File:1890RobinsonsBandCropped.jpg

Cartoon showing band playing to promote dime museum in New Orleans, 1890.

This was on the cover of New Orleans newspaper "The Mascot" for 15 November, 1890. "Robinson's Band Plays Anything". Cartoon shows a caricatured African-American band playing on a balcony. People, horses, and dogs are either horrified or knocked prostrate into the street by the music. A man labeled "Propery Holder" yells "For God Sake Stop". People with heads of birds or jackasses walk into the museum.

New Orleans historian Al Rose called this "The earliest known illustration of a jazz band". The instrumentation of cornet or trumpet, trombone, clarinet, and drums is suggestive of the early jazz bands of some 15 years later, but without other evidence the musical style played by the band shown can only be speculated about.

Note that the tromobone with the backward facing bell was not just a conceit of the cartoonist; military surplus instruments of this style were sold at the time. Note also the drummer seems to have a cymbal attached to the bass drum.

Rose states Robinson's Dime Museum was on Basin Street. However a Detroit Publishing Company photo from about 1890 (LC-D418-8102) shows "Eugene Robinson's Museum & Theatre" on the 700 block of Canal Street. (Possibly the business was located on both streets at different times.)