Stride Piano
Piano playing has transformed. Jazz migrated from New Orleans to Chicago and New York, the capital of ragtime. Ragtime was out! Blues was in!
A new period started in the history of jazz piano music.
It seemed as they play all the weird and ugly notes and it still sounded so great.
Playing piano that way sounded loud and intense. It was plain "Stride piano" playing.
The most successful players of stride playing were Eubie Black from Baltimore (from 1906), Luckey Roberts from Philadelphia, Willie "The Lion" Smith , James Johnson (1914) from New York and Thomas "Fats" Waller (1920).
They came to Atlantic City before World war one in order to entertain the guests in the red-light district. When the summer season was over, most of these pianists would move to Harlem, the black ghetto of New York, where they played in the night-clubs for black people.
In the 1920s, When blues became so popular white tourists has started to come to Harlem to get a bit more of this exciting music. So now black piano players could play also in white parties. This could help them pay their rent and therefore were called "rent parties". These parties became very popular after World War 2 and gave stride playing a respected place in the history of jazz piano music.