WWII Jazz boom, The Fillmore, Oakland Blues, North Beach & Forbidden City Nightclubs
San Francisco was the location for dynamic developments in popular entertainment: Traditional, Modern and Bop Jazz and the unique Asian nightclubs of Frisco. Tourism and the 1939 Golden Gate Treasure Island World’s Fair primed the pump for a re-emergence of hot music in Baghdad-by-the-Bay.
When Swing Wasn’t Fun Anymore
By 1939, touring dance bands had become routine businesses and many Swing musicians were bored with playing stock arrangements. While the famous instrumentalists in the top orchestras had license to improvise creatively, musicians staffing the average dance band did not. Many began feeling like cogs in a jukebox and wanted to do more than just read notes and collect a salary. Traditional Jazz was a direct reaction.
Trombone player Melvin Edward Alton “Turk” Murphy (1916-1987) became a leader of the revivalists. He complained:
I had played in ‘name bands’ of all sorts for a long
