Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 9
Ah, New Orleans: the City that Care Forgot, the Big Easy, the
Birthplace of Jazz. This panel will explore the history and myth
of the Crescent City’s part in the creation and dissemination of
jazz music. The papers situate New Orleans appropriately in the
historical context of the progressive era, the imposition of Jim
Crow, the tightening straight-jacket of racial dualism, and the
sexual double standards that characterized the period. The aim
is a deeper knowledge and appreciation of the diversity of jazz
in the city, and, simultaneously, a shattering of the
longstanding myths surrounding the music and its proliferation.
Emily Landau’s paper takes us to Storyville, New Orleans’s
notorious red-light district. Landau argues that the promotion
of New Orleans as the “birthplace of jazz,” has, in effect,
erased the real business of Storyville, a commercial sex
district where poor women turned tricks for change and many of
the musicians were also pimps