# Twelfth Street Station: The Great Migration and How New Orleans Music Reached Chicago

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/groundwater-the-blues-beneath-everything-7851197/twelfth-street-station-the-great-migration-and-how-new-orleans-music-reached-chicago
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/groundwater-the-blues-beneath-everything-7851197/twelfth-street-station-the-great-migration-and-how-new-orleans-music-reached-chicago.md
Podcast: [Groundwater: The Blues Beneath American Music](https://stenobird.com/podcast/groundwater-the-blues-beneath-everything-7851197)
Published: 2026-06-09T09:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://groundwater.fm/s1/4
Audio file: https://op3.dev/e/media.transistor.fm/61ad9cf9/3412c308.mp3
Processing state: not_requested
JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/groundwater-the-blues-beneath-everything-7851197/episodes/twelfth-street-station-the-great-migration-and-how-new-orleans-music-reached-chicago
Duration seconds: 820

## Resource

The music didn’t ride north on riverboats. It rode the Illinois Central Railroad — out of New Orleans, up through Memphis and the Mississippi Delta into Chicago — in the luggage cars and Jim Crow coaches of the Great Migration. Episode 4 of Groundwater traces what the music became when it left the South: Louis Armstrong stepping off the train at Twelfth Street Station in 1922 with a cornet and a fish sandwich; King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band and Armstrong’s first recorded solo; the Hot Five’s “West End Blues” and the thirteen-second cadenza that changed what a trumpet could do; Muddy Waters electrifying his Delta guitar on the South Side for Chess Records; Count Basie’s Kansas City swing; and Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie inventing bebop as an act of self-defense. The pipeline begins at Congo Square. The northern terminus is Chess Records. Music and sound, in order of appearance: • “Guitar Rag” — Sylvester Weaver — OKeh, 1923 (theme; public domain) • “2-8-2 No. 1534, Illinois Central” — Vinton Wight, Sounds of Steam Locomotives No. 1 — Folkways FX 6152, 1956 • “Chimes Blues” — King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band — Gennett, 1923 • “West End Blues” — Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five — OKeh, 1928 • “Hoochie Coochie Man” — Muddy Waters — Chess, 1954 (written by Willie Dixon) • “One O’Clock Jump” — Count Basie and His Orchestra — Decca, 1937 • “Ko-Ko” — Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie — Savoy, 1945 Excerpts used briefly for criticism and commentary; pre-1928 recordings are public domain.

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