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Pioneers of Jazz - The Story of the Creole Band (Hardcover, New)
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Pioneers of Jazz - The Story of the Creole Band (Hardcover, New)
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Thanks to the pioneering tours of the Creole Band, jazz began to be
heard nationwide on the vaudeville stages of America from 1914 to
1918. This seven-piece band toured the country, exporting for the
first time the authentic jazz strains that had developed in New
Orleans at the start of the 20th century. The band's vaudeville
routines were deeply rooted in the minstrel shows and plantation
cliches of American show business in the late 19th century, but its
instrumental music was central to its performance and distinctive
and entrancing to audiences and reviewers.
Pioneers of Jazz reveals at long last the link between New Orleans
music and the jazz phenomenon that swept America in the 1920s.
While they were the first important band from New Orleans to attain
national exposure, The Creole Band has not heretofore been
recognized for its unique importance. But in his monumental,
careful research, jazz scholar Lawrence Gushee firmly establishes
the group's central role in jazz history.
Gushee traces the troupe's activities and quotes the reaction of
critics and audiences to their first encounters with this new
musical phenomenon. While audiences often expected (and got) a kind
of minstrel show, the group transcended expectations, taking pride
in their music and facing down the theatrical establishment with
courage. Although they played the West Coast and Canada, most of
their touring centered in the heartland. Most towns of any size in
Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana heard them, often repeatedly, and
virtually all of their appearances were received with wild
enthusiasm. After four years of nearly incessant traveling, members
of the band founded or joined groups in Chicago's South Side
cabaret scene, igniting the craze for hot New Orleans music for
which the Windy City was renowned in the early 1920s. The
best-known musicians in the group--cornetist Freddie Keppard,
clarinetist Jimmy Noone and string bassist Bill Johnson--would play
a significant role in jazz, becoming famous for recordings in the
1920s. Gushee effectively brings to life each member of the band
and discusses their individual contributions, while analyzing the
music with precision, skillful and exacting documentation.
Including many never before published photos and interviews, the
book also provides an invaluable and colorful look at show
business, especially vaudeville, in the 1910s.
While some of the first jazz historians were aware of the band's
importance, attempts to locate and interview surviving members
(three died before 1935) were sporadic and did little or nothing to
correct the mostly erroneous accounts of the band's career. The
jazz world has long known about Gushee's original work on this
previously neglected subject, and the book represents an important
event in jazz scholarship. Pioneers of Jazz brilliantly places this
group's unique importance into a broad cultural and historical
context, and provides the crucial link between jazz's origins in
New Orleans and the beginning of its dissemination across the
country.
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