EDWARD KID ORY (1886-1973)

Edward "Kid" Ory (b. December 25th, 1886 - d. January 23rd, 1973)  was an american jazz trombonist and band leader. He also composed several standards as Muskrat Ramble (1926), Ory's Creole Trombone and Savoy Blues (1927 ?). He was one of the main figures of New Orleans jazz in the 1910s and 1920s and played an important part in the revival which took place in the 1940s. He was a typical player of the tailgate style, accompanying the trumpet lead with a rhythmic counterpoint interspersed with sliding effects.

Biography

Kid Ory was born at the Woodland Plantation, near La Place, Louisiana. He started playing music as a child on self made instruments. After making his debuts on the banjo in a string band and marching bands, he switched to trombone at age 13 (he had spared money to buy a trombone in a music shop in New Orleans). However, since he was 10 years old, he was leading a group which became quite well known in south-eastern Louisiana, and among which he even had his friend Buddy Bolden play the cornet.They were soon joined by Johnny Dodds on clarinet, after Kid Ory offered him enough money for him to drop his daytime job at the local transportation company. At the same time, the violin player switched to cornet, and the band's line-up was then close to the present days traditional jazz bands. With this orchestra, Ory played mainly the Lincoln and the national park. For family reasons, he remained at La Place until he was 21 (his family thought he was too young to go and play with Buddy Bolden) before he eventually left with his group.

He career starts flourishing in the early 1910s in New Orleans, as he plays in Lewis Matthews's orchestra. He then took over that very popular orchestra, with Mutt Carey, between 1912 and 1919, leading it to become one of the more appreciated in New Orleans, and recruiting local musicians as Johnny Dodds, Jimmie Noone, King Oliver or Sidney Bechet. He'll also hire a young trumpet prodigy called louis Armstrong to replace King Oliver in 1916. Forced to leave to California in the early 1920s, he takes the opportunity to gather a new orchestra under his sole leadership, the Kid Ory's Creole Orchestra, which will become the first african-american orchestra on record, playing such tunes as Ory's Creole Trombone and Society Blues under the name Spike's Seen Pods Of Pepper Orchestra.

King Oliver asked Kid Ory to come join him in Chicago in 1919. Ory agreed, but planned his trip to California first. While in California he got an engagement at the Cadillac Cafè, with higher wages than King Oliver's offer. He then settled in California and played with his own orchestra. He took there and then his first music lessons and learnt to read sheet music. His band also got regular bookings in San Francisco and Oakland. He made his first recording in Los Angeles in 1922, billed as Spike's Seven Pods Of Pepper Orchestra and playing tunes as Ory's Creole Trombone and Society Blues. He fared very well until 1924, when he split his band and moved to Chicago  to join Louis Armstrong. A few months later, he leaves Armstrong and joins King Oliver in Erskine Tate's orchestra. While in Chicago he starts taking trombone lessons with famous classical trombonist Jerry Chimera. In 1926, Louis Armstrong asks him to join his Hot Five to make records for the Okeh label. Heebie Jeebies, Savoy Blues, Hotter Than That, I'm Not Rough among others were recorded with the Hot Five. These recordings rank among the best of the start of the 20th century jazz. In Struttin' With Some Barbecue, Kid Ory is heard soloing in the very distinctive style he had then.

So by the end of the 1920s he was very active in the recordings studios in Chicago with Louis Armstrong's Hot Five in 1926-1927 and Hot Seven, Jelly Roll Morton's Red Hot Peppers (Original Jelly Roll Blues, Doctor Jazz, Black Bottom Stomp, Dead Man Blues, ...), King Oliver's Dixie Syncopators (Snag It, Wa Wa Wa,...) and many others.

In 1927, he is hired to play in Oliver's orchestra at the Savoy Ballroom in New York. He soon comes back to Chicago to play with Dave Payton, and then back again to New York's Savoy, with Clarence Black.

Still Ory was longing to go back to California. By the end of 1929, he goes back to Los Angeles to play with his long time partner cornetist Mutt Carey. After several engagements in Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco, Kid Ory leaves the music business in the 1930s. The depression getting worse, it was getting more and more difficult to make a living playing music. He took up different jobs, even farming with his brother. He will eventually pick up his trombone again at the start of the 1940s. His Creole Orchestra was then an important actor of the revival of the New Orleans style in California in the 1940s and 1950s. Marili Morden and Nesuhi Ertegun, producers of the Crescent Records, introduced him to Orson Welles in 1944, which lead to his playing on the Orson Welles Radio Show and other radio shows. In 1946, Kid Ory claimed playing New Orleans Folk Music (as opposed to the then burgeoning be-bop, even though Kid Ory personally did not reject any form of music) found new bookings with his Creole Jazz Band in San Francisco and Los Angeles. He saw then a new time of strong artistic activities, which allowed him to invest in a music club where he would still be playing at the dawn of the 1960s. However, an ailing health make him leave the scene to go and live in Hawaii where he will eventually pass in 1973.

As far as one can look back in the story of jazz, Kid Ory appears as the first great trombonist of the african-american culture. He helped define and develop the tailgate style, which means for the trombone playing a rhythm line under the lead of the trumpets. Kid Ory's huge sound, his bold use of the slide and strong humor defined the new sound of New Orleans trombone. A pioneer of recorded jazz, he was also a composer who helped build the musical glory of New-Orleans and Dixieland.

Kid Ory was one of the few musicians and singers to record songs in Louisiana creole (Blanche Touquatoux, Eh La-bas, or Creole Bobo, a creole lullaby). In a short movie shot in Paris, France, Kid Ory recalls that his father was born in that city. He also tells how quarters as the Latin Quarter remind him of the atmosphere of New-Orleans.

He dies of heart failure on January 23rd, 1973. He had stopped playing in 1966.