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Jazz as a style didn't come into its own until around 1920. Before
that there were such prejazz forms as band and piano ragtime, jug
bands, banjo groups, country blues, European marching bands and pop
songs, street calls, and African percussion music. Good examples of
this early American music can be heard on the Smithsonian Folk
Collection. Most good jazz texts run the history and descriptions
down. One such book is Jazz Styles by Mark Gridley.
Jazz came about due to the inevitable confluence of ragtime and the
blues. Of course, one could make a semantic argument which would
confuse what the salient characteristics of jazz are (much of what
they presented on BET Jazz I wouldn't call jazz, for example).
Similarly, I would not call the Original Dixieland Jass Band's barn
animal and slide-whistle gimmicks jazz. (Many contemporaries called
their stuff jive hokum.) Jazz didn't really swing until Jelly Roll
Morton and Louis Armstrong, and simply because Louis and Jelly played
ragtime before they evolved their great jazz groups does not make what
they played before that jazz....

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