Trad jazz

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Trad jazz, short for "traditional" jazz is a music genre popular in Britain and Australia from the 1940s onward through the 1950s and which still has enthusiasts today. It represented a recreation of the sounds and playing styles of New Orleans dixieland jazz. British and Australian bands of this genre copied the playing style of such artists as Sidney Bechet or King Oliver.

Opinions are divided about whether "trad jazz" is a valid name because one point of view would have it that jazz is a folk music tradition like any other, while the opposite point of view holds that jazz playing breaks loose from traditions and conventions so that, therefore, "traditional jazz" is a contradiction in terms.

In Britain during the 50's and 60's trad jazz was used to dance skip jive, a descendant of jive and swing dance.

For definition, many aficionados today consider trad to be the traditional playing of a piece with solo after solo leading up to a finish. Some feel that "hot jazz" though similar to trad, and indeed containing many of the same tunes, was more ensemble playing with less individual virtuosity brought to the forefront. Early King Oliver pieces define hot jazz to many. As individual performers began stepping to the front as soloists, the music changed. Ironically, one of ensemble players in King Oliver's Original Creole Band, Louis Armstrong, was by far, the most influential of the soloists, creating a big demand for the new style of jazz in the late 1920's and early 1930's. Other influential stylists who are still revered in trad jazz circles today include Sidney Bechet, Bix Beiderbecke and Muggsy Spanier.