St. Louis has had a unique and at times underappreciated effect on jazz music. Not many know that before the migration of jazz musicians from New Orleans to Chicago, many stopped in St. Louis for quite some time, developing a sound individual to the city before continuing north.
There are many factors that contributed to the St. Louis sound in the early days of jazz. St. Louis had a large German immigrant population, as New Orleans was heavily influenced by German culture; musicians living in St. Louis were influenced by the culture of German music, which was generally centered around drums and bass. The blues, born on the Mississippi Delta, also moved north to St. Louis, and New Orleans musicians who stopped in the city before continuing onto Chicago absorbed this sound as well.
Ragtime was the predominant form of music in the late 1800s and early 1900s. It was in the red light district, also known as Chestnut Valley, where ragtime became fully formed in St. Louis. Night clubs and bars lined Targe Street, and ragtime music could be heard from each venue on any night. A pianist by the name of Top Turpin, who would set his piano up on cement blocks so he could stand up while playing energetic music, was considered the king of Rag until Scott Joplin came around. Scott Joplin is believed to have moved to St. Louis in 1900, soon after released his iconic “Maple Leaf Rag.”
It is known that ragtime musicians played a major role in the 1904 World Fair in St. Louis. Though the mayor did not hire ragtime musicians because he felt it would make the festival too centered around them, the music itself had an indelible effect on those who came across it. A club called Rosebud was a regular and popular hangout for many of the ragtime musicians during the World’s Fair in St. Louis. Scott Joplin, along with his contemporaries, would rehearse new compositions on the crowds at Rosebud and other clubs. Rags at this time were mainly improvised, but after some time pieces were more frequently written down due to the growing sheet music market of the era.
River boats brought blues musicians up from Mississippi, flooding St. Louis with blues music. Though blues was already prominent in some ways, this migration solidified the genre in nightclubs all over the city. Not only did New Orleans jazz mix with ragtime to effectively create St. Louis Blues, but Mississippi delta music solidified and further developed the blues throughout the city. In 1914, W.C. Handy had released his famous “St. Louis Blues,” which quickly became a popular tune all over the country at a time when ragtime was dwindling as a popular musical style and the public’s taste was shifting to blues and jazz. By 1916, ragtime had just about faded from current American culture, as the ’20s were just around the corner, jazz and blues would soon completely take over, and some musicians in St. Louis would play a key role in the development of jazz before its migration to Chicago and New York.
Though blues was becoming popular, many early blues tunes were marketed as rags. Around this time (1914-1916), Jelly Roll Morton came to St. Louis for a short time and brought a style of piano playing to the city called stride, or “novelty” piano as it was called then. Around the beginning of 1916, the African American community began to demand overall higher quality acts throughout St. Louis, which sometimes meant hiring white acts in black venues. By then musicians began moving towards Chicago, but despite this the music scene thrived and continues to throughout the city.
St. Louis is the link among New Orleans, the Mississippi Delta, and Chicago. Music of all kinds, blending together, became the sound of St. Louis - jazz, blues, ragtime, gospel, etc. The city continues to be a focal point of any musician’s study of the beginnings of jazz. It is essential and extremely important in the history of this uniquely American creation.
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