The Evolution of Jazz; 15; Chicago Jazz, Part Two

This she demonstrated in her later work with King Oliver and with Louis Armstrong's Hot Five. For example here is Leo Haydn in a recording with the New Orleans musicians Louis Armstrong on cornet Johnny Dodds clarinet Kid Ory trombone Johnny Saint-Cyr banjo this is a composition of our own. It's called your next perhaps in memory of her original audition for the original Creole band and know it especially her her introduction. For her. You are. Missile will learn quickly and well. In recent years

she's been in residence in France where she is part owner of a jazz club in Paris during fall and winter and is and tours through France and other sections of Europe in the summer. Johnny's own Fred Ramsay summary at first most of Chicago turned a very deaf ear at a New Orleans jazz it just didn't exist as far as the large music schools and 10 to 15 thousand students of classical music were concerned. The study of musicians directories of the period gives no hint that any jazz whatsoever was to be found. It was there on the south side. Professional dance teachers advertise proficiency in the one step the tango one step and dream hesitation waltz Hawaiian guitars especially saccharine ones were in great demand. There was a Mozart company advertising a high class musical act in the costume of the 18th century and German bands were as plentiful as the beer that flowed wherever they played at this time 19 17 to 18 many musicians identified the brand of music

that came to Chicago as Creole hence all the confusion concerning the baffling number of groups both large and small that use this word. When the main lane travelling show broke up and its band settled in Chicago they got a job at the deluxe cafe on South Street South State Street at 30. This was the band that hotels are joining in 1917 and it seems to have been the entering wedge for New Orleans and Chicago. It was known both as a Creole band and a New Orleans jazz band as given by musicians who played with the band its personnel included Lawrence do a probably its original leader a clarinet sugar a Johnny cornet Roy Palmer trombone minor hall drums Ed Garland bass little Harden piano Louis kept my guitar. There were changes as the man left to form bands of their own a new man from New Orleans came up Wellman bro came to take out garlands place on bass and he lists a succession of clarinet players including big guy Louis Nelson Jimmy noone Sidney but Shea played for a while when sugar

Johnnie died a couple had took his place on a coronet. George Field who later played with King Oliver played trombone with them for a while as did sue Robertson Babb Frank a piccolo bands man from New Orleans stayed a short time while the brandy handled the drumming and when Tubby hall arrived in Chicago he took his brother miners place on drums. I gave all these names to indicate how Definitely it was a New Orleans family Clambake leader Lux was right across the street from the Big Dance cafe of the dreamland. It wasn't long before offshoots of the deluxe crowd were installed at the dreamland with only State Street between them there was a lot of doubling back and forth there are two ways to double. One is for an individual musician to go back and forth between two bands with the intermissions time so we can work straight through all the evening. The other way is for the whole band to play until they give an hour and then move across the street to another place. A great deal of this went on at that time down State Street a few blocks at the old Pekin theater an annual parade as a done some pioneering two with another Creole band 1018 the

Chicago Defender wrote of his music. It's gripping the dances of the Windy City and causing people to come to the peak. Dancing pavilion and hear the music it's all the rage in the east and west. Chicago is not behind it never was jazz music is right at your door. There's jazz music is attracting so much interest and attention that the peaking is being packed nightly. It's even better than the loop for dancers leave that section and go to the peak and the freshman's has served in public dancing is from 11 to 5 am. So interest in jazz was growing in Chicago but let me point out that the defender is a Negro newspaper instilled in me to much of white Chicago. The existence of jazz was an arcane matter. I judged by caper as was more of a legitimate musician. He was respected for his careful musicianship on the trumpet by all jazz men who played with him although the same man of press to make a choice usually name one Johnson. Louis Armstrong Joe Oliver kept his favorites over parrots the most significant thing about the wartime infiltration

into Chicago of the New Orleans Jazz Man was that no group ever tried to form a big band. When more musicians began to be spotted around town no one wanted to expand on the theory of the bigger the better each one scurried around until they had a small band of his own and he chose a man who played his kind of music in this way the sense in the meaning of New Orleans jazz was preserved at a crucial moment. Within a few years however it large bands were started in Chicago generally not by New Orleans musicians though they later played with them. You 1919 Chicago Jazz was electrified by the arrival of Joseph Oliver fresh from people as cabaret in New Orleans musicians disagree as to just how it came about that Joe took the train to Chicago. It hardly seems important in relation to the lasting effect that his arrival created. Two of the Creole orchestras veterans advents and Will Johnson got wind of a job at the Royal guides by now nightclub proprietors were scouting for jazz talent. Johnson got together Lottie Taylor a pianist from Chattanooga and Paul Barber and drummer from New Orleans and they needed a trumpet and

clarinet. Joe Oliver received were and while he was at law that they needed him in the band Jimmy Newman who had been vacationing in New Orleans came up on the same train with them. When he got off the train in Chicago delegations from two different vans where they had to meet him. They had heard he was on the way and each group wanted him. A diplomat Joe capitalized on the situation by joining both bands has also staved off a fight that night in the materialized one of the groups was the original group that had been playing at the deluxe original as they call themselves. The other was the new group formed to go into the Royal Garden Cafe at thirty first in St.. When he went on the stand here for his first night's job of doubling back and forth across State Street no introductions were necessary for Joe Oliver had met them all before in New Orleans with Joe Oliver a new era began. He was a strong personality and he believed in business like methods it wasn't long before he had all sorts of extra dates lined up for his men like well Johnson of the original

Creole orchestra. King Joe Oliver of the Creole Jazz Band had a good business head. This is a matter of business was a phrase which kept turning up in his letters to musicians. I mean I want you to be a band man and a band man only and do all you can for the welfare of the band in the line of playing your best at all times that's another quote from one of his letters all over it continually strove to perfect the personality of his orchestras. This wasn't just a matter of luck it called for a talent for picking just the right kind of man to play in his bands. It was a real contribution to the 1920s that Oliver kept together a six to seven piece band for six years with very few changes. This provided a rallying point for New Orleans musicians and Chicago just as the earlier Creole band at the deluxe cafe had died. It also set a pace that stimulated competition and it was also the band that influenced many of the young white Chicago musicians. In 1919 the management of dreamland dancehall Nigella good offer in recognition of the work he'd been doing with his band let him get a band of his own together they told him and he could book them and in their place and a steady job the group he played with at the Royal Gardens appealed to many took him to

the dreamland that then with only two changes little Haydn replaced Lottie Taylor on piano and Jimmy noone had found another job. So King Joe sent down to New Orleans for the clarinet as Johnny dons. When he arrived on a day in January 19 20 dimes carried a clarinet wrapped in a bundle of old newspapers he didn't have much in the way of the suit case and anyone witnessing his quiet greeting to Joe Oliver would not have considered the occasion anything out of the ordinary. But with the addition of Johnny Dodds King all of his Creole Jazz Band took shape as the Best New Orleans aggregation in Chicago. Don's in a sense typified New Orleans he was a hometown boy far from home and he felt pretty lonely. The jazz musicians who came up from New Orleans often felt that way. The northern cities were cold bleak and uninviting. There were no palm trees swaying in the warm breeze there was no barbershop like Buddy Bolden is where they can get together and swap shop talk. There was no gumbo Creole. Not all the men from New Orleans could take being so far from home clad in garments that fitted the 90s better than the post-war days. Some of these boys arrived with their

instruments but no cases. Wade Whaley's clarinet stuck out of the back pocket of a flowing coat. Well Frank who sings trombone fitted part into a suitcase part into a nondescript bundle sticking out one hand and camouflaged by newspaper. But he was luckier than the rest his short cornet fitted into a real suitcase. Jelly Roll Morton waited for a motley crew like this in his touring car once at the station I think this was in California and then spirit in a way as he puts it so no one could see them in their tight pants and box back codes and brought them to a tailor. But that was just the beginning of jelly rolls troubles with that group of hometown boys he booked his band into a fancy nightclub in New Orleans clubs where the hours were long and the pay short they had always cooked their food on the job. And that said jelly roll is what they did in this ornate nightclub they cooked up red beans and rice in a bucket. Jelly Roll Morton So that sort of thing would have to go. And they took the next train back to New Orleans. Dodds was not that homesick. He stuck to Chicago and made a go of it but like all the others who came up from the Crescent City he like to go around with the New

Orleans crowd in this way regional ties bound them together in the music for a time was kept intact. Few Chicagoans ever played in a New Orleans band at first. They kept their music as it was in Chicago liked it that way. When Johnny Dodds and his orchestra do all of his Creole Jazz band began packing them in from all over the city. They were on the stand at the dreamland every night at 9:00 sharp. After a few numbers. To warm them up the band got in the mood and began to send the music out with that unique beat and punch that was all their own. I want to clock in the morning the place rocked as the dancers shouted for more. But then the band had to pack up their instruments and go down the street to the peak and the grounds. The crowds assimilated the idea pretty quickly and it wasn't long before State Street used to be jammed with people moving on down to the began. I'm going on down State Street was Pine Top Smith's way of saying he was out to get rid of his blues. Their fame began to spread and pretty soon a letter came from San Francisco. The Oliver band went there. By this time a type of experiment of

contrast was happening was occurring things that were happening in art and literature and business was booming in the golden twenties the era of normalcy. When Joe Oliver and his crew moved into a nickel dance hall on Market Street in San Francisco I'm still reading Mr. Ramsey summary with a few emendations there was a corresponding let down of affairs down on State Street in Chicago the year the band left 1921 was a pretty slow one for jazz in that city. Things picked up in August when the sunset cafe opened with a band from New Orleans. Charles Cook booked a large van into the Lincoln Gardens. Tommy Ladd came to Chicago in 1900 to a fine New Orleans blues player. Great talent was playing a company months behind singers like love the Austin and San Francisco Joe Oliver was getting ready to wind up a sensationally successful tour of the West Coast and bring his back his band back to the Royal Gardens decorated and named the Lincoln Gardens. The manager says Mr. Ramsay probably reflected a trend when he changed the name because America was beginning to

discover that it did have traditions of its own. The banjo Oliver brought into Lincoln Gardens on a Saturday night in 1922 was altered a bit baby dogs joined the band as drummer and Bertha guns replaced little hardened. Louis Armstrong a young man at that time and played on the same riverboat as Baby Dodds Joe Oliver began thinking about Louis whom he had heard playing in New Orleans. He thought that it too cornet team would go over pretty well at the Lincoln Gardens and that Louis was coming on in excellent style. You may also have figured that it was a question of getting Louis for his band before anyone else St. Louis and another band would have been a distinct menace and King Joel. Undoubtedly took cognizance of that fact. The wire from Oliver went off on a hot day in July 1922 and was waiting for Louis when he got home after watching all afternoon with the tuxedo band. Well we know this was his big moment so he threw his material together in an old fashioned carpet day. During his first week in Chicago Louis didn't play with the band King Oliver wanted him to rehearse

with him and get on in their style he also wanted a chance to work up some unusual stunts with Armstrong and the rehearsals gave them time for that too. The best strategy and I worked out was that of the two cornet break when two horns instead of one played an identical break phrase breaks with single instruments were common enough in jazz as we know it all through this chorus but the two horn break every musician in Chicago wondering how it could be done without any written notation. Apparently the secret that all over had devised was to run through several of these before hand with Louis. Then when they were on the job and the moment for the next break came Oliver leaned over and sang the phrase and Louie's ear. It took keen ears and a perfect sense of timing to pull the stunt. All right. I am I

am. I am. I am. I am. I am. I am. That was king Oliver's band at the Lincoln second

cornet. Johnny Dodds clarinet and little Haydn had come back on piano because of the fact that Bertha had to return to her home on the West Coast. So although I was not playing with the group. And the reason incidentally that Joe Oliver had thought of hiring little Haydn was because he thought of Louis was now living with him and would remarked in a letter months before when he saw a photograph of the little town this little I like or show as the way I would like to go over the dreamland and meet Little Louie was delighted. Not long after that evening Louis and little were married and she came back to play with the Creole Jazz Band. When we came into Louie's life a particularly good time Fred Ramsey continues it was she who encouraged him when the work seemed hide and he was feeling a little out of his depth in Chicago she

practiced long hours with him and helped him to learn difficult cornet passages from classical music. They played in churches together and all this careful work made Lily a good reader as well as improvising and that was a talent he simply had to possess if he was to go ahead. So she supplemented the initial reading lessons he had received from Davy Jones the mellophone player. In the course of the riverboat excursions it was little to who was first to sense the difference in style between the way in Oliver and to encourage Louis to develop his own way of playing. There was one passage for example that was constantly getting Louis down that was a long cornet solo but we played that all over used in his own famous composition to promote blues it was full of tricky new work with lots of subtle inflections the hand of the Korn I just had to be held over the bell of the horn at the same time that he had to blow furiously. Well sense Lou is distress of not being able to play this sort of solo. She had noticed that he often whistled as he walked along the street. His phrasing was both simple and direct and she called his attention to the easy way he worked out variations on any melody when he whistled. Then he told her that was the

way Bonk Johnson played in the blanket plenty of originality when it came to variations in melodic line. She was quick to grasp that Louis was more at home with wrong style than that without a ball over and she told him to work along these lines which he later did though he himself believes that his main influence was always as he puts it King Joe. At last Joe Oliver had recruited the kind of musicians he wanted when he put them all together on the stand at the Lincoln Gardens it was a formidable and talented combination which few could challenge. This was the lineup as they came on the job night after night King Joe Big forceful a hard man with the muted tones and with plenty of thrust on the open cornet away with the curious trick of playing just a little behind the beat second cornet Johnny Dodds clarinet and trombone. Johnson on bass that are one of the original Creole band little Haydn and baby dogs. Every night at the big cabaret down on State Street was jammed with people who had come to dance to this band the garden didn't look like much from the street. It was the kind of place that saved up and surprises for the inside. By 10 o'clock every evening the

band would begin to relax and off would come coats and ties when Oliver took one of his solos the chest expansion caused his dress shirt to pop open revealing a rolling plain of red underwear that meant they were really going whenever Joe said. Now you'll see my red underwear. They alternated you all over his tunes with those of Jelly Roll Morton Richard M. Jones and pop melodies of the day like of all the wrongs you've done in a year of this sort of life rolled by the nearly nineteen twenty three he was offered his first recording contract at this time such an opera was unique and represented a major triumph for the music played by New Orleans negroes. Undeniably some amount of prejudice had operated to keep negro jazz bands out of the studios while white orchestras imitating their music had cashed in on the West Coast. The spikes brothers a pair of Negro songwriters had formed a company to get around the situation and as you've heard they had recorded the music of Henri's band in one thousand twenty one. The Paramount company was first to recording all of its Creole Jazz Band. He had waited until Oliver had recorded for Janet before releasing their

sides before describing the recording methods at the time. Here is another. The King Oliver Jazz Band recordings was written by Frank Melrose and little Haydn and it's called Sweet Love and man. The kind of jazz that was flourishing in Chicago in the early 20s. OK OK.

OK OK. I hope some of you remember Ed while listening to that record the recording

made at about the same time in New York by the Red Nichols group. The period that Nichols thought was the high point in the development of jazz. Next week more about Chicago. The influence on white musicians and beginning with a description of the kind of recording technique that was utilized in these early jazz recordings which will explain why they occasionally sound not quite high fidelity. You know I've been listening to the evolution of jazz. I recorded series prepared and produced by Nat Hentoff under the auspices of Northeastern University and presented by the Law Institute cooperative broadcasting Council. The evolution of jazz was recorded in the Boston studios of WGBH Af-Am. This is the national educational radio network.