In 1921, the year after the recording of Mamie Smith’s historic Crazy Blues, the musical Shuffle Along opened at Manhattan’s 63rd Street Theater. Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle, both African-American composers, cowrote the musical score. This was the first time that music written by African-American musicians was presented ostensibly for a white audience. Following Shuffle Along, downtown white Manhattanites developed an interest in the already thriving uptown black music scene. A surge in the sales of recordings by African-American musicians followed, and New York quickly became the city to which black musicians came to seek their fame.

When whites wandered north of 125th Street to experience "native Negro music" firsthand, they tended to head for such white-only spots as the famed Cotton Club, located at 644 Lenox Avenue. (A by-product of prohibition, the Cotton Club was opened by Chicago gangster Owney Madden in 1923 as a clearinghouse for his bootlegged liquor.) "White-only" applied solely to the patrons, as virtually all of the performers at such Harlem clubs were African-American. Floor shows at the Cotton Club were lavish spectacles featuring light-skinned female dancers clad in lewd "native" costumes and accompanied by percussive "jungle music."

By 1922, both black and white fans flocked to buy the latest recordings, and black musicians in the City of New York could not record fast enough. The recently founded Black Swan label struck gold with Ethel Waters, the most popular blues singer of the early 1920’s, and Bessie Smith, known to this day as the Empress of the Blues. Busy working as an accompanist for both singers was none other than Fletcher Henderson.