South Texas Jazz: An Overview
    If New Orleans was the cradle of jazz, San Antonio was one of its major destinations by the time it reached the toddler stage. The main metropolitan center between New Orleans and California, most touring musicians stopped in the Alamo City on their journey between coasts to play in downtown venues like the Plaza Hotel or area dance halls like The Horn Palace and Shadowland. Many of those players stayed, or eventually returned to enjoy the city's unique synthesis of small-town charm, urban sophistication, and African, European, and Latin American cultural influences.

    The jazz that developed in this region is firmly rooted in Texas blues, a tradition historian Gunther Schuller noted to be "probably much older than the New Orleans idiom that is generally thought to be the primary fountainhead of jazz." Small-town Texan Jack Teagarden, who moved to San Antonio in the '20's, was one of the first recorded jazz players to incorporate "blue notes" (the flatted 3rd, 5th, and 7th) into his playing. Players from New Orleans like trumpeter Don Albert settled here and fused their Crescent City style with Texas blues. (To hear clips of early Texas jazz artists and groups like Albert, Austin's Eddie And Sugar Lou's Hotel Tyler Orchestra, the western swing of Prince Albert Hunt's Texas Ramblers or The Paradise Joy Boys, Jimmy Joy's Dallas-based Baker Hotel Orchestra, blues singer Texas Alexander, pianist Sonny Clay, and San Antonio's Troy Floyd, go to redhotjazz.com). Venues on San Antonio's East Side, such as what is now the Carver Community Cultural Center, hosted jazz greats like Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday; and Don Albert's WWII-era Keyhole Club featured Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Nat King Cole, Dizzy Gillespie, and a young saxophonist named John Coltrane playing with Houston-born Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson.

"...where the real art is."
     That San Antonio/South Texas jazz tradition is still going strong. In small venues and large, you can still hear world-class jazz, from Diana Krall to Ravi Coltrane to Arturo Sandoval to Chick Corea to the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. And in dimly-lit clubs all over the city, you can witness nightly the magic of improvisational interplay between skilled and accomplished musicians. As New York saxophone legend Gary Bartz said in an interview with the San Antonio Current: "Look in your own neighborhood. I've been all over the world, and I haven't been anywhere where I haven't seen great artists. And when you find them, support them. If you hear them in a small club, support that club. That's where the real art is."

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