Frederic Ramsey, Jr. was employed by Harcourt, Brace & Company, and in 1937 was asked to read a manuscript that been submitted by the musician Ted Lewis.

[1] Charles Edward Smith wrote "the highly charged romantic evocations of the scene for each of the four settings of the book: New Orleans, Chicago, New York, and the jazz environment everywhere in the United States.

For its editors and writers it was an act of faith to create a story that would lend the beginnings of jazz in New Orleans a closer indebtedness to black musical sources.

[1] The book also helped renew interest in an early form of jazz:what followed over the next half century was a flood of recordings of what came to be known as the music of the New Orleans Revival.

Within a few months of its publication there was interest in finding and perhaps recording some of the musicians Charlie Smith described in his final chapters about what he'd heard in the Mardi Gras bars and dance halls.