Sunday and all that jazz

The Original Dixieland Jazz Band, who were the originals in every way, reunited in 1936 under the name "The Original Dixieland Five".  Label: "His Master's Voice".



I must put text between songs, otherwise Blgr removes the song.






The sound quality is the prob with these early recordings, that and being quite stiff and curtailed.  Still, that's what we have, so there it is.



Notes on the last number [which follows]:

This is not the original version from 1917.

Instead, an electric recording system captures the ODJB--microphones!

I suspect this "slow" version is the speed wanted by the OJDB musicians.  In other words, this MIGHT be the CORRECT speed in the sense that the musicians wanted this slower speed all along (but had been forced to "speed it up" in 1917).

Maybe the Victor company producer (Eddie King?) asked the musicians to play fast in 1917 to fit so much onto the disc.

Or maybe we are playing the the 1917 disc too fast, with 78 rpm being the wrong speed.

The Original Dixieland Jazz Band, called the Original Dixieland Five on the record label, plays "Original Dixieland One Step."  One-steps are double march time (counted as 1, 2, 3, 4 - 1, 2, 3, 4) whereas two-steps are march time counted as 1 and 2 and 3 and 4, 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. One-steps are brisk (around 130 bpm) in contrast to two steps at walking tempo (about 100 bpm).

This is the RARE version recorded on November 10, 1936.  I like this version better than the 1917 version!  Listen for the pianissimo playing midway through the performance!  Then a solo by Shields!

The performance has new effective crescendo and climax (not true for the 1917 performance).

Here the sound is far richer than what could be captured in 1917.  I prize the VARIETY in this performance, which is in sharp contrast to the monotonous repeating of the original disc.

The aging "jass" musicians are in fine form here!

Elsewhere on youtube I give the ODJB's history up to 1925.  Five years pass...

For at least part of 1930 Edwards was unable to support himself as a musician.  He instead operated a newsstand.  Walter Winchell noted in the New York Daily News, "Here is drama right in the middle of New York city.  His newsstand is near 5th st. on 7th ave--in front of Joe's place.  His name is Eddie Edwards--once the leader of the Dixieland Jazz Band...Eddie is, perhaps, the world's top trombone player, too--out of a job--and reduced to peddling newspapers--so he can exist...How about getting him in a band?"

A clipping of Winchell's column is owned by Edwards' grandson.  Handbills from 1930 through 1933 establish that Eddie Edwards and his Silver Slipper Orchestra was booked regularly.

Relationships deteriorated significantly in the 1930s when the band was reorganized.  Four members resented LaRocca for claiming two shares in revenue for one share claimed by the others; LaRocca felt entitled to the extra because he had risked some of his own money in reviving the band.

LaRocca's claims around this time to be sole composer of most ODJB numbers also infuriated the others, who maintained that the early numbers had been collaborative efforts.

No band members recorded again until the mid-1930s.  In 1935 a group called the Original Dixieland Jazz Band made two records for Vocalion, but the only original band member was Sbarbaro.

In 1936 "Nick LaRocca and the Original Dixieland Band"--the name given on discs--cut titles for RCA Victor.  Sbarbaro played drums and Shields played clarinet, but this was not a true reunion of original members, Edwards being conspicuously absent.  A dozen musicians were added, new arrangements supplied for the old numbers.  The performances share little with the band's trademark sound and sold poorly.

On September 25 and again on November 10, 1936, four original members (LaRocca, Shields, Edwards, and Sbarbaro) along with J. Russel Robinson re-recorded numbers that the ODJB had introduced nearly two decades earlier, using old arrangements for the most part.

The band--identified as The Original Dixieland Five on some labels, as Nick La Rocca and The Original Dixieland Jazz Band on others--does not repeat early sections on "Original Dixieland One-Step."  By not repeating, the band creates time or space on the record for Shields to take a solo.

His solo had been worked out in advance--he had delivered the same solo eight months earlier when the augmented band had recorded "Original Dixieland One Step."

Band members were considerably older and the music must have seemed dated to audiences at that time, but the two sessions produced remarkable records, the microphone capturing nuances that no acoustic era recording horn could.  Drums and piano were finally prominent on ODJB records.

The four surviving original members never worked together again but the name Original Dixieland Jazz Band was used for records made later.  In 1938, Shields, Edwards, and Sbarbaro made Bluebird records credited to the Original Dixieland Jazz Band.

Edwards and Sbarbaro continued to work together, from 1943 to 1946 making various records credited to the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, with other musicians including Max Kaminsky, Eddie Condon, and Wild Bill Davidson.  Commodore records of 1946 gave credit to "Eddie Edwards and His Original Dixieland Jazz Band."