Something New Blows Into Chicago-Dixieland Jazz

Jazz was evolving in the black south from an amalgamation of African rhythms, southern blues, spirituals, folk music, marches, and ragtime. Dixieland Jazz was imported from New Orleans, thought to be the birthplace of Jazz. A new wind blows into the Windy City, and this new Jazz was captivating audiences. Chicago's theatres and dance halls were doing big business showcasing the syncopated Dixieland Jazz, that had a hold on America's youth in the 1920s. An increasingly common scene in Prohibition Chicago was the influx of black and white musicians from New Orleans. Chicago's large black community supported a well established black entertainment industry, and this was certainly driven by the mass movement of southern blacks, into Chicago's South Side. Chicago's blacks were far from wealthy, but they had a lot more money to spend than they had in the south. Times were good, and the dance clubs and theatres on the famed South State Street were hopping to the upbeat tunes of Ragtime Music.
At the corner of Wabash and Van Buren in the Chicago Loop, the Friars Inn attracted the city's rich and infamous, such as Dion O'Bannion and Al Capone. An eight piece house jazz band called The New Orleans Rhythm Kings featured the new Jazz style.The Band was fronted by clarinetist Leon Roppolo, cornetist Paul Mares, and Trombonist George Brunies. The crowds reaction to the bands charisma was undeniable, and the band was viewed as commercially viable, and the music was a worthy entry into the Chicago Jazz Scene.
A cross pollination between white and black approaches to jazz, blues, and country music is evident, despite the social barriers imposed between races. Today, with the great attention paid to the differences between black and white cultures in America, we tend to forget that a healthy and mutual respect actually existed between black and white musicians in the 1920s.
Gennett Records is a persistent footnote in music history, although a detailed account of the recording company and its owners has never been undertaken.  How did Italian piano manufacturers stumble across, and record so many of America's  great music innovators? Record companies, in the 1920s, grew alongside America's emerging jazz, blues, and country music styles. Gennett Records embraced these new genres, and was one of the first record labels to cater to both black and white record markets. Their studio might record a black jazz band in the morning, and then record a white Appalachian string band in the afternoon. Gennett's ground breaking Jazz,  Blues, and country records sold modestly in department stores, music stores, and mail order catalogs. It was an era when a "hit" record generally sold by the thousands, and not by the millions. It would be a decade later, before radio would be used to promote musical recordings. As the Great Depression took hold, Gennett Records, and a marvelous era in music recording, came to a crashing halt.  The Gennett label is an icon in American folk music, and few record companies documented America's musical grassroots as thoroughly as Gennett Records. Hundreds of rare Gennett Label "Old Time", sacred, and country blues recordings preserved the regional songs and music styles, which were important parts of the early evolution of country and rock music. Among serious record collectors and historians of early jazz, blues, and country music, the hard to find, antique 78-rpm discs on the Gennett Records Label, have been coveted for years.