Jazz could use more guys like Eddie Condon, who was born 100 years ago this month. Neither a standout instrumentalist nor a prolific songwriter, Condon nevertheless left a lasting mark on jazz by assembling great bands and holding them together through sheer force of personality. He helped define the Chicago sound of the 1920s, established traditional jazz as a New York cultural institution in the Swing Era, and was one of the first bandleaders to make a mark on television.

Condon was also the H.L. Mencken of jazz, a brilliant author of prose wielding a highly quotable sense of humor. In his 1947 autobiography, “We Called It Music,” he recalled: “I arrived at the job in what I considered to be a perfect state of equilibrium: half man and half alcohol.” Once, when a French record producer presumed to tell the musicians how to play, Condon exclaimed, “We don’t tell them how to jump on grapes!” And then there’s his description of Chicago at the height of the Jazz Age: “Around midnight you could hold an instrument in the middle of the street and the air would play it.”

In his heyday, Eddie Condon was a brand name.There were those who referred to his style of music as “Chicago-Dixieland,” but the term most listeners preferred was the “Eddie Condon style.” When you dropped Condon’s name into a discussion (or, more likely, an argument), everyone knew exactly what kind of jazz you were talking about.

It is startling, then, that the Condon centennial has scarcely been recognized: There is no new box set, no new book, and, most surprising, not even a tribute concert here in his adopted city. True, Jack Teagarden’s centennial this summer was greeted with a similar lack of fanfare, but Teagarden was merely a great singer and trombonist; Condon represented an entire jazz movement.

Condon was born in Goodland, Ind., on November 16, 1905, and grew up in the towns of Momence, Ill., and Chicago Heights. A banjo player and guitarist, he was an early convert to the new music just out of New Orleans, and in the summer of 1922 he was able to work with his hero, Bix Beiderbecke.

Condon spent most of the Roaring ’20s in Chicago, and his name would become synonymous with the sound of that time and place. He initially gravitated to the New Orleans pioneers, including Louis Armstrong, who worked in King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band at the Lincoln Gardens. Then he took up with the young white Chicagoans, most prominently trumpeter Jimmy McPartland, tenor saxophonist Bud Freeman, and clarinetists Frank Teschmacher and Benny Goodman – all of whom idolized the older black New Orleanians. Condon was soon a factotum of Chicago’s white, smallband jazz scene.

Co-leading a band with Red McKenzie (a sometime singer who was even less of a player than Condon), Condon recorded four titles in December 1927 that put both the Condon sound and its most famous players – McPartland, Freeman, Teschmacher, pianist Joe Sullivan, drummer Gene Krupa, and Condon on banjo – on the map. These songs, especially “Sugar” and “China Boy,” are given credit for launching what became known as Chicago Jazz.

Condon moved to New York in the late 1920s, just as Gotham was becoming jazz’s epicenter. He was substantial enough a musician to tour with the musically demanding cornet player and bandleader Red Nichols (whose centennial also is this year). During these climactic years, Condon recorded with most of the era’s giants, including pianist Fats Waller, tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins, Teagarden, and Armstrong – the last on the memorable blues “Knockin’ a Jug.” Condon was also one of the first jazzmen to produce and participate regularly in integrated record sessions.

Though opportunities dried up during the Great Depression, Condon had two important things going for him. He found a place to play, Nick Rongetti’s club on West 10th Street and Seventh Avenue, which would be the first of many addresses Condon transformed into a shrine for his brand of jazz. And he joined forces with a sympathetic record-retailer turned producer, Milt Gabler (famous posthumously as Billy Crystal’s uncle), who was anxious to record as much of Condon’s music as possible.

During the war years, Condon produced a series of Town Hall jazz concerts that were broadcast for both civilians and Armed Forces Radio listeners. He was especially popular with GIs, who liked his music for the same reason Chicago gangsters had: As Condon put it, “It’s got guts, and it doesn’t slobber.” His friend Bing Crosby referred to Condon’s music as the “Dixieland Cult” (describing himself as a member), but Condon referred to the two-fisted, hard-drinking, duespaying musicians he worked with as his “mob.” Condon’s was a working class audience that could relate to his pretension-free performances and his direct, folksy presentation.

After the war, Condon’s music became still more widely known. Gabler upgraded Condon to the more mainstream Decca Records label (and he later recorded several albums for Columbia); he launched the first of several jazz clubs called Condon’s; and for more than a year hosted the first televised series of jazz sets, “Eddie Condon’s Floor Show.” In the 1950s and ’60s, he toured the world and recorded prolifically. He lived until 1973 in an apartment on Washington Square North.