Abstract:
Ten questions are answered regarding the first jazz recording, whether it was really the first, and if so, how it qualifies as jazz. They touch on the nature of swing feeling, the extent of improvisation in the recordings, the primacy of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, the recordings of Wilbur Sweatman, and the comedy team of Harlan and Collins, and why the Original Creole Orchestra of Bill Johnson, featuring Freddie Keppard, did not record.
Key Words: Original Dixieland Jazz Band, Freddie Keppard, swing feeling, improvisation, ragtime, Dixieland, Wilbur Sweatman
During 2017 I was invited to help several institutions celebrate the 100th anniversary of the first jazz recording: “Livery Stable Blues” and “Dixie Jazz Band One-Step” by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band (ODJB) that was made for Victor Talking Machine Company on February 26, 2017. 1 In preparing my presentations, several questions arose, and crowd responses furthered my lines of inquiry. They are summarized below.
1: Were the ODJB’s February 26, 1917 renditions of “Dixie Jass Band One-Step” and “Livery Stable Blues” the very first jazz recordings?
“Dixie Jazz Band One-Step”,
Original Dixieland Jazz Band, 1917
“Livery Stable Blues”
Original Dixieland Jazz Band, 1917
How we answer that question depends on how we define jazz. Adhering to a strict definition, a performance of music must not only swing but also be improvised in order to qualify as jazz.2 The audiences at my presentations gave mixed responses to the question of whether the ODJB recordings that I played for them were “swinging.” Though some listeners felt that music sounded stiff, others agreed that the ODJB’s music swung in a springy elastic way that had a lilting, buoyant feeling.
Both groups of audience members agreed that the music sounded “hot.” This is important because many listeners among jazz fans and musicians tend to employ the term “swinging” merely to designate their perception that the music is hot, not necessarily that the music projects any rhythmic quality peculiar to jazz. Swing feeling is an opinion about how the music sounds, and opinions diverge. Just as beauty is said to be “in the eye of the beholder,” swing feeling may lie “in the ear of the beholder.” Therefore, listeners who perceived the music as merely being hot, though stiff, but not necessarily springy, elastic, lilting, or buoyant, would rule out the “jazz” label for the sound of the ODJB’s first recordings.
2: Was it improvised?
Contacts with band members revealed that the music at the February 26, 1917 session was entirely worked out.3 That means it was not improvised, and the absence of improvisation would disqualify the music from being called “jazz.” A few audience members suggested, however, that the music may have 2
included improvisation at the time that it was being worked out, and the musicians may have improvised when they played gigs. Therefore, we might give the ODJB a pass when we try to impose this second criterion regarding whether their first recordings qualify as “jazz.”
3: Did the ODJB actually start out calling their music by the word “jazz”?
The answer is “No.” In fact, on the record’s center seal the band’s name was printed as “Original Dixieland Jass Band,” not “Jazz Band,” and the piece on the “B” side of the disc containing “Livery Stable Blues” was titled “Dixie Jass Band One-Step,” not “Dixie Jazz Band One-Step.”
One story behind how the Original Dixieland Jass Band name got changed to Original Dixie Jazz Band is that publicity posters in Chicago for the jass band gigs were mutilated by vandals who crossed out the “j” from the word “jass,” thereby leaving the band’s name as “The Original Dixieland Ass Band.” Not wanting to be called an “ass band,” the musicians changed the s’s to z’s, thereby creating the word “jazz.”
4: What did the terms “jass” and “jazz” originally mean?
The words served as both verbs and nouns. “To jass” or “to jazz” meant to speed up or to make more vigorous. “Jass” or “jazz” was the highly spirited, very syncopated music that such bands played. The next question was, “Where did these terms originate?” The answers fill numerous research studies. 4 For instance, some trace it all the way back to ancient Arabia, where it had something to do with sex.
Most connect it with pep and exhilaration.
5: How do we classify the 1916 music of Wilburn Sweatman and the instrumental interludes in a 1916 recording by Harlan and Collins?
“My Hawaiian Sunshine”
Wilburn Sweatman, 1916-35
“Down Home Rag”
Wilburn Sweatman, 1916-35
Wilbur Sweatman was a clarinetist-composer-bandleader who had recorded in 1904, 1914, and 1916. His earliest recordings did not survive. But his 1916 recordings of “Hawaiian Sunshine” and “Down Home Rag” did survive.5 They are lively and syncopated, and they contain instrumentation much like that of the ODJB. Some listeners feel that their sound is much like jazz and that embellishments in them seem improvised. Other listeners consider the music to be more like marches or ragtime than like jazz. If we agree with the former listeners, then Sweatman made the first jazz recordings, and the ODJB did not. If we agree with the latter listeners, the ODJB was the first band to record jazz.
The comedy team of Byron Harlan and Arthur Collins recorded a piece in December of 1916, then again on January 12, 1917: “That Funny Jas Band from Dixieland.” 6 An instrumental interlude, occurring between its vocal passages, sounds much like the instrumental music of the ODJB. Professional New York session musicians played it quite precisely and with much vigor, but it might not have been improvised. Audience members at all my presentations felt that it was jazz. If we agree that it was jazz, then Harlan and Collins’ recordings disqualify the ODJB from being the very first to record jazz. If we do not consider the instrumental interludes in the Harland and Collins recordings to be jazz or the Sweatman recordings to swing, then the ODJB retains its primacy.
“That Funny Jas Band from Dixieland”
Performed by Arthur Collins, Byron Harland in 1916. 3
Recorded on Edison Blue Amberol Records.
Released in May 1917.
The song was composed by Gus Kahn (lyrics) and Henry Marshall (music);
6: Were the ODJB’s the first “Dixieland” jazz recordings?
In order to answer that question, we must ask, “What did the word “Dixieland” mean?” because whether the ODJB was actually the first “Dixieland” band depends on how you define “Dixieland.” During the second half of the twentieth century, we usually associate the term with a band comprised of a front line containing trumpet, trombone, and clarinet and a rhythm section comprised of guitar or banjo, tuba or string bass, drums, and sometimes piano. The trumpet, clarinet, and trombone execute non-imitative polyphony, their lines interweaving about each other. Often we associate the term with musicians wearing red and white striped clothing and straw hats. But this was not necessarily the way that the earliest jazz musicians used the term.
Before we can answer the question definitively, we must review a bit of American political history. In 1763 a boundary dispute arose between Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. The states hired two surveyors, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon. The line that these two men drew became The Mason-Dixon Line. Then when Missouri asked to join the Union in 1819 considerable friction existed in Congress between slave holders and abolitionists. At that time there were exactly 19 slave states and 19 free states, and to admit Missouri as a slave state would upend the balance. To resolve this dilemma, the legislator Henry Clay suggested that Missouri be admitted as a slave state and Maine be admitted as a free state. This resolution became the Missouri Compromise of 1820. With it, the Mason-Dixon Line was extended across the northern border of Missouri and through the middle of territories in the Louisiana Purchase. In this way, “Dixieland” became another name designating the American South because it encompassed all territory south of the Mason-Dixon Line.
This reveals that “Dixieland” designated a place before it designated a jazz style. In the minds of Northerners it was a mythical place of idyllic nature, as celebrated in songs by Stephen Foster, such as “Suwanee River,” “Old Black Joe,” and “Camp Town Races.” New Orleans musicians knew about this association. So when they played up North, especially in Chicago, they used it in their bands’ publicity because “Dixieland” bore a cachet for Northerners. Before the ODJB used the term in Chicago and New York, there were a number of other New Orleans groups playing in the North that promoted themselves as bands “from Dixieland,” such as The Brown Brothers Band from Dixieland. In this sense, then, the ODJB was not the “original” “Dixieland” band. An ancillary question raised is that if New Orleans musicians did not necessarily call their music “jazz” or “Dixieland” while they were playing in New Orleans, “What did they call their music?”
The answer is that musicians from New Orleans usually called their music “ragtime.” 7 In fact, many musicians from New Orleans continued to call their music “ragtime” long after they migrated northward, though Northerners tended to call it “jazz.”
7: What is the difference between ragtime and jazz?
Returning to a definition of jazz that requires both swing feeling and improvisation we can sort this out. Accounts of ragtime composers and pianists in St. Louis and Joplin, Missouri mention that they were improvising during the 1890s.8 But if we listen to recordings of their rags, a springy, lilting, buoyant quality is missing from their music.9 Ragtime can be hot and spicy, and in that respect some ragtime performances can resemble jazz in the ears of listeners who require “swing feeling” merely to be “getting hot.” But the peculiar rhythmic feeling that musicians can apply to any kind of music in order to make the music jazz is not present in ragtime. Therefore, the use of improvisation begins to qualify ragtime as jazz, but the absence of swing feeling disqualifies it. 4
A telling sidelight to this discussion is that at the beginning of the twentieth century, and throughout the teens, a number of published arrangements of ragtime were available in music stores that contained parts for all of a band’s members to play. Reconstructions of these arrangements by present-day musicians sound much like jazz, even though none of the musicians are improvising.10 This suggests that a transition from ragtime to jazz may have been relatively smooth. (One passage in the ODJB’s recording of “Dixie Jass Band One-Step” is actually a rag, “That Teasin’ Rag” by Joe Jordan.) It also indicates that the ODJB’s music had a number of precedents available in sheet music form throughout the country. In fact, among musicians this category of arrangements is termed “stocks.” They were considered to be stock arrangements widely available from commercial publishers, not originals penned by the band members.
8: Was the ODJB’s music the beginning of jazz, thereby making them the truly “Original” Dixieland Jazz Band?
One answer to this requires considering how unlikely it would be that a single band, all by themselves, could invent an entire approach to music, which we today call “jazz.” In fact, the approach and its component parts were already present before the ODJB formed. 11 On the other hand, if we were to accept the idea that the ODJB invented jazz, a corollary question would be, “Was jazz begun in 1917?” Providing an answer requires us to reference stories about a powerful New Orleans cornetist named Buddy Bolden and to wonder what his band sounded like. The only known photo of the band has been dated as most likely 1903. Stories by musicians and fans who were active at the time suggest that the band had been playing as early as the middle of the 1890s, and certainly during the first few years of the twentieth century. 12 Unfortunately, we do not know how the band sounded because no recordings of them survived. Nevertheless, oral histories and their band photo certainly suggest that something like jazz was being played long before 1917. Bolden’s band is often cited as the first jazz band. Therefore, the answer to the question of whether jazz began with the ODJB or in 1917 is “No.” The recording by the ODJB was merely a snapshot of what was happening in the progression of styles that were developing during the teens.
9: If most historians and musicologists agree that African Americans invented jazz, why was the first recording of it made by white musicians?
As discussed above, the African-American Wilbur Sweatman recorded in 1916, but some listeners today don’t perceive the music on his discs to sound like jazz. They say it sounds more like march music or ragtime. For listeners who perceive Sweatman’s music as sounding much like jazz, then the first jazz recordings were indeed made by African Americans, not white musicians. For listeners who don’t feel that Sweatman’s earliest recordings qualify as jazz, the first jazz recordings had been made by the white musicians of the ODJB.
That cruel irony derives in part from a situation with an African American group that toured the North American continent from 1914 to 1918, getting as far north as Winnipeg, Canada and as far west as Los Angeles and San Francisco. This was the Original Creole Orchestra, founded and led by bassist Bill Johnson. Their band name did not include the word Dixieland, and, though we suspect that they played jazz, their name did not include the word jass or jazz. We know that all its members were highly reputed musicians who could play jazz. 13 Unfortunately, however, most of their gigs were vaudeville acts that included comedy routines, songs composed by Stephen Foster such as “Old Black Joe,” they played in front of a backdrop that portrayed a humble country cabin, and they wore overalls, straw hats, and red bandannas. They played at state fairs and intermissions for boxing matches. We don’t know how much they improvised. Record executives, however, knew that the highly spirited music of bands from New Orleans definitely had a potential market for listeners who owned Victrolas. Therefore, recording firms solicited the services of bands that were known for this music. 5
The Creole Orchestra’s star trumpeter was Freddie Keppard, and he had taken control of the band’s finances. In 1916, the Victor Talking Machine Company offered a written contract for him to make a recording with the Original Creole Orchestra. Unfortunately, there emerged four problems with pursuing the offer.
(a) Keppard was reluctant because of its possibility of allowing copiers. This is reasonable when we recognize that his vaudeville routines constituted Keppard’s main livelihood, and the availability of recordings could cut into that livelihood if imitators learned his routines.
(b) The recording staff wanted the band to rehearse in the studio without pay, and this annoyed Keppard’s dignity.
(c) Keppard and his band members could not agree on whether to take a flat fee or settle for royalties.
(d) Keppard was insulted by how low a fee Victor was offering. He knew the kinds of fees earned by other recording artists at the time, such as Enrico Caruso, and the offer rendered to his band was much lower. After the Original Creole Orchestra turned them down, Victor approached the ODJB to make the first recordings.
10: How did a ragtime band from New Orleans wind up in a recording studio in New York making a best-selling record?
The story is that a booking agent from Chicago knew that there was an opportunity for New Orleans-style musicians there. He contacted Johnny Stein, a New Orleans drummer-bandleader, and Stein contacted several New Orleans musicians in 1916 to join him in Chicago for their first steady gig. Subsequently, when unable to acquire a salary increase, the musicians left Stein to form their own band and began another steady gig. Stein reformed another band on his own, and the ODJB became quite popular on its own. Among its fans were such show business luminaries as Fanny Brice, Buster Keaton, Will Rogers, and Al Jolson. The New York booking agent of Jolson had been looking for such a band, and Jolson suggested that he visit Chicago to hear the ODJB. Once the agent heard the ODJB he was sufficiently enthusiastic to scout a gig for them in NYC. They were promised a few weeks of steady work at a new restaurant called Reisenweber’s, beginning January 15, 1917. They made the trek to NYC and began playing there. After about two weeks it was not looking good for them because the diners were baffled about what to do with the music. The ODJB was about to lose the gig when the restaurant manager went onto the dance floor and told the patrons that they could improvise a dance to this music. Finally, one couple got on the floor and did just that. Then another couple followed suit. When patrons realized that they could dance to the music of the ODJB the band caught on, and soon there were lines around the block to get into hear them. Their contract was extended. That is when Victor Talking Machine Company contacted them to make the first record. 14
Notes
1: Controversy swirls around the activity of the ODJB in the studio of the Columbia Record Company on January 30, 2017 because if a record were made there it would predate the Victor session of February 26, 2017. At one time, erroneously listed in discographies and jazz histories alternately as a test pressing and as a legitimate recording for delayed issue, recent research revealed that the Columbia session was only an audition. The ODJB did not record for Columbia until May. Apparently, the staff at Columbia was so offended by the raucous sounds made in their studio in January that they decided to let the ODJB go. Brian Rust, the most esteemed discographer of pre-modern jazz, made the correction in revised editions of his discography. 6
2: Mark C. Gridley, Robert Maxham & Robert Hoff, “Three Approaches to Defining Jazz.” Musical Quarterly, 1989, 73, 4, 513-531 (expanded and reprinted in Lewis Porter, Ed., Jazz: A Century of Change, New York: Schirmer, 1997, 18-38).
3: Eddie Edwards interview by Richard B. Allen, July 1, 1959, in Hogan Jazz Archives, Tulane University, New Orleans.
4: Alan P. Merriam and Fradley H. Garner, “Jazz-The Word.” Ethnomusicology, vol. 12, no. 3 (September, 1968) (373-396); Dick Holbrook, “Our Word JAZZ,” Storyville, December 1973-January 1974 (46-58).
Research by Lewis Porter:
https://lewisporter.substack.com/p/the-word-jazz-7-of-7debunking-false
5: Mark Berresford, liner notes for Wilbur Sweatman 1916-1935 (Jazz Oracle BDW 8046).
6: Byron Harland and Arthur Collins, Edison Blue Amberol, December 1916; song was composed by Gus Kahn (lyrics) and Henry Marshall (music).
7: Personal communication with Lawrence Gushee, June 1988.
8: James Haskins, Scott Joplin: The Man Who Made Ragtime (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1978).
9 Compare the piano roll recording of “Maple Leaf Rag.” made by its composer Scott Joplin in April 1916 (Biograph Records 1006Q) with that made in May 1938 (Riverside 9003) by Jelly Roll Morton, for Alan Lomax at the Library of Congress to demonstrate the difference between ragtime and jazz. I asked each set of audience members to tell me whether the “Maple Leaf Rag” recordings evoked in them “a lilting, buoyant feeling that was a springy and elastic.
YouTube address for original piano roll recording by Scott Joplin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMAtL7n_-rc
Two versions by Jelly Roll Morton, for Alan Lomax at the Library of Congress, May 1938 (Riverside 9003)
- Undistributed recorded performance by band of Lawrence Gushee, June, 1988; personal communication with James Dapogny, June 1989.
- Richard Sudhalter, Lost Chords White Musicians and Their Contributions to Jazz, 1815-1945, New York: Oxford (9-16).
William Howland Kenny, Chicago Jazz: A Cultural History: 1904-1930. New York: Oxford, 1993 (66-67). Karl Koenig: Basin Street | Your online source for historical Jazz
- Donald Marquis, In Search of Buddy Bolden: First Man of Jazz (Baton Rouge, LA Louisiana State University Press, 1978).
- Lawrence Gushee, Pioneers of Jazz: The Story of the Creole Band (New York: Oxford, 2003).
- Rudi Blesh, liner notes, The Original Dixieland Jazz Band, LPV 547, RCA Victor, 1967. 7
Bibliography
Blesh, Rudi, liner notes to The Original Dixieland Jazz Band, LPV 547, RCA Victor, 1967.
Gridley, Mark, Robert Maxham & Robert Hoff, “Three Approaches to Defining Jazz.” Musical Quarterly, 1989, 73, 4, 513-531; expanded and reprinted in Lewis Porter, Ed., Jazz: A Century of Change, New York: Schirmer, 1997 (18-38).
Gushee, Lawrence, Pioneers of Jazz: The Story of the Creole Band. New York: Oxford, 2003.
Haskins, James, Scott Joplin: The Man Who Made Ragtime. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1978.
Holbrook, Dick, “Our Word JAZZ,” Storyville, December 1973-January 1974 (46-58).
Kenny, William Howland, Chicago Jazz: A Cultural History: 1904-1930. New York: Oxford, 1993.
Koenig, Karl, Basin Street | Your online source for historical Jazz
Marquis, Donald, In Search of Buddy Bolden: First Man of Jazz. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1978.
Merriam, Alan P. & Fradley H. Garner, “Jazz-The Word,” Ethnomusicology, vol. 12, no. 3 (September 1968): 373-396
Sudhalter, Richard, Lost Chords: White Musicians and Their Contributions to Jazz, 1915-1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.