Well, its here, 2017, the centennary of many events, but musicologists will remember 1917 as the year the first commercial Jazz record was released.
The Livery Stable Blues by The Original Dixieland Jass Band was an immediate successes, and ODJB went on to make a lot of records. Of course the name of the band was misleading; it was not original. They were white musicians who had played in integrated bands in New Orleans. They learned there chops from Afro-American musicians. The title of the first Jazz band would be more fitting for the bands of Buddy Bolden or Jelly Roll Morton, but like the Blues revival of the 1960s, ODJB brought Jazz into the mainstream, and thereby created a market for the work of Afro-American musicians. So, something very good came out of it.
Livery Stable Blues is “Jass” in it rudimentary form, and when listening to it, one has to remember this was a time before electrical recording, when music was played into an accoustic horn and cut to a cylander or disc. Nonetheless, the music had a startling effect on most anyone who had not been down in the Storyville, the red light district of “Noo Orlins.” The dynamics of immediate improvs on the theme, and fills over held notes would eventually be absorbed Western popular music. New Orleans had a tradition of marching bands, and after the Civil War, the musicians began to fool around and show off in the street. They began to “Rag” the melodies in the 1890s, which is a genre ripe for improv. They also began to use flat 3, 5, and 7s, which became known as “Blue notes.” The synthesis turned up as entertainment in the brothels and saloons of Storyville which, ironically, were closed down in 1917, forcing musicians, and the girls, to move to places like Chicago and St Louis.
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