Evolving from traditional marching music in the southern United States, ragtime, a precursor to jazz, employed the syncopated rhythms of African music. But performing them on the piano was new and previously unheard of in America. The left hand of the pianist would play a regular bass progression while the right would play a more sprightly melody. In Harlem ragtime evolved into stride piano, a style that depends more on improvisation, as does most authentic jazz. Scott Joplin is regarded as the "king" of ragtime, and the early stride pianists include James P. Johnson, Willie "The Lion" Smith, and Fats Waller.
New Orleans jazz, which drew upon elements of dixieland, started in its namesake city in about 1910 and soon was spread to Chicago, New York, and other urban areas by touring bands. It combined trumpet or clarinet improvisation over a backing band consisting usually of piano, banjo, drums, and double bass or tuba. Perhaps the most famous New Orleans jazz tune is "When the Saints Go Marching In," and the most celebrated performers associated with this style include King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, Sidney Bechet, and, above all, Louis Armstrong.
Bebop, which developed in the 1940s, is noted for its complex harmonies, free-form melodies, rapid chord changes, and relatively fast tempo. Closely associated with large cities, particularly New York, it is seen as the defining genre of music for twentieth-century modernism, the cultural movement that sought to break down traditional notions of artistic form. It is highly complex and difficult music, usually performed by small combos. Loved by French intellectuals such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, bebop was also known for the sharp attire of its players, with crisp suits and berets becoming the uniform of bebop. Charlie Parker is often considered the originator of bebop; other major figures associated with this style include Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, and Bud Powell.
Taking the melodic improvisation of bebop one step further, in the late 1950s and 1960s artists such Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, and Cecil Taylor began developing free jazz. Free jazz, which is often deliberately cacophonous, sought to deconstruct the forms of jazz that had gone before it, dispensing with fixed tempos, chord progressions, and melodies. It emphasized individual, subjective, and even anarchic expression and gave voice to African-American anger during the Civil Rights period. In its free and abstract nature, it could be compared to the abstract expressionist movement in painting that developed at around the same time, as practiced by Jackson Pollock.
Jazz fusion, which developed in the late 1960s and became a dominant style in the 1970s, represented an attempt to synthesize the improvisational elements of jazz with the simplified rhythms and electronic instruments of blues and rock music. Miles Davis initiated the movement with his 1969 album "In a Silent Way." Artists known primarily for playing jazz fusion include Weather Report, Chick Corea, and Nucleus.
First formulated in the 1980s in the U.K., acid jazz sought to combine jazz with funk and hip-hop influences. It is most notable for its use of looped, electronically-created beats. Jazz improvisation is then overladen, sometimes alongside samples or live record-scratching. American musicians such as Roy Ayers and Donald Byrd are often seen as forerunners of the style, but British practitioners such as Jamiroquai and the Brand New Heavies fully realised the genre.
Also developed during the 1980s, smooth jazz added a lounge element to jazz. It focused on producing down-tempo songs characterized by electric bass guitar, saxophone, and programmed percussion. The sound, heavily influenced by pop music styles, was clean and commercial and aimed for a polished, easy-listening finish, far from the frenetic outbursts and difficulties of bebop and free jazz. George Benson, Earl Klugh, David Sanborn, and Dave Koz are amongst the genre's most well-known practitioners.