Feedback & Questions

If you are looking for information about a particular song, try the ASCAP or BMI sites as that is where the copyrights are registered for every song ever written. If you are looking for information about an artist, try The All Music Guide first

All of my work is Copyrighted. IF you don't know what that means go here to learn what you can and can not do with articles and pictures found on this site. I do a extensive on-line search monthly to see if my articles and pictures are being used on other web sites and I have hired an attorney to prosecute anyone using my work without my permission.

I get many e-mails from students in high school or college. If you are in that group please remember that I will NOT do your homework or research your term paper. I also do not have any access to song lyrics as these are Copyrighted and those copyrights are vigorously enforced. I have found and put together a series of links that may help you with these tasks. - HOMEWORK HELPERS - As I make some of my living as a researcher, believe me when I tell you, that there isn't a place more valuable for finding an answer to a question than your local library not the Internet.

I receive many questions about the origins of jazz. If you want to know:

The city in which jazz was born,

• Then you haven't read or really looked at this site, as the answers are there.

• Jazz was not invented thus there was no inventor. Jazz is not like a clothes dryer or baseball. It is a collection of musical ideas and influences that came together at approximately the same time.

• I do not believe there was one.

• That's what the site is all about. Read it, don't ask me to explain what I have already made available.

• there are many theories and no one knows for sure. I AM sure that jazz meant dance music as it began to become popular and prior to that it was a throw away term as in "your music ain't nothin' but jass or jizz or jazz."

• This is a question with a hundred answers and I get asked it at least 10 times a month in email. Your teacher assigned it to you so you would have to read about jazz and come to a conclusion yourself. The reason there is no answer, is that it would take me more than a few hours to write it and then every high school kid and college kid in the universe would take my answer and put it into the essay that they were assigned. The "effects of jazz" does not have one answer and mine would and should be different than anyone elses. It is a question to see how much you have have learned.

My web site is about the roots of jazz and the people who helped make early Jazz popular. I don't feel that it is the purpose of my website to deprive scholars or students from learning the answer to this question without learning how to do the research it takes. Too many young people think that the answers to any of their questions can be found on the Internet, I disagree. Your local library and books are where the real action is!

African Americans not allowed entry into the Cotton Club

• This is not about jazz. It is about discrimination which took place all over America and still does. African Americans were not allowed entry into some restaurants, stores, hotels and most every other business so why would the Cotton Club be any different.

Email your questions or comments to Jazz Roots at the following address. In order to avoid the massive amount of spam sent to me, you will have to please substitute the "at" with @ - ack"at"jass.com