Original Dixieland Jazz Band

Original Dixieland Jazz Band earned its place in history as the first jazz ensemble to commit performances to disc, accomplishing that milestone in 1917. Although Buddy Bolden had already been playing the music twenty-two years earlier and this White quintet was not necessarily the finest of its era, the group did much to bring jazz into mainstream awareness between 1917 and 1923, especially during its initial seasons. The musicians absorbed the style from New Orleans contemporaries such as King Oliver yet secured their breakthrough opportunity ahead of others. In 1916 the lineup of drummer Johnny Stein, cornetist Nick LaRocca, trombonist Eddie Edwards, pianist Henry Ragas, and clarinetist Alcide "Yellow" Nunez worked together in Chicago. After Tony Sbarbaro replaced Stein and Larry Shields took Nunez’s chair, the band secured an engagement at Reisenweber’s restaurant in New York early the following year. Its energetic performances, confined to collective ensembles punctuated only by brief solo breaks, provoked widespread excitement. Columbia captured the quintet on “Darktown Strutters Ball” and “Indiana” but declined to issue the sides; Victor instead recorded “Livery Stable Blues,” featuring the horns mimicking farmyard sounds, and “Dixie Jass Band One-Step,” releasing the results promptly. The former title became a major success that effectively inaugurated the jazz era. Over the ensuing seasons ODJB introduced enduring pieces that later became standards, among them “Tiger Rag,” “At the Jazz Band Ball,” “Fidgety Feet,” “Sensation,” “Clarinet Marmalade,” “Margie,” “Jazz Me Blues,” and “Royal Garden Blues.” During 1919–1920 the band traveled to London, now featuring J. Russel Robinson in place of Ragas, who had succumbed to the 1919 influenza epidemic, and Emile Christian substituting for Edwards; once more the musicians stirred considerable attention while presenting jazz to European audiences. Upon returning to the United States, however, ODJB found itself viewed as somewhat dated following the ascendancy of Paul Whiteman and the arrival in 1922 of the superior New Orleans Rhythm Kings. By 1923, when numerous pioneering Black jazz figures finally entered recording studios, the group was regarded as a historical entity; internal conflicts soon led to its dissolution. In 1936 LaRocca, Shields, Edwards, Robinson, and Sbarbaro—the last of whom was by then the only member still pursuing music full-time—reconvened for a brief series of final recordings before LaRocca withdrew permanently. Although the cornetist’s assertions that ODJB had invented jazz were overstated and carried racial overtones, the ensemble contributed substantially to the music’s early development, its approach being widely emulated by groups that recorded between 1918 and 1921, while also furnishing repertoire for subsequent Dixieland bands and shaping the work of Bix Beiderbecke and Red Nichols.