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

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, clairnet, and drums is suggestive of the early jazz bands of some 15 years later, but without other evidence any pronouncements of the musical style played by the band shown are speculative.

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 cymbol attached to the bass drum.

Al Rose states Robinson's Dime Museum was on Basin Street. However the accompanying article does not state a specific address but mentions Canal Street and not Basin, and a Detroit Publishing Company photo from about 1890 (LC-D418-8102; see Image:CanalRobinsonsMuseumTram.jpg) shows "Eugene Robinson's Museum & Theatre" on the 700 block of Canal Street. (Possibly the business was located on both streets at different times.)