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ALABAMA BOUND |
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greatest hot trumpeter in existence. He hit the highest and the lowest notes on a trumpet that anybody outside of Gabriel ever did. He had the best ear, the best tone, and the most marvelous execution I ever heard and there was no end to his ideas; he could play one chorus eight or ten different ways. Freddie was a very fine fellow�with plenty of cheap notoriety �always was after women and spent every dime he ever made on whiskey. In the end he died broke in Chicago.
It was under Freddie Keppard in 1908 that there happened to come into existence the first Dixieland combination. Freddie was playing at the time at a big dance hall called the Tuxedo, located in the tenderloin district on Franklin Street between Custom House and Iberville. Billy Phillips' joint was close-by and it created such a scandal when Lefty Louie's gang out of New York killed him that business fell off in the place for a while. At that time Freddie had seven pieces�violin, bass, drums, guitar, trombone, clarinet, and trumpet. To save money he dropped the violin, bass, and guitar�and added a piano. This was the first Dixieland combination: five pieces, composed of Edward Vincent�trombone, Freddie Keppard�cornet, George Baquet�clarinet, D. D. Chandler�drums, and Bud Christian�piano.* Then I wish you could have heard those boys ramble on.
* Whatever his pet prejudices, Jelly Roll never lost sight of his main point: hot jazz was the creation of New Orleans Negroes. In his view "the light, two-beat jazz" which has come to be called "Dixieland" was the creation of the Keppard combination. One can understand his insistence on this seemingly small point when one remembers that the all-white Original Dixieland Jazz Band of 1917 (by chance the firsthand to record jazz) is generally reckoned the originator of "Dixieland." And in this lies the reason for Jelly Roll's telling tliis circumstantial tale of Keppard's all-Negro Tuxedo band, which antedated the white group hy a decade. |
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