Which music qualifies as jazz has been a hot topic for over a hundred years. From the beginning there were attempts to both define and separate jazz from the popular music of the time as that popular music evolved from ragtime and waltz music to funk and rock. At some lost moment that effort to distinguish jazz flipped from it being the lesser endeavor to being the more creative and artistically worthy one, America’s art form, distinct, even if popular, from mere pop. This need to categorize, which would eventually invade all styles of music, began with swing gaining dominance in the 1930s which quickly inspired hot clubs, moldy figs, and revivalists to spring up to preserve a sound not yet a generation old. It soon took on a new urgency as in the ’40s swing diverged down at least two major paths into the future. One being bop, and the progression of artistically focused jazz that followed it. The other being what Tad Richards calls small group swing, but at the time became known as rhythm and blues—a style that lent itself to rock ’n’ roll, soul, and everything after. This was the audience focused path.
There was other jazz going on, revival, or otherwise, that did not follow either path, and older musicians who just kept playing how they had, or traveled between styles. The branches on the jazz tree are primarily a critic creation with the artists hopping between them as
