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The Original Dixieland Jazz Band
- Louisiana State University Press
- Chapter
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106 • I Remember ]azz Five days later, on my car radio in Athens, Georgia, on February 12, 1983, I heard the news of Eubie's passing. It was hard to be sad over the completion of as successful a life as his. The Original Dixieland Jazz Band The ODJB's importance in the history of jazz can't be overstated. Those musicians made the very first jazz record ever issued (1917). And they ultimately made jazz a household word with early records that were enormously successful just after World War I and with tours both in the United States and abroad. The recorded performances that earned the band its fame, though, sounded little like the prerecording ODJB. Since 78 rpm discs were limited to three minutes of performance , the band had to play far too fast to get the entire piece tracked. As a result much of the subtle and artful improvisation had to be sacrificed. Subsequent audiences, of course, wanted to hear the band sound the way it did on its records. Thus the ODJB had to say goodbye to the real jazz and give the public what it wanted. "What could we do?" Nick Larocca, the trumpet player and leader, asked me in 1955. "That's how we made those records and everybody in the world was copying us. The only thing we could do was to copy our own records." When I met Eddie Edwards, the trombone player, in the 1950s, he was no longer the slim, handsome figure I had known from photographs , but a jolly old gentleman of enormous girth. He was makinga Commodore record session with Johnny Wiggs, and they ran through a piece in rehearsal that was real and satisfying. Wiggs was gleeful over Edwards' sound. Then Eddie said, "Yeah, Johnny. That was great—but we can't do that on the record. It'll put everybody to sleep." Unfortunately, his view proved to be accurate. I noted that Edwards didn't speak with the characteristic New Orleans dialect and I mentioned it to him. "You don't sound at all like a yat," I said. (Orleanians tease each other for using the phrase "Where y'at" as a greeting, and thus call each other "yats.") "I never heard it at home when I was young," Edwards said, "and my mother was alwayscorrecting my speech. So I guess I just never picked it up. It used to be hard for people from home, when they met me up North, to believe that I was really from New Orleans." I Remember Jazz • 107 Larry Shields came home from California for a brief visit just before he died. I took him and his brother Harry to lunch at Tujagues on Decatur Street. (Larry remembered the place nostalgically and observed that it hadn't changed in forty years.) When I asked him if he thought he'd picked up his clarinet style from someone who had gone before, he shook his head and said, "Style! I didn't have any style! I just blew like hell the best way I could and only hoped I could keep up. When people talked about my style I never knew what they meant. I could never play much clarinet. Not like the kid, here. [Younger brother Harry was then fifty-two.] If he'd been playin' he would have been the most famous clarinetist in the world." But Larry's testimony notwithstanding, listening to those old records is enough to show that Larry wasn't the tyro he made himself out to be. I never knew Harry Ragas, the original piano player with the band. He died when I was three years old, but I had the opportunity to speak with J. Russel Robinson, who made many early records with the band, and he said, "I suppose you could say that I've played with better musicians in my life, but that's only true in a way. For originality and spontaneous music—and for just plain fun—that was it. I never had a better time in my life." Frank Signorelli, who also played with the ODJB in itsearly years, recalled that he was completely disoriented during his first rehearsal . "Those guys didn't know any music, but they alwaysknew what they were doing. I knew all about music, but I didn't have any idea what I was doing. But they just showed me. They didn't tell me. They showed me. God, it was great." Signorelli...