100 Years of Jazz on Vinyl

On 26 February 1917, five musicians from New Orleans entered a recording studio in New York to record the world’s first jazz record. The five musicians of the “Original Dixieland Jazz Band” — Dominic “Nick” LaRocca (cor, lead); Edwin “Eddie” Edwards (tb); Larry Shields (cl); Henry Ragas (p); Anthony “Tony” Sbarbaro (dr) — did not invent jazz, but they were pioneers of jazz all the same, and this 1917 recording remains unique. Their achievement in recording the first jazz record 100 years ago with “Livery Stable Blues” and “Dixie Jass Band One-Step” remains a significant event in music history.

Although syncopated music, ragtime, foxtrots, and one-steps had been available on record for some time, this new jazz was initially “shocking” to many listeners. Accordingly, there was controversy for many years over whether jazz was really “music” or simply “musical rubbish”.

For the term “Jass” — later “Jazz” — came into use only after the music itself already existed: first in 1913 in sports journalism, where it was used to describe the play of a baseball team. “Jass” meant something like spirited or enthusiastic. It was not until 1915 that the term was transferred from sport to music in a newspaper article in Chicago to describe a syncopated rag by Art Hickman.

And today, just 100 years later, the audiophile recording has undergone a remarkable evolution. We now hear jazz, among other things, in the finest digital quality — sometimes praised, sometimes criticized for its supposed lack of sonic warmth. Digitally processed, in the new parlance “remastered,” and preserved for all time, we can make the “old” world and era of jazz audible almost anytime and anywhere, without any mechanical wear.
(Photo: sprisi / pixelio.de)