Joe Oliver
Joe “King” Oliver is said to have started music as a trombonist, and from about 1907, he played in brass bands, dance groups, and various small groups in New Orleans bars and cabarets. In 1918, he moved to Chicago (to which he may have acquired his nickname), and in 1920 he began directing his own group. After taking California (primarily Oakland and San Francisco) in 1921, he returned to Chicago and, in some of the same musicians, began a commitment to the Lincoln Gardens King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band (June 1922). This group was joined a month later by 22 years, Louis Armstrong as second cornetist. With two horns (Oliver and Armstrong), clarinet (Johnny Dodds), trombone (Honore Dutrey), piano (Lil Hardin), drums (Baby Dodds), and double bass and banjo (Bill Johnson), Oliver began recording in April 1923. Many young white jazz musicians had the opportunity to hear it then, either on disc or live at the Lincoln Gardens.
In late 1924, after a tour of the Midwest and Pennsylvania, the group has completely revamped including two or three saxophones, and played in Chicago as the Dixie Syncopators (February 1925 to March 1927), the most distinguished saxophonists who played with the group were Barney Bigard and Albert Nicholas. Shortly after a brief but successful engagement at the Savoy Ballroom in New York (from May 1927), members began to disperse and fall the group dissolved, but Oliver remained in New York, recording ad hoc, often with orchestras. From 1930 to 1936 he toured widely, mainly in the Midwest and upper South, with dimes and 12 bands, he had rarely made during this period, and there is more ‘records from April 1931. He spent the last months of his life to retirement from the music Savannah.
Oliver is generally considered one of the most important musicians in New Orleans style. Like other early cornetists New Orleans, he played in a rhythm of four squares and cut melodic style (which contrasts with the deliberate irregularity of the young Armstrong and his imitators) and has a repertoire of forms of expression differences of pace and height, a frieze on the scene of novelty effects and other derivatives blues vocal style. He frequently used the stamp modifiers of various kinds, and was especially renowned for his wa-wa effects, as in his famous three-chorus solo on Dipper Mouth Blues (1923), which was learned by heart by many trumpeters years 1920 and 1930 and who, like Sugar Foot Stomp, became a jazz standard. As a soloist, May it be better heard in a number of blues accompaniments, including Sippi Wallace.
In contrast to his near-contemporary, Freddie Keppard and Bunk Johnson, Oliver integrated his playing superbly with his ensemble and was an excellent leader, the Creole Jazz Band may have been a successfull largely because of the discipline that it imposed its musicians. Indeed, the former New Orleans cornetists, only Oliver was extensively recorded in the 1920s with an exceptional, and the revival of New Orleans style, which began shortly after his death owes much to the rediscovery of its small band of three dozen recordings Creole, which are known internationally by the 1940s. After 1924, the quality of its recordings have decreased, partly because of recurring sore teeth and gums, and partly because his style is at odds with that of his younger sidemen, but with a good orchestra, it was able to play consistent and energetic, even as late as 1930. Almost all of his performances have been reissued.
Oliver’s influence is difficult to assess: his playing during New Orleans period (his best year, according to Souchon) has not been registered, and in 1925 his style was largely replaced by Armstrong. He had a clear impact on the training Ellington sideman Bubber Miley, and perhaps these white musicians as Muggsy Spanier and his dumb tricks have been copied by Johnny Dunn and trumpeters such as Natty Dominique Ladnyi and Tommy, who remained outside the influence of Armstrong, may have derived in part from their styles Oliver. The extent of the influence of Oliver Armstrong himself, although clearly audible and significant, has yet to be examined properly. Oliver is credited with songs on many albums and recordings of copyright, it is not known how many of them, he actually composed.
Thanks to Bottle Openers