Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2008 - (Page 58)

“superstar” ensemble of jazz — King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band — which both introduced Louis Armstrong to the world and made a series of 37 recordings in 1923 still regarded as prime examples of New Orleans-style ensemble improvisation. By then, it was the height of the Jazz Age, Chicago was America’s most dynamic urban setting, and Joe Oliver’s New Orleans ensemble was the most sought-after band in the city. The band’s leader had developed a unique style of playing, with various mutes and resonators, that “plasticized” the bright, focused sounds of solo brass instruments. A latecareer recording with The Dixie Syncopaters, “Wa Wa Wa,” lent the modern name “wah-wah” to this musical bag of tricks, which would later play a major role on the stylistic innovations of rock guitarists. Oliver also devised a method of playing twinned leads and breaks onstage with his protégé Armstrong, a technique employed many decades later by Southern rock bands, most notably The Allman Brothers Band. The band put together by Joe “King” Oliver in Chicago in the early 1920s was the first “supergroup” of early jazz — the first African-American band from New Orleans to make a huge impression on Jazz Age audiences and American record buyers. In 2006 Archeophone Records reissued 37 recordings of Oliver’s band on a two-disk set where a 22-year-old Louis Armstrong makes his first appearance on records. Looking back, the King Oliver Jazz Band releases are also where the history of jazz as an expression of African-American culture really begins. Oliver’s major career achievement, the 1923 Creole Jazz Band recordings, took place before the introduction of electrical recording technology, during an era (from the 1890s to the mid-1920s) that preceded the microphone. To make a record at that time, Oliver’s seven-piece band would stand together in front of the mouth of a megaphone, sending their collective sound down the open siphon to a diaphram, where it moved a needle which, in turn, inscribed a master. Even at the time, they were considered a faint reproduction at best of what the band actually sounded like in live performance. Collectors David Sager and Doug Benson, both traditional jazz musicians, have produced the first new transfers in a decade of ENDURING INFLUENCE IN THE those old King Oliver HISTORY OF JAZZ disks (some so rare that Besides the budding, young only one copy exists). Armstrong, Oliver’s Creole Jazz By working closely with Band included brothers Johnny a worldwide network of and Warren “Baby” Dodds collectors and carefully (both already stars in their own matching a playback right on clarinet and drums stylus to each disk, and respectively) and Lil Hardin by using the most (soon to become Mrs. Louis advanced digital Armstrong) on piano. Chicagoans crowded the technology and making no effort to change the inherent sonic dance floor every night, and musicians came from balance of the originals, they’ve given us the most accurate near and far to hear them. An entire generation of reproductions of these pre-electric recording documents ever young, white jazz musicians, including Bix released. Biederbecke and Hoagy Carmichael, came to study So what does the music sound like to contemporary ears? the band’s performances. And some musicians — like Well, there’s a ricky-ticky element to the rhythmic pulse, and trumpeter James “Bubber” Miley, who brought a hokey feel to some of the soloing — on a couple of Oliver’s “Camp Meeting Blues” to the Duke Ellington numbers, for instance, Louis Armstrong is featured not on Orchestra, where it was recast as “Creole Love Call” — cornet but on slide whistle. But even with all that, listening took away more than just music lessons. to King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band today, we can still hear The records made by the Creole Jazz Band had a more the passion, the rhythmic drive, and the tight ensemble lasting impact. During the Depression, as glossy conception, with individual strands in some passages Hollywood movies and swank big bands dominated the woven together so masterfully that even today entertainment scene, a subculture emerged of record they stand out as supernaturally modern. collectors who favored old, obscure blues and jazz. —Roger Hahn Rummaging through second-hand shops, publishing newsletters, and even reissuing recordings on their own labels, these impassioned cultural reformers created the first 58 LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES\Fall 2008 ARCHEOPHONE RECORDS REISSUES 1923 KING OLIVER BAND RECORDINGS

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2008

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2008 Contents Friends Editor’s Column Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities New Orleans Immortelle The Historic New Orleans Collection Highland-Fairfield: The Historic Heart of Shreveport The Ogden Museum of Southern Art Perils of the Mississippi River Louisiana Foodways Harvest of Life King Oliver: The Forgotten King of Jazz Louisiana Architecture Jazz Notes Louisiana State Museum Eye of the Storm Louisiana Association of Museums Soul Resin Bookstand Sound Advice Forum

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2008

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