The major jazz centers of the 1920s include New Orleans, Chicago, New York and Kansas City, Missouri. The music extended up from Louisiana to infiltrate the rest of the country.
The great Jazz musician of the 1920s include Joe "King" Oliver, Edward "Kid" Ory, Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, Jelly Roll Morton, Paul Whiteman, Duke Ellington and Earl Hines.
Even though jazz music had roots in black music, only records by white artists were available for sale until 1922, when Mamie Smith encouraged the sale of "Race Records," or records by black artists.
Jazz music inspired a cultural movement that had its own style of dress and even its own lingo. Some common slang we use today, such as "cool" and "hip," has jazz roots.
In the 1920s, radios and the phonograph became affordable and almost every home had one. This advancement allowed for the rapid spread of jazz music and increased the popularity of this genre.