|
| Horace Greeley |
|
| He despised Sioux City |
Despite having famously advised his readers in 1865 to "Go west, young
man...." New York newspaper editor Horace Greeley may not have had Northwest
Iowa's largest city in mind, for he also reputedly once remarked that, "The two lowest places
on the face of the earth are Shanghai and Sioux
City."
A wide-open, rough-and-tumble river city on the banks of the wide Missouri, Sioux
City was where people worked hard--and played harder--for 100 years, from the city's founding in 1854
up through the first five decades of the 20th century. Beginning in the 1920s, Jazz musicians started to arrive from
all over the country to take advantage of the Good Times atmosphere. Both the musicians and the music flourished in the sporting
houses, hotels, taverns, dance halls, joints, dives, road houses, "speak easys" and after-hours clubs that proliferated
throughout the city and surrounding territory.
|
| Wild, wonderful Lower Fourth Street in old Sioux City |
Not a few of these storied establishments were operated by bootleggers and
gangsters from Chicago, Kansas City, Milwaukee and St. Louis. It was these shady entrepreneurs who kept the illegal
liquor flowing into Sioux City from Canada and the Ozarks during nationwide Prohibition in the 1920s. Gambling
and "Ladies of the Night" were so prolific that they were cottage industries (one of our main downtown
thoroughfares-- Pearl Street-- was actually named after a favorite professional hooker of bygone days). City fathers
and business leaders knew a good thing when they saw it, and consequently many of "Sioux City's Finest"
were only too willing to look the other way-- often for a price!
It was a golden era for gangsters--and for
Jazz.
It wasn't long before the city became so populated by bootleggers, gamblers, prostitutes and mobsters
that some citizens and members of the press began to refer to Sioux City as "Little Chicago"--mostly in
an effort to shame the authorities into cleaning up the town and its racketeer image. The moniker stuck, and the
city has been known by it--unofficially, of course--ever since .
|
| Sweet Fanny's at Lower Fourth & Court Sts, in the heart of "Little Chicago" as it is today.... |
Sioux City is also sometimes called "Jazz Town" by musicians
due to its long history of nurturing America's only true original art form...and for producing generations of fine
jazz musicians. We haven't been able to bring back those wide-open days of yesteryear, but we brought back the music...hot
and sultry, romping and happy....of those golden years of the Roaring 20s, Dirty 30s and Sporting 40s!
Pull
up a chair, sit back, relax, and have a listen as we recapture the golden era of Jazz. If you close
your eyes you just might picture a wild night in the Little Chicago of Al Capone's day, or imagine
sipping a cool Mint Julep in an elegant French Quarter courtyard on a lazy afternoon.
| Club Maison Bourbon.... |
|
| ...in the heart of the French Quarter |
|
