THE EARLY MUSICIANS - Buddy, Bunk, Freddie and The King




 

The players in these early bands were mostly artisans (carpenters,

bricklayers, tailors, etc.) or laborers who took time out on weekends and

holidays to make music along with a little extra cash.

The first famous New Orleans musician, and the archetypal jazzman, was

Buddy Bolden (1877-1931). A barber by trade, he played cornet and began

to lead a band in the late 1890's. Quite probably, he was the first to mix

the basic, rough blues with more conventional band music. It was a

significant step in the evolution of Jazz.

Bolden suffered a seizure during a 1907 Mardi Gras parade and spent the

rest of his life in an institution for the incurably insane. Rumor that he

made records have never been substantiated, and his music comes from

the recollection of other musicians who heard him when they were young.

Bunk Johnson (1989- 1949), who played second cornet in one of Bolden's

last bands, contributed greatly to the revival of interest in classic New

Orleans jazz that took place during the last decade of his life. A great

storyteller and colorful personality, Johnson is responsible for much of the

New Orleans legend. But much of what he had to say was more fantasy

than fact.

Many people, including serious fans, believe that the early jazz musicians

were self-taught geniuses who didn't read music and never took a formal

lesson. A romantic notion, but entirely untrue. Almost every major figure

in early jazz had at least a solid grasp of legitimate musical fundamentals,

and often much more.

Still, they developed wholly original approaches to their instruments. A

prime example is Joseph (King) Oliver (1885-1938), a cornetist and

bandleader who used all sorts of found objects, including drinking glasses,

a sand pail, and a rubber bathroom plunger to coax a variety of sounds

from his horn. Freddie Keppard (1889-1933), Oliver's chief rival, didn't

use mutes, perhaps because he took pride in being the loudest cornet in

town. Keppard, the first New Orleans great to take the music to the rest of

the country, played in New York vaudeville with the Original Creole

Orchestra in 1915.

 

JAZZ COMES NORTH

 

By the early years of the second decade, the instrumentation of the typical

Jazz band had become cornet (or trumpet), trombone, clarinet, guitar,

string bass and drums. (Piano rarely made it since most jobs were on

location and pianos were hard to transport.) The banjo and tuba, so closely

identified now with early Jazz, actually came in a few years later because

early recording techniques couldn't pick up the softer guitar and string bass

sounds.

The cornet played the lead, the trombone filled out the bass harmony part

in a sliding style, and the clarinet embellished between these two brass

poles. The first real jazz improvisers were the clarinetists, among them

Sidney Bechet (1897-1959). An accomplished musician before he was 10,

Bechet moved from clarinet to playing mainly soprano saxophone. He was

to become one of the most famous early jazzmen abroad, visiting England

and France in 1919 and Moscow in 1927.

Most veteran jazz musicians state that their music had no specific name at

first, other than ragtime or syncopated sounds. The first band to use the

term Jazz was that of trombonist Tom Brown, a white New Orleanian who

introduced it in Chicago in 1915. The origin of the word is cloudy and its

initial meaning has been the subject of much debate.

The band that made the word stick was also white and also from New

Orleans, the Original Dixieland Jass Band. This group had a huge

success in New York in 1917-18 and was the first more or less authentic

Jazz band to make records. Most of its members were graduates of the

bands of Papa Jack Laine (1873-1966), a drummer who organized his

first band in 1888 and is thought to have been the first white Jazz

musician. In any case, there was much musical integration in New Orleans,

and a number of light skinned Afro-Americans "passed" in white bands.

By 1917, many key Jazz players, white and black, had left New Orleans

and other southern cities to come north. The reason was not the notorious

1917 closing of the New Orleans red light district, but simple economics.

The great war in Europe had created an industrial boom, and the musicians

merely followed in the wake of millions of workers moving north to the

promise of better jobs.

 

LITTLE LOUIS & THE KING

 

King Oliver moved to Chicago in 1918. As his replacement in the best

band in his hometown, he recommended an 18-year-old, Louis Armstrong.

Little Louis, as his elders called him, had been born on August 4, 1901, in

poverty that was extreme even for New Orleans' black population. His

earliest musical activity was singing in the streets for pennies with a boy's

quartet he had organized. Later he sold coal and worked on the levee.

Louis received his first musical instruction at reform school, where he

spent eighteen months for shooting off an old pistol loaded with blanks on

the street on New Year's Eve of 1913. He came out with enough musical

savvy to take jobs with various bands in town. The first established

musician to sense the youngster's great talent was King Oliver, who tutored

Louis and became his idol.

 

THE CREOLE JAZZ BAND

 

When Oliver sent for Louis to join him in Chicago, that city had become

the world's new Jazz center. Even though New York was where the

Original Dixieland Jass Band had scored its big success, followed by the

spawning of the first dance craze associated with the music, the New York

bands seemed to take on the vaudeville aspects of the ODJB's style

without grasping the real nature of the music. Theirs was an imitation

Dixieland (of which Ted Lewis was the first and most successful

practitioner), but there were few southern musicians in New York to lend

the music a New Orleans authenticity.

Chicago, on the other hand, was teeming with New Orleans musicmakers,

and the city's nightlife was booming in the wake of prohibition. By all

odds, the best band in town was Oliver's Creole Jazz Band, especially

after Louis joined in late 1922. The band represented the final great

flowering of classic New Orleans ensemble style and was also the

harbinger of something new. Aside from the two cornetists, its stars were

the Dodds Brothers, clarinetists Johnny (1892-1940) and drummer Baby

(1898-1959). Baby Dodds brought a new level of rhythmic subtlety and

drive to jazz drumming. Along with another New Orleans-bred musician,

Zutty Singleton (1897-1975), he introduced the concept of swinging to the

Jazz drums. But the leading missionary of swinging was, unquestionably,

Louis Armstrong.

 

FIRST JAZZ ON RECORDS

 

The Creole Jazz Band began to record in 1923 and while not the first black

New Orleans band to make records, it was the best. The records were

quite widely distributed and the band's impact on musicians was great.

Two years earlier, trombonist Kid Ory (1886-1973) and his Sunshine

Orchestra captured the honor of being the first recorded artists in this

category. However, they recorded for an obscure California company

which soon went out of business and their records were heard by very

few.

Also in 1923, the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, a white group active in

Chicago, began to make records. This was a much more sophisticated

group than the old Dixieland Jass Band, and on one of its recording dates,

it used the great New Orleans pianist-composer Ferdinand (Jelly Roll)

Morton (1890-1941). The same year, Jelly Roll also made his own initial

records.

 

JELLY ROLL MORTON

 

Morton, whose fabulous series of 1938 recordings for the Library of

Congress are a goldmine of information about early Jazz, was a complex

man. Vain, ambitious, and given to exaggeration, he was a pool shark,

hustler and gambler a well as a brilliant pianist and composer. His greatest

talent, perhaps was for organizing and arranging. The series of records he

made with his Red Hot Peppers between 1926 and 1928 stands, alongside

Oliver's as the crowning glory of the New Orleans tradition and one of the

great achievements in Jazz.

 



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