Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2007 - (Page 36)

The Dodds Brothers What’s in a name? Consider a tale of two brothers: one nicknamed “Baby,” the other “Toilet.” Latch key orphans, you might ask? Bed wetters? Hardly … we’re talking about two of the greatest jazz musicians ever to come out of the Crescent City — drummer Warren “Baby” Dodds and his older brother, Johnny Dodds, the king of early jazz clarinet. Younger brother called “Baby,” okay … that makes sense, but where did the “Toilet” come from? When Johnny was working in Kid Ory’s band (around 1915) the name was bestowed upon him by the other members of the group as a tribute to his “gut bucket” blues playing, presumably because it was so “low-down” and “dirty” that you had to squat down to appreciate it. A fulsome image, perhaps, but this should come as no surprise to anyone living in this city. Provocative squats are a New Orleans art form — a standard “second line” move. Besides, every king needs a “throne”…. Yet somehow this nickname gets to the blues essence of what Johnny Dodds’ clarinet style was all about — evocatively self-expressive, with a refulgent roundness of tone across all registers of the instrument. What he lacked in technique he made up for with feeling. What set him apart was that he didn’t sound like any of the Creole clarinetists who came out of New Orleans in the early Jazz Age. He had a voice of his own, which is what every jazz musician aspires to. Baby, for his part, is often recognized as the first great jazz drummer through his associations with Kid Ory, King Oliver, Fate Marable, Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, and, ultimately, during a long stretch with his brother’s bands in Chicago in the latter 1920s and 1930s. Individually and as siblings, the Dodds brothers made unique and abiding contributions to the evolution of traditional New Orleans jazz. Johnny was born in 1892 and Baby a little over six years later. As children, they got their first taste of New Orleans “hot” music chasing the “second lines” in Central City. Johnny started on a tin flute obtained from a bottle man, while Baby built a drum for himself from a lard can, fashioning sticks by whittling down rungs from one of his mother’s chairs. (First person to sit in that chair after Baby got through with it was definitely in for a surprise!) When the family moved to Waveland, Mississippi, probably around 1909, Baby brought the lard can and used the baseboards of an out house in the back of their cottage as his bass drum, achieving what he called a “big sound.” So big, in fact, that when he asked his father for a drum set for Christmas (after Johnny had received a real clarinet to replace the tin flute), he was informed that he was “making enough noise already.” So much for spoiling the Baby! Soon after he went to work in a bag factory back in New Orleans to get the money to buy himself a drum set and paid for lessons from Dave Perkins, Louis Cottrell, and Walter Brundy. Looks like “big brother” Johnny caught all the breaks … only downside for him was, wherever he went, the Baby was sure to follow. And follow he DID! Thus the two brothers were paired in Kid Ory’s band, with Marable on the Streckfus steamers, in King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, with Louis Armstrong’s Hot Seven, in Jelly Roll Morton’s Red Hot Peppers, and in Johnny’s Black Bottom Stompers — a list that accounts for many of the classic jazz recordings made in the 1920s. To the very end, Johnny never could shake his younger brother. After his brother’s death in 1940, Baby went with Bunk Johnson and rode the New Orleans Revival to even greater international celebrity with recordings of his drum solos and radio programs such as Rudi Blesh’s “This Is Jazz.” Both Gene Krupa and Dave Tough — two of the most highly regarded jazz drummers of the Swing Era — learned the basics of tuning and playing drums “hands on” from Baby Dodds, who once said: “Some people call [the way I Johnny Dodds and Warren “Baby” Dodds 36 LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES\Winter 2007-08

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2007

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2007 Contents Friends Editor’s Column Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Katrina: Days of Terror, Months of Anguish Paintings by Rolland Golden The Historic New Orleans Collection The Great Ouachita River Flood of 1932 Jazz Notes Louisiana Architecture Louisiana: Where Land Meets Water Louisiana State Museum Through A Lens Sharply: An Interview with Michael Lewis MR-GO: A “miracle” mired in controversy Louisiana Foodways Louisiana Association of Museums New Orleans: An Autopsy Bookstand Sound Advice Forum

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2007

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