Jazz: From New Orleans to Memphis

It was in spring 1718 that the French Mississippi Company founded a colony on the twin banks of the Mississippi River and called it La Nouvelle-Orléans. Over its subsequent three hundred years, New Orleans’ diverse communities gave rise to deeply distinctive musical and culinary traditions, and from its unique cultural blend emerged one of the world’s most recognisable, multifaceted and popular musical genres: jazz.

Evolving towards the end of the 19th century from a mix of African, European and wider musical influences (including marching brass bands), jazz is inextricably connected with the social, economic and political heritage of the Deep South. It provides our tour with a focal point for a voyage along the Mississippi that will chart not only transitions within music but also within American society and culture.

Led by one of ACE’s most experienced music specialists, we will explore the origins of jazz in its many forms, following in the footsteps of the enterprising musicians who got their early breaks in the city. While Louis Armstrong is the most widely known today, cornetist Buddy Bolden is credited with helping to advance New Orleans’ distinctive ragtime sound, King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band created some of the very first great jazz recordings, and the arrangements of Jelly Roll Morton retain a near-unrivalled place in jazz history.

From the leafy courtyards of the French Quarter, heavily influenced by Louisiana’s Spanish colonial past, to Jackson Square, site of the southern state’s purchase by the United States in 1803, we will seek to understand how and why jazz developed here, and what it meant for the growing popular musical traditions of the USA.

Our stay in ‘The Big Easy’ will encompass several musical events: we will dine at the Palm Court Jazz Café, home to live Dixieland jazz, and take in the music of Snug Harbor alongside our hotel’s very own Jazz Playhouse. We also hope to offer visits to late night venues, including Preservation Hall, a cornerstone of live jazz in New Orleans since its inception in the 1960s; while Tour Director Sandy Burnett will explore the distinctive features of jazz and blues in a series of lectures, supplemented by a private performance with a jazz band based in the city.

An excursion to the nearby Oak Alley Plantation will help to inform our understanding of the distinctive social and economic history of the region, while the swampy landscape of the Bayou will welcome us for a relaxing riverboat trip.

Later we will follow the path of the Mississippi northwards, tracing musical developments within the US at the towns of Leland and Clarksdale (site of the ‘Devil’s Crossroads’), and enrich our knowledge of the Deep South’s history at the civil war site at Vicksburg and Dockery Farms, a major site for the development of Delta blues. Reaching Memphis, our tour turns to the emergence of mid-20th century musical genres with visits to Elvis Presley’s home at Graceland, Sun Studio, the Stax Museum of American Soul Music and the legendary Beale Street – all against the backdrop of profound social change, illuminated by a visit to the National Civil Rights Museum.

Late evenings are balanced by several leisurely mornings and free time to explore our surroundings independently, providing opportunities to sample the region’s world famous Creole and Cajun cuisine.

In New Orleans we will stay in the four-star Royal Sonesta Hotel, a timelessly elegant establishment based in a historical courtyard building in the city’s French Quarter. Our base in Memphis will be the legendary Peabody Hotel, a grand four-star institution famous for its resident mallard ducks, who have undertaken a daily march since they were first placed in the hotel’s fountain over eighty years ago. Intermediate stops will be at comfortable hotels in Natchez and Clarksdale.

This tour will be led by Sandy Burnett, MA, a musician and broadcaster.  Sandy spent a decade as one of the core team of presenters on BBC Radio 3, hosting dozens of live broadcasts from the BBC Proms and interviewing many of the world’s finest musicians.  As a double bass player, Sandy  has performed, toured and recorded with many of the finest musicians, artists and ensembles from Britain and beyond. He is the regular bass player for Blue Harlem, the Hep Chaps, the Tuxedo Jazz Orchestra and for the American singer/songwriter Gerard Kenny; he has a Sunday residency at Le Caprice in London’s West End, appears regularly at Ronnie Scott’s, and in 2016 his playing was featured in the National Theatre’s acclaimed revival of August Wilson’s play based around black American music-making in the 1920s, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. 

Sandy says: “I am delighted once again to be leading this ACE Cultural Tours trip to the city where jazz began. Always a tricky term to define, jazz reflects a synthesis of various musical influences, and I’m looking forward to exploring both the heritage of this wonderful art form and hearing how it has evolved into the living, breathing form of entertainment that it is today. Jazz isn’t just historical – its style has always had something of the contemporary about it; and the same applies to Memphis, one of the first areas of the United States where black and white musicians could perform and record freely. Radio was king in 1950s Memphis, and it was the experience of growing up listening to bluegrass, country and western, rhythm and blues and gospel that shaped Elvis Presley into the legend he later became.”