpeter-pianist Denis Rose, pianist Tommy Pollard, saxophonist Don Rendell, and drummers Tony Kinsey and Laurie Morgan.
At this point both streams tended to emulate Americans, whether it be Charlie Parker for Beboppers or Joe "King" Oliver and other New Orleans musicians for traditionalists, rather than try to create a uniquely British form of jazz.
During the 1950s mass emigration into the UK, brought an influx of players from the Caribbean such as Joe Harriott and Harold McNair, though some, among them Dizzy Reece, found the shortage of genuine jazz work frustrating - dance music remained popular - and migrated to the United States.
British-born players too, including George Shearing, active on the London scene since before the war, and Victor Feldman also chose to move across the Atlantic to develop their careers.
In 1959, the Chris Barber Jazz Band scored a hit with a version of Sidney Bechet's "Petite Fleur"[11] on both the US Billboard and UK singles charts (No.
Firmly established as an outstanding bebop soloist before his arrival in the UK he went on to claim a leading spot in British jazz.
He had been toying with some loose free form ideas since the mid-1950s, but finally settled upon his conception in 1959, after a protracted spell in hospital with tuberculosis gave him time to think things over.
He finally settled on a line-up of Keane (trumpet, flugelhorn), Pat Smythe (piano), Coleridge Goode (bass) and Phil Seamen (drums).
Les Condon temporarily replaced Keane on trumpet in 1961, while Seamen left permanently the same year, his place taken by the return of the quintet's previous drummer, Bobby Orr.
Instead of the steady pulse of Ornette's drummer and bass player, Harriott's model demanded constant dialogue between musicians which created an ever-shifting soundscape.
In 1962, he wrote in the liner notes for his Abstract album, "of the various components comprising jazz today - constant time signatures, a steady four-four tempo, themes and predictable harmonic variations, fixed division of the chorus by bar lines and so on, we aim to retain at least one in each piece.
One important aspect was the South African jazz musicians who had left their home nation,[13] including Chris McGregor, Dudu Pukwana, Mongezi Feza, Johnny Dyani, Harry Miller and later Julian Bahula.
South African and free jazz influences came together in projects like the Brotherhood of Breath big band, led by McGregor.
These influences mixed in a way that led to British contemporary jazz of the time developing a distinctive identity distancing it to some extent from American styles.
One branch of this development was the creation of various British jazz fusion bands like Soft Machine, Nucleus, Colosseum, If, Henry Cow, Centipede, National Health, Ginger Baker's Air Force, to name a few.
[16] The music continued to be presented in a wide range of venues in major British cities, but with most activity still focused in London.
Many musicians from this band, including Django Bates, Iain Ballamy and Julian Argüelles, have also become important artists with highly developed individual musical voices.
In the early 2000s, the F-IRE Collective gained significant attention with Polar Bear and Ben Davis receiving Mercury Prize nominations.
At the same time, Black British traditions in jazz have been strengthened, in part, by the "rediscovery" and celebration in the 2000s of Jamaican altoist Joe Harriott's once-neglected music and by the publication of books about him and his close collaborator, bassist Coleridge Goode.
Among The NJA's special collections are the papers of Mike Westbrook, John Chilton, Jim Godbolt and Charles Fox.