Composer: Lee/Lopez/Nunes

Publisher: Public Domain

CD: The Seventy-Fifth Anniversary

Label: RCA

 1992 BMG Music. All Rights Reserved.

Recording Date: February 26, 1917

Personnel: Nick LaRocca, cornet; Eddie Edwards, trombone; Larry Shields, clarinet; Henry Ragas, piano; Tony Sbarbaro, drums

  

  

  

Title: Livery Stable Blues
Artist: Original Dixieland Jazz Band (ODJB)
Type of Tune: early jazz (AKA Dixieland and traditional jazz)
Tempo: 163 BPM (beats per minute)
Key: Eb
Form: 12-Bar Blues
Devices: vibrato; slurs; rips; growls; glissandi, barnyard animal noises made with instruments
Scales: blues; major
Recurring Patterns:
Developmental Techniques:

General Comments:

Livery Stable Blues, released in 1917, is historically significant as it is considered to be the first jazz recording. The ODJB, comprised of all white musicians, certainly did not invent jazz but did mark the beginning of its recorded history. At that time, jazz was considered a wild, noisy, playful, fun, impertinent music with little if any perceived artistic value. Nick LaRocca, the band’s leader, instinctively understood the elements of popular appeal and novelty in jazz. Of course, jazz was destined to grow in depth, breadth, and brilliance far beyond the ODJB’s effective yet modest capabilities.