Nabokov, Nicolas [Nikolay]

New Orleans jazz.

A style of small-ensemble jazz that originated shortly before World War I, became internationally known through recordings in the 1920s, and underwent a revival in the 1940s (see Traditional jazz). It now exists as an interrelated group of performance styles with fixed instrumentation and relatively restricted repertory. Some writers distinguish it from Dixieland jazz, a label that they reserve for white musicians and orchestras.

The earliest New Orleans ‘hot’ players in the first two decades of the century thought of their music as ragtime, albeit with a local accent. This music was for the most part learned and played by ear by amateurs or semiprofessionals, though some players were musically literate; it usually used a rhythm section of drums, guitar and plucked double bass and emphasized a continuous ensemble polyphony, in which the wind players rarely rested. The large dance bands before 1920 comprised violin, cornet, clarinet, trombone, drums, double bass, guitar and sometimes piano. The use of two cornets – which was thought on the evidence of King Oliver's recordings of 1923 to be essential to the authentic New Orleans style – was virtually never a feature of the older orchestras. Furthermore, though often imitated during the 1920s, the instrumentation of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band (cornet, trombone, clarinet, piano and drums) was not common in New Orleans itself.

In the early New Orleans groups, the melody was often shifted from instrument to instrument. By the early 1920s, however, it was generally assigned to the cornetist, who most often functioned as leader. New Orleans cornetists born before about 1895 played the lead with relatively little variation, unlike later jazz trumpeters; they made use of clipped articulation with relatively precise binary subdivisions of the beat, cultivating the middle register to f'' and employing a forceful tone, often with a ‘whinnying’ rapid vibrato. The clarinettist supplied a countermelody in quavers over a wide range, and characteristically used a more limpid timbre than later players, perhaps because of a French bias in the training of early New Oreleans clarinettists. In general, the earliest recordings by King Oliver, Sidney Bechet and others show New Orleans players as the first to integrate blue notes as well as portamento and strong vibrato into an expressive melodic instrumental style. New Orleans drummers used very large and resonant bass drums and employed the press roll on the snare drum, probably with comparatively little reliance on other percussion accessories. The much-discussed question of two-beat versus four-beat rhythm is related to the transition from ragtime to jazz: the first New Orleans jazz drummer to be recorded, Tony Sbarbaro of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band in 1917–18, freely shifted from one to other. Perhaps the most distinctive rhythmic feature was a pervasive but relaxed playing off the beat, particularly at the slower foxtrot or slow drag tempo.

The repertory and instrumentation of the white dixieland tradition became fixed to a far greater degree than that of the black tradition. Particularly with the onset of the ‘revival’ in the late 1930s, many hymn tunes and various Creole folk or popular songs entered the repertory of black New Orleans jazz, often at the behest of recording directors and jazz historians. The harmony of New Orleans jazz is often simpler than the ragtime progressions that underlie it: chords more complex than the dominant 7th and diminished 7th are seldom used; there is little modulation, except between the strains of march tunes; keys with more than one sharp or four flats are avoided. Solo playing is generally confined to the recurring two-bar breaks or to brief moments when one player dominates the ensemble, though there are frequent duets for wind instruments. In general there is little improvisation in the sense that term acquired after the early 1920s; routines, once learned, are quite stable.

The classic bands of the early 1920s New Orleans style were King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band and the New Orleans Rhythm Kings; later recordings of bands led by Jelly Roll Morton, Lil and Louis Armstrong and Johnny Dodds are also prized as early examples of New Orleans jazz. These were all recorded in Chicago for the so-called race record market. Recordings made in the 1920s in New Orleans itself, especially by Sam Morgan's band and the Jones and Collins Astoria Hot Eight, are somewhat different in character from the groups recorded in the North, and no doubt reflect the contemporary local style.

The strong association in the public's mind between New Orleans jazz and the music of the marching-band tradition is somewhat exaggerated: the custom of employing wind bands to play at the funerals of members of fraternal orders is a picturesque survival of one widespread in the USA during the 19th century. Many musicians and historians also hold that certain features of New Orleans jazz derive from or are common to musics of the West Indies. However, despite New Orleans's long history of close contact with the West Indies, this ‘Spanish tinge’ (the term is Jelly Roll Morton's) has yet to receive thorough study.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

GroveJ

SchullerEJ

S.B. Charters: Jazz: New Orleans, 1885–1957 (Belleville, NJ, 1958, 2/1963/R

A. Rose and E. Souchon: New Orleans Jazz: a Family Album (Baton Rouge, LA, 1967, enlarged 3/1984)

M. Williams: Jazz Masters of New Orleans (New York and London, 1967/R)

M. Dorigné: Jazz, i: Les origines du jazz: le style Nouvelle-Orléans et ses prolongements (Paris, 1968)

R.J. Martinez, ed.: Portraits of New Orleans Jazz: its People and Places (Jefferson, LA, 1971)

W.J. Schaefer and R.B. Allen: Bands and New Orleans Jazz (Baton Rouge, LA, and London, 1977)

F. Turner: Remembering Song: Encounters with the New Orleans Jazz Tradition (New York, 1982)

LAWRENCE GUSHEE