Jazz travels upstream: Follow the birth of jazz
Within the so-called “Crescent City” of New Orleans, American jazz was born, encouraged, and flourished, thanks to the creative energy of men like Jelly Roll Morton, who is regarded as the first great jazz composer. The Storyville neighborhood was a musical incubator for jazz, until the federal government closed it down in 1917, when alcohol became illegal during the era of the Great Prohibition.
“That kind of music followed the night life, the drinking, and the all-night parties” notes Bill Smith, a jazz historian. “So when they shut down Storyville, the musicians all lost their jobs. Many of them began to work entertaining people on the luxurious riverboats, the so-called gambling boats that traveled up and down the Mississippi River. Because the musicians migrated in search of work, and the music followed the parties and the liquor, jazz was soon transplanted to Memphis and Chicago, where other unique styles of jazz were created.”
Thanks to recorded music, radio, and the advent of television, jazz quickly spread all over the USA and across the oceans, back to the shores of those places where its seeds first sprouted before the great social and cultural immigrations into New Orleans. If you want to really enjoy jazz, plan a trip that will let you trace its roots across the USA back to the great city of New Orleans. Along the way you can listen to the various styles of jazz that evolved as it traveled upriver.