Before the Music Had a Name

When music genres wind up with a name, it's usually because the style became so commercially viable that someone in the media decided to label it with a clever word or phrase.

To illustrate my point, let's look at three demarcation points in 20th century music, each 10 years apart: Swing existed years before Benny Goodman's Palomar Ballroom appearance in 1935, bebop was around before Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie made their first Guild records together in 1945 and rock 'n' roll existed before Chuck Berry's records for Chess or Elvis Presley's records for Sun in 1955. Let's start with swing. Before Goodman began using the Edgar Sampson arrangements for Chick Webb's band in 1935, swing was already flourishing:

Here's Benny Carter playing and singing Swing It in 1933...



Here's the Chick Webb band playing Edgar Sampson's arrangement of Stompin' at the Savoy in 1934...



Here's the Webb band playing Edgar Sampson's arrangement of Don't Be That Way in 1934...



And here's Fletcher Henderson's arrangement for his band of Wrappin' It Up in 1934...



Before bebop wound up with a name, the music was already emerging at after-hours clubs and bars in Harlem.

Here's guitarist Charlie Christian jamming on Stompin' at the Savoy at Minton's Playhouse in 1941...



Here's Thelonious Monk at Minton's in 1941...



Here's Dizzy Gillespie at Minton's Uptown House in 1941 playing Kerouac...



And here's Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Oscar Pettiford in Room 305 or the Savoy Hotel in Chicago riffing on the chord changes to Sweet Georgia Brown in 1943...



Before disc jockey Alan Freed began calling music aimed at teens “rock 'n' roll" in the mid-1950s, the music was already percolating in multiple forms:

Here's the roots of rock 'n' roll before it was smoothed out...