Jazz Heyday

Internationally renowned performers toured the Circuit from the 1930s until the 1970s. Clubs in the Jim Crow South often catered to diverse audiences at the peak of jazz’s popularity in the 1940s. This image of Cab Calloway was taken in the Clover Club in the Overtown neighborhood in Miami. Overtown was a thriving African American community in downtown Miami. Clubs like the Harlem Square, Mary Elizabeth Hotel, and Clover Club attracted the biggest names in popular music in addition to smaller acts working the Circuit. Overtown was almost completely destroyed by construction of Interstate 95 in Miami after decades of threats by white business and political leaders in the city.

African American performers created Dixieland jazz from the blues and ragtime in the early twentieth century. This 1982 recording of jazz pioneer Ida Goodson demonstrates a transitional style between traditional blues and the more polished jazz style of the 1930s and 1940s. Pensacola native Ida Goodson performed with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band in New Orleans before returning to Florida and playing the organ in churches. Later in life she performed at the Florida Folk Festival and other cultural venues.

African American businesses and homes in Jacksonville were restricted to segregated districts within the city. The Knights of Pythias Hall, depicted in this 1943 photograph, formed the center of Jacksonville’s LaVilla neighborhood. Known as the “Harlem of the South,” LaVilla hosted numerous national touring performers, including Ray Charles and Cab Calloway. Ray Charles began his career in LaVilla. Bandleader Walter Barnes described the neighborhood in 1938. When his band came to town, he wrote in the Chicago Defender, “the telephone lines started buzzing, taxis started running, the tailors, the restaurants, and in fact, the whole stroll turned out on W. Ashley Street in this city's young Harlem.” When his band left town to tour the rest of the state, Barnes concluded: “All in all, Jacksonville is a very fly town.”

The widespread popularity of big band jazz allowed Americans in some cities in the 1920s and 1930s to cross racial boundaries and enjoy the music together. Southern cities were not as permissive as northern cities, but the large military presence in Florida during World War II sometimes allowed for a more permissive racial atmosphere in dancehalls and nightclubs across the deeply segregated state. This was especially true in Pensacola, where naval aviators trained at Pensacola Naval Air Station, Saufley Field, and Ellyson Field. This 1942 photograph of musicians performing at the Twilight Club in Pensacola depicts the open atmosphere. Jazz great Ida Goodson is playing the piano.