Basin Street Blues by Spencer Williams Brass Quintet - Digital Sheet Music

SKU: A0.1458413

Basin Street sits on the edge of the French Quarter of New Orleans. A few years before this song was written, it served as the border of a red-light district known as Storyville. A city councilman named Sidney Story came up with the idea of creating a district to which prostitution would be limited, where it could be watched and regulated. So "The District" was created in 1897; it soon became known as "Storyville," much to the chagrin of Councilman Story. During its 20-year official life, a visitor could buy a "blue book" for two bits that listed prostitutes alphabetically and by race and address. It was abolished in 1917 during World War I because it violated a rule that no house of prostitution could be within 5 miles of a military base. The Navy wanted its sailors pure of heart. It's also a place where jazz grew up. The bordellos hired musicians to entertain customers, who weren't particularly interested in the music. So the mostly black performers were free to experiment, to try new syncopated rhythms, to blend the sounds of African drums and plantation gospel to come up with what would become known as Dixieland music. Storyville (it would later mostly be razed for public housing, and still later begin to gentrify as property values rose) was where Spencer Williams wrote the song in 1928; Louis Armstrong, who spent some of his childhood nearby, first recorded it in 1928. It has since been recorded by dozens of other artists.
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