In the boiling August of 1919, a 27-piece African-American jazz outfit called the Southern Syncopated Orchestra was summoned to play at Buckingham Palace as part of a royal command concert. The orchestra was Britain’s first introduction to black music. Their hothouse syncopations and Mississippi washboard rhythms were a balm after the first world war, and they went down a storm on the concert circuit.
A decade or so later, in the swing era of the 1930s, the clarinettist Benny Goodman adapted jazz for white tastes, toning it down and cleaning it up – much as Elvis Presley would do for the postwar generation with black rock ’n’ roll. By the time Miles Davis arrived in the 1950s, jazz was an increasingly white enthusiasm. He became a fashion icon for blue-eyed Mods and white soul brothers of one kind or another. Even today style magazines exalt the photograph of him on the cover of his 1958 Milestones album. What louche insouciance of dress. (Yes, Miles was way past cool.)
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