In 1920, an aspiring African-American scholar named Fletcher Henderson came to Manhattan in hopes of pursuing graduate work in chemistry. What he found instead was that Plessy v. Fergusson—that blemish on the face of American juris prudence that held that "separate but equal" was not violative of the Thirteenth Amendment—still cast its shadow over American society. Segregation was the Supreme Court-sanctioned way of life, and despite Henderson’s degree from Atlanta University in both chemistry and mathematics, the hallowed halls of research science remained off-limits to him. Henderson turned instead to music, whose serious study he had made under the tutelage of his mother. Those years of training notwithstanding, this unassuming, might-have-been scientist was an unlikely candidate to start a musical revolution that would forever change the sound of jazz.

The same year that Henderson arrived in New York City, Mamie Smith and her band the Jazz Hounds recorded Crazy Blues, the first recording ever of a black singer accompanied by an all-black ensemble, for the Manhattan-based OKeh record label (OKeh 4169). Smith was a cabaret singer who came to Harlem from Cincinnati around 1898 while touring as a dancer with the Smart Set dance company. By the time she recorded Crazy Blues, Mamie Smith had amassed a following greater than that of any other Harlem performer of her day.

The Harlem of the early 1900s was not the overly romanticized melting pot of black and white culture it became during the 1920s. Virtually all of Harlem’s more than 100 clubs, cabarets and theaters were African-American owned, and the patrons as well as the performers were primarily African-American. There was little awareness of black music among whites, but this changed in the wake of Smith’s hit, which, ironically, was also the first commercial recording targeted specifically for sale to black consumers. Before this time, record companies had never considered the possibility that selling to the African-American population might be profitable, and Okeh (possibly because it was a new and struggling company) took a chance in issuing Crazy Blues. When the disk sold 75,000 copies in its first month, however, white-owned record companies suddenly recognized both the buying power of the African-American community and its demand for black recording artists. What came to be known as the "race record" was born.

Despite the pejorative label, race records served three important functions. First, their sale allowed some black musicians a means to earn a living in a segregated society. By all accounts, Mamie Smith was able to afford a lavish existence that included a passion for furs and diamonds, a townhouse on 130th Street and a country house on Long Island. Second, the music of such pivotal blues artists as Charlie Patton and Blind Lemon Jefferson is readily available on CD today because of the preservation of race recordings made during the 1920s. Third, through this form, the music of African-American performers, songwriters and composers became popularized outside of their own community.

The earliest recording of this primarily African-American and Creole style of music by a non-white band was Kid Ory’s Sunshine Orchestra’s 1922 recording of Society Blues and Ory’s Creole Trombone (Nordskog 3009). However, it was the Original Dixieland Jass Band, an all-white New Orleans quintet playing in the style of African-American and Creole musicians, that gave rise to the popularity of the New Orleans sound. In 1917, the quintet made their Manhattan debut, and while there, recorded Indiana and Darktown Strutters’ Ball for the Columbia label (Columbia A2297). The recording was so successful that the group returned to the studio later that year to record Livery Stable Blues and Original Dixie Jass Band One-Step (Victor 18255). This second recording sold over one million copies. Between 1917 and 1925, the year they disbanded, the band toured extensively throughout the United States and Europe. It was the Original Dixieland Jass Band—later renamed the Original Dixieland Jazz Band--that made "jazz" a household word.

The year 1917 also marked the beginning of a mass migration of jazz musicians to the West Coast, and to the cities of New York and Chicago. The movement came as a result of the Navy’s raids of New Orleans’ infamous red-light district. The city was a Navy embarkation point, and this branch of the U.S. armed forces could not permit its reputable sailors to be influenced by the allure of disreputable pleasures. An unfortunate result of this rising moral tide was the obliteration of the nascent New Orleans jazz scene. By 1920, Chicago had become the country’s focal point of jazz innovation.

It was in Chicago that the coronet player/bandleader Joe "King" Oliver earned his place as one of the most important figures of early jazz. King Oliver got his start as the coronet player in Kid Ory’s jazz band, then moved to Chicago in 1918 and formed King Oliver’s Jazz Band the following year. In 1922, Oliver persuaded another coronet player, who was still living in New Orleans at the time, to come and join his band in Chicago. That coronet player was Louis Armstrong.

Armstrong was already the undisputed king of the hot jazz solo. Foreshadowing the extended solos of such later jazz artists as Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, Armstrong infused jazz improvisation with a rhythmic and harmonic sense that was well beyond that of any of his contemporaries. The King Oliver recordings between the years 1922 and 1924 were the hit records of the day among African-Americans, though white Americans continued to shun jazz.

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.

Early in 1923, Henderson formed his own band with some of the musicians he knew through his studio work, including tenor-saxophone player Coleman Hawkins and alto saxophonist Don Redman. At this point, the band’s repertoire consisted mainly of bland, stock arrangements of show tunes and other popular music; while the recordings made money, there was nothing musically noteworthy about them. During the summer of 1923, the Club Alabam, a cellar spot situated beneath the Nora Bays Theater on West 44th Street, was looking for a house band to entertain the after-theater crowd. Henderson auditioned his band and was offered the position. Appearing under the name the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra, what started primarily as a studio band suddenly found itself performing nightly in the heart of Manhattan’s theater district.

Don Redman seized the opportunity to experiment with a working band and began to write the ensemble’s arrangements. Retaining the New Orleans style rhythm section of banjo, drums, piano and tuba, Redman expanded the ensemble to include full brass and reed sections, each of which was divided further into high and low sounding instruments. In performance, the melody was split between the brass and reed sections, often switching rapidly from one section to the next to create musical nuance and variation in tone color. One by one, the ensemble’s stock arrangements fell into disuse in favor of Redman’s more innovative ones. Redman’s increasingly complex arrangements for the big band, however, could not compensate for the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra’s one fatal flaw: None of the band members really knew how to improvise. This weakness became all the more apparent when the first King Oliver recordings featuring Louis Armstrong hit New York in 1923.

However, Henderson had an uncanny gift for persuading musicians to drop whatever they might be doing and move to the Big Apple. In 1924, just in time for the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra’s move from the Club Alabam to the larger and more prestigious Roseland Ballroom on 51st Street, Henderson managed his most stunning coup, somehow hiring Louis Armstrong away from King Oliver. Armstrong’s decision to leave the King Oliver Jazz Band and join Henderson was a turning point in the development of big band jazz. It was Armstrong who taught the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra, along with the rest of the City of New York, how to improvise.

With Armstrong at his disposal, Redman modified his arrangements to include segments where brass and reed sections would rest, allowing a lone instrumentalist to improvise accompanied only by the rhythm section. As a result, the soloist and rhythm section alike were elevated to a new role of central importance. In 1925, the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra recorded the Redman arranged Sugar Foot Stomp (Columbia 395D) and defined big band jazz as we now know it. Through sales of Sugar Foot Stomp as well as nightly radio broadcasts from the Roseland Ballroom, word of New York City’s revolutionary big band style of jazz spread. Overnight, Fletcher Henderson found himself one of New York’s most sought-after musicians, and Manhattan became the center of jazz culture.

After a mass government raid of the Chicago speakeasies, King Oliver arrived in Manhattan in 1927 and was offered the house band position at the Cotton Club. When he declined, a young bandleader and composer who had come to New York from Washington D.C. in 1922 filled the position. Heavily influenced by the Fletcher Henderson big band sound, this aspiring musician jumped at the chance to develop a rapport with a working band that only a steady gig could offer. That young musician, Edward "Duke" Ellington became one of the most important of all American composers as well as one of the most prolific and influential figures in jazz.

Many factors led to the passing of the original big band era, including the rise of white big bands, the Depression, World War II, and, as always, changing interests. Eventually the next generation established rock ‘n’ roll as its own musical insignia. Still, though the Cotton Club closed its doors in 1940, and the Roseland Ballroom, now located a block north, no longer features jazz artists, New York City remains a vital center of jazz. There are hundreds of clubs throughout all five boroughs. Such Manhattan spots as Iridium, the Village Vanguard and the Blue Note continue to draw jazz musicians and fans from around the globe. In addition, Manhattan annually hosts major summer jazz festivals, and Jazz at Lincoln Center (see below) has become a world-famous arts institutions. The City of New York, birthplace of the big band seven decades ago, is still making jazz history today.