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The Shreveport Symphony Orchestra will honor the musical legacy of “The Father of Ragtime,” Scott Joplin with two live in-person and virtual performances this weekend. Joplin, an Ark-La-Tex native, is credited as the inventor of the revolutionary musical style ragtime. The pianist’s works would influence musicians to also push boundaries, leading to the formation of other groundbreaking genres in the 20th century. “It’s fair to say he essentially was the standard-bearer for a brand-new kind of music which is a precursor of jazz and blues,” said Michael Butterman, SSO’s music dir...

Todd A. Price, The American South Published 8:23 pm UTC Feb. 8, 2021 New Orleans jazz legend Donald Harrison plays his jazz version of "When the Saints Go Marching In." Photo: Dinah Rogers, For The Tennessean, Illustration: Andrea Brunty, USA TODAY Network As the National Museum of African American Music opens its doors, journalists from the USA TODAY Network explore the stories, places and people who helped make music what it is today in our expansive series, Hallowed Sound. Jazz is a genre of performances, not songs. Created in the moment through improvisation, every time a song is played i...

Our Language (1924-1928) Louis Armstrong arrives in New York from Chicago where, during a brief stay with the Fletcher Henderson band, he amazes his fellow musicians and teaches the city to swing. A blues craze, spearheaded by Bessie Smith, takes the nation by storm. Cornetist Bix Beiderbecke, the first great white jazz artist, eventually plays for bandleader Paul Whiteman, whose blending of classical and jazz traditions comes to epitomize jazz for many Americans. This episode also traces the childhood of Benny Goodman, whose musicianship catapults him out of the slums of Chicago; and Goodman...