King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band
Just Gone
11383-B
Richmond, IN, April 5, 1923
King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, c / Honore Dutrey, tb / Johnny Dodds, cl / Lil Hardin, p / Bill Johnson, bj / Baby Dodds, d.
Transfer using the proper 1.6 mil stylus, video, and commentary by pianist and jazz scholar Brad Kay
KING OLIVER’S CREOLE JAZZ BAND – the Nine Gennetts
BRINGING BACK live sounds in the Way-Back Machine is my racket! I got busy this week, and completed work on the nine Gennett sides from April 5th and 6th, 1923, by King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band. I had laid down the raw tracks a couple weeks ago, when I first posted three sides. Now, here are the nine, all in a group. These are my own copies, the cleanest of these rarities I’ve managed to collect up to now. They are not “Marty-Alexander-Worthy” mint specimens – they’re merely serviceable, none better than “E,” none worse than V+. But heard as a group, they’re not bad. Quite good, in fact!
NOW there’s SPACE between the instruments. And definition, too. Finally, you really can hear the rhythm section. Lil Hardin’s piano, at last, is completely audible, and she’s kicking ASS the whole time, supplying much more than “boom-chuck” accompaniment. Lil plays cross-rhythms and sometimes a flat-out, "clavé," “Spanish Tinge” backup that contrasts well with the band. She plays “tall” piano – to make up for the lack of string bass and a full drum kit. Her playing is impassioned, copasetic, neat, accurate and wholly on-point. She throws her full, tiny, four-foot-eleven frame into the fray, really leaning into the instrument, making a big sound, playing HARD with these take-no-prisoners gents. I think now would be a good time to re-assess her skills, these having been dissed and dismissed by generations of so-called “critics.”
Drummer Baby Dodds does yeoman work, despite being restricted to woodblocks and cymbal. His rhythm is spicy, incisive and definitive. Another big reveal is Bill Johnson on six-string banjo. Now heard throughout the sides, and despite the cruel handicap of not playing his bass, Johnson is still holding up his end, playing the contrasting steady beat against the often “out” rhythms coming from the piano.
[Ezra Wickenmeyer, chief recording engineer for Gennett, imposed these restrictions on the unsuspecting Oliver band. Ezra's main concern was that the cutting stylus did not get bounced off the wax by errant noises. For the same reason, he also banished Oliver and Armstrong to the rear of the studio, fully thirty feet from the recording horn].
Johnny Dodds on clarinet, solos outstandingly on many of the sides, sounding like a Pterodactyl in attack mode. Honore Dutrey has great moments, mostly in "breaks," on trombone, too.
You finally get a close look at the musical relationship between King Oliver and Louis Armstrong. Mostly, Oliver is very much in front, decisively leading the band from his cornet. On second cornet, Louis sounds farther away, always deferential to Oliver, being a “good boy” - but now, close listening shows him counterpointing, harmonizing and doubling Oliver, and also filling “holes” wherever they are. Louis steps closer to the recording horn to solo twice (his earliest on record), on “Chimes Blues” and “Froggie Moore.” I had always thought these early solos were hesitant or embryonic, but BOY was I wrong! Louis plays as smartly and definitively as he would on any later records.
SO NOW you finally can savor the “Gestalt,” the in-your-face, densely textured, collectively-improvised TOTALITY of this amazing band, for a whole twenty-five minute set. Kick back in your chair, have a leisurely smoke and a flask of “hooch.” It’s as close as you’ll ever get to sitting at a ringside table at Lincoln Gardens, with Tesch, Bix, Hoagy, Mezz and Krupa. As Hoagy exclaimed later, “WHY isn’t the WHOLE WORLD here to see this??”
THE PROGRAMME:
1. I’m Going Away to Wear You Off My Mind
2. Canal Street Blues
3. Just Gone
4. Froggie Moore
5. Mandy Lee Blues
6. Chimes Blues
7. Weather Bird Rag
8. Dipper Mouth Blues
9. Snake Rag
Enjoy!
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