Jazz as a whole also came under attack as an example of bad taste, however, in much the same way rock n’ roll and hip-hop would later, by people who had no knowledge of the music whatsoever.
Jazz as a whole also came under attack as an example of bad taste, however, in much the same way rock n’ roll and hip-hop would later, by people who had no knowledge of the music whatsoever. The New York Times published editorial after editorial throughout the late 1910s and 1920s touting the dangers of jazz, which had historically been associated with the brothels where it was initially played; just months after Livery Stable Blues became a hit recording, the Storyville red light district, previous tolerated by the city leaders of New Orleans, was completely shut down. And Edward Baxter Perry wrote in the popular music magazine The Etude that ragtime, into which he was lumping early jazz songs like Livery Stable Blues and the Original Dixieland Jass Band’s even more popular 1917 follow-up Tiger Rag, “is syncopation gone mad. And its victims in my opinion can only be treated like the dog with rabies, with a dose of lead. Whether it is simply a passing phase in our decadent art culture, or an infectious disease which has come to say, like leprosy, time will tell.”