King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band

[Lazaro Vega]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118532323897176964.html

July 25, 2007

MUSIC

King Oliver in the Groove(s)

By NAT HENTOFF

July 25, 2007; Page D12

When I was in my teens, reading about the storied sites of early jazz, I

envied the Chicagoans of the 1920s who were hip enough to spend nights at

the Lincoln Gardens café where King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band was in

residence, recently joined by Oliver's young New Orleans protégé, Louis

Armstrong. But the few recordings I could find sounded as if time had worn

the music down and dim, including the clicks and scratches of those used

early discs.

Now, however, in a remarkable feat of sound restoration, "King Oliver/Off

the Record: The Complete 1923 Jazz Band Re-Recordings" (archeophone.com,

also at Amazon.com) makes it very clear to me why among the regulars in the

audience back then were the young white jazz apprentices who -- according to

Lil Hardin (the pianist in the band) -- thronged to hear King Oliver's

Creole Jazz Band whenever they played in Chicago:

"They'd line up 10 deep in front of the stand -- Muggsy Spanier, Dave Tough,

George Wettling -- listening intently. Then they'd talk to Joe Oliver and

Louis." (Also among them were Eddie Condon and 14-year-old Benny Goodman.)

Drummer George Wettling described the excitement in the club in "Hear Me

Talkin' to Ya, Dover," a book published in 1955 that I co-edited with Nat

Shapiro: "Joe would stand there, fingering his horn with his right hand and

working his mute with his left, and how they would rock the place! Unless

you were lucky enough [to be there], you can't imagine what swing they got."

Now we can. David Sager (a recorded sound technician at the Library of

Congress) and Doug Benson (a teacher and recording engineer at Montgomery

College in Rockville, Md.) created their Off the Record label last year to

bring King Oliver's Creole Band back to life. Working on rare original

recordings supplied by collectors, Mr. Benson, writes his partner, "began to

capture onto the digital domain clean, smooth transfers of the discs, using

a wide array of styli." The actual music was deep in the original grooves --

though until now poorly reissued and reproduced. The 1923 sounds had to be

excavated.

While there were distinctive soloists in the band -- clarinetist Johnny

Dodds, trombonist Honore Dutrey and, of course, the leader and the newcomer

from New Orleans who would eventually swing the world -- this was

essentially a dance band.

In his exceptionally instructive notes, Mr. Sager explains: "That the Oliver

band's sound was replete with marvelous invention, and a superior 'hot'

sound, was the added premium. The principle, however, was rhythm."

Joe Oliver never had to announce the next number. As trombonist Preston

Jackson recalled, "He would play two or three bars, stomp twice, and

everybody would start playing, sharing with the dancers the good time they

were having."

"After they would knock everybody out with about forty minutes of 'High

Society,'" Wettling said, "Joe would look down at me, wink, and then say,

'Hotter than a forty-five.'"

Years later, I would hear from musicians who had been at the Lincoln Gardens

about the always startling, simultaneous "hot breaks" Armstrong and Oliver

played. (A "break" is when the rhythm section stops and one or more horns

electrify the audience for a couple of measures.)

Among the 37 numbers in the two-disc set, these legendary "breaks" can be

heard on "Snake Rag," "Weatherbird Rags," "The Southern Stomps," and "I

Ain't Gonna Tell Nobody."

Energized by joining the players and dancers at Lincoln Gardens, I

remembered a night long ago at Preservation Hall in New Orleans where, in

another "hot" dance band, trombonist Jim Robinson lifted me into joy. What

Oliver and Armstrong brought from New Orleans to Chicago, and then to the

rest of the planet, exemplified how Robinson also felt about his New Orleans

birthright: "I enjoy playing for people that are happy. If everyone is in a

frisky spirit, the spirit gets into me and I can make my trombone sing. If

my music makes people happy, I will try to do more. It gives me a warm heart

and that gets into my music." Oliver and Armstrong felt the same way.

Since the members of King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band were driven by the

desire to keep the dancers and themselves happy, hearing them as they were

at Lincoln Gardens provides a keener understanding that this music began in

the intersecting rhythms of the musicians and the dancers' pleasure.

And in all the different forms jazz has taken since, when it ain't got

somewhere that makes-you-want-to-move swing, it may impress some critics

with its cutting-edge adventurousness, but it's not likely to make anyone

shout -- as King Oliver's banjoist, Bill Johnson, did one night at Lincoln

Gardens -- "Oh play that thing!"

In his deeply researched article on King Oliver in the Summer 2007 issue of

the invaluable American Legacy: The Magazine of African-American Life and

Culture, Peter Gerler notes that after Lincoln Gardens was destroyed in a

fire on Christmas Eve, 1924, Joe Oliver brought a new band, the Dixieland

Syncopaters, into the Plantation Café, which like Lincoln Gardens "was a

'black-and-tan' club, where crowds of blacks and whites mingled, danced, and

enjoyed the music of top black bands." A Variety review of the new King

Oliver band exclaimed: "If you haven't heard Oliver and his boys, you

haven't heard real jazz. . . . You dance calmly for a while, trying to fight

it, and then you succumb completely."

Now that Messrs. Sager and Benson have brought us inside the Lincoln

Gardens, their coming attractions on their Off the Record label include 1922

recordings by Kid Ory, the New Orleans king of the "tailgate trombone"; long

unavailable sessions by Clarence Williams's Blue Five (with Louis Armstrong

and Sidney Bechet); and the classic Bix Beiderbecke sides on the Gennett

label. There are more to come.

Messrs. Benson and Sager have been friends since junior high school, where

both played in the trombone section of the school band. Mr. Benson also

plays bass and piano, and is a composer and arranger. They have now parlayed

their lifelong enthusiasm for this music into a permanent sound library of

historic jazz performances freshly retrieved from inside the original

grooves.

With regard to what's ahead on their label, Mr. Sager says eagerly: "It will

be interesting to see what technology enables us to do in the coming years."

I yearn to listen to Bix Beiderbecke directly, so I can hear what Louis

Armstrong heard: "You take a man with a pure tone like Bix's and no matter

how loud the other fellows may be blowing, that pure tone will cut through

it all."

Mr. Hentoff writes about jazz for the Journal.

URL for this article:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118532323897176964.html

[kh1958]

It's great news that this team will restore more early jazz recordings.

[AllenLowe]

it's a very nice CD, very good sound - I would only comment on Hentoff saying: "I yearn to listen to Bix Beiderbecke directly, so I can hear what Louis Armstrong heard" by suggesting that there's plenty of extremely well-recorded Bix that shows clearly what Atrmstrong was saying - good sound, good transfers, crystal clear - time for Nat to take his thumbs out of his ears -

[Stereojack]

time for Nat to take his thumbs out of his ears -

He'd have to take his head out of his ass first.....

[Christiern]

The zound iz very imprezzive--one hearz thingz that zimply weren't there before.

[J.A.W.]

The zound iz very imprezzive--one hearz thingz that zimply weren't there before.

[AllenLowe]

zank you -

[Christiern]

Zank Harold

[Harold_Z]

Zank Harold

You're Velcome.

[Lazaro Vega]

Currently sold out...re-pressing....

[Christiern]

Inability to keep up with demand for King Oliver recordings is a noteworthy surprise.

[Lazaro Vega]

A crowning achievement

King Oliver -- with Louis Armstrong -- made history with 1923 record

August 26, 2007

BY JOHN LITWEILER

The history of jazz changed forever 85 years ago. That's when Louis Armstrong, a few days after his 21st birthday, arrived in Chicago on an Illinois Central train from New Orleans to join King Oliver's renowned band.

Did the addition of Armstrong make Oliver's the first great jazz band? It certainly was the first great jazz band to make a record. Even now it is one of the bare handful of great jazz ensembles, with a distinctive ensemble conception and all players at the height of their creative powers. In fact, four of them, all from New Orleans -- Oliver and his protege Armstrong, Johnny and Baby Dodds -- proved to be among the most original jazz artists ever.

We know it was a great band because of their 37 sides from 1923. Those recordings were made in the era before electric recordings, often under terrible conditions. Down through the years, some of the power of the Creole Band survived on scratchy old 78 rpm discs that were the source of earlier reissues. We had to adjust our ways of hearing, our powers of concentration, to listen to those CDs and LPs.

What we couldn't hear was just how brilliantly the band played. We can hear that brilliance now on a wonderful two-CD album "King Oliver Off The Record: The Complete 1923 Jazz Band Recordings," issued by the Off The Record label that reveals expressive qualities and many musical elements that were previously hidden.

CHICAGO JAZZ FESTIVAL

When: Aug. 30-Sept. 2

Where: Grant Park

Hours: 11 a.m.-9:30 p.m.

Tickets: Free

Call: (312) 744-3315; www.chicagojazzfestival.us

The time was during the midst of the great migration to Chicago, where thousands of African Americans from the South were moving each year, mostly to the narrow South Side Black Metropolis. Jazz, an invention of African Americans, was the era's new music -- more than a baby but probably only an adolescent by then. Nightly, crowds of up to 700 packed the Lincoln Gardens Cafe, 31st Street and Cottage Grove Avenue, to enjoy King Oliver's band.

Its style was a final refinement of the New Orleans idiom, which was surely the earliest kind of jazz. The two cornets played the melody, clarinet and trombone played countermelodies and the rhythm section (piano, banjo, drummer Baby Dodds) beat out a steady, four-beat foundation. Even though the primitive recording equipment wouldn't let them play very high or low notes, "King Oliver Off The Record" lets us hear much of their personal sounds: Oliver's cleverly muted lead, Armstrong's harmonies with a richer sound, Johnny Dodds' emotive clarinet, Honore Dutrey's smooth trombone.

This is passionate music. Their fast pieces are not just stomps, they swing mightily -- and swing was brand-new in 1923 -- and their blues are not just slow jams. You can hear that passion from the very beginning of these two discs, "Just Gone," in the band's fiery attack and especially in the way Oliver and Armstrong lead them all in the triumphant middle strain. That passion is joyous in tracks such as "Froggie Moore," the Armstrong feature "Tears" and the two versions of Oliver's "Dippermouth Blues" feature. In the second version, especially, the band rocks and there is electricity in the choruses, led by Armstrong, that frame Oliver's famous choruses.

There's passion in the terrific momentum of pieces like "Snake Rag" and "Chattanooga Stomp." The fire in those pieces results from not only the band's headlong drive, but also from the closely structured themes that Oliver composed.

Among the 15 blues are two of the most beautiful ever performed. If the slower version of "Working Man Blues" expresses the depths of despair in its down-turning themes and Johnny Dodds' final countermelody, "Riverside Blues" leads to hope, even nobility, especially in Armstrong's climbing chorus at the end. And the first version of "Mabel's Dream," with three themes, an Oliver-Armstrong duet chorus and a poignant Johnny Dodds countermelody at the end, yields grandeur.

These strong personalities shared an ensemble vision, each player contributed ideas and each piece is full of detail. Solo choruses break out of the ensemble in a few pieces, including two of Armstrong's first cornet solos. And Oliver and Armstrong were famed for their two-cornet breaks. It's exciting music, some of the hottest of hot jazz. The sounds of the horns in "King Oliver Off The Record" show us much of this music's depth of feeling.

So the Creole Band's music is more than passionate: If any jazz is ever profound, it is theirs. Its life-enriching qualities are among the first evidence that jazz was more than just another kind of pop music. Inevitably, their closely shared vision dissipated and the band broke up in 1924. The Dodds brothers formed their own band, Armstrong left to play with big bands and Oliver formed his own big band.

By then the original New Orleans jazz idiom was almost an anachronism. Yet the Creole band looked to the future in their swing; in their songs that became hits for Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman and others; in the many trumpeters influenced by Oliver; in the gang of white Chicago musicians they inspired; and especially in Armstrong, who became the first great jazz soloist. And now, at last, we have "King Oliver Off The Record" to show us how it all began and just how wonderful his Creole Band was.

"King Oliver Off The Record: The Complete 1923 Jazz Band Recordings" is sold by Archeophone.com.

John Litweiler is a Chicago jazz critic and author.