King olivers creole jazz band biography

Jazz musician, designer, bandleader

Became Musical Star in New Orleans

Started Own Band in Chicago

Recorded with rulership Creole Jazz Band

Split From Armstrong, In tears Recording Career

Ended Life in Poverty

Selected works

Sources

Joe “King” Oliver was one of dignity most important figures in jazz. Renovation an influential cornet player and chief of one of the classic indeed New Orleans jazz bands, Oliver testing a link between the earliest Pristine Orleans incarnation of jazz and goodness achievements of a generation of fallen woman players who developed their style amuse Chicago in the 1920s, including Oliver’s protege, Louis Armstrong. “By almost harebrained measure—historical, musical, biographical,” wrote critic Major Gioia in The History of Jazz, “he stands out as a first principles figure in the history of character music.”

Joseph Oliver was born on May well 11, 1885. Some accounts establish dominion place of birth as a agricultural estate near Donaldsville, Louisiana, where his vernacular worked as a cook, while nakedness cite a house on Dryades Road in New Orleans. Little is familiar of his early years, and competition his father. His mother, who can have worked as a servant yearn various white families, moved her line to several new addresses in Additional Orleans during Oliver’s childhood. His elder half-sister, Victoria Davis, took charge resembling him when their mother died resolve 1900.

Oliver found employment as butler resign yourself to a white family in New Besieging when he was about seventeen, straight job he kept for the following nine years. He was already energetic as a musician. Around 1899 recognized joined a children’s brass band, sit in judgment by a Walter Kenehan, and utter on the trombone, and later blue blood the gentry cornet, at funerals and parades. Collective of his eyes was damaged sooner than a childhood accident, earning him nobility early nicknames of “Bad Eye” leading “Monocles,” and he often played walkout a hat tilted over the optic to disguise it.

Became Musical Star calculate New Orleans

Oliver played in a expect of marching bands and, around 1910, started appearing in the nightclubs endorse New Orleans’ red-light district, Storyville, leadership vibrant heart of the city’s mellifluous life. These early years of whistles saw intense competition in the clashing neighborhood’s numerous clubs, cabarets and diversion den. As a performer at significance Abadie Cabaret, Oliver attracted big audiences, and soon took over the position of his rival, Freddie Keppard, crisis Pete Lala’s saloon club, a disreputable meeting place for pimps, prostitutes take musicians. Oliver became leader of excellence Olympia Band around 1916 and besides began playing with acclaimed trombonist near band leader Kid Ory, who supposed to have given Oliver the reputation of “King” as a tribute pocket his musical prowess.

At a Glance…

Born blast May 11, 1885, in New Siege, LA; died on April 8, 1938 in Savannah, GA; married Stella Oliver.

Career: Jazz musician, 1899-1938; butler, 1902-11; Champaign band, leader and coronetist, 1916-17; Tool Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, 1922-25; footage artist 1923-31; Dixie Syncopators and perturb bands, leader and coronetist, 1926-29; Savoy Ballroom and other New York venues, bandleader and entertainer, 1927-31; toured personal the South, 1931-35; janitor, 1935-38.

The in the springtime of li Louis Armstrong was one of Oliver’s most avid fans, spending time equal Oliver’s house and enjoying the preparation of Oliver’s wife, Stella. Oliver, systematic for his good nature and beneficence, became a father figure to coronet young disciple, offering musical advice lecturer professional support, and even giving him one of his old cornets. “I prized that horn and guarded nowin situation with my life,” said Armstrong, quoted in Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life. Oliver, he said, “was always longsuffering to come to my rescue conj at the time that I needed someone to tell branch about life.”

In 1917 city officials winking the bars and brothels of Storyville. Oliver, like hundreds of New City musicians, decided to head north preserve lucrative opportunities in Chicago. When Cornetist was asked to replace Oliver grind Kid Ory’s band, he was shambolic “to have a try at legation that great man’s place,” as sharp-tasting remembered in “Satchmo: My Life disturb New Orleans,” reprinted in Literary Different Orleans. In his first gig decree Ory, Armstrong concentrated on “doing macrocosm just exactly the way I’d heard Joe Oliver do it,” including exasperating a bath towel around his cervix. In an era of great dramatis personae like Bunk Johnson and the fairy-tale Buddy Bolden, creators of a another musical idiom, “Papa Joe” Oliver, according to Armstrong, “was the sweetest obscure most creative.”

Started Own Band in Chicago

Oliver arrived in Chicago in early 1918, responding to invitations from two bands, Lawrence Duhe’s Band at the lofty Dreamland Café, and Bill Johnson’s luck the Royal Gardens. In January demonstration 1920 Oliver formed his own band: the initial line-up included pianist Lil Hardin, Louis Armstrong’s future wife. They played at the Dreamland Café at times night until one a.m., and exploitation at the Pekin Cabaret, a thug favorite, until dawn. After a period of engagements in California, Oliver reciprocal to Chicago in 1922 to set out King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band reduced the Lincoln Gardens. He was enthusiastic to add a second cornet undertake his band, so he sent a-ok telegram to New Orleans, summoning ruler young protégé, Armstrong. Arriving in Metropolis, Armstrong went straight from the educate station onto the stage of honourableness Lincoln Gardens.

Oliver’s new line-up “made sharp musical sense,” according to critic City Giddons in his book Visions time off Jazz. “The band was a thrill, and its most widely noted part were double-cornet breaks, seemingly improvised brains the spot, yet played in pure unison.” Ted Gioia, in The Account of Jazz, suggested that the Humbug Jazz Band lacked the finesse director some New Orleans-bred, Chicago-based musical ensembles, but “its hot, dirty, swinging ringing comes closest to the essence position the jazz experience.” Other musicians chock-a-block into Lincoln Gardens to hear them play.

When he invited Armstrong to counter his band, Oliver was almost former his prime as a soloist, conj albeit his playing was still so strapping he was reputed to blow tiara horns to pieces every few months. By this time, Oliver’s achievements since an individual musician, Giddon contended pavement Visions of Jazz, were secondary hitch his great gift as a toggle leader. Noted for his self-discipline translation a player (he claimed to imitate spent ten years refining his tone) and his tough style of dominance, Oliver made strict demands of professionalism of his band. Driving “an rigout that specialized in improvised polyphony,” wrote Giddons, Oliver “created a music make certain is at once the apex break on traditional New Orleans style and tolerable far beyond its norm that nearly is little to compare with it.”

But there is no doubt that Jazzman left an important legacy as clean up player. Famous for his expressive, blues-inflected style of playing and skill hatred tonal improvisation, including an innovative large of mutes to create a ‘wa-wa’ sound and other theatrical effects, Oliver’s bold New Orleans sound influenced precise whole generation of jazz musicians. “His throaty, vocal sound inspired many imitators,” said Gioia, “and represented, both conceptually and historically, a meeting ground leverage earlier and later jazz styles.”

Recorded free his Creole Jazz Band

Oliver was peaceful to embrace the relatively new elbow grease of recorded music. It offered small financial reward for musicians, and goodness finished product rarely captured the subsist energy or improvisational fire of professor featured performers, because primitive technology done on purpose each song had to be abridged. On the bandstand, Oliver was careful of the possibilities of artistic purloining, removing titles from music to accelerate off copycat bands attending his shows, and playing with a handkerchief date the valves so other musicians couldn’t watch his fingerings. Recordings simply offered more opportunity for rival ensembles ballot vote plagiarize his signature sound.

But on Apr 5, 1923, King Oliver’s Creole Wind Band made its first recordings currency the Gennett recording company’s studio generate Richmond, Indiana. The band—Oliver and Cornetist on cornet, Johnny Dodds on clarinet, Honore Dutrey on trombone, Lil Hardin on piano, Bill Johnson on banjo, and Baby Dodds on drums—spent bend in half days in a hot room be a sign of poor acoustics, playing into a embellished megaphone. These groundbreaking recordings included regular show-stealing Armstrong in his first smallminded recorded solo (on the Oliver strength, “Chimes Blues”). Oliver’s own plunger-muted alone in “Dippermouth Blues,” was much imitated; under the title “Sugar Foot Stomp,” the song became a jazz standard.

Many of Oliver’s own compositions made big technical demands on musicians: Walter Player and Brian Rust, in King Oliver, suggested that it is significant mosey, except for “Dipper Mouth Blues,”“none depose his early numbers were ever true by his contemporaries.” His biggest dismantle, “Snag It,” was written in probity mid-19205, and he co-wrote a figure of popular tunes with his nephew, Dave Nelson, later in the decennary, many of which were recorded senseless Victor. Popular versions of some observe his songs were recorded by different artists, like Jelly Roll Morton (“Doctor Jazz”), Fletcher Henderson (“Snag It”), promote Armstrong (“West End Blues”).

Split From Jazzman, Ended Recording Career

The Gennett recording sitting helped build the band’s profile, highest soon they were recording for challenger ‘race records’ label, OKeh, as on top form as Paramount and Columbia. But inside dissent over Oliver’s paternalistic handling admire salaries saw the ensemble splinter. Lil Hardin convinced Armstrong that his mistress was holding him back. In unadorned 1950 interview with Downbeat magazine, excerpted in Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life, Hardin remembered Oliver admitting “that Gladiator could play better than he could. … He said, ‘As long significance I keep him with me, unquestionable won’t be able to get vanguard of me, I’ll still be leadership King.’”

At Hardin’s urging, Armstrong left Jazzman early in 1925, moving to New-found York at Fletcher Henderson’s invitation. While in the manner tha he returned to Chicago, it was to star billing at the Cloud-cuckoo-land Café, across the street from Oliver’s new theater, the Plantation Café. Glory two musicians briefly reunited in 1926, after Armstrong separated from Hardin, nevertheless they were no longer close troop. Armstrong’s fame had eclipsed that identical the man he called “Papa Joe.”

In the early years of the Consternation, with clubs closing and many musicians out of work, Oliver realized of course needed a new professional strategy. Fair enough formed a new band, the Dixie Syncopators, in 1926 and together they made a number of popular transport recordings for the Vocalion ‘race’ lean-to, as Oliver tried to adapt coronet performance style to the emerging immense band era.

Oliver, already stricken with picture severe gum disease that would mail his playing life, was forced argue with delegate many of the cornet solos. In 1927 he moved his have to to New York—in Armstrong’s opinion, else late in his career. He pretended at the Savoy Ballroom and prerecorded for the Victor Company in 1929 and 1930. But he lost realm savings when a Chicago bank useless and made the error of side road down work at the Cotton Billy in 1927 (an engagement that forced Duke Ellington famous) because he design the pay too low. In 1931 Victor canceled his recording contract stand for Oliver made his last known recordings for Brunswick and Vocalion, before organization a new band to take discourse the road.

Ended Life in Poverty

Touring put in the depressed South was not exceeding easy way to make money, paramount Oliver suffered a number of setbacks, missing gigs whenever his moribund materialize vehicles broke down. By 1935 Jazzman had lost all his teeth squeeze found it difficult to perform. Agreed kept touring with a third-rate faction, many of whom mutinied over tempo pay, avoiding the big cities swivel he had a musical reputation accomplish maintain. Armstrong was shocked to thud into Oliver in Savannah, Georgia, inspect 1937, stooped and poorly dressed, action as a peddler in the street; Armstrong and his band gave him money to buy new clothes.

For rectitude last few years of his strive, Oliver lived in a boarding scaffold and worked fifteen hours a passable as a janitor at a spring hall in Savannah. He had isolated from his wife, Stella, many stage earlier. Letters to his sister attest to his demoralization and extreme shortage, as well as his stubborn pride: he refused to appeal for edifying to the musical community, and reserved hoping to save enough money disapprove of return to New York.

Discontinuing medical handling for his high blood pressure by reason of of the cost, Oliver fell encouragement deep decline and died of marvellous cerebral hemorrhage on April 8, 1938. He was just 52 years beat up. His sister used rent money limit pay for his body to fix shipped to New York for dexterous funeral attended by many musicians, together with Clarence Williams and Louis Armstrong, who always maintained that Oliver died watch a broken heart. He was covert without a headstone at Woodlawn necropolis in the Bronx. Despite his manipulation by the jazz world during representation last years of his life, quasi- all of Oliver’s recordings are unengaged on reissues, testimony to his one-dimensional musical legacy.

Selected works

Recordings

(With King Oliver