Description

The author of Cakewalk:unsung creators of jazz music and a trilogy on the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments presents a fascinating new take on the relationship between America’s original music and the foundations of our modern freedoms.   John William Templeton spent 14 years uncovering a building on San Francisco’s Barbary Coast which is the first site to use jazz in its name and the first to feature a jazz band.  The oldest building in the district, it is one of eight sites where African-American club owners dominated the entertainment scene in the latter half of the 19th century and first decades of the 20th century.   At the beginning of that process, the first jazz performance was tied to the abolitionists who were seeking to pass the 15th Amendment.   You have to see it to believe it all, so the Cakewalk tour pulls the pieces together on Sunday,April 24 at 1 p.m..

In addition to Cakewalk, Templeton also presented the exhibition Jazz Genesis in San Francisco and Los Angeles