"Just don't give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don't think you can go wrong."
~ Ella Fitzgerald
King Oliver and his Creole Jazz Band, Chicago, 1923 © Gilles Petard/Redferns/Getty Images.
Cataloged as the Devil's music, jazz broke the barriers, musically and socially. Jazz was famous for being an improvised way of music, instead of the traditional structure - performers over composers. Initially jazz was a type of music only played in Black neighborhoods and establishments.
Jazz faced many problems having racism as its greatest opponent because it was a type of music only played in Black neighborhoods and many believed that young people would ignore classical music -the "good music".
Flappers having fun while musicians perform during a Charleston dance contest at New York's Parody Club. 1926.
Benny Krueger's band plays at Brooklyn's Brighton Beach — as a flapper girl dances on the piano.
Prohibition brought jazz into gangster run nightclubs, where jazz and alcohol were mixed and Black musicians were hired. This caused white people to mix between them, beginning in the nightclubs of Chicago where white youth from all social classes were drawn to jazz and the attractive new dances that went with it.
This newfound physical freedom, combined with the illicit mix of races helped jazz become a big artistic expression even in the face of critics stepping up their efforts to stop the madness.
The Journal of Education Vol. 108, No. 14 (OCTOBER 22, 1928), pp. 347-348 (2 pages).