M. Ted,
Also John Hammond of Columbia Records did a great service as well by booking integrated jazz acts into the South. The Benny Goodman Sextet is a case in point. Louis Armstrong toured the South always with an integrated band. True, the musicians may have stayed in separate hotel rooms but the fact that they appeared together and were accepted says something about the power of music.

Sam Phillips, of Sunn Records, saw Elvis as a way of promoting music that had been traditionally African-American with a cross-over of rural white country music. It was in fact a way to sell "race music" to white people.

When I was in New Orleans in the '53, there was a municipal ordinance that integrated musicians were illegal on the same stage. When I played in jam sessions on Bourbon Street, the drummer who was black just took his set off the stand and played in the audience to get around the ordinance. The musicians approached it with a resigned sense of humor.

Frank