New Orleans usually gets the credit for being the birthplace of jazz. The city's laid-back culture and ethnic diversity gave rise in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to what is generally considered the first style of jazz. New Orleans jazz initially developed in the city's African-American community, but musicians of all backgrounds began to play it. Band leader "Papa" Jack Laine's musical groups were racially integrated and played New Orleans jazz for years before pressure to segregate called a halt to this practice. New Orleans jazz spread to other cities in the United States as musicians from the city joined tours, minstrel shows and vaudeville shows. This style of jazz laid the groundwork later jazz developments. Musical instruments moved from string instruments to brass, especially the trombone, cornet and clarinet. The tempo increased, and the familiar jazz "call and response" style became an integral part of the music. Dixieland jazz, a similar kind of style, is an outgrowth of the original New Orleans jazz.
Swing music, also called Big Band music, dominated in the 1930s and 1940s, becoming not only the most popular style of jazz but also probably the most popular style of music in the entire country (see references 2). Swing was tighter and more disciplined than other styles of jazz, and less improvisational. Swing music tended to use the same riff repeatedly, but this made the songs even more catchy and danceable. Many of the most famous American jazz musicians come into their own during the Big Band period, including Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Glen Miller and Tommy Dorsey. After the Big Band period, however, jazz suffered an overall decline in popularity.
The development of cool jazz was a reaction against the more up-tempo styles of bebop and swing. Cool jazz is distinctive for its laid-back, unemotional style, where technical virtuosity is less important than lyricism. Solos in cool jazz are generally more complicated than those in other forms of jazz, but slower-paced. Probably the most famous cool jazz musician is Miles Davis, whose seminal "Birth of the Cool" album was released in 1957.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, jazz made a resurgence among young people, both in the United States and in Europe. Acid jazz, a blend of funk, jazz, disco, soul and hip-hop, came from the United Kingdom, where bands like Brand New Heavies and Jamiroquai, heavily influenced by American soul music, began commonly using jazz-like chord structures in their songs. The credit for coining the term "acid jazz" is most often given to British DJ Gilles Peterson, who, while playing an old 7-inch jazz record, kept changing the speed until it sounded "all warped."