Trane meets the Motor City

Detroit became a destination for migrating African Americans early, starting with the Underground Railroad; the city's proximity to Canada was convenient for those seeking to escape Southern slavery.

- JIM AUSTIN

The mass human movement accelerated with the Great Migration, which started about 1910, when millions of African Americans left the Jim Crow South for northern cities. The same human movement that brought the blues to Chicago and jazz to New York City took both to Detroit.

In all those cities, the 1920s was a time of ballrooms and big music halls. In Detroit, "society bands" black and white played through-composed, jazz-inflected music, according to a narrative put together by Cliff Coleman and Jim Ruffner for the local jazz museum.' The proliferation of orchestra chairs meant that skilled musicians familiar with a range of musical styles could find work, especially if they read music.

It also meant that Detroit was ready when, in 1927, Don Redman, who had been the chief arranger for Fletcher Henderson's band, moved to the city to lead William McKinney's Cotton Pickers, the resident Black jazz orchestra at Detroit's Graystone Ballroom.

The Pickers soon became an important touring band, with a national reputation. Big-name orchestras like Duke Ellington's and Fletcher Henderson's started to visit the city; on Monday nights, the national bands would "battle" local bands, according to Coleman and Ruffner's account.

As the '20s yielded to the '30s and beyond, there was a shift across the country away from big bands and toward smaller groups, for obvious economic reasons. In Detroit, this shift was aggravated by other factors, including riots and the decimation of Paradise Valley by so-called urban renewal (a story familiar from other cities including, notably, Memphis). The ballrooms shut down, and entertainment moved into smaller venues throughout the city.