The Original Dixieland Jass Band, later Original Dixieland Jazz Band (ODJB), was a Dixieland jazz band that made many of the earliest jazz recordings in 1917. Their "Livery Stable Blues" became the first jazz record ever issued. The group composed and recorded many jazz standards, the most famous being "Tiger Rag". In late 1917, the spelling of the band's name was changed to Original Dixieland Jazz Band.
The band’s original members were Nick LaRocca (cornet), Eddie Edwards (trombone), Larry Shields (clarinet), Henry Ragas (piano), and Tony Sbarbaro (drums). Several members had previously performed in bands led by the New Orleans musician Papa Jack Laine. By late 1917, the group had adopted the spelling “Jazz” in its name.
ODJB billed itself as "the Creators of Jazz". It was the first band to record jazz commercially and to have hit recordings in the genre. Band leader and cornetist Nick LaRocca argued that ODJB deserved recognition as the first band to record jazz commercially and the first band to establish jazz as a musical idiom or genre.
The original quintet disbanded in 1926. Ten years later, Nick LaRocca recruited most of the quintet to form a new swing band featuring the ODJB members. The full quintet reunited in 1936 to great acclaim, and finally disbanded in 1938.
Origins
In early 1916, a promoter from Chicago approached clarinetist Alcide Nunez and drummer Johnny Stein about bringing a New Orleans-style band to Chicago, where the similar Brown's Band From Dixieland, led by trombonist Tom Brown, was enjoying success. They then assembled trombonist Eddie Edwards, pianist Henry Ragas, and cornetist Frank Christian. Shortly before they were to leave, Christian backed out, and Nick LaRocca was hired as a last-minute replacement.
On March 3, 1916 the musicians began their job at Schiller's Cafe in Chicago under the name Stein's Dixie Jass Band. The band was a hit and received offers of higher pay elsewhere. Since Stein as leader was the only musician under contract by name, the rest of the band broke off, sent to New Orleans for drummer Tony Sbarbaro, and on June 5, started playing under the name, The Dixie Jass Band. LaRocca and Nunez had personality conflicts, and on October 30 Tom Brown's Band and ODJB agreed to swap clarinetists, bringing Larry Shields into the Original Dixieland Jass Band. The band attracted the attention of theatrical agent Max Hart, who booked the band in New York City. At the start of 1917 the band began an engagement playing for dancing at Reisenweber's Cafe, on Columbus Circle, in Manhattan.
LaRocca and Sbarbaro were both children of Sicilian immigrants, part of the substantial Sicilian community that had settled in New Orleans between the 1880s and early 1900s. Historian Claudio Lo Cascio, drawing on US Immigration Service records, has documented how Sicilian musicians in that community brought with them a tradition of marching band performance, the Sicilian banda, that merged with the African-American brass band culture already flourishing in New Orleans, contributing to the instrumentation and call-and-response structures that would define early jazz.
First recordings
While a couple of other New Orleans bands had passed through New York City slightly earlier, they were part of vaudeville acts. ODJB, on the other hand, played for dancing and hence, were the first "jass" band to get a following of fans in New York and then record at a time when the American recording industry was essentially centered in the northeastern United States, primarily in New York City and Camden, New Jersey.
Shortly after arriving in New York, a letter dated January 29, 1917, offered the band an audition for the Columbia Graphophone Company. The session took place on Wednesday, January 31, 1917. Nothing from this test session was issued.Charters, Samuel. 2008. A Trumpet Around the Corner: The Story of New Orleans Jazz. Univ. Press of Mississippi. p. 141.
The band then recorded two sides for the Victor Talking Machine Company, "Livery Stable Blues" and "Dixieland Jass Band One-Step", on February 26, 1917 at Victor's New York studios.John Robert Brown, A Concise History of Jazz. Mel Bay Publications, 2004, p. 25. These titles were released as Victor 18255 in May 1917, the first issued jazz record. The band's recordings, first marketed as a novelty, were a surprise hit, and gave many Americans their first taste of jazz. Musician Joe Jordan sued, since the "One Step" incorporated portions of his 1909 ragtime composition "That Teasin' Rag". The record labels subsequently were changed to "Introducing 'That Teasin' Rag' by Joe Jordan". A court case dispute over the authorship of "Livery Stable Blues" resulted in the judge declaring the tune in the "public domain".
In the wake of the group's success of the Victor record, the ODJB returned to Columbia in May, recording two selections of popular tunes of the day chosen for them by the label (possibly hoping to avoid the copyright problems which arose after Victor recorded two of the band's supposedly original compositions) "Darktown Strutters' Ball" and "(Back Home Again in) Indiana" as catalogue A-2297.
Numerous jazz bands were formed in the wake of the success of ODJB that copied and replicated its style and sound. Also bands were brought from Chicago and California (such as the Frisco Jass Band) in an attempts to join the jazz craze. Established bands of different types and bandleaders such as Wilbur Sweatman began billing their groups as "jass" or "jazz" bands. Earl Fuller, bandleader at a competing New York venue, was ordered by management to form a "jass" band.
W. C. Handy recorded one of the earliest cover versions of an ODJB tune when he released a recording of "Livery Stable Blues" by Handy's Orchestra of Memphis for Columbia in 1917.
In 1918, the song "When You Hear That Dixieland Jazz Band Play" by Shelton Brooks, "the King of Ragtime Writers", was published by Will Rossiter in Chicago. It was a tribute to the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, who were featured on the cover.Graczyk, Tim, with Frank Hoffmann. Popular American Recording Pioneers: 1895-1925. London and New York: Routledge, 2008, p. 257
Original New Orleans Jazz Band When the New Orleans Jazz style swept New York by storm in 1917 with the arrival of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, Jimmy Durante was part of the audience at Reisenweber's Cafe on Columbus Circle when ODJB played that venue. Durante was very impressed with the band and invited them to play at a club called the Alamo in Harlem where Jimmy played piano.
Durante had his friend, Johnny Stein (the previous drummer and leader of the group), assemble a group of like-minded New Orleans musicians to accompany his act at the Alamo. Stein did so, with a band consisting of fellow veterans of the Laine bands in New Orleans, other than pianist Durante. In late 1918 they recorded two sides for Okeh under the name of the New Orleans Jazz Band. They recorded the same two numbers a couple of months later for Gennett under the name of Original New Orleans Jazz Band, and in 1920 the same group recorded again for Gennett as Jimmy Durante's Jazz Band. They later billed themselves as "Durante's Jazz and Novelty Band".
Later history of the band
After their initial recording for the Victor Company, the ODJB recorded for Columbia Records (after the first Victor session, not before as has sometimes been reported) and Aeolian-Vocalion in 1917, then returned to Victor the following year, while enjoying continued popularity in New York. Trombonist Edwards was drafted for World War I in 1918 and replaced by Emile Christian, and pianist Henry Ragas died of influenza in the 1918 flu pandemic the following year and he was replaced by pianist and composer J. Russel Robinson.
Robinson's compositions for the band recorded and released in 1920, include the classic "Margie" and "Palesteena (Lena from Palesteena)", were among the most popular and best-selling hits of 1920. "Aggravatin' Papa" was composed with lyricist Roy Turk and Addie Britt and was recorded by Alberta Hunter in 1923 with Fletcher Henderson's Dance Orchestra and also by Bessie Smith, Sophie Tucker, Florence Mills, Lucille Hegamin, and Pearl Bailey. Robinson also collaborated with Roy Turk on the compositions "Sweet Man O' Mine" and "A-Wearin' Away the Blues", and he wrote "Mama Whip! Mama Spank! (If Her Daddy Don't Come Home)" for blues and jazz singer Mamie Smith and her Jazz Band in 1921, which were released on the Okeh label. Robinson was a member of the band until 1923; he rejoined the band when it reformed in 1936.
"Margie", composed by J. Russel Robinson with Con Conrad, with lyrics added by Benny Davis, has been covered over a hundred times. "Margie" has been recorded by Louis Armstrong, who also covered the band's "Tiger Rag", Ray Charles, Al Jolson, Duke Ellington and His Orchestra in 1935, the Billy Kyle Swing Club Band, Claude Hopkins, Red Nichols, Django Reinhardt, George Paxton, the Dutch Swing College Band, Fats Domino, Sidney Bechet, Don Redman, Cab Calloway, Jim Reeves, Gene Krupa, and Benny Goodman.
"Margie" was a no. 9 hit for ODJB in 1921 with J. Russel Robinson on piano. Eddie Cantor had the biggest hit version of the ODJB classic, spending five weeks at no. 1 in 1921. The song also was featured in the movie The Eddie Cantor Story and was the theme of the television series of the same name in 1961–1962. Cantor also recorded ODJB's "Palesteena (Lena from Palesteena)". Gene Rodemich and His Orchestra reached no. 7 with their version in 1920. Ted Lewis and His Band reached no. 4 in 1921. Frank Crumit had a no. 7 hit in 1921. Claude Hopkins and His Orchestra reached no. 5 in 1934 with Orlando Peterson on vocals. Don Redman and His Orchestra got to no. 15 in 1939 with a cover of the ODJB song. Dave Brubeck, Bix Beiderbecke, Bing Crosby, Jo Stafford, Erroll Garner, Oscar Peterson, Charlie Shavers, Jimmy Smith, Joe Venuti, Ray Barretto, and Shelly Manne also have recorded the song. Jimmie Lunceford recorded the song in 1938 with a Sy Oliver arrangement that featured Trummy Young.
London tour
Other New Orleans musicians, including Nunez, Tom Brown, and Frank Christian, followed ODJB's example and went to New York to play jazz as well, giving the band competition. LaRocca decided to take the band to London, where they would once again enjoy being the only authentic New Orleans jazz band in the metropolis, and again present themselves as the Originators of Jazz because they were the first band to record the new genre of music dubbed jass or jazz. The band's April 7, 1919 appearance in the revue Joy Bells at the London Hippodrome was the first official live jazz performance by any band in the United Kingdom and was followed by a command performance for King George V at Buckingham Palace. The concert did not start auspiciously, with the assembled aristocracy, which included French Marshal Philippe Pétain, peering through opera glasses at the band "as though there were bugs on us", according to LaRocca. The audience loosened up, however, after the king laughed and loudly applauded their rendition of "The Tiger Rag". The British tour ended with the band being chased to the Southampton docks by Lord Harrington, who was infuriated that his daughter was being romanced by the lead singer of the band. In London, they made twenty more recordings for the British branch of Columbia. While in London, they recorded the second, more commercially successful, version of their hit song "Soudan" (also known as "Oriental Jass").