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Jazz performers would generally improvise within their given styles while performing.
For the most part, jazz is based on the assumption that any number of melodies
can exist with a particular chord, and each soloist during a performance would
improvise off of this cord. Despite the basis of improvisation, two basic forms
surfaced. One style followed an AABA format, which usually consisted of 32 measures
of meter. The second style grew mainly from African American folk music. 
This style was very similar to the 12-bar blues form and had fairly standardized
chords. During the 1920s, a cornet or trumpet player, accompanied by a clarinet
player providing the countermelodies and a trombone player with rhythmic slides
typically produced the jazz melody.
It was not until 1917 when The Original Dixieland Jazz Band produced the first jazz record. Records by the New Orleans Rhythm Kings in 1922 and the Creole Jazz Band followed them in 1923. One of the most influential jazz players was trumpeter Louis Armstrong. Armstrong pioneered soloist playing, making it essential to the format of jazz. While this early jazz originated, for the most part, from New Orleans, as the 1920s progressed, there was a distinct shift to a style forming in Chicago. This style added the implementation of the saxophone and the use of the piano. From the Harlem district of New York, James P. Johnson mastered a style of jazz piano known as stride piano. These forms of jazz on piano would later become the boogie-woogie of the 1930s and 1940s. Another noted shift in jazz during the 1920s was that instead of fairly small bands performing, big bands became increasingly popular. Such musicians as Duke Ellington and Fletcher Henderson took part in this big jazz band movement. As the 1920s gave out, this sort of jazz progressed into the swing era of the 1930s.
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