It keeps the phones ringing off the hook. Brown Sugar knows many callers by voice if not by name.

“I went home and told my wife that I wasn’t never coming back,” one caller says midway through her Tuesday afternoon blues show. “And she told me, ‘Brown Sugar ain’t gonna take care of no poor man.’” They both laugh.

“That’s right, baby,” she says. They flirt while the rest of New Orleans listens to Arkansas bluesman Johnnie Taylor. He’s called her for years but won’t send her a picture. She chats with him every time he calls but hasn’t told him her real name.

Brown Sugar is one of 50 volunteer DJs at 90.7 FM WWOZ (referred to locally as Oh-Zee). From the most shoestring of beginnings, the station has become a fixture in the local music scene and in the city. In the early ’80s, the founders started playing tapes from a transmitter located in a shack across the river. With the arrival of webcasting, OZ is now an international beacon of New Orleans jazz, R&B and all the roots music of South Louisiana. Besides Brown Sugar’s suitors, the station has an intensely loyal listenership.

Before becoming the mysterious voice known to New Orleanians as Brown Sugar, she was an avid listener and frequent caller. She was coaxed over the call-in line to come down to the station and volunteer. When she said hello over the air for the first time the phone started ringing. “It was the fellas wanting to know who that woman is,” she says.

Brown Sugar soon had her own show. Not wanting to share her real name she called herself Sugar. “I played Sugar, Sugar by Wilson Pickett a lot so I used that as a name,” she says. Then one day in the studio, station co-founder Jerry Brock suggested she become Bubbling Brown Sugar. She thought Brown Sugar was good enough and she goes by that for her blues show and her Sunday morning gospel show.

As she got more involved as a volunteer she became membership director. She left behind a music club, a liquor store and a carpet cleaning business to work for OZ at its tiny office just outside of the French Quarter. When her air-time rolls around, she grabs a satchel of her CDs from home and walks across the street into Louis Armstrong Park. The studio is situated in a cozy two-story building. She slips on the earphones, slides in a CD and cuddles up to the microphone to ask New Orleans, “Are you all ready for this action?”

Her voice has become part of New Orleans. It’s her voice coming over the airwaves in the opening scene of The Big Easy. She even found her name in a recent mystery novel also trying to capture the feel of the city.

OZ is a round-the-clock soundtrack for the city. Programming features jazz most prominently. The middle of the day is carved out for New Orleans music featuring funked up R&B by everyone from Dr. John to the Radiators. Any other music with roots in New Orleans can be found sometime during the week. That includes blues, Cajun and Celtic music, African and Caribbean sounds, Zydeco and gospel.

“Jazz Fest is a ten day festival,” says station manager David Freedman. “WWOZ puts on a 365-day festival.” Like the Jazz Festival and unlike most commercial radio stations, OZ’s mission is to present a great variety of music, especially by local musicians. Freedman says that the easiest way to see if you’re in New Orleans is to tune your FM radio to 90.7. “You’ll know,” he says.

OZ is a volunteer-staffed and listener-supported radio station. It’s one of the few community radio stations nationally that is not affiliated with a college or university. Members provide the bulk of support that keeps OZ on the air. The loyalty of those listeners is very important to the station. “We don’t have the most listeners,” says Freedman. “We have people who listen the most.” And they take pride in the station. “We have more bumper stickers than all the other stations combined. Anybody can buy a billboard. But not everybody will mess up their bumper for you,” Freedman says.

OZ has drawn enthusiastic support from its inception. Founders Jerry and Walter Brock came to New Orleans in the mid ’70s to start a community radio station. Just barely in their 20s, they had already helped two other community stations get off the ground before coming to the Big Easy. Though they weren’t familiar with the city’s music before they arrived, they immediately recognized it as an untapped resource. No commercial stations featured local artists.

As they applied for a license, local musicians held benefits to raise money for the project. In 1980, they broke onto the airwaves with 12 hours of daily programming. Jerry Brock spent his nights recording 90 minute tapes. The following day he would take them out to the shack that housed their transmitter. “We didn’t even have a phone out there,” he says.

A short time later, they were offered space above the music club Tipitina’s. A small apartment became their studio. They got their first caller on day one. “Snooks Eaglin called and said, ‘We hear you, Jerry,’” Brock says. Other now legendary musicians did programs for them. Art Neville, James Booker and many more got involved with OZ. Occasionally they hung a microphone in the club downstairs and broadcast live shows. Locals tuned in and the word got out. In the pages of Interview magazine, Andy Warhol declared OZ, “The greatest radio station on earth.”

The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation, the sponsor of Jazz Fest, also recognized OZ as a vital part of the music scene. When the station hit financial woes in the mid-’80s, the foundation stepped in and made a commitment to keep them on the air. The two organizations compliment each other well. OZ now broadcasts live from the festival. They make recordings of those shows and other concerts throughout the year. The CDs are distributed to OZ members and are not for sale anywhere.

Jazz is a mainstay on OZ. On late Tuesday afternoons, Lewis White hosts a three-hour show featuring everything from Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue to the newest recordings of New Orleans jazzmen, Terence Blanchard and Donald Harrison, Jr. A retired press agent and newsman from Alabama, White has always had a passion for music. “I can sing you the lyrics of any popular song between the ’40s and now,” he says.

The cool flow of White’s show belies his studio intensity. White is meticulous and finicky in planning his show. He draws heavily on his own collection of jazz, much of it on vinyl. He cues up a record, notes it in his log and ponders what to segue into next. “It helps to feel it,” he says while scanning down a record jacket. “The best actor couldn’t pull this off.” He stops momentarily to listen to Coltrane. “The blues is the key to this stuff,” he says. Then he quickly sifts through another stack of records.

How the DJs feel about the music is one of the only guidelines working at OZ. There are no playlists, which commercial stations use to keep very popular songs in heavy rotation. “Our DJs are happy if they can play something you’ve never heard before,” Freedman says. That fresh, live feel keeps OZ at the heart of the city’s music scene.

Louisiana Music Factory (210 Decatur St., 586-1094)
The Louisiana Music Factory has an excellent selection of local music in all genres. They have deep catalogues of local artists and a fair amount of independent and self-released CDs. The Factory hosts in-store concerts and is very well connected with the local music scene, so it is not uncommon to see local musicians drop by to chat or shop. There is also a selection of videos and music related books and magazines. Upstairs, they have a large collection of used vinyl, focusing more on jazz and rock music from recent decades.

The Virgin Megastore (620 Decatur St., 671-8100)
Virgin offers everything in new local and national releases. The first floor features major popular releases in all genres. The second floor is devoted to New Orleans and Louisiana music, from blues and gospel to Cajun and zydeco. There is also a section of imported music from Latin, Caribbean and African countries. Virgin schedules in-store performances during Jazz Fest. All media are well represented at Virgin, from DVDs and video games to books and magazines.

Magic Bus (527 Conti St., 522-0530)
The Magic Bus deals in new and used CDs and vinyl. Besides a large selection of rock and jazz, they have an excellent selection of Reggae and Brazilian music. There’s also plenty of folk and classical music on CD or vinyl. Music fanatics can find a selection of official imports, Japanese imports, Gold Discs and out of print material. Magic Bus trades CDs and doesn’t specialize in particular genres. Instead, they look for quality everywhere. So Magic Bus is an excellent place to browse.

Basin Street Records (www.BasinStreetRecords.com)
Founder Mark Samuels built Basin Street Records the hard way. In its early years, he spent nights and weekends handing out leaflets and wearing a sandwich sign to promote his artists at the clubs. Since then he’s signed some of the most popular local jazz bands and Los Hombres Caliente releases on Basin Street have been the best selling albums at the Jazz Fest for several years. He’s also signed trumpeter Kermit Ruffins, drummer Jason Marsalis, Pianist Henry Butler, clarinetist Dr. Michael White and R&B artist Jon Cleary.

Louisiana Red Hot Records (www.LouisianaRedHot.com)
Also a relatively young label, Louisiana Red Hot features the music of South Louisiana from New Orleans to Cajun country. Releases span elder statesmen like pianist Ronnie Kole to precocious newcomers like New Orleans’ Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews to Cajun teenagers Feufollet. Red Hot has also released many compilation samplers for those who want to hear a range of new performers.

Throughout the first century of jazz, New Orleans produced many amazing musicians. Louis Armstrong became the city and jazz’s first great ambassador. Entering jazz’s second century, many talented trumpeters are following in his footsteps.

It is nearly impossible to overstate the drama of Armstrong’s miraculous climb to world-wide recognition and popularity. He was born at the turn of the century into extreme poverty in a neighborhood bordering Storyville, New Orleans’ official red light district. Not yet a teenager he was placed in a “Colored Waifs Home” after police caught him shooting a pistol on New Year’s Eve. He played in the home’s band and took to the cornet, an instrument very similar to a trumpet. By his late teens, Joe “King” Oliver took him under his wing and into his band. Oliver then took him to Chicago, where the two became famous in the early ’20s.

Armstrong spent the next decade increasing his fame for his virtuoso playing and entertaining. Thereafter, he rarely returned to New Orleans. Through the decades, styles changed and he sometimes played with less talented groups of musicians, but his musical genius remained unquestionable. Coupled with his huge personality, his talents took him around the world as a band leader well before his hometown was desegregated.

Back in New Orleans, many new trumpeters gained fame. The legendary Al Hirt grew up in New Orleans and played a swinging style of Dixieland jazz. Hirt, known as “Jumbo” to his friends, preferred to play melodic popular music rather than pursue the more esoteric sounds of modern jazz. He had been trained in classical music and led and played in big bands after World War II. But he made it big recording music with his New Orleans-based jazz band starting in the ’50s. His popularity translated into regular television appearances and a 15-year run as Playboy magazine’s favorite trumpeter. He ran a lively and popular club on Bourbon Street for years, only a couple blocks down from former bandmate, friend and clarinetist Pete Fountain.

Hirt also, perhaps only incidentally, passed on the legacy of New Orleans trumpeting superstars. At a rehearsal, he gave a trumpet to the son of his piano player to give him something to do. The piano player was Ellis Marsalis. The boy was Wynton Marsalis and the trumpet was his first.

Wynton Marsalis has climbed to the top of the jazz world. He is the artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City. He has recorded prolifically, won Grammys in both jazz and classical music and won a Pulitzer Prize for music.

While Marsalis lives in New York, New Orleans is not suffering for lack of accomplished or rising star trumpet players. One of the young lions is Nicholas Payton.

Though Payton is just 29, he has been playing the Jazz Fest for two decades, starting with his father Walkter Payton’s Snapbean Band. At the age of 19, Payton was invited to join Elvin Jones’ Jazz Machine – as musical director. Since then he’s recorded several diverse albums including a Grammy-winning collaboration with Doc Cheatham and a tribute to Louis Armstrong.

“I am one of the few people fortunate enough to make a living leading my own band,” Payton says. It keeps him on the road most of the year. When he’s in town, a good place to catch him is at Snug Harbor (626 Frenchmen St., 949-0696), a jazz club that favors modern and progressive styles of jazz but includes plenty of traditional New Orleans jazz as well.

Another blazing New Orleans trumpeter who has climbed to the upper echelons of modern jazz is Terence Blanchard. Blanchard was chosen by Downbeat magazine in 2000 as its readers’ choice for jazz artist of the year and for best album. Blanchard’s music gets well beyond jazz audiences though. He wrote the musical scores for many Spike Lee films, including Clockers, Malcolm X, Jungle Fever, as well as for MGM films such as Original Sin. Blanchard was recently hand chosen to succeed Ellis Marsalis as the director of jazz studies at the University of New Orleans.

There are several local trumpeters who favor more traditional styles of jazz and play more frequently in local clubs. Wendell Brunious and Gregg Stafford both play more traditional jazz at clubs such as Preservation Hall (726 St Peter St., 522-2841) and the Palm Court Jazz Café (1204 Decatur St., 525-0200).

Many New Orleans musicians make their name in the marching brass bands that play jazz funerals and “second line parades.” The ReBirth Brass Band was co-founded by a young trumpeter named Kermit Ruffins. Blowing their brass band standard “Do Whatcha Wanna,” the ReBirth broadened the brass band repertoire. Brass bands originally jazzed up spirituals and hymns for jazz funerals. “When the Saints Go Marching In” is an old hymn. The ReBirth brought funk and soul sounds into the music. They covered Earth, Wind and Fire and other popular music of the ’70s.

After roughly a decade with the ReBirth, Ruffins left to focus more on an old style of New Orleans jazz. “Traditional New Orleans is a strong backbeat with a steady swing,” he says, citing Armstrong’s “Hello Dolly” and “When You’re Smiling.” Ruffins takes his band, the Barbecue Swingers, to all sorts of New Orleans nightspots, from jazz clubs to corner bars (Vaughan’s, 800 Lesseps St., 947-5562) to dancing and big band clubs.

As always, there are younger trumpeters climbing their way up the ladder. Irvin Mayfield is making waves with Los Hombres Calientes. They are infusing jazz with afro-Cuban and Latin beats. Mayfield forms the core of the band along with veteran percussionist Bill Summers, who got his own early start with Herbie Hancock. As jazz carries into its second century, youth and tradition are well acquainted in New Orleans.

If there’s a silver lining to the cloud of confusion surrounding Louis Armstrong’s birth, it’s that jazz enthusiasts got to celebrate it for a full year, says Bruce Boyd Raeburn, curator of Tulane University’s William Ranson Hogan Jazz Archive.

“And Pops deserves it anyway,” he says.

Armstrong said he was born on the Fourth of July, 1900. Jazz scholars suggest that he chose that date. Armstrong was born into extreme poverty and thus born at home instead of at a hospital. No hospital or official birth certificate exists. But scholars have unearthed a priest’s baptism record. The baptism was performed in early August of 1901 and states that Armstrong was born recently. Many scholars accept the document as valid.

This reflects the birth of jazz itself, which, for all that we do know, still leaves some of the particulars to debate. Because jazz has become so important to so many, people want to know who created it and how. Looking for easy answers has led to many misleading accounts.

Many factors complicate the study of early jazz. Since it coalesced in music halls in poor black neighborhoods in New Orleans, the newspapers of the times had little to say about it. The clubs only made the news if there was a fire or a murder. As the music became more popular in the early 1900s, precursors of The Times-Picayune editorialized that the new music was vulgar and a blight on the city’s otherwise upstanding culture. Eventually it retracted those comments. In fact, it did so prominently when the New Orleans Jazz Museum opened in 1961.

By then the early days were long gone and many of the early musicians had passed on. New Orleans had in many ways taken the music for granted. It wasn’t until the 1930s, when people outside of the city declared jazz an important art form, that professional historians started to piece together the story and collect its artifacts. Clues led in every direction.

Since jazz evolved out of a mix of many influences, it’s difficult to say how far back the evolution goes. Ragtime of the 1880s is very important. But the blues and gospel also came into play among musicians and in the communities that housed the early dance halls where jazz developed. African rhythm is also essential, so many scholars trace the roots back to Congo Square, where slaves in colonial Louisiana were allowed to gather on Sundays to make their own music and hold their own customary dances. That was a freedom denied slaves elsewhere in the new world. Many say that’s a key reason why jazz could develop in New Orleans and not elsewhere.

Researching jazz also requires an understanding of the culture of New Orleans, says Raeburn. Particularly with regards to race, New Orleans was and is culturally unique. So historians who aren’t familiar with the city’s Creole population, and how socially mixed New Orleans was prior to the turn of the century, can’t really understand the way jazz came together. New Orleans had long had populations of free people of color and mixed race Creoles. Some had been affluent slave owners before the Civil War. While the rest of the country polarized into black and white following the Civil War and during segregation in the 1890s, New Orleans was more about exceptions than rules. For example, Buddy Bolden, whose heyday was as a cornetist in bands playing the African-American music halls along South Rampart Street in the 1890s, lived two doors down from Larry Shields, the clarinetist who would later play on the first commercial jazz recording, says Raeburn. The all-white Original Dixieland Jazz Band, led by Dominic La Rocca, made that record in New York in 1917. There was considerable change in the music between those years, Raeburn says, but it leaves open questions of association and influences. With music, talent tended to trump race in local bands, he adds. And that doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of other ethnic factors, particularly Latin and Caribbean ones.

Jazz’s development was also affected by other social changes. Storyville, the official prostitution district created just north of the French Quarter, opened in 1898. Because there was money to be made at the pianos in bordello parlors and in the bands in Storyville saloons, many early jazz musicians played there. Jelly Roll Morton was a famous Storyville piano “professor.” Some places allowed musicians to play the new music, others didn’t. But in the end it had a strong influence on jazz because of the musicians who met there and the music they played together.

There is no single creator of jazz, but there are key musicians who made great break throughs. Currently Buddy Bolden’s role is seen as most important, says Jack Stewart, a writer, musician and jazz afficionado researching the history of jazz. “He was the first to bring cult of personality into the process,” Stewart says. “He did an awful lot. But did he do the whole thing? No.” Bolden’s importance doesn’t come at the expense of others like Jelly Roll Morton, or Emile “Stalebread” Lacoume or Dominic LaRocca, Stewart adds.

Jazz has changed greatly over the years. And some traditionalists and purists say that later forms of music shouldn’t be called jazz at all. They should have thought up their own names. So whether Duke Ellington played jazz or some sort of symphonic derivative is a debate based on different presumptions.

For those who want to enter the fray, there is ample ammunition to get behind an argument. New Orleans has two major archives of jazz materials. One is Tulane’s Hogan Jazz Archive, which holds a huge collection of phonograph records and recorded interviews. The Louisiana State Museum has the other large collection, which was created as a private project by a group of jazz enthusiasts in the 1960s. They opened a jazz museum in the French Quarter. Eventually they decided that the project was much bigger than they had imagined or could keep up with and gave their collection to the state museum.

The Hogan Archive was created in 1958. It holds 2000 reels of audiotape interviews with early legends, musicians who played in their bands, their children, friends and historians. From all of these spoken histories, researchers have been able to compare accounts and create time-lines and sequences of influences. The archive also has holdings on newer music. “Hogan is interested in other music because it’s rooted in how people live here,” Raeburn says.

The Louisiana State Museum has both an archive and a jazz museum, located at the U.S. Mint at one corner of the French Quarter. The museum displays the largest collection of instruments used by early musicians, including the first cornet Armstrong learned to play, and instruments played by everyone from Dizzie Gillespie to Pete Fountain. The exhibition breaks down jazz by time period, by contributing influences, and by the make-up of the bands. Pictures and storyboards help put the puzzle of influences together. The archive holds more than 10,000 photographs.

The basis of the state museum collection are the holdings of the individual collectors who came together in 1961 to create the New Orleans Jazz Museum. Their museum was a scholarly endeavor from the beginning. But they eventually realized that the project required more space, maintenance and administration then they could keep up with. So they donated the holdings to the State Museum. Many of them had become acquainted with the music as young fans, who bought each new record as they were issued, says Steve Teeter, curator of jazz at the museum.

The New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park added to the collection by conducting videotaped interviews with elder musicians and family and friends of musicians no longer with us. They have been able to corroborate stories and piece together more about the culture that created jazz.

The exhibit also begins the process of documenting the current music scene. Photos show both young brass bands in street parades, and senior players at the revival-oriented Preservation Hall. And musicians of all ages at Jazz Fest. While these events will become history too, they will also be incredibly well recorded for future generations.

The Hogan Archive is located in Tulane’s Jones Hall 504-865-5688. The State Museum exhibition is located in the Old U.S. Mint (400 Esplanade Ave., 568-6968). The New Orleans Jazz National Historic Park is located at 916 N. Peters St. 504-589-2636.