The Original Dixieland Jazz Band (ODJB), in 1917, under the leadership of Nick LaRocca, with his side man Sbarbaro, (accompanied by Shields,Ragas,Edwards) made the First Jazz Recording.

This first recording and many to follow were instant sensational “Hits”, and the success of the ODJB was immense and musicians worldwide changed instrumentation to emulate the sound and style they made famous. From 1917 to 1936  ODJB recorded fifty-two 78’s that are still sold today.

Yet, Isn't it bizarrely strange, that while at the same time Italians were being offered lower wages than Blacks for work on the docks in New Orleans, and Italian Indentured field hands had Black with shotguns as "overseers" in the cotton fields of the Carolinas, and Italians were met with signs at factories "No WOPS ", the Original Dixieland Jazz Band (ODJB) that was led by an Italian, is "identified" by currently "politically correct" musicologists as collaboraters of the "oppressive " WHITE society, and therefore NOT worthy of recognition !!!!!

I am responding to an incident during an academic conference held in New Orleans with a panel discussion on jazz, when someone rose from the audience and asked: "What about the ODJB, the first band to record jazz?"

A panalist launched into the by now almost perfunctory response to the question, stressing that the circumstances which had permitted the Original Dixieland Jazz Band to make the first jazz recording were another indication of the RACIST bias of the recording industry and suggesting that, beyond that, the question should not be dignified with further elucidation!

Basicly the response says, that since the Italians are NOW accepted as White, despite their being villified as ALL being Mobsters, that the Italians were LESS Persecuted than the Blacks THEN, and therefore the Blacks should deserve ALL the credit for Jazz.

The term "jazz" was fused into the New Orleans style of instrumental ragtime, collectively improvised, which had been developing since the turn of the century. The term itself became a rallying point for New Orleans musicians of all ethnic and racial backgrounds, creating conditions for the formation of a community of interest in support of the new music, which was perceived as a local product.

While the roots of Jazz were undoubtedly nourished largely within the African-American community (which was itself extremely diversified), its subsequent development before 1917 was a more broadly communitarian phenomenon, drawing on a variety of musical cultures extant in New Orleans.

The Original Dixieland Jass Band was formed in 1916 with five talented musicians from New Orleans who were performing in Chicago. Their early influences came from performing with Ragtime, society groups, the music of the Opera House in New Orleans and John Phillip Sousa. The music they performed and recorded was their own and the band made American music history.

None other than  Louis Armstrong, in  Swing That Music, 1936, is quoted as saying:

“The first great jazz orchestra was formed in New Orleans by a cornet player named Dominick James LaRocca. They were the hottest five pieces that had ever been known before.  They all came to be famous players and the Dixieland Band has gone down now in musical history.”

As Dr. Bruce Boyd Raeburn, Curator of The Jazz Archivist writes:

Nick LaRocca and Sbarbaro with the ODJB, Leon Roppolo with NORK ,Curly Lizana with the New Orleans Jazz Babies, Charlie Cordilla with the Halfway House Orchestra or the subsequent activities of Joseph "Wingy" Manone, Sharkey Bonano, Tony Parenti, Louis Prima ( RAA: and Charlie Scaglioni, Santo Pecora, Sherwood Mangiapane, Manuel Manetta), and others all attest to an Italian jazz connection which was deep and abiding.

To dismiss any of this body of work as imitative or derivative is to appease the critic at the expense of the historian and to remove from discussion some of the music's most colorful and charismatic personalities.

Read the entire article at:
 

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http://www.odjb.com/JazzItalianConnection.htm