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.
LOUIS IN NEW YORK AND BIG BANDS ARE BORN
That tradition, however, was too restricting for a creative genius
like Louis
Armstrong. He left Oliver in late 1924, accepting an offer from New
York's most prestigious black bandleader, Fletcher Henderson
(1897-1952). Henderson's band played at Roseland Ballroom on
Broadway and was the first significant big band in Jazz history.
Evolved from the standard dance band of the era, the first big Jazz
bands
consisted of three trumpets, one trombone, three saxophones (doubling
all
kinds of reed instruments), and rhythm section of piano, banjo, bass
(string
or brass) and drums. These bands played from written scores
(arrangements or "charts"), but allowed freedom of invention for the
featured soloists and often took liberties in departing from the
written
notes.
Though it was the best of the day, Henderson's band lacked rhythmic
smoothness and flexibility when Louis joined up. The flow and grace of
his
short solos on records with the band make them stand out like diamonds
in
a tin setting.
The elements of Louis' style, already then in perfect balance,
included a
sound that was the most musical and appealing yet heard from a
trumpet; a
gift for melodic invention that was as logical as it was new and
startling,
and a rhythmic poise (jazzmen called it "time") that made other
players
sound stiff and clumsy in comparison.
His impact on musicians was tremendous. Nevertheless, Henderson didn't
feature him regularly, perhaps because he felt that the white dancers
