RECORDING FOR CRESCENT 1944-45
Music: The Kid Comes Back
Monday, Feb. 05, 1945
To jazz connoisseurs, lightskinned, leathery Edward ("Kid") Ory, 58, is an authentic old master. His fame flowered in the Bayreuth of jazz, New Orleans in the early 1900s. Ever since, he has been one of the legendary great tailgate trombonists.* A little over a decade ago, thoroughly discouraged by the rising popularity of big-orchestra sweetness ("I figured I couldn't live off jazz"), he dropped out of sight. This week, after more than two years of shuffling up the comeback trail, the Kid and his slippery, sliding trombone were sitting pretty again.
It was a dark-eyed jazz zealot named Marili Morden, proprietor of Hollywood's Jazz Man Record Shop, who finally found the Kid. He had been working in the mail room of Los Angeles' Sante Fe railway station. For nine years his trombone had been collecting dust, but he had not lost the old tailgate technique.
Zealot Morden got him a job on Orson Welles's radio program. Then, with the help of Washington's 27-year-old Nesuhi Ertegun, erudite, diminutive son of the late Turkish Ambassador, she founded the Crescent Record Co. Zealot Ertegun is passionately certain that New Orleans jazz is a genuine art form, and America's chief contribution to culture. His most obvious reason for founding the company was to get the Kid back on wax. (Ory's 1921 Sunshine recordings—Ory's Creole Trombone, Society Blues—were probably the first Negro-made records of U.S. jazz.)
Crescent's 1,500 pressings of two Kid Ory discs (Creole Song; South, Get Out of Here; Blues for Jimmy) were sold out soon after the release. They were made in Los Angeles with the help of an authentic Dixieland ensemble—including Trumpeter Edward ("Mutt") Carey, who weathered the sweet-arrangement era as a Pullman porter. The recordings, a mixture of Congo barrelhouse and Creole sauce, are probably as close as anything ever put on wax to the spirit of old Storyville, New Orleans' once-gaudy bawdyhouse district.
Crescent's Morden and Ertegun, who are putting out a 1,200-disc reissue this week, have enthusiastic plans for new Ory recordings this spring. Meanwhile the Kid, already expert on the five-string banjo, guitar, alto saxophone, trumpet and bass, is taking piano lessons. Mulling over his future, he concluded: "Now that I've got me a good Dixieland band, I'm going to try and play as long as I hold up."
* In old New Orleans, blaring Negro bands were carted through the streets on the slightest pretext; the trombonist sat well back, over the parade wagon tailgate, where he had elbow room to maneuver his slide.
From the book “Hot Jazz For Sale: Hollywoods Jazz Man Record Shop”
by Gary Ginell: (page 144-145)
A third session was held o September 8, 1945, with the resulting records actually released before the sides from the August session. The band remained intact except for Simeon, who was replaced by another veteran of the Oliver and Morton bands, Darnell Howard. Once again, the session was dominated by numbers familiar to fans of the traditional jazz revival: W.C. Handy’s “Oh, Didn’t He Ramble,” “Maryland, My Maryland,” and Wilbur Sweatman’s “Down Home Rag”.
For the fourth tune, Ory decided on a traditional rag that he had known for years but could not recall its title. For the purpose of the session, he named it after the year Marili Morden was born, “1919.” These four sides, numbered Crescent 3 and 4, were released on November 15, 1945.
