Often, its role was to provide a variation of the bass melody that fit into the spaces between the first two voices. The trombone sounds in a lower register than a cornet, trumpet, or clarinet, providing a vocal balance to those higher voices. Brilliant clarinet soloists like Sidney Bechet used the obbligato role to create an endless stream of melodic variations.
The New Orleans jazz standard “High Society” provides one of the clearest examples: originally a marching band song, the piccolo part on the trio (third strain) was adapted to clarinet by Alphonse Picou. The role can be traced to Western formal music, in which the second voice was seen as an essential melodic counter-point to the first voice. The second voice, or obbligato, often had the greatest improvisational freedom, and was expected to play highly ornamental variations of the melody (later, in the mid-20th century, it was sometimes called “window dressing”). However, compared to the cornet and trumpet, the violin’s softer sound made it difficult to hear above the din of the other instruments and dancers, and it gradually faded from the front-line. Piron, leader of his New Orleans Orchestra, was one of the few to use a violin as a lead voice in an orchestra setting. His sound helped define the more modern jazz of the late 1920s, and was one of the most imitated jazz styles for decades. Whereas Bolden, Keppard, and Oliver were known for their rough and affected sounds (through mutes or wah-wahs), Armstrong developed a more pure cornet and trumpet tone, without affects or vocalization. When Louis Armstrong left King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band to form his own band in 1925, he expanded the solo abilities of the cornet and trumpet. The fact that all three musicians were known locally as “king” of the cornet reflects the instrument’s importance in the development of the style. Freddie Keppard was considered the dominant cornetist from 1907 till 1915, with Joe Oliver coming after him, from 1915 to 1918. Following his mental breakdown in 1907, other local cornetists maintained the prominence of the instrument. First Voice: Cornet, Trumpet, or Violinīuddy Bolden helped to define the cornet as the dominant melody or solo voice in early New Orleans jazz. The overall affect is a musical conversation, in which the first and second voices respond to one another, and the deeper third voice provides a bass-level counterpoint. Collective improvisation among these instruments can involve a three-way “call and response.” The first voice will state a theme or melody, and the second and third voices will then make a melodic statement in response it. The interaction of the three instruments creates a melodic polyphony, which is in contrast to the solo melody statements of modern jazz styles, which came after New Orleans jazz in the mid-1920s. The third voice is most often the trombone.
The second voice, or obbligato, is usually the clarinet, but can also be the violin or saxophone.
The first voice or lead melody is usually the cornet or trumpet, though some early jazz bands used the violin. In New Orleans-style jazz, the term “front line” refers to three melody instruments.
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