Centennial - 'King' Oliver's Creole Jazz Band
Note: In the original posting of this article, I included some harsh words about the RCA Vintage series of LPs. They were written without full knowledge of how they were made, and have been eliminated.
There are many centennial events in jazz history given that many important recordings and artists are now 100 years old. We could all use some celebrating, and such landmarks serve to remind us of great artists, great recordings and other important happenings with regard to the music.
With regard to reissues of recordings in particular, digital technology has advanced to a tremendous degree since programs like No-Noise and CEDAR were developed and utilized. Before these appeared, when everything was analog, LP reissues utilized whatever source recordings were available since masters and stampers often were not. Beautifully recorded items suffered due to surface noise on the original pressings; collectors had to learn to live with the fact that original 78s on Paramount, various budget labels, Decca and early Capitols were noisy and parts of the ensembles were inaudible. Additionally, the owners of these original pressings often loved them too well, and they were distorted due to being played back with worn needles.
Some reissues were subjected to producers editing out extreme ticks and pops using scissors and splicing tape, and the result made the recordings sound jerky, or used extreme filtration so that even the loud passages sounded dull.
Recordings processed with No-Noise were a revelation when they appeared, but I remember when it was used early on on a Benny Goodman 3 CD set, and the late and already much missed Dan Morgenstern later told me he’d attended a press conference announcing the reissue and hearing some samples. Dan said that several tracks were so “No-Noised” that they sounded like they were recorded under water. He alerted the sound engineer who worked on them, who was truly surprised. “They weren’t musicians. They didn’t know what they were listening to.” Several tracks were in fact re-done, and the results were indeed much better than the LP reissues previously issued. CEDAR was even better, and engineers used them both for new reissues, because they were different in execution and results. There are new generations who have heard classic recordings in often excellent sound where the source was pretty bad. I’ve had to explain why there is surface noise on some of these recordings, because most of them today are pretty clean. My students have never seen a 78.
As one can imagine, some classic recordings have been reissued many times, and digitally cleaned up anew. In general, whether digital technology was used or not, engineers who did this particularly well were celebrated by collectors. Names that come to mind immediately are Jack Towers, David Lennick, Ted Kendall, and John R.T. Davies, who became a superstar in the jazz reissue world given his excellent work, and many jazz fans probably bought certain fringe reissue projects simply because he worked on them. John was an excellent musician, a saxophonist who played in the Paul Whiteman Tribute band led by Richard Sudhalter who played Frank Trumbauer’s parts.
The King Oliver recordings with Louis Armstrong are excellent examples of recordings that have been issued many times with various results. But it is safe to say that the sound presentation in the Archeophone boxed set “Centennial” is on another level entirely. I don’t know what techniques the sound engineers used to get the results presented, but I can certainly say that the sound of these recordings is remarkable. Knowledgeable historians who have heard every incarnation of these tracks have written that these recordings are heard in the best sound ever. I was mesmerized from the first second. As we know, they were recorded via the acoustic process, where everyone surrounded a big horn that fed the sound to a needle which doesn’t allow a lot of cleaning up, but the engineers have been able to improve the balance of the musicians, and they now sound full of life and vivid. I was literally lost in recordings I’d heard many times and had never really heard before until the CDs were played on my sound system. Admittedly, I have a large surround system so I can pump up the volume., and hearing them nice and loud was thrilling.
It was the mission of this reissue that not only would the Oliver recordings be presented in the best possible sound, but that important recordings which influenced the participating musicians and music created during the period of their initial issue be featured, creating a context of not only where the music came from, but how influential it was moving forward.
At this point, we must introduce a remarkable man named Ricky Riccardi, who is the most knowledgeable Louis Armstrong historian perhaps ever. As most readers know, he has written two excellent volumes of the life of the great Louis, and has completed a third which finishes the story of this remarkable man, albeit in reverse order (he started out with the last part of his career, and has been chronicling his life backwards). It was well known that Armstrong had a tape recorder back when they were practically new, and would make tapes of all types - conversations with friends, autobiographical musings, and perhaps most importantly given this reissue, recordings of tracks that he loved and were major influences on him, again with his commentary. Happily, all of these tape reels have been digitized and are protected. From those reels and Armstrong interviews , Riccardi has assembled the contents of CD 3 which in his words includes an “unlikely concoction of minstelsy, opera, marches, blues, ragtime, early jazz, the church, barbershop quartets, spirituals, Yiddish lullabies, bugle calls, Irish tenors, Italian sopranos, instrumental virtuosos and everything in between.” He calls this “the essence of Louis Armstrong.”
As stated, several tracks were in Armstrong’s own collection, and were well loved - opera stars such as Caruso, Tetrazzini, Galli-Curci, John McCormick, Sousa’s band, trumpet virtuoso Herbert L. Clarke (Armstrong admired his tone and technique - what a shame these two trumpet giants probably never met), Al Jolson, and stage superstar Bert Williams. Armstrong would later record two of Williams’s monologues, showing how much he admired Williams’s delivery and comedy, and proving that he was a such good seller for Decca Records that they would let him record these two tracks on a 12” disc, which could certainly not be placed in a Harlem jukebox.
CD 4 is called “Joe’s Jazz Kingdom,” and here we experience what influenced Oliver’s music, and how the music influenced what came after. What Riccardi points out in his notes for this volume is that the artists featured were usually ignored by previous historians such as Gunther Schuller, Martin Williams and Ken Burns. The dissemination of these recordings via CD and YouTube have certainly made them more visible and hearable.
Art Hickman not only led an early jazz band, but was a key influence on the musicians in Fate Marable’s Orchestra that played on a riverboat and included Armstrong at one point. Paul Whiteman had a major hit with “Wang Wang Blues,” which also became part of the Marable band’s repertoire. Also featured on this CD are Mamie Smith, Ethel Waters, Frank Guarente with Paul Specht’s Orchestra, Louis Panico, an Oliver ‘student’ with the Isham Jones Orchestra, Charlie Straight, Jelly Roll Morton, and a young Loring ‘Red’ Nichols, who quotes from Oliver’s solo on “Dipper Mouth Blues” on an Edison dance record.
These recordings are accompanied by a beautiful hard cover book with vintage record ads, photos and other graphics with extensive commentary on the recordings by Mr. Riccardi.
Almost as a bonus, the Oliver tracks are also included on two beautiful vinyl LPs. I cannot vouch for them because I don’t have a turntable, but since vinyl ain’t cheap, this is another layer of collectability.
The producers Meaghan Hennessy and Richard Martin have created a real masterpiece. This is not a casual purchase, but if you are a fan of the music, you will be playing this a lot just to marvel at the sound quality. Certainly every public and university library should have it.