What Did King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band Sound Like in the Studio? (2017 High School Project)

Using both modern and acoustic technology, I wanted to see if it was possible to decipher what King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band may have sounded like in the Gennett Studios in Richmond, Indiana on the historic day of April 5th, 1923. The day was a landmark in history because it was the first time the internationally renowned trumpeter Louis Armstrong recorded, as well as famous New Orleans musicians Baby and Johhny Dodds, Honore Dutrey, Bill Johnson and pianist Lil Hardin, not to mention the leader himself, Joe King Oliver. Many famous tunes were cut that day and they were a big success in the jazz community. Unfortunately the technology of the day was quite limited in both frequency range and sound quality, not helped by the crude and out of date technology used by Gennett (Paramount wasn’t much better, though Okeh wasn’t bad). Now, however, given what we know about the session’s lineup and the styles of the musicians I tried to recreate the sound of the Creole Jazz Band, or more specifically the sound of the Creole Jazz Band in Gennett Studios. With the horns, the two cornettists Oliver and Armstrong were both muted, Johnny Dodds’ clarinet very prominent and playing lots of eighth notes, Dutrey’s trombone moaning away. In rhtyhm section, Baby Dodds could only use woodblocks and cymbal, because bass drum and snare would overpower the recording stylus (which is a shame since Dodds was famous for his use of the ’press roll’ on the snare drum during the Oliver days). Hardin plays a very rhythmic but quiet countermelody on the piano, while Johnson chunks away at the banjo, since his string bass couldn’t be recorded (also a shame because of his slap bass technique which was quite famous). I transferred the digital recording to wax cylinder which resulted in a sound similar to Oliver’s band, with the individual instruments melding into a sort of ghostly sound that is characteristic of acoustic recordings. I hope this is an enjoyable experiment to listen to and is at all informative. The intention was to see if the sound of the band was able to be recreated. I am not comparing myself to the talented members of the band, but I am merely trying to figure out what the group sounded like.