King Oliver - Off The Record: The Complete 1923 Jazz Band Recordings
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CD Details
Artist: King OliverEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2006-11-01
Music Label: Off The Record (distributed by Archeophone Records)
Soundtracks:
- Just Gone
- Canal Street Blues
- Mandy Lee Blues
- I'm Going Away to Wear You Off My Mind
- Chimes Blues
- Weather Bird Rag
- Dipper Mouth Blues
- Froggie Moore
- Snake Rag
- Snake Rag
- Sweet Lovin' Man
- High Society Rag
- Sobbin' Blues
- Where Did You Stay Last Night
- Dipper Mouth Blues
- Jazzin' Babies Blues
- Alligator Hop
- Zulu's Ball
- Workingman Blues
- Krooked Blues
- Chattanooga Stomp
- London (Cafe) Blues
- Camp Meeting Blues
- New Orleans Stomp
- Buddy's Habit
- Tears
- I Ain't Gonna Tell Nobody
- Room Rent Blues
- Riverside Blues
- Sweet Baby Doll
- Working Man Blues
- Mabel's Dream
- Mabel's Dream (take 1)
- Mabel's Dream (take 2)
- The Southern Stomps (take 1)
- The Southern Stomps (take 2)
- Riverside Blues
Music reviews of Off The Record: The Complete 1923 Jazz Band Recordings
Music Review: Outstanding Sound Restoration Gives New Life to Timeless Music
Rating: 5 Stars
In a series of recordings in Chicago, Illinois, and Richmond, Indiana, in 1923, a transplanted New Orleans jazz band led by cornetist Joseph "King" Oliver recorded some of the most influential sides in the history of popular American music. On second cornet was the soon-to-be world famous Louis Armstrong. The band also included such fine instrumentalists as Johnny Dodds on clarinet, Honore Dutrey on trombone, and Johnny's brother "Baby" Dodds on drums.
Included among these historic recordings are "Canal Street Blues," "Weather Bird Rag," "Dipper Mouth Blues," and "Alligator Hop," to name only a few. Two things have kept these recordings among the top of the list of the most important jazz records of all time. First, the sheer quality of the band itself and its individual members, continues to impress listeners nearly 100 years later. Second, this band was the last, best exponent of the style of collective improvisation (two or more players improvising on the melody at the same time) which was the hallmark of the New Orleans jazz bands. By the early '30's a new style, eventually dubbed "Swing," had replaced the "Dixieland" style of the New Orleans bands. Swing bands were generally larger ("Big Bands") in which individual soloists would improvise against arranged backgrounds. Experiments in the kind of collective improvisation exemplified by the King Oliver Band would not be seriously undertaken until "New Thing" or "Free Jazz" emerged in the late 1950s and Early 60s. In many ways, jazz would wait 30 years before tackling this complex and difficult style again, with mixed results.
I can remember buying my first "Jazz Archives" LP of these recordings in the early 1970s. I eagerly brought the album home from the record store and put it on the turntable. To my great disappointment, every tune was unlistenable. They were so marred by the surface noise on the original "78" rpm discs, resulting from almost 50 years of play by collectors, that all that could be heard beneath the rubbish was the small, barely audible sound of Joe Oliver's lead cornet. Everything else was buried by pops, clicks and hisses. At that time sound restoration was in its infancy, and there was really little that could be done to substantially improve the sound quality of these badly worn "78" transfers.
Well, what a difference 30 years makes. Although the sound of these new reissues will never be confused with recordings made digitally or on magnetic tape, there is a clarity of sound and detail that is a wonder to hear. Each instrument in the band can be heard distinctly, with a richness that makes it possible to really enjoy it as living music from a great band rather than merely as a musical fossil to be examined for what it can tell us about older styles of jazz.
The notes are excellent. The details of how the sound restoration engineers came up with the idea of using different styluses of varying widths to go deeper or shallower into the record grooves to find pieces of undamaged sound waves that had not been scratched off through decades of play, is fascinating. The history and importance of these records, and the circumstances of their recording, are thoroughly explored.
There's not much more to add to the almost universal acclaim that this 2-CD reissue has received from previous reviewers here. I can only add my own voice to the others and say that if you have an interest in jazz, or the popular music of the early 20th century, you really should have this set your collection.
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