Three years before Jenkins Orphanage gave shelter to children, the Rev. Daniel Joseph Jenkins embarked on a European odyssey that inspired him to help Charleston's needy children and teach them music.

A lean, 6-foot, 7-inch Jenkins was most likely an impressive figure when he arrived in early 1889 at the African Training Institute at Colwyn Bay, Wales, a resort town west of Liverpool.

It was there that Jenkins, who became known as "the Orphanage Man," emerged as a 19th-century renaissance man with an international vision.

The Rev. William Hughes, a former missionary to the Congo, established the institute in 1889, according to Jeffrey P. Green's 1980 "Edmund Thornton Jenkins: The Life and Times of a Black American Composer 1894-1926."

The biography of Jenkins' youngest son provides much of what is known today about the orphanage's contribution to music. It tells this story:

The institute trained black students to be "practical evangelists, studying medicine, printing, tailoring, carpentry and other skills that would make them welcome in the missionary field."

Green included Jenkins' connection to Hughes' work because it was his contention that Hughes' ideas inspired Jenkins.

"Jenkins told a colleague, John E. Dowling, that he got the idea of organizing a band to collect money from Europe."

Taking a cue from Booker T. Washington, who successfully raised money through his Tuskegee Singers, "Daniel Jenkins began early to exploit small Negroes playing band music," according to an Aug. 26, 1935, Time magazine article report."

He obtained some battered horns and organized a band that he sent north in 1893 to play on street corners.

The band first traveled to England in September 1895. It made its last trip in 1929.

In 1913, Jenkins said: "I took the boys out to play on the streets, but their strange appearance created so much excitement and monopolized the thoroughfares to such an extent that we at once were forced to retire, also under English law, boys at the age of ours were forbidden to play instruments."

Their presence on the streets of London landed Jenkins in court. According to Green, "Parson Jenkins was tried at Bow Street Magistrate's Court at the beginning on a charge of exploiting child labor."

Jenkins turned to a friend from home, Charleston attorney Augustine Smythe, who was visiting the city, for help. When Smythe returned to England with his family in 1914 Jenkins returned the favor -- in gold.

"The war broke out and Jenkins was able to assist several prominent Charlestonians stranded by the money confusion" after Britain declared war on Germany on Aug. 4, 1914, Green wrote, citing a July 31, 1937, News and Courier article. "They were unable to cash checks but he was paid in gold and loan money to get them out of the country."

Jenkins players were part of the famous French 369th Regimental Band during World War I and were given credit by some for introducing jazz to Europe. They also played with Will Marion Cook's Southern Syncopated Orchestra, a band that also went to Europe in 1919, turning Europeans on to American popular music.

The music of Jenkins Orphanage is still felt today. Many people consider its work to have been mostly a novelty of raucous music and street corner shenanigans. Some scholars give Jenkins' musicians credit for being some of the best trained, most versatile musicians ever produced in America.

The long educational tradition that started in 1891 has stocked big bands and small ensembles in the United States since the beginning of American swing music.

Most Jenkins players were never celebrated. They were victims of racism and of being pioneers. Some were so important to the outfits they were affiliated with, they managed to become known as individuals by fans. Rhythm guitarist Freddie Green, born in Charleston in 1911, joined the Count Basie Band in 1937, remaining there until his death in 1987.

By all accounts, the Basie band was the quintessential American swing band, and by Basie's own account, Green set the pace. Along with bassist Walter Page and drummer Jo Jones, Green was part of what some jazz historians consider to be the greatest rhythm section ever in jazz.

Recent scholarship is pointing toward the likelihood that the birth of jazz in New Orleans was paralleled or even predated by what happened in Charleston and perhaps some other places. Jenkins players were improvising on streets in cities along the East Coast and in England when New Orleans' legendary Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton was 5 years old and almost a decade before Louis Armstrong was born.

The Charleston Jazz Initiative, a research project housed at the College of Charleston, is seeing evidence of that as it collects information and presents programming on the history of jazz in Charleston.