Jazz

Between big bands, Gillespie led small ensembles or performed with all-star aggregations such as Jazz at the Philharmonic. As a bandleader, he was among the first to introduce Latin musical elements into modern jazz.

As many as five Jenkins Orphanage bands were on tour during the summers of the 1920s.

Jenkins’s greatest contribution to Charleston, however, was the founding of the Jenkins Orphanage.

Jenkins took advantage of the growing popularity of jazz in London and played clarinet in dance orchestras to support himself while he continued his classical music studies.

In the mid-1970s no one could have imagined staid, conservative Charleston welcoming an invasion by more than 150,000 people for…