Biography
Freddie Keppard earned recognition among New Orleans cornet “kings,” following Buddy Bolden and preceding King Oliver. As one of the few 1910-era innovators granted a later opportunity to record, he left behind audible evidence of his command. Active by roughly 1906, he directed the Olympia Orchestra while taking on freelance engagements across New Orleans. In 1914 his Original Creole Band carried jazz to Los Angeles. After relocating to Chicago in the early 1920s, he performed with Doc Cook’s Dreamland Orchestra—on which he appeared for several sessions—alongside Erskine Tate, Ollie Powers, and Charles Elgar. Offered the chance in 1916 to become the first jazz musician captured on record, he declined, fearing rivals would appropriate his concepts. Between 1923 and 1927 he finally documented his playing, the strongest examples issued under his own Jazz Cardinals, most notably “Stock Yard Strut.” Those sides display staccato phrasing shaped by brass-band conventions and a spirited tone. By the mid-1920s alcoholism had set in, sending him into decline just as his prime should have arrived. Tuberculosis ended his life in 1933 at age 43. Every recording he made appears on one compact disc released by the European King Jazz label.
Singles