| Year |
Developments in Jazz |
Historical Events |
| 1900 |
- A cutting contest (a colloquial term for music competition) for ragtime pianists is held at New York's Tammany Hall.
|
- Hawaii becomes official U.S. territory.
- First electric bus runs in New York City.
|
| 1901 |
- Charles Booth's performance of J. Bodewalt Lange's Creole Blues is recorded for the new Victor label. This is the first acoustic recording of ragtime to be made commercially available.
- The American Federation of Musicians (the musicians union) votes to suppress ragtime.
- Louis Armstrong is born.
|
- U.S. President William McKinley is assassinated.
- Painter Pablo Picasso's first exhibit is held in Paris.
- Theodore Roosevelt becomes president.
|
| 1902 |
- The John Philip Sousa Band records the ragtime piece, Trombone Sneeze, written by Arthur Pryor.
- Lincoln Park is opened in New Orleans as a center for ragtime and early jazz performances.
- Scott Joplin publishes The Entertainer: a Ragtime Two-Step, which would become a popular hit nearly 70 years later.
- Pianist Jelly Roll Morton claims to have invented jazz in this year.
|
- The Electric Theatre, the first movie theater in the United States, opens in Los Angeles, California.
- Cuba gains independence from the United States.
|
| 1903 |
- Pianist and composer Eubie Blake publishes his first piano rags.
|
- The Wright brothers make their first successful flight.
|
| 1904 |
- Cornetist Buddy Bolden begins to develop a reputation in New Orleans for playing music that fuses elements of blues and ragtime.
- Tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins is born.
|
- The third Modern Olympic Games opens in St. Louis, Missouri as part of the World's Fair.
- The ice cream cone is created.
- The first underground line of the New York City Subway opens.
- The first New Year's Eve celebration is held in New York City's Times Square.
|
| 1905 |
- A black newspaper in Indianapolis releases a statement in reaction to racist songs popular during this period: "Composers should not set music to a set of words that are a direct insult to the colored race."
|
- Scientist Albert Einstein presents his special theory of relativity.
- Pizza is introduced at Lombardi's in New York.
|
| 1906 |
- Jelly Roll Morton composes King Porter Stomp.
|
|
| 1907 |
- Cornetist Buddy Bolden is committed to a mental institution without having ever recorded any music.
- Scott Joplin moves to New York.
|
- The first wireless broadcast of classical music is produced in New York.
|
| 1908 |
|
- Alcohol is banned in North Carolina and Georgia.
|
| 1909 |
- The U.S. Marine band records Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag.
- The popularity of ragtime continues to grow among Blacks and white resulting in increased public interaction between the races.
|
- Alcohol is banned in Tennessee.
- Robert Peary reaches the North Pole.
- William Howard Taft becomes president.
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