Original Dixieland Jazz Band

Intro

• Dixieland jazz band that made the first jazz recordings in early 1917.
• Their "Livery Stable Blues" became the first jazz record ever issued.
• The group composed and made the first recordings of many jazz standards, the most famous being "Tiger Rag".
• In late 1917 the spelling of the band's name was changed to Original Dixieland Jazz Band.
• The band consisted of five musicians who had played in the Papa Jack Laine bands, a racially integrated group of musicians who played for parades, dances, and advertising in New Orleans.
• ODJB billed itself as the "Creators of Jazz".
• It was the first band to record jazz commercially and to have hit recordings in the new genre.
• Band leader and cornetist Nick LaRocca argued that ODJB deserved recognition as the first band to record jazz commercially and the first band to establish jazz as a musical idiom or genre.

Origins

• In early 1916 a promoter from Chicago approached clarinetist Alcide Nunez and drummer Johnny Stein about bringing a New Orleans-style band to Chicago, where the similar Brown's Band From Dixieland, led by trombonist Tom Brown, was enjoying success.
• They then assembled trombonist Eddie Edwards, pianist Henry Ragas, and cornetist Frank Christian.
• Shortly before they were to leave, Christian backed out, and Nick LaRocca was hired as a last-minute replacement.
• On March 3, 1916 the musicians began their job at Schiller's Cafe in Chicago under the name Stein's Dixie Jass Band.
• The band was a hit and received offers of higher pay elsewhere.
• Since Stein as leader was the only musician under contract by name, the rest of the band broke off, sent to New Orleans for drummer Tony Sbarbaro, and on June 5, started playing under the name, The Dixie Jass Band.
• LaRocca and Nunez had personality conflicts, and on October 30 Tom Brown's Band and ODJB agreed to swap clarinetists, bringing Larry Shields into the Original Dixieland Jass Band.
• The band attracted the attention of theatrical agent Max Hart, who booked the band in New York City.
• At the start of 1917 the band began an engagement playing for dancing at Reisenweber's Cafe, on Columbus Circle, in Manhattan.

Origins

First Recordings

First

Recordings

• While a couple of other New Orleans bands had passed through New York City slightly earlier, they were part of vaudeville acts.
• ODJB, on the other hand, played for dancing and hence, were the first "jass" band to get a following of fans in New York and then record at a time when the American recording industry was essentially centered in the northeastern United States, primarily in New York City and Camden, New Jersey.
• Shortly after arriving in New York, a letter dated January 29, 1917, offered the band an audition for the Columbia Graphophone Company.
• The session took place on Wednesday, January 31, 1917. Nothing from this test session was issued.
• The band then recorded two sides for the Victor Talking Machine Company, "Livery Stable Blues" and "Dixieland Jass Band One-Step", on February 26, 1917 at Victor's New York studios.
• These titles were released as Victor 18255 in May 1917, the first issued jazz record
• Livery Stable Blues featured instruments doing barnyard imitations and the fully loaded trap set, wood blocks, cowbells, gongs, and Chinese gourds.
• This musical innovation represented one of the first experimental exercises in jazz.
• At the time, their music was liberating; the barnyard sounds were experiments in altering the tonal qualities of the instruments, and clattering wood blocks broke up the rhythm. The music was very lively when compared to the pop music of the time.
• The band's recordings, first marketed as a novelty, were a surprise hit, and gave many Americans their first taste of jazz.
• Musician Joe Jordan sued, since the "One Step" incorporated portions of his 1909 ragtime composition "That Teasin' Rag".
• The record labels subsequently were changed to "Introducing 'That Teasin' Rag' by Joe Jordan".
• A court case dispute over the authorship of "Livery Stable Blues" resulted in the judge declaring the tune in the "public domain".

Success

• In the wake of the group's success of the Victor record, the ODJB returned to Columbia in May, recording two selections of popular tunes of the day chosen for them by the label (possibly hoping to avoid the copyright problems which arose after Victor recorded two of the band's supposedly original compositions) "Darktown Strutters' Ball" and "(Back Home Again in) Indiana"
• Numerous jazz bands were formed in the wake of the success of ODJB that copied and replicated its style and sound.
• Also bands were brought from Chicago and California (such as the Frisco Jass Band) in an attempts to join the jazz craze.
• Established bands of different types and bandleaders such as Wilbur Sweatman began billing their groups as "jass" or "jazz" bands.
• Earl Fuller, bandleader at a competing New York venue, was ordered by management to form a "jass" band.
• W. C. Handy recorded one of the earliest cover versions of an ODJB tune when he released a recording of "Livery Stable Blues" by Handy's Orchestra of Memphis for Columbia in 1917.
• In 1918, the song "When You Hear That Dixieland Jazz Band Play" by Shelton Brooks, "the King of Ragtime Writers", was published by Will Rossiter in Chicago.
• It was a tribute to the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, who were featured on the cover

Later

Success

Later Career

• After their initial recording for the Victor Company, the ODJB recorded for Columbia Records and Aeolian-Vocalion in 1917, then returned to Victor the following year, while enjoying continued popularity in New York.
• Pianist and composer J. Russel Robinson joined the band in 1919
• Robinson's compositions for the band recorded and released in 1920, include the classic "Margie" and "Palesteena (Lena from Palesteena)", were among the most popular and best-selling hits of 1920.
• "Margie", composed by J. Russel Robinson with Con Conrad, with lyrics added by Benny Davis, has been covered over a hundred times. "Margie" has been recorded by Louis Armstrong, who also covered the band's "Tiger Rag", Ray Charles, Al Jolson, Duke Ellington, Django Reinhardt, Fats Domino, Don Redman, Cab Calloway, Jim Reeves, Gene Krupa, and Benny Goodman.
• "Margie" was a no. 9 hit for ODJB in 1921 with J. Russel Robinson on piano.
• Eddie Cantor had the biggest hit version of the ODJB classic, spending five weeks at no. 1 in 1921.
• The song also was featured in the movie The Eddie Cantor Story and was the theme of the television series of the same name in 1961–1962.
• Cantor also recorded ODJB's "Palesteena (Lena from Palesteena)".

London Tour

London

Tour

• Bandleader Nick LaRocca decided to take the band to London, where they would once again enjoy being the only authentic New Orleans jazz band in the metropolis, and again present themselves as the Originators of Jazz because they were the first band to record the new genre of music dubbed jass or jazz.
• The band's April 7, 1919 appearance in the revue Joy Bells at the London Hippodrome was the first official live jazz performance by any band in the United Kingdom and was followed by a command performance for King George V at Buckingham Palace.
• The concert did not start auspiciously, with the assembled aristocracy, which included French Marshal Philippe Pétain, peering through opera glasses at the band "as though there were bugs on us", according to LaRocca.
• The audience loosened up, however, after the king laughed and loudly applauded their rendition of "The Tiger Rag". *
• The British tour ended with the band being chased to the Southampton docks by Lord Harrington, who was infuriated that his daughter was being romanced by the lead singer of the band
• In London, they made twenty more recordings for the British branch of Columbia.
• While in London, they recorded the second, more commercially successful, version of their hit song "Soudan" (also known as "Oriental Jass").*
• The band returned to the United States in July 1920 and toured for four years.
• This version of the band played in a more commercial style, adding a saxophone to the arrangements in the manner of other popular orchestras.
• In 1927 LaRocca was replaced by 19-year-old trumpeter Henry Levine, who later brought this kind of repertoire to the NBC radio show The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street.

Last

Years