The Jazz Age, Unveiled

The day after New Orleans Rhythm and Blues icon Allen Toussaint died in November, 2015, musician and author Sam Irwin heard a rendition of Toussaint’s “The Bright Mississippi” played by Grammy-winning trumpeter Nicholas Payton. The music struck Irwin, who hadn’t picked up his own trumpet in thirty years.

This is the story of how Irwin started his band the Florida Street Blowhards, but it is also the story of how he started writing his latest book, The Hidden History of Louisiana’s Jazz Age (History Press)—which began as a collection of blog posts he wrote to promote his new band, and has now emerged as a fully-fledged exploration of jazz music’s history in his home state.

We at Country Roads have had the great pleasure of sharing excerpts from this project over the past year, including the stories behind Louis Armstrong’s first performance in Baton Rouge, and his much-debated birthday. In his book, Irwin deep dives into similarly tantalizing topics, such the biography of Crowley trumpeter Evan Thomas—who was murdered on the bandstand; the history of how jazz found a home miles away from New Orleans in rural Acadiana; and the legacy of Baton Rouge musician and bandleader Toots Johnson.

Autographed copies of The Hidden History of Louisiana’s Jazz Age can be purchased at samirwin.net. The book can also be found at arcadiapublishing.com/the-history-press.

Read more of Sam Irwin's work in Country Roads, here.