Early jazz - Chicago and Joe King Oliver
November 20th, 2008 | by Tom |
Prior to 1920, the jazz development was taking place in many parts of the United States. However, as the new decade began, for a few years the main center in which the music moved forward became the lakeside city of Chicago.
About fifty thousand African Americans from the Southern states arrived in Chicago in the years leading up to 1920. A major demographic shift also known as the “Great Migration”.
Spurred on by the wartime, economic boom of armament production and the need for unskilled labor in manufacturing and packing, meant that the new arrivals brought musical tastes and awareness with them, and almost overnight Chicago acquired a knowledgable and enthousiastic audience for jazz and the early form of blues.
Certainly, the most influential among the African-American and Creole arrivals from New Orleans was Joe King Oliver, a large, striking-looking man with a scar over his left eye that made it protrude in a distinctive fashion.
Oliver had been sought out to come to Chicago by the ubiquitous Bill Johnson to open a new club called “The Royal Gardens” early in 1918. Oliver worked there, in Johnson’s band, but he also appeared in the Dreamland Café with a group led by the Creole clarinetist Laurence Duhé.
In Duhé’s band, Oliver played for a time alongside another clarinetist, Sidney Bechet, who enjoyed a reputation as one of the most talented younger reed players from New Orleans, and who would go on to become one of the first significant solo improvisers in jazz, initially in Europe and then in New York, where he was to make his first influential recordings within a few weeks of Oliver’s own in 1923.
For three years, Oliver worked steadily, generally playing his two jobs a night, and becoming recognized as one of the best cornetists in Chicago.
His specialty was using a variety of mutes to create a range of effects, and his skill was such that he could imitate a range of sounds, including a crying baby.
By 1920, Oliver was doubling under his own name at the Dreamland and a State Street Club called “Pekin Cabaret”. His band was a prototype of his Creole Jazz Band of a few years later, including Johnny Dodds on clarinet and Lil Hardin on piano, but in 1921 his somewhat troubled residency at the Pekin, a club that remained open until 6 AM every morning, with frequent outbreaks of violence, led Oliver to forsake Chicago temporarily for the period in California.
Tags: chicago jazz, king oliver, sidney bechet