Jazz followed the same formula. New Orleans, at the time when jazz first appeared, was one of the unhealthiest cities in the world. Buddy Bolden, lauded as the originator of the jazz idiom, was born in New Orleans right before the devastating 1878 yellow fever epidemic raged through the city. Black infant mortality in New Orleans at the time was 45 percent, and the typical life span of an African American a mere thirty-six years.
