Hundreds of budding musicians thought they could do what the Original Dixieland Jazz Band did the cockier ones thought they could do it better. They had played what sounded to British ears like banjo, clarinet, cornet and trombone all channelling different melodies at the same time. So Britain created something of its own: the dance band, a regional variant whose seeds had been sown back in 1919 when the riotous Original Dixieland Jazz Band had arrived in London. I n the 1920s and 1930s, boiling hot American jazz didn’t really suit the British reserve.
