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A Detroit Jazz Reading Room

New Orleans is commonly called the cradle of jazz. The early concentration of the recording industry in New York made that city the capital of jazz. St. Louis, Chicago, Los Angeles and Kansas City are all heralded for their distinctive contributions to the swinging vernacular.

Detroit, too, has played and continues to play an important role. In the '20s it was a nexus for the development of the big band jazz style; in the '50s an exodus of Detroit-grown musicians joined the bebop revolution in New York. Today such Detroiters as Geri Allen, James Carter and Kenny Garrett are among the most widely-praised talents on the scene. Six essays take the story from the 19th Century to today.

• The Beginning: Black Music in Detroit --1850 -1920 by Herb Boyd : There is no way to determine just when and where jazz began -- or when it came to Detroit. For many years it was commonly believed that jazz was born in New Orleans and then moved north via the Mississippi River. This conclusion is slowly being toppled…
• Stompin' at the Graystone: Jazz in Detroit -- 1917-1940 by Lars Bjorn : One of the high points in Detroit's jazz history must have been the spring of 1927 when you could hear both the McKinney's Cottonpickers and the Jean Goldkette Orchestra. These two bands were on the forefront of big band jazz, but in two separate worlds: the black and the white…
• Bebop in Detroit: Nights at the Blue Bird Inn by Lars Bjorn and Jim Gallert : In the jazz world, one sure sign of veneration is having tunes named after you. By that measure Detroit's Blue Bird Inn has made it…
• Black Bottom and Beyond: The View from the '80s by Herb Boyd: Detroit's jazz scene is complex, ever-changing and full of sweet surprise. In its seventy-some years of existence, jazz in Detroit has pushed beyond the restrictive confines of Black Bottom to virtually engulf the city…
• What the Cultural Warriors Won: A '90s View by W. Kim Heron: In one of the triumphant performances of the Montreux-Detroit Jazz Festival, homeboy saxophonist James Carter took the stage on Sept. 4, 1994, while the audience buzzed with electricity…

Boyd's essays and Bjorn's solo effort first appeared "Detroit Jazz Who's Who" published by the Jazz Research Institute in 1984 and now out of print; the title to Boyd's Black Bottom piece has been changed slightly here. The Bjorn-Gallert essay on the Blue Bird Inn first appeared in 1994 in the official program guide to the 15th annual Montreux-Detroit Jazz Festival. The essays are reprinted with permission of the authors. Heron's piece is new to this exhibit.

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Swinging Through Time - Graystone - Reading - About

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