Nick La Rocca and The Original Dixieland Jazz Band--that's what the label calls the ODJB here--plays "Tiger Rag" from a session held on September 2, 1936. The aging "jass" musicians are in fine form here! Due to the use of microphones, the sound here on Victor 25403 is far richer than the sound of the original 1918 Victor recording. Elsewhere on youtube I give the ODJB's history up to 1925. Five years pass... For at least part of 1930 Edwards was unable to support himself as a musician. He instead operated a newsstand. Walter Winchell noted in the New York Daily News, "Here is drama right in the middle of New York city. His newsstand is near 5th st. on 7th ave--in front of Joe's place. His name is Eddie Edwards--once the leader of the Dixieland Jazz Band...Eddie is, perhaps, the world's top trombone player, too--out of a job--and reduced to peddling newspapers--so he can exist...How about getting him in a band?" A clipping of Winchell's column is owned by Edwards' grandson. Handbills from 1930 through 1933 establish that Eddie Edwards and his Silver Slipper Orchestra was booked regularly. Relationships deteriorated significantly in the 1930s when the band was reorganized. Four members resented LaRocca for claiming two shares in revenue for one share claimed by the others; LaRocca felt entitled to the extra because he had risked some of his own money in reviving the band. LaRocca's claims around this time to be sole composer of most ODJB numbers also infuriated the others, who maintained that the early numbers had been collaborative efforts. No band members recorded again until the mid-1930s. In 1935 a group called the Original Dixieland Jazz Band made two records for Vocalion, but the only original band member was Sbarbaro. In 1936 "Nick LaRocca and the Original Dixieland Band"--the name given on discs--cut titles for RCA Victor. Sbarbaro played drums and Shields played clarinet, but this was not a true reunion of original members, Edwards being conspicuously absent. A dozen musicians were added, new arrangements supplied for the old numbers. The performances share little with the band's trademark sound and sold poorly. On September 25 and again on November 10, 1936, four original members (LaRocca, Shields, Edwards, and Sbarbaro) along with J. Russel Robinson re-recorded numbers that the ODJB had introduced nearly two decades earlier, using old arrangements for the most part. The band--identified as The Original Dixieland Five on some labels, as Nick La Rocca and The Original Dixieland Jazz Band on others--does not repeat early sections on "Original Dixieland One-Step." By not repeating, the band creates time or space on the record for Shields to take a solo. His solo had been worked out in advance--he had delivered the same solo eight months earlier when the augmented band had recorded "Original Dixieland One Step." Band members were considerably older and the music must have seemed dated to audiences at that time, but the two sessions produced remarkable records, the microphone capturing nuances that no acoustic era recording horn could. Drums and piano were finally prominent on ODJB records. The four surviving original members never worked together again but the name Original Dixieland Jazz Band was used for records made later. In 1938, Shields, Edwards, and Sbarbaro made Bluebird records credited to the Original Dixieland Jazz Band. Edwards and Sbarbaro continued to work together, from 1943 to 1946 making various records credited to the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, with other musicians including Max Kaminsky, Eddie Condon, and Wild Bill Davidson. Commodore records of 1946 gave credit to "Eddie Edwards and His Original Dixieland Jazz Band."

• published: 16 Dec 2013
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