Because Chicago was an important center for railroad and shipping it attracted many transients and travelers (Ostransky 63). Many of these people were musicians, particularly piano players. As these people arrived in Chicago they realized that a hint of ragtime was there already. As a matter of fact it may have been introduced there as early as 1893 at The World's Fair (Ostransky, 67). At there f

After a while jazz spread throughout the north, and although it didn't always flourish as it did in Chicago, you could go to a nightspot and listen to jazz in most cities. There were also things that happened over the years that had an effect on the development of jazz. Two major happenings in America's history that had an effect on jazz were the Great Depression and Prohibition. Big-Band jazz reached its peak in the early 1930s and may not have done so if employers were paying musicians enough to live off of. During the depression musicians would work for dollars a day, but the work was not nearly abundant enough and New York City had only a few places for jazzmen.

nt parties became a good way of paying for lodging. The parties were extremely popular and much anticipated, sometimes as far as a month in advance. The party would cost no more than a dollar to get into and the money would be divided between paying for the band and the rest of the party and next month's rent. Willie the Lion Smith was one of the greatest pianists of the time and he recalls: "They would crowd a hundred or more people into a seven room railroad flat, the walls would bulge. Some of the parties spread to the halls and all over the building."

air it was thought that professors had introduced the music style and it formed a pretty good foundation. In 1906, Tony Jackson came to Chicago and about two years later Jelly Roll Morton arrived. The two continued to build the foundation that had been started at the fair. The two performed at popular nightspots and it was said by Eileen Southern: "because of their efforts Chicago became the center of ragtime playing that St. Louis had been a decade earlier"(Ostransky, 63).

The biggest contributor to the jazz scene in Harlem was the piano and that is also where the duals to see who was better took place. For many it was a way to make a living and for others it was merely a habit but it fast became what the brass band was for New Orleans by the late 20s (Gioia, 98). James P. Johnson states: "The other sections of the country never developed the piano like the New York boys did. Only lately have they caught... The people in New York were used to hearing good piano being played at concerts and in cafes, the ragtime players had to live up to this. They had to get orchestral effects, sound harmonies, chords and all of the techniques of European concert pianists who were playing all of their music all over the city" (Gioia, 99).

Another big contributing factor was that as mentioned before, New Orleans was an important starting point for many tr

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Approximate Word count = 1750
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)