Early jazz developed in the 1910s in the ‘melting pot’ of New Orleans, as players combined influences including ragtime, blues and marching band music to create a style of jazz that was heavy on collective, polyphonic improvisation.

Trumpeter Louis Armstrong was jazz’s first major soloist, and his recordings with his Hot Five and Hot Seven are some of the most important of the 20th Century.

Bix Beiderbecke played in a lighter, ‘sweeter’ way than the more operatic Armstrong, with Bix’s trumpet often accompanied by the saxophonist Frankie Trumbauer.