The First Jazz Record
New York, 1917, where a New Orleans band pressed jazz onto a record for the first time.
Related
Time and place
26 February 1917, New York, at the Victor Talking Machine Company. The New Orleans band called the Original Dixieland Jass Band recorded Livery Stable Blues and Dixieland Jass Band One-Step.
What happened
The band consisted of white New Orleans musicians who played New York dance halls and restaurants. They used the fixed division of a collective front line. The cornet led the melody, the clarinet wound around it, the trombone slid, and the rhythm section pushed. Released in March, the two sides sold remarkably well and are usually called the first jazz records. Black musicians had almost no chance to record; their music travelled by performance and memory.
What changed
Jazz moved from local event to national commodity, fixing dance steps, band lineup and the name itself. Record companies learned this music could sell, and a race records market followed. Improvisation turned from an event into a text that could be imitated, compared and collected. Later players learned from records.
Listen to the turn
Begin with the Dixieland attributed to the band, where the melodic and syncopated frame survives at the piano. Then Joplin's Elite Syncopations, ragtime piano from before the recording, with syncopation in the score. Finally The Ragtime Dance, where dance rhythm moves from piano to band. A record turned a moment into a lesson.
Related
This turn belongs to Modern; see Syncopation, and Cornet and Clarinet.
Listen in the library
All tracks from midicn-lib — inline badge is the license tier (C1 commercial / C2 non-commercial / C3 study only).
Sources
- Grove Music Online, entry "Original Dixieland Jazz Band" — recording date and label checked, not quoted
- Ted Gioia, The History of Jazz (Oxford University Press) — early recording context checked, not quoted
Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.