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
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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
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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.