NEW ORLEANS JAZZ/DIXIELAND

In the 1890s in New Orleans a new style of music was born. It combined elements from both African and European music traditions with improvisation and the syncopated rhythms of ragtime.

Ragtime was a style of playing developed by barroom pianists toward the end of the century. It involved “ragging” or syncopating a tune—shifting the stress onto what would normally be an unstressed beat. It produced a catchy, hypnotic effect, and quickly became popular. After leading ragtime player SCOTT JOPLIN published “Maple Leaf Rag” in 1899, ragtime became a craze.

MARCHING BANDS

Brass bands dominated New Orleans’ music at the turn of the century. They played for parades, dances, riverboat trips, and funerals, and they included blues (derived from the old plantation songs), European marches, and dance music in their repertoire.

These bands often marched in funeral processions, playing slow dirges and hymns on the way to the cemetery, and breaking into more up-tempo “jazzed” up versions of the same tunes on the way back to town.

In 1897, alderman Sidney Story helped create a legal gambling and red-light district in New Orleans called Storyville. The brothels and gambling halls provided musicians with plenty of work. Pianists would play in the brothels and brass bands played in the streets, often on the back of carts. This area became the centre of the new jazzy style.

Not surprisingly, the instruments of the first New Orleans jazz bands were those of the marching bands. A cornet played the melodic lead, a trombone provided a tenor counter-melody or doubled the bass line, and a clarinet supplied a counter melody in eighth notes. They were supported by a rhythm section that consisted of a side drum, tuba, and banjo or guitar. Piano and string bass were often important in these bands.

The harmony of New Orleans jazz was often simpler than the ragtime progressions on which it was based. Keys of more than one sharp or four flats were generally avoided and there was little modulation (changing from one key to another).

THE FIRST JAZZ BANDS

The musician credited with first playing the new style was cornetist Buddy Bolden. His first band, formed in 1895, played the dances at Lincoln Park. No recordings exist, but those who heard him said he played very loudly and forcefully. His style greatly influenced many of the musicians at the time.

Cornetist Freddie Keppard was leading the Olympia Orchestra and freelancing around New Orleans in 1906. Strongly influenced by Bolden, he was one of the few jazz innovators of the 1910 era who later had a chance to record. He passed up an opportunity to record in 1916, which would have made him the first jazz musician to do so, fearing someone might steal his ideas. He finally recorded during the 1920s with his Jazz Cardinals.

Piano player, composer, and bandleader Jelly Roll MORTON claimed to have invented jazz in 1902. While this was almost certainly an exaggeration, he was one of the major innovators in the transition from ragtime to jazz. His band, the Red Hot Peppers, made some influential and exciting recordings in 1926. Many of his compositions, such as “Wolverine Blues” and “King Porter Stomp” have become standards.

The exodus of blacks from the South to the Northern factories helped spread the New Orleans style. Storyville was closed in 1917 by the military because they felt it was a bad influence on the troops at the nearby naval base. This forced the musicians there to look for work on the riverboats or in larger cities such as Kansas City, St. Louis, and Chicago, furthering the spread of jazz. An important group of these musicians was led by cornetist Joe “King” Oliver, whose Creole Jazz Band first recorded in 1923.

DIXIELAND

The term Dixieland was originally used to describe white bands playing the New Orleans style. What we know as the New Orleans style today is the music recorded by New Orleans musicians in Chicago during the 1920s. The first jazz recording was by five white musicians from New Orleans, called the Original Dixieland Jass Band (“jass” was soon changed to “jazz”). They recorded “Livery Stable Blues” and “Dixieland Jazz Band One-Step” on February 26, 1917, at Victor studios in New York City. The leader of the band was Nick LaRocca, a self-taught cornetist who played by ear.

In 1911, trombonist Edward “Kid” Ory led a popular band in New Orleans. Many influential musicians had played in this band, including King Oliver, Louis ARMSTRONG, Sidney Bechet, and Johnny Dodds. Ory moved to California in 1919 and in 1922 recorded “Ory’s Creole Trombone” and “Society Blues” with a group called Spike’s Seven Pods of Pepper Orchestra. This was the first recording made by an African-American jazz band.

Louis Armstrong learned the cornet in a home for delinquent African-American boys and played with numerous groups in New Orleans. King Oliver recommended Armstrong as his replacement in Kid Ory’s band when he left for Chicago. When Oliver formed King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, he sent for Armstrong as a second cornetist. Louis Armstrong left that band in 1924, and went on to record with his own groups the Hot Five and Hot Seven. He became the most important of the early jazz musicians.

Another important musician to emerge from and shape the New Orleans sound was Sidney Bechet. An African-American Creole clarinettist, Bechet studied classically with Lorenzo Tio. Something of a prodigy, he played in bands around New Orleans when he was 11. At 14 he headed for Chicago, where he met Will Marion Cook, an African-American composer and band leader. Cook took Bechet to New York and then to Europe. While in London, Bechet began experimenting with a new instrument, the soprano saxophone. This became his primary instrument, making him the first important jazz saxophone player. His phrasing and vibrato helped define the New Orleans style.

THE JAZZ AGE

The jazz of the “Jazz Age” was from New Orleans. Within an astonishingly short space of time, the music was known world wide. It transcended race: some of the best early jazz was played by white bands, especially the New Orleans Rhythm Kings.

New Orleans jazz was superseded by jazz styles (usually known collectively as swing) that emphasised individual solo improvisation at the expense of the collective front-line improvisation characteristic of classic New Orleans style. The joyful sound of New Orleans jazz continued to have a major influence, however, and New Orleans jazz (called interchangeably “Dixieland”) has enjoyed periodic revivals, especially in the 1940s and 1980s.

A funeral marching band in New Orleans. Funeral bands would play hymns and spirituals on the way to the church and jazz numbers on the way back.

Thomas Betts