Jun 29 2008
The Original Dixieland Jazz Band: Livery Stable Blues
The Original Dixieland Jazz Band made the first recordings of New Orleans jazz in 1917. The band was formed in Chicago by former members of some of Papa Jack Lain’s popular racially integrated bands in New Orleans. By 1917 they were working in New York and were recorded by Victor. The ODJB booked themselves as the “originators of jazz,” an understandable controversial claim and one that the band members themselves, with the exception of trumpeter Nick LaRocca, who clung to the title later in life, recognized to be merely publicity.
The band went through several names, starting in Chicago in 1916 as Steins Dixie Jass Band under the leadership of drummer Johnny Stein. They later changed the spelling to jazz, possible due to the sexual connotations of the term jass in turn of the century New Orleans slang. In that sense, perhaps they were the originators of jazz, having given it it’s name. Jimmy Durante became the band’s pianist for a while in the early 1920s and later became their bandleader, calling the band Jimmy Durante’s Jazz Band.
Membership in the band changed often. This 1917 78 rpm Victor recording is accompanied by a photo of the band, then made up of drummer Tony Sbarbaro, trombonist Eddie Edwards, cornetist Nick LaRocca, clarinetist Larry Shields and pianist Henry Ragas.
