America at 250: How Chicago helped transform jazz and spread the music across the U.S.

Jazz is smooth and sweet and Chicago made it famous.

"We like to say it started in New Orleans, grew up in Chicago, and really spread to the world," said Heather Ireland Robinson, executive director of the Jazz Institute of Chicago.

She loves the music and its history.

"In the 1920s, jazz was born in let's call it the red light districts of New Orleans," she said. "In come the cops, and say we're closing down this red light district. Where do you go geographically? You go up, you go up the river, you take a train, you take whatever's available, and you end up in the Midwest."

The Jim Crow South sent Black people from all over the South to Chicago in the Great Migration.

 "Businessmen, people were coming here to find opportunities," Robinson said. "So you had audiences, high-level, excellent educated people that were looking for something to do. Then you had these musicians. So the sound began to develop"

They took the jazz that originated in the Big Easy and put their own spin on it.

"It was more of a hard bop sound. People were playing faster notes, there were horns," Robinson said. "So you got a different kind of a faster sound. So, the sound you think of as jazz today, especially with the horns, is the sound we think of as Chicago sound."

Chicago's iconic Bronzeville neighborhood was the center of it all. It was bustling with jazz clubs for decades, starting in the 1910s.

There was the Vendome Theater at 31st and State streets. The Sunset Cafe on 35th Street was drawing crowds. The Club DeLisa was one of the "black and tan" clubs open to whites and Blacks, defying the racial segregation of the day.

And there were big names like Jelly Roll Morton, Alberta Hunter, King Oliver, and Louis  Armstrong.

Armstrong's wife, Lil Hardin Armstrong, was an influential pianist and composer even before meeting her husband.

"As a woman, you don't hear her story often, but she was writing a lot of these charts," Robinson said. "She also saw something in him that they knew would make a huge impact."

The impact of Chicago jazz kept growing through the years; from greats like Nat King Cole, Earl Hines, and Dinah Washington to Ramsey Lewis, Herbie Hancock, Von Freeman, and Eddie Harris.

"The music is always developing. People say jazz is dead. It's absolutely not," Robinson said.

Jazz still reigns supreme at Chicago venues like the Green Mill and the Jazz Showcase.

"There are definitely Chicagoans and others that hold onto that sound," Robinson said.

Yong jazz artists like Thaddeus Tukes are making their own sounds, too, in a city known for creating opportunity.

"The music community here is very tight-knit. Everybody looks out for each other. Everybody respects each other. I don't think you see that in other cities," Robinson said. "That's the spirit of the arts in Chicago. Can you do it? Great, let's go, and the world will embrace you."