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new Orleans
Two rare youthful snapshots of Jelly Roll Morton (above): in 1902, aged seventeen; and a few years later, with his wife, Anita Gonzales. (Photos courtesy of Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis.)
Above, right: New Orleans was much more than a matter of geography, and the great recordings in the pure style were of course made in other cities and later years. Here are Jelly Roll's Red Hot Peppers, in Chicago in 1926.
Center: Some jazzmen who may never even have visited Louisiana were touched by the influence. A St. Louis band like cornetist Charlie Creath's J azz-O -Maniacs produced some strictly New Orleans music.
At the far right, a latter-day photo of early clarinetist George Baquet, flanked by a dignified 1918 portrait of young Sidney Bechet.
This must have been very much a Golden Age, and like most of the great periods of human achievement, it is very doubtful that anyone had an idea then that anything out of the ordinary was going on. Jazz was then, as always, the way a bunch of musicians made a living. But it was also something else that it never again has been or is likely to be: it was a way of life.
It meant street parades, with everyone turning out to watch the brass bands strutting in the hot sunlight (Joe Oliver with a handkerchief under his uniform cap to absorb the sweat). It meant bands riding through town in trucks to advertise a big community dance (with the tailgate down and young Kid Ory's trombone reaching way down over it). It meant hymns at the funeral service and Didn't He Ramble on the way back; dances and fights at the big drinking and gambling joints in the official red-light district;