The Penguin Jazz Guide (8 page)

Ragtime was already being recorded, but because ragtime was essentially a piano music and because the piano was the instrument that presented most difficulties for early recording, it was increasingly being created on small ensembles using struck idiophones like the xylophone and accordion instead, or sometimes saxophones. Ragtime could, of course, also be replicated on punched paper rolls for player pianos, but the difficulty in assessing early jazz performance here is that it was not uncommon for additional notes to be added (by creating more holes) in such a way as to suggest a virtuosity the player did not possess.

Musicians were largely justified in fearing that records would only poorly represent their art. Dame Nellie Melba famously distrusted recording on the grounds that playbacks of her peerless voice robbed it of its subtleties. Until 1925, only acoustic recording was possible, which meant that sound vibrations were physically transferred from a large gathering horn to a disc or cylinder by means of a cutting stylus, leaving a so-called ‘hill and dale’ trace which could be transferred to a hard master copy and thence to a finite number of commercial copies from which sound could be reproduced by a reverse process. The results were highly inconsistent and often unsatisfactory. They inevitably involved compromise in performance, so that any contemporary recording of early jazz can only be regarded as a partial or incomplete representation of the music as played.

However, both the Victor and Columbia companies began to explore the potential of popular music recording in the year before the US entered the First World War. Columbia famously missed the boat, recording the Original Dixieland Jazz Band at the end of January 1917 but failing to release ‘Darktown Strutters Ball’ and ‘Indiana’ until they were overtaken by Victor, who recorded the group on 26 February and released the legendary recording number ‘18255’, which sold more than a million copies at 75 cents each.

It was apparently assumed that this success was a singleton, a chance novelty, and with America also embroiled in a European conflict for the next two years and business redirected towards a war economy – and a certain sentimental patriotism in music – jazz recording was sporadic until 1920, when the Okeh label began to do what Victor and Columbia had considered insufficiently commercial and target a predominantly black audience with what were described (with undeserved notoriety) as ‘race records’. Perhaps astonishingly, but with a certain market logic, the segregation of musical charts in the US continued for decades and to a degree still persists today. OKeh was essentially a blues label, basing its early success on Mamie Smith’s singing of Perry Bradford material, and for a time jazz musicians recorded mainly as accompanists to blues artists.

However, other labels began to show an interest in jazz. At Paramount, music recordings
were created largely as a means of illustrating the company’s own phonograph equipment. More specialized, but also much cruder, was the Gennett company, which took recording into the American hinterland (Indiana, in this instance, an accident of geography which explains why Bix Beiderbecke, and not one of the New Orleans players, stands tall in the early history of jazz. It wasn’t until the middle of the ’20s that jazz artists began to be recorded in the music’s city of birth.

The irony remains that in order to gain an authentic sense of what early jazz performance sounded like, one also has to listen to the music of the great revival that followed the Second World War. For all their shortcomings, though, the earliest recordings are precious survivals …

EUBIE BLAKE

Born James Hubert Blake, 7 February 1883, Baltimore, Maryland; died 12 February 1983, New York City

Piano

Memories Of You

Shout! Factory 30146

Blake (p rolls); Steve Williams (p); Gertrude Baum (p rolls); Noble Sissle (v). 1915–1973.

Eubie Blake said (1978):
‘I used to sneak out of bed at night, get me some long pants and go play for this woman who ran a house. Ragtime was considered lowdown music, not for the music itself, but reason of the places it was played, bawdy houses and joints. I learned how to play and I’ve played the same way ever since.’

If he’d known he was going to live so long, Blake famously said, he’d have taken better care of himself. As it was, he was a part of American music from the very birth of jazz till his death just days after his 100th birthday.

For all his longevity, little remains in print, but his importance is undiminished by the thinness of the documentation. The material here might more strictly be considered
Ur
-jazz, since it comes, some of it, from even before the Original Dixieland Jazz Band made the ‘first’ jazz records, and does so by virtue of being taken from mechanical piano rolls made by Blake. In a stylistic regress backwards into the obscure origins of the music, these are intriguing artefacts. The relationship between jazz and ragtime isn’t securely understood by most listeners and much like the relationship between jazz and blues it is often asserted rather than explained. It’s hardly the place to do that here, but listening to Blake down the years makes one realize what an elusive and transient concept ‘swing’ is. It has often been said that modern ragtime revivals take the music too fast, elevating dexterity over beauty of phrasing and stateliness. Blake was something of a show-off but even his survivals suggest that our understanding of this great music has been too much affected by
The Sting
and the ragtime craze that followed.
Memories Of You
comes up to date with a 1973 performance of ‘I’m Just Wild About Harry’ but reaches back to ‘The Charleston Rag’ and this is probably the only Blake disc anyone needs: wonderfully fleet performances and good guest spots. Untarnishable music.

ORIGINAL DIXIELAND JAZZ BAND

Formed 1916

Group

The Original Dixieland Jazz Band 1917–1921

Timeless CBC 1-009

Nick LaRocca (c); Emil Christian, Eddie Edwards (tb); Larry Shields, Artie Seaberg (cl); Bennie Krueger, Don Parker (as); J. Russel Robinson, Billy Jones, Henry Ragas, Henry Vanicelli (p); Tony Sbarbaro (d). 17 February–November 1920.

George Melly said (1998):
‘It’s strange music. It seems very far away in time, but also absolutely present, as if it had been badly recorded yesterday. It’s a disappointment to many jazz fans who hear it for the first time, clunky and muffled, but it contains everything they love about jazz. Rhythm (even if it’s a bit sticky), wild melody, weird sounds.’

A group of young white players from New Orleans. Under Nick LaRocca’s leadership they began working in Chicago in 1916, then went to New York and created a sensation at Resenweber’s restaurant. Arrived in London in 1919 and played in Hammersmith for nine months. LaRocca’s illness blocked further progress but there was a brief comeback a decade later in 1936. LaRocca then retired to become a builder.

The ODJB, for all their anomalous position, remain the place to start in dealing with the history of jazz on record. Whatever effects time has had on this music, its historical importance is undeniable: the first jazz band to make records
may
have been less exciting than, say, the group that King Oliver was leading in the same year, but since no such records by Oliver or any comparable bandleader were made until much later, the ODJB assume a primal role. Harsh, full of tension, rattling with excitement, the best records by the band have weathered the years surprisingly well. Although the novelty effects of ‘Barnyard Blues’ may seem excessively quaint today, the ensemble patterns which the group created – traceable to any number of ragtime or march strains – have remained amazingly stable in determining the identity of ‘traditional’ jazz groups ever since. The blazing runs executed by Shields, the crashing, urgent rhythms of Sbarbaro and LaRocca’s thin but commanding lead cornet cut through the ancient recordings. Although the band were at the mercy of their material, which subsequently declined into sentimental pap as their early excitement subsided, a high proportion of their legacy is of more than historical interest.

Fifty-four of their recordings between 1917 and 1923 have survived, but there is no comprehensive edition currently available. Their 1917 sessions for Aeolian Vocalion, very rare records, are now available on a Retrieval early-jazz compilation. An ASV CD includes 18 tracks and offers a good cross-section of their work, although a couple of undistinguished later pieces might have been dropped in favour of the absent and excellent ‘Mournin’ Blues’ or ‘Skeleton Jangle’. One can hear the band grow in stature as performers as time goes on, but the excitement of their earliest dates remains crucial to the spread of the music.

Retrieval have gathered in the 17 sides which the group made for Columbia in London. These are tough records to find in good shape, and even the usually immaculate Retrieval have had to use one or two less than pristine originals, but sound is mostly fine. One problem with these tracks is that Shields is overpoweringly forward in the acoustic mix, leaving LaRocca almost in the shadows. The earlier performances, though, are up to the ODJB’s best, including ‘Satanic Blues’ (recorded but never issued on Victor) and the first ‘Tiger Rag’ to be recorded in Britain. The 1920 sessions have poorer material, but there’s a bonus in the four sides the group made for OKeh in 1922–3, with a different personnel.

The Timeless CD sweeps the board, since it covers all of their Victor sessions up to the end of 1921, in lively and enjoyable sound, which gives the best idea of the sensation this remarkable group must have caused.

JAMES P. JOHNSON

Born 1 February 1894, New Brunswick, New Jersey; died 17 November 1955, New York City

Piano

Carolina Shout

Biograph BCD 105

Johnson (p rolls). May 1917–June 1925.

Composer Conlon Nancarrow said (1983):
‘Johnson is arguably the first completely American composer to emerge in the United States. And you notice I don’t say “jazz” composer. His work was beyond category and beyond price.’

A versatile and subtle jazz player and classical composer, Johnson is the inventor of stride piano. He came to New York as a youngster and was exposed to a huge range of music at rent parties and shebeens in the ghetto ‘Jungles’. His interest shifted to formal composition during the ’30s and ’40s, but his influence on jazz piano is inestimable. Too little is known now about Johnson’s orchestral music (of which much has been lost) to make any settled judgement about his significance as a ‘straight’ composer. Ironically, though, his enormous importance as a synthesizer of many strands of black music – ragtime, blues, popular and sacred song – with his own stride style has been rather eclipsed by the tendency to see him first and only as Fats Waller’s teacher. Johnson was in almost every respect a better musician than Waller, and perhaps the main reason for his relative invisibility has been the dearth of reliable recorded material. This early Biograph brings together some staccato and lumpy piano rolls, hard listening but of unmistakable significance for the history and development of jazz in the period. ‘Charleston’ is a rarity, and ‘Carolina Shout’ had a profound impact on Duke Ellington. So much comes from these sketchy survivals that it is difficult to assess them aesthetically. All the elements of what would become hot jazz are there in embryo, but twinned with Johnson’s other concerns. He valued them so equally that the distinction between his vernacular and classical work seems forced and ideological. He still awaits full and comprehensive analytical study. Anyone who takes up that challenge has to start with these early rolls.

EUREKA BRASS BAND

Formed 1920

Group

New Orleans Funeral And Parade

American Music AMCD-70

Percy Humphrey, Willie Pajeaud, Edie Richardson (t); Albert Warner, Sunny Henry (tb); George Lewis (cl); Ruben Roddy (as); Emmanuel Paul (ts); Joseph ‘Red’ Clark (sou); Arthur Ogle, Robert ‘Son’ Lewis (d). August 1951.

Trumpeter Wynton Marsalis said (1990):
‘Wherever you say it first emerged, in cat-houses, bars or out on the street, what came to be called jazz was music that had a social function. It bound African-American people together and confirmed their sense of community.’

This sits here out of strict chronological sequence as a representative of a music that in its heyday went unrecorded. The group was formed in 1920 by clarinettist Willie Parker, so its provenance is not anachronistic and neither is the music. This is the most authentic available example of old New Orleans music in its original environment, even if this recording
of traditional funeral and parade music was recorded in a French Quarter alleyway rather than actually on the job. The regulars of the Brass Band, as it was then, were augmented by Lewis for the day, although he plays flat, and the brass are similarly wayward in intonation. The recording is musty, the tempos ragged, the extra takes of four of the numbers an anti-climax, while some of the dirges threaten to dissolve altogether. But seldom has the old music sounded so affecting, the workmanlike attitude of the players lending it something like nobility. The remastering has been done very well, considering the source material, and the superb documentation – by Alden Ashforth, the teenage enthusiast who recorded the session – adds to the undeniable mystique.

Samuel Charters managed to record the Eureka again in 1956, for Moe Asch’s Folkways label, and some 80 minutes of rehearsal music has also survived, now rather extravagantly spread across two CDs, worth chasing up by anyone interested in this period. Given that some of this is chatter, tune-ups and breakdowns, it’s scarcely an essential way into this kind of music. But Charters’s vivid notes bring the occasion back to life, and since it presents the Eureka players at their most typical (this time without Lewis), it may even be more valuable as a document.