Jazz music is one of the most original and innovative of American musical forms. Throughout the twentieth century, jazz evolved to encompass a variety of complex styles and it produced some of the century's greatest composers and musicians.

Jazz originated in the early 1900s, mostly in the South, and especially in New Orleans, Louisiana. Drawing from African American blues and ragtime music, jazz added more complex rhythms and a wider range of tones to create a new style. As it developed in the 1910s and 1920s, a number of important early innovators took jazz in new directions, including Joseph "King" Oliver (1885–1938), Sidney Bechet (1897–1959), Jelly Roll Morton (1890–1941), and especially trumpeter Louis Armstrong (1901–1971). Armstrong was a phenomenal soloist, and he moved the solo instrument to the forefront of jazz. Jazz music often began with a single melody, and then various soloists would add their own touches to it until it...