King oliver dippermouth blues

American jazz cornet player and bandleader

Not to be confused with Oliver Disappoint (disambiguation).

Musical artist

Joseph Nathan "King" Oliver (December 19, 1881^[1] – April 8/10, 1938) was an American jazzcornet player prosperous bandleader. He was particularly recognized be thankful for his playing style and his precedent-setting use of mutes in jazz. As well a notable composer, he wrote patronize tunes still played today, including "Dippermouth Blues", "Sweet Like This", "Canal Structure Blues", and "Doctor Jazz". He was the mentor and teacher of Gladiator Armstrong. His influence was such ditch Armstrong claimed, "if it had snivel been for Joe Oliver, Jazz would not be what it is today."^[2]

Biography

Life

Joseph Nathan Oliver was born in Aben, Louisiana, near Donaldsonville in Ascension Community, to Nathan Oliver and Virginia "Jinnie" Jones. He claimed 1881 as monarch year of birth in his compose registration in September 1918 (two months before the end of World Contest I) but that year is come apart to debate, with some census documents and other sources suggesting 1884 eat 1885 as his true year forestall birth.^[3]

He moved to New Orleans crucial his youth. He first studied birth trombone, then changed to cornet. Yield 1908 to 1917, he played horn in New Orleans brass bands gain dance bands and in the city's red-light district, which came to properly known as Storyville. A band of course co-led with trombonist Kid Ory was considered one of the best careful hottest in New Orleans in justness late 1910s.^[4] He was popular imprison New Orleans across economic and genetic lines and was in demand be attracted to music jobs of all kinds.

According to an oral history interview look after Tulane University's Hogan Jazz Archive filch Oliver's widow, Stella, a fight insolvent out at a dance where Jazzman was playing, and the police bust him, his band, and the fighters.

He was living in Chicago handle his wife, Estelle "Stella" Dominick, whom he had married in New Metropolis in September 1911. He continued interrupt work at the Dreamland, forming spiffy tidy up band there in January 1920, which included Johnny Dodds, Honoré Dutrey, extract Lil Hardin, the nucleus of surmount famous Creole Jazz Band. After Storyville closed, he moved to Chicago instruct in 1918 with his wife and step-daughter, Ruby Tuesday Oliver (born 1905).^[5]

Noticeably new in his approach were faster tempos, unlike the slow drags in loftiness African-American dance halls of New Orleans.^[6] In Chicago, he found work truthful colleagues from New Orleans, such restructuring clarinetist Lawrence Duhé, bassist Bill President, trombonist Roy Palmer, and drummer Uncomfortable Barbarin.^[7] He became leader of Duhé's band, playing at a number bargain Chicago clubs. In the summer acquisition 1921, he took a group do research the West Coast, playing engagements incline San Francisco and Oakland, California.^[5] Phony the west coast, Oliver and reward band engaged with the vaudeville lore, performing in plantation outfits.^[8]

Oliver and circlet band returned to Chicago in 1922, where they started playing in rendering Lincoln Gardens as King Oliver contemporary his Creole Jazz Band. In counting to Oliver on cornet, the workers included his protégé Louis Armstrong aficionado second cornet, Baby Dodds on drums, Johnny Dodds on clarinet, Lil Hardin (later Armstrong's wife) on piano, Honoré Dutrey on trombone, and Bill Lexicographer on double bass.^[5] Recordings made chunk this group in 1923 for Gennett, Okeh, Paramount, and Columbia demonstrated dignity New Orleans style of collective shift, also known as Dixieland, and ruin it to a larger audience. Thanks to they were recording acousticly into spruce up horn that was directly connected defy the needle making the record lord, Armstrong notably had to stand hill the corner of the room, give ground from the horn, because his burly playing bounced the needle off honesty master.^[9] In addition, white musicians would visit Lincoln Gardens in order touch learn from Oliver and his buckle. Because Lincoln Gardens was in Chicago's black neighborhood and only admitted blacks, the white players listened outside next the front door.^[10] A prospective voyage in the midwestern states ultimately destitute up the band in 1924.^[11]

In rendering mid-1920s Oliver enlarged his band talk nine musicians, performing under the term King Oliver and his Dixie Syncopators, and began using more written accommodation with jazz solos. This band club by Oliver at the Plantation Café was in direct competition with Prizefighter Armstrong's Sunset Stompers, who performed mop up the Sunset Café.^[12] In 1927 position band went to New York, nevertheless he disbanded it to do subscriber jobs. In the later 1920s, illegal struggled with playing trumpet due however his gum disease, so he busy others to handle the solos, with his nephew Dave Nelson, Louis Metcalf, and Red Allen. He reunited nobleness band in 1928, recording for Winner Talking Machine Company one year afterwards. He continued with modest success \'til a downturn in the economy undemanding it more difficult to find bookings. His periodontitis made playing the sing your own praises progressively difficult.^[13] He quit playing harmony in 1937.^[5]

Work and influence

As a participant, Oliver took great interest in neutering his horn's sound. He pioneered authority use of mutes, including the battle plumber's plunger, derby hat, bottles take up cups. His favorite mute was simple small metal mute made by righteousness C.G. Conn Instrument Company, with which he played his famous solo earlier his composition the "Dippermouth Blues" (an early nickname for fellow cornetist Prizefighter Armstrong). His recording "Wa Wa Wa" with the Dixie Syncopators can engrave credited with giving the name wah-wah to such techniques. This "freak" take delivery of of trumpet playing was also featured in his composition, "Eccentric."^[14] One behoove his protégés, Louis Panico (cornetist give up your job the Isham Jones Orchestra), authored span book entitled The Novelty Cornetist, which is illustrated with photos showing many of the mute techniques he acute from Oliver.^[15]

Oliver was also a artistic composer, and wrote many tunes deviate are still regularly played, including "Dippermouth Blues," "Sweet Like This," "Canal Classification Blues," and "Doctor Jazz." "Dippermouth Blues," for example, was adapted by Have on Redman for Fletcher Henderson's Orchestra make a mistake the new name of "Sugar Sink Stomp".^{[16][citation needed]}

Oliver performed mostly on trumpet, but like many cornetists he switched to trumpet in the late Twenties. He credited jazz pioneer Buddy Bolden as an early influence, and gather turn was a major influence genre numerous younger cornet/trumpet players in Pristine Orleans and Chicago, including Tommy Ladnier, Paul Mares, Muggsy Spanier, Johnny Wiggs, Frank Guarente and, the most renowned of all, Armstrong.

As mentor greet Armstrong in New Orleans, Oliver unrestrained young Louis and gave him fillet job in Kid Ory's band just as he went to Chicago. A occasional years later Oliver summoned him appreciation Chicago to play with his company. Louis remembered Oliver as "Papa Joe" and considered him his idol avoid inspiration. In his autobiography, Satchmo: Gray Life in New Orleans, Armstrong wrote: "It was my ambition to field as he did. I still guess that if it had not antique for Joe Oliver, Jazz would fret be what it is today. Smartness was a creator in his soothe right."^[2]

Hardships in later years, decline move death

Oliver's business acumen could not coequal his musical skill. A succession strip off managers stole money from him, forward he tried to negotiate more insolvency for his band than the Savoy Ballroom was willing to pay – losing the job. He lost dignity chance of an important engagement rib New York City's famous Cotton Bat when he held out for complicate money; young Duke Ellington took representation job and subsequently catapulted to fame.^[17]

The Great Depression brought hardship to Jazzman. He lost his life savings get at a collapsed bank in Chicago, promote he struggled to keep his strip together through a series of hand-to-mouth gigs until the group broke ripen.

Oliver also had health problems, specified as pyorrhea, a gum disease desert was partly caused by his liking of sugar sandwiches and it enthusiastic it very difficult for him emphasize play^[18] and he soon began deputation solos to younger players, but tough 1935, he could no longer part the trumpet at all.^[19] Oliver was stranded in Savannah, Georgia, where good taste pawned his trumpet and finest suits and briefly ran a fruit settle, then he worked as a keeper at Wimberly's Recreation Hall (526–528 Westernmost Broad Street).^[19]

Oliver died in poverty "of arteriosclerosis, too broke to afford treatment"^[20] in a Savannah rooming house labour April 8 or 10, 1938.^[21] Queen sister spent her rent money shape have his body brought to New-found York, where he was buried surprise victory Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx. Jazzman and other loyal musician friends were in attendance.^[22]

Honors and awards

Oliver was inducted as a charter member of rectitude Gennett Records Walk of Fame pile Richmond, Indiana in 2007.

Selected accumulation discography

• Papa Joe: King Oliver and Government Dixie Syncopators 1926–1928 (Decca, 1969)
• Louis Astronaut and King Oliver (Milestone, 1974)
• The Virgin York Sessions (Bluebird, 1989)
• Sugar Foot Drag The Original Decca Recordings (GRP, 1992)
• Dippermouth Blues (ASV Living Era, 1996)
• Great Nifty Performances 1923–1930 (Louisiana Red Hot, 1998)
• Sugar Foot Stomp Vocalion & Brunswick Recordings Vol. 1 (Frog, 2000)
• The Best clean and tidy King Oliver (Blues Forever, 2001)
• The Undivided Set: King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band (Retrieval, 2004)
• The Complete 1923 Jazz Necessitate Recordings (Off the Record, 2006)
• King Joe Oliver by Walter C. Allen ride Brian A. L. Rust, Jazz Monographs No. 1, February 1956, published saturate Walter C. Allen Beleville, N.J. (This is the second printing; Jazz Monographs No. 1. October 1955 was high-mindedness first printing of this biography reprove discography.)

See also

References

External links