MUSICAL GUIDE
Here is a brief, subjective guide to the common styles at JBs

JAZZ
Jazz comes in so many variations it’s impossible to describe it in few words. Generally, the JBs brand of Jazz is the kind that’s easy to like and listen to – Jazz played for having a good time, as the sign on the pub stage playfully reads, “Happy Jazz Please”

TRAD
Short for “traditional”, Trad Jazz brings to mind straw hats and banjos, steamboats and gambling, the New Orleans red light district and horses. This is a vital part of JBs musical history and it comes in many sub-varieties. It’s the good time music we partied to in the 20’s.

SWING
Somewhere along the continuum between “Jazz” and “Blues” is a music flavoured by both, that is danceable and great for any party. Big bands usually play “Swing”, but so do smaller combos. It’s not as rocky as Rhythm and Blues and light enough to keep your foot tapping.

BLUES
Blues, like Jazz, can be so many things. A mellow guitar on a front porch. Low down harmonica and a foot stomp. Up-tempo rhythm ‘n’ blues with rolling piano, honking Saxes and shouting, crooning or demanding vocals. Modern, classic, pre-war, electric, acoustic, arranged, improvised and traditional – the blues is wide...

RHYTHM ‘N’ BLUES
Equally wide and difficult to sum up briefly, as the name implies R&B is a rockier rhythmical version of the blues. It includes anything from Chicago Blues to Blue-based Soul and Gospel influenced music. Extremely upbeat syncopated rhythmical variations of R&B include called “Funk”, and modern variations include “Hop”. Add some Jazz influences and you might get “Jazz Hop”.

SOUL

Soul music is a music genre originating in the United States combining gospel music and rhythm and blues. According to the , soul is "music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of funky, secular testifying." The genre occasionally uses improvisational additions, twirls and auxiliary sounds. Catchy rhythms, stressed by handclaps and plastic body moves, are an important feature. Other characteristics are a call and response between the soloist and the chorus, and an especially tense vocal sound.

ROCK ‘N’ ROLL
A little rougher than rhythm ‘n’ blues, more intensive. Reminiscent of Little Richard, Fats Domino and Jerry Lee Lewis...

ROCKABILLY
An upright bass slapping time with a steady rhythm guitar. Lots of energy and a whiff of country in the vocals. Elvis in 1954...