Post by bassman on Mar 9, 2023 13:39:44 GMT
100 Years of King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band
This is to commemorate a most remarkable, early jazz ensemble.
I am about three weeks early on this, considering the date of their first studio session. But since the group as such - with Armstrong, I mean - had started to exist a few months earlier, it may be just as well.
King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band belongs to the classic representations of the music we love. Jazz "archaeologists" will be familiar with the lineup of Oliver's band, which, by the end of 1922, had established a residency at Lincoln Gardens, Chicago. It included young Louis Armstrong on second cornet, Johnny Dodds on clarinet, his brother Baby Dodds on drums, Lil Hardin on piano, Honoré Dutrey on trombone, and Bill Johnson (also known as one of the early exponents of jazz bass) on banjo - at least this was the personnel that cut the first sides on April 5, 1923, at Gennett Studios in Richmond, Indiana.
This is to commemorate a most remarkable, early jazz ensemble.
I am about three weeks early on this, considering the date of their first studio session. But since the group as such - with Armstrong, I mean - had started to exist a few months earlier, it may be just as well.
King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band belongs to the classic representations of the music we love. Jazz "archaeologists" will be familiar with the lineup of Oliver's band, which, by the end of 1922, had established a residency at Lincoln Gardens, Chicago. It included young Louis Armstrong on second cornet, Johnny Dodds on clarinet, his brother Baby Dodds on drums, Lil Hardin on piano, Honoré Dutrey on trombone, and Bill Johnson (also known as one of the early exponents of jazz bass) on banjo - at least this was the personnel that cut the first sides on April 5, 1923, at Gennett Studios in Richmond, Indiana.
Although the group recorded for Okeh, Columbia, and Paramount as well in the same year, I prefer the Gennett sides because, in spite of the crude techniques of early record making, they sound more relaxed than their later counterparts. Studio work must have been a tough job. For instance, imagine Armstrong having to stand alone, because of the force of his projection, separated from the rest of the band by (purportedly) twelve or fifteen feet, and having to shuttle up to the recording horn for those famous breaks with his boss Joe Oliver: This is not the type of situation where an otherwise hard-swinging live band would feel comfortable. One of several reasons - to my mind - why the Oliver band still manages to swing may be the absence of a tuba. So, the impression here is of a nice four-beat instead of the tuba-heavy two-beat that plagues quite a few of those early jazz recordings.
(Mind you: The image added to the Youtube file does not show the Creole Jazz Band but Oliver's Dixie Syncopators, 1925!)