Section from chapter 1927-28: Harlem, Chicago and Kansas City   [ return to introduction ]

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By Mervyn Cooke • 325 illustrations,
82 in full color • 256 pages • 8-1/2 x 8-1/2"
Cloth • ISBN 0-7892-0399-5 • U.S. $45.00
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Earl Hines (seated at the piano) and his band pose behind their instruments at the Grand Terrace Café, Chicago, soon after he founded the ensemble in December 1928. [ view larger image ] (The Frank Driggs Collection)
Chicago

Chicago was beginning to lose its status as the focal point for jazz by the end of the 1920s. Many musicians from New Orleans and other southern cities had been migrating northward to the Windy City since the 1910s in search of employment, and by 1922 Chicago was home to such revered performers as Jelly Roll Morton, King Oliver and Louis Armstrong, who recorded many of their early masterpieces in the city's studios.

Important venues during the 1920s included the Apex Club on East 35th Street (which featured the music of New Orleans clarinetist Jimmie Noone from 1926), the Coliseum on East 15th Street (famous for hosting cutting contests between rival bands), the Dreamland Café, Friar's Inn, Lincoln Gardens and the Savoy Ballroom. Some of these were closely linked to local gangster organizations, and were heavily involved in the supply of illicit alcohol during Prohibition (1919—33). Figures such as the notorious Al Capone built empires through establishments known as "speakeasies," which sold bootleg liquor. Where there is alcohol, jazz is generally not far away, and a severe government clampdown on Chicago speakeasies in 1928 was one reason behind the new migration of musicians eastward to New York. By this time, the Big Apple was widely regarded as jazz's future city-of-opportunity.

Thanks to the tenacious efforts of performers such as Earl Hines (• p. 124), who remained for a decade at Chicago's Grand Terrace under the watchful eye of the Mafia, the city nevertheless remained firmly on the jazz map during the swing era, and new venues sprang up in the 1940s that helped to promote the developing bop style. Simultaneously, Chicago became one of the most important centers for the post-war growth of a powerful urban brand of blues, and in the 1960s the city again became prominent as the home of the radical free jazz (• p. 150).