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Creole Trombone

Kid Ory and the Early Years of Jazz

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
Edward "Kid" Ory (1886-1973) was a trombonist, composer, recording artist, and early New Orleans jazz band leader. Creole Trombone tells his story from birth on a rural sugar cane plantation in a French-speaking, ethnically mixed family, to his emergence in New Orleans as the city's hottest band leader. The Ory band featured such future jazz stars as Louis Armstrong and King Oliver, and was widely considered New Orleans's top "hot" band. Ory's career took him from New Orleans to California, where he and his band created the first African American New Orleans jazz recordings ever made. In 1925 he moved to Chicago where he made records with Oliver, Armstrong, and Jelly Roll Morton that captured the spirit of the jazz age. His most famous composition from that period, "Muskrat Ramble," is a jazz standard. Retired from music during the Depression, he returned in the 1940s and enjoyed a reignited career.
Drawing on oral history and Ory's unpublished autobiography, Creole Trombone is a story that is told in large measure by Ory himself. The author reveals Ory's personality to the reader and shares remarkable stories of incredible innovations of the jazz pioneer. The book also features unpublished Ory compositions, photographs, and a selected discography of his most significant recordings.
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    • Library Journal

      Starred review from October 15, 2012

      Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist McCusker (photographer, New Orleans Times-Picayune) delivers a definitive biography of jazz pioneer Edward "Kid" Ory (1886-1973) that chronicles his significance as an artistic innovator (he invented the "tailgate" style of trombone playing, one of the pillars of Dixieland jazz) and as a sideman in the seminal Louis Armstrong's Hot Five sessions (during which he composed "Muskrat Ramble"). The author creates something beyond the standard chronological biography, masterfully using Ory's life story to examine themes of race and economic oppression from the sugarcane fields of Ory's youth to his self-identification as white in later years. (He was born into a mixed-race family.) McCusker buttresses his own research with Ory's remarkable unpublished autobiography, which contains such gems as a description of a preteen Louis Armstrong sitting in with Ory's group and the trombonist's encounters with unrecorded jazz legend Buddy Bolden. This detailed record of Ory's life challenges many assumptions about the period. VERDICT A well-researched look at an oft-chronicled period, this book uses solid research to dispense with romantic apocrypha. An essential title for any serious popular music collection.--John Frank, Los Angeles P.L.

      Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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  • English

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