Episode Details

The music didn’t ride north on riverboats. It rode the Illinois Central Railroad — out of New Orleans, up through Memphis and the Mississippi Delta into Chicago — in the luggage cars and Jim Crow coaches of the Great Migration.

Episode 4 of Groundwater traces what the music became when it left the South: Louis Armstrong stepping off the train at Twelfth Street Station in 1922 with a cornet and a fish sandwich; King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band and Armstrong’s first recorded solo; the Hot Five’s “West End Blues” and the thirteen-second cadenza that changed what a trumpet could do; Muddy Waters electrifying his Delta guitar on the South Side for Chess Records; Count Basie’s Kansas City swing; and Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie inventing bebop as an act of self-defense. The pipeline begins at Congo Square. The northern terminus is Chess Records.

Music and sound, in order of appearance:

 • “Guitar Rag” — Sylvester Weaver — OKeh, 1923 (theme; public domain)
 • “2-8-2 No. 1534, Illinois Central” — Vinton Wight, Sounds of Steam Locomotives No. 1 — Folkways FX 6152, 1956
 • “Chimes Blues” — King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band — Gennett, 1923
 • “West End Blues” — Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five — OKeh, 1928
 • “Hoochie Coochie Man” — Muddy Waters — Chess, 1954 (written by Willie Dixon)
 • “One O’Clock Jump” — Count Basie and His Orchestra — Decca, 1937
 • “Ko-Ko” — Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie — Savoy, 1945

Excerpts used briefly for criticism and commentary; pre-1928 recordings are public domain.