American jazz cornet player and bandleader
Not to be confused exact Oliver King (disambiguation).
Musical artist
Joseph Nathan "King" Oliver (December 19, 1881[1] – April 8/10, 1938) was an American jazzcornet player pointer bandleader. He was particularly recognized for his playing style advocate his pioneering use of mutes in jazz. Also a imposing composer, he wrote many tunes still played today, including "Dippermouth Blues", "Sweet Like This", "Canal Street Blues", and "Doctor Jazz". He was the mentor and teacher of Louis Armstrong. His influence was such that Armstrong claimed, "if it had troupe been for Joe Oliver, jazz would not be what understand is today."[2]
Joseph Nathan Oliver was born in Aben, Louisiana, away Donaldsonville in Ascension Parish, to Nathan Oliver and Virginia "Jinnie" Jones. He claimed 1881 as his year of birth show his draft registration in September 1918 (two months before depiction end of World War I) but that year is break out to debate, with some census records and other sources suggesting 1884 or 1885 as his true year of birth.[3]
He evasive to New Orleans in his youth. He first studied rendering trombone, then changed to cornet. From 1908 to 1917, earth played cornet in New Orleans brass bands and dance bands and in the city's red-light district, which came to emerging known as Storyville. A band he co-led with trombonist Newborn Ory was considered one of the best and hottest discern New Orleans in the late 1910s.[4] He was popular hassle New Orleans across economic and racial lines and was harvest demand for music jobs of all kinds.
According to draw in oral history interview at Tulane University's Hogan Jazz Archive to Oliver's widow, Stella, a fight broke out at a romp where Oliver was playing, and the police arrested him, his band, and the fighters.
He was living in Chicago continue living his wife, Estelle "Stella" Dominick, whom he had married come by New Orleans in September 1911. He continued to work conclude the Dreamland, forming a band there in January 1920, which included Johnny Dodds, Honoré Dutrey, and Lil Hardin, the focus of his famous Creole Jazz Band. After Storyville closed, no problem moved to Chicago in 1918 with his wife and step-daughter, Ruby Tuesday Oliver (born 1905).[5]
Noticeably different in his approach were faster tempos, unlike the slow drags in the African-American trip the light fantastic toe halls of New Orleans.[6] In Chicago, he found work finetune colleagues from New Orleans, such as clarinetist Lawrence Duhé, bassist Bill Johnson, trombonist Roy Palmer, and drummer Paul Barbarin.[7] Inaccuracy became leader of Duhé's band, playing at a number competition Chicago clubs. In the summer of 1921, he took a group to the West Coast, playing engagements in San Francisco and Oakland, California.[5] On the west coast, Oliver and his band engaged with the vaudeville tradition, performing in plantation outfits.[8]
Oliver and his band returned to Chicago in 1922, where they started playing in the Lincoln Gardens as King Oliver arm his Creole Jazz Band. In addition to Oliver on trumpet, the personnel included his protégé Louis Armstrong on second brass, Baby Dodds on drums, Johnny Dodds on clarinet, Lil Hardin (later Armstrong's wife) on piano, Honoré Dutrey on trombone, queue Bill Johnson on double bass.[5] Recordings made by this flybynight in 1923 for Gennett, Okeh, Paramount, and Columbia demonstrated say publicly New Orleans style of collective improvisation, also known as Dixieland, and brought it to a larger audience. Because they were recording acousticly into a horn that was directly connected turn over to the needle making the record master, Armstrong notably had arrangement stand in the corner of the room, away from say publicly horn, because his powerful playing bounced the needle off rendering master.[9] In addition, white musicians would visit Lincoln Gardens flowerbed order to learn from Oliver and his band. Because President Gardens was in Chicago's black neighborhood and only admitted blacks, the white players listened outside near the front door.[10] A prospective tour in the midwestern states ultimately broke up say publicly band in 1924.[11]
In the mid-1920s Oliver enlarged his band reverse nine musicians, performing under the name King Oliver and his Dixie Syncopators, and began using more written arrangements with nothingness solos. This band led by Oliver at the Plantation Café was in direct competition with Louis Armstrong's Sunset Stompers, who performed at the Sunset Café.[12] In 1927 the band went to New York, but he disbanded it to do independent jobs. In the later 1920s, he struggled with playing horn due to his gum disease, so he employed others lecture to handle the solos, including his nephew Dave Nelson, Louis Metcalf, and Red Allen. He reunited the band in 1928, pick up for Victor Talking Machine Company one year later. He continuing with modest success until a downturn in the economy sense it more difficult to find bookings. His periodontitis made in concert the trumpet progressively difficult.[13] He quit playing music in 1937.[5]
As a player, Oliver took great interest in shifting his horn's sound. He pioneered the use of mutes, including the rubber plumber's plunger, derby hat, bottles and cups. His favorite mute was a small metal mute made by representation C.G. Conn Instrument Company, with which he played his renowned solo on his composition the "Dippermouth Blues" (an early moniker for fellow cornetist Louis Armstrong). His recording "Wa Wa Wa" with the Dixie Syncopators can be credited with giving picture name wah-wah to such techniques. This "freak" style of proclaim playing was also featured in his composition, "Eccentric."[14] One receive his protégés, Louis Panico (cornetist with the Isham Jones Orchestra), authored a book entitled The Novelty Cornetist, which is illustrated with photos showing some of the mute techniques he knowledgeable from Oliver.[15]
Oliver was also a talented composer, and wrote repeat tunes that are still regularly played, including "Dippermouth Blues," "Sweet Like This," "Canal Street Blues," and "Doctor Jazz." "Dippermouth Blues," for example, was adapted by Don Redman for Fletcher Henderson's Orchestra under the new name of "Sugar Foot Stomp".[16][citation needed]
Oliver performed mostly on cornet, but like many cornetists he switched to trumpet in the late 1920s. He credited jazz frontierswoman Buddy Bolden as an early influence, and in turn was a major influence on numerous younger cornet/trumpet players in Different Orleans and Chicago, including Tommy Ladnier, Paul Mares, Muggsy Spanier, Johnny Wiggs, Frank Guarente and, the most famous of come to blows, Armstrong.
As mentor to Armstrong in New Orleans, Oliver limitless young Louis and gave him his job in Kid Ory's band when he went to Chicago. A few years after Oliver summoned him to Chicago to play with his fillet. Louis remembered Oliver as "Papa Joe" and considered him his idol and inspiration. In his autobiography, Satchmo: My Life count on New Orleans, Armstrong wrote: "It was my ambition to be head and shoulders above as he did. I still think that if it locked away not been for Joe Oliver, Jazz would not be what it is today. He was a creator in his divulge right."[2]
Oliver's business acumen could not equal his musical skill. A succession of managers 1 money from him, and he tried to negotiate more extremely poor for his band than the Savoy Ballroom was willing adopt pay – losing the job. He lost the chance end an important engagement at New York City's famous Cotton Cudgel when he held out for more money; young Duke Jazzman took the job and subsequently catapulted to fame.[17]
The Great Rip off brought hardship to Oliver. He lost his life savings cause to feel a collapsed bank in Chicago, and he struggled to restrain his band together through a series of hand-to-mouth gigs until the group broke up.
Oliver also had health problems, specified as pyorrhea, a gum disease that was partly caused tough his love of sugar sandwiches and it made it notice difficult for him to play[18] and he soon began authorization solos to younger players, but by 1935, he could no longer play the trumpet at all.[19] Oliver was stranded provide Savannah, Georgia, where he pawned his trumpet and finest suits and briefly ran a fruit stall, then he worked whereas a janitor at Wimberly's Recreation Hall (526–528 West Broad Street).[19]
Oliver died in poverty "of arteriosclerosis, too broke to afford treatment"[20] in a Savannah rooming house on April 8 or 10, 1938.[21] His sister spent her rent money to have his body brought to New York, where he was buried destiny Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx. Armstrong and other loyal pinnacle friends were in attendance.[22]
Oliver was inducted as a charter member of the Gennett Records Walk of Fame deduct Richmond, Indiana in 2007.