num_pages: 691
description: For the first time, the real story of St. Louis. Here is the first of a two-volume chronicle that traces the city from its beginnings as a Mississippi River trading center all the way to the explosion in Ferguson that followed the shooting of a black teenager by a white police officer. Here is the story of ragtime, blues, jazz and rock music; of the personalities and innovations that have given the city one of the most exciting entertainment scenes in America. And here is a city that is far more than its music. The St. Louis blues doesn't have just one meaning. For here, too, is the story of a city constantly seeking answers to the confounding questions of race -- of the relations between black and white. This first volume traces St. Louis from the founding in 1764 to the Second World War. Started as a city without a priest and without the military, the Osage tribe helped dig the cellar for the first house. The settlers, white and black, danced on Sunday and celebrated every holiday. The city was the crown jewel of the Louisiana Purchase by the United States in 1803 and while the government changed, the music continued. By the early eighteen-nineties the St. Louis entertainment district was known far and wide -- police practiced a tolerance policy as locals and river travelers from St. Paul to New Orleans were allowed freedom to enjoy the city's offerings. In the saloons and bordellos, sounds from the Mississippi Delta mixed with those from the prairie to make ragtime and urban blues. Three of the most enduring classics of the American songbook emerged from St. Louis -- "The St. Louis Blues," "Stagger Lee" and "Frankie and Johnny" -- each with a lasting story to tell. The music carried into the twenties and thirties with three of the top five selling blues artists in America -- Lonnie Johnson, Peetie Wheatstraw and Walter Davis. The city also produced over 20 best-selling female singers and a roster of riverboat musicians, including Louis Armstrong, who turned jazz hot. And here, too, before the First World War, was the start of the St. Louis civil rights movement, a generally peaceful attempt to use voting and organized protest to make change, begun in 1910 out of a reform movement that had uncovered poverty and deadly living conditions in the city's downtown districts. A horrific race riot in East St. Louis in 1919 left hundreds dead and spurred the movement, helping launch the NAACP. In the thirties, the movement took on inequality and segregation and lunch counter protests were born. This volume also includes a third ring of the St. Louis circus -- notable events that played a role in shaping the city and the American impulse to party, an urge embedded in the very foundation of the confluence of the mighty Mississippi and the wide Missouri rivers. The World's Fair of 1904 saw such an impulse, one that lives into the present. Teddy Roosevelt called the Fair "stupendous" after covering 10 miles on foot around the grounds in one frantic day; a Fair that left the modern Forest Park, larger than New York's Central Park. There was Charles Lindbergh, whose solo flight across the Atlantic in the "Spirit of St. Louis" made him the greatest national hero of his day. St. Louis also saw the construction of the bridge that tied East to West. It saw the construction of America's busiest railroad station. It opened the first high school for African Americans in the West. Beer maker Adolphus Busch was the first manufacturer to nationalize his brew. The city was home to the nation's first skyscraper. St. Louis is also a city crazy about baseball, of the Cardinals, the Browns and the Stars and which celebrated what is perhaps the most famous confrontation in World Series history: the 1926 clash between Grover Cleveland Alexander and Babe Ruth.
language: English
title: That St. Louis Thing Vol. 1: An American Story of Roots, Rhythm and Race