:focal(400x301:401x302)/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/44/65/44655b1e-09e4-4c52-aaa3-1e2030fa38ab/water_color_portrait.jpg "Long Before Jazz, Frank Johnson Was Playing the Hottest Music in America | Arts & Culture")
An anonymous watercolor portrait of Francis Johnson keeping an early 19th-century horn Courtesy NYPL On March 9, 1819, a supremely gifted musician named Francis “Frank” Johnson performed a concert at the Masonic Hall on Chestnut Road in Philadelphia. Johnson and his bandmates have been absolutely free Black adult men the […]