New York, artist and jazz aficionado Keith Henry Brown was commissioned for this year’s Jazz Festival poster. Brown said he was drawn to LaVilla’s musical history, noting Ray Charles got his start in Jacksonville, playing piano for bands at the Ritz Theatre in LaVilla.
Ray Charles Robinson, who had attended the Deaf and Blind School in St. Augustine, moved to LaVilla to stay with friends of his mother after she passed. He stayed for just over a year, earning $4 a night. He then moved to Seattle as he wanted to get as far away from Florida as was possible.
Other music legends that played in LaVilla include, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald,
and Louis Armstrong.
Brown is quoted as saying “The large figures in my picture, looming over the once ecstatic downtown of Jacksonville at its music–fueled height are meant to imply the ghosts of the past that inform the future”
