Edward ‘Kid’ Ory was born in La Place, Louisiana, on December 25 1886. His father’s family was of French extraction: “When my dad arrived in this country at the age of seventeen, he only knew a few words of English. My first language was French. I was the fifth of seven children”. As for his mother, she was half-and-half Spanish and Indian. But Kid Ory was always considered ‘black’ by the American racial system. His father owned plantations in La Place, thirty-odd miles from N.O. This was where he spent his boyhood along with his five sisters and his brother.
“My first instrument was a banjo that I made from a cigar-box. In 1907 my dad bought me a real banjo in N. Orleans. When I was thirteen, I formed a little band. We had a violin made from materials we found, a three-string bass, a guitar and a banjo, and our drum-kit was a chair. To make some money we would organise picnics with beer and salad: fifteen cents to get in and dance. We played numbers like ‘Pallet On The Floor’ and waltzes. On the weekend we’d go to N. Orleans to listen to the bands that played in the public parks. Once they’d played a number, we would be able to play it too. If we didn’t manage to steal it all, we’d make up a number out of two of theirs”.
Although he was best known as a trombonist and singer, Ory was also one of the first ‘multi-instrumentalists’ in Jazz history. He could play cornet, bass, alto sax, clarinet and drums. His first trombone was a valve instrument: “I’d bought it for four dollars which five of us had earned playing at the picnics. I went on to slide trombone as it was getting more popular. But for some time I used both. The first musicians I heard were Buddy Bolden and Edward Clem, a one-eyed cornettist. I once had the chance to speak to Bolden. I’d been to see one of my sisters in N. Orleans. I had come back from the shop where I’d bought a trombone and I was trying it out. Hearing me from the street, Buddy knocked on the door. When I answered the door, he told me he needed a trombonist, but my sister said no, I was too young. Buddy Bolden had a good sound for the time, though harmonically it was lacking. Don’t forget, though, that he was the man who started it all”.
Ory denied emphatically that Jazz owed any of its origin to Africa.: “It doesn’t go back that far. All it was to begin with was people clapping hands in church”. His parents both died the same year, within months of each other. “All I’d got to show was what these days would be the level of primary education”. In 1911 he took his band to N. Orleans. “ I had put a sign on my door, ‘Orchestra and brass band’. you’d have to have been blind not to see it. Then I hired a removal van and had a pal make me a poster with my name, address and phone number on it. I got loads of enquiries.
In the end I became quite popular”. Up to when he left for California, He had. In turn, on trumpet, Papa Mutt Carey, King Oliver and Louis Armstrong, plus Johnny Dodds, Sidney Bechet, Jimmie Noone and George Lewis on clarinet. But he played the most with Joe ‘King’ Oliver: “I gave Joe his nickname. The last time I saw him, at the Savoy, he thanked me. He worked in my band in 1916, but through the twenties I worked for him in New York, Chicago and St Louis. As for Louis Armstrong, my memories of him go back to the time when he was parading through the streets as part of the Waifs’ Home Band. Even then he was getting noticed. The drummer in my brass band, Black Benny, took him under his wing. He it was who asked me if Louis could play with us. When Joe Oliver left, Louis replaced him on cornet. He progressed by leaps and bounds. He had a great ear. We would take a piano part, decipher the melody line and Louis would learn it by heart. He didn’t learn his trade on the riverboats, he could already play when he quit my band”.
Like Joe Oliver, Jimmy Noone also left Kid’s band to work in Chicago. “ When I was offered a residency in Chicago, I was happy to give it to Joe Oliver. Things were going too well for me in N. Orleans. But in 1919 I went off to California on my doctor’s advice, to live in a drier climate. I only knew one person in L.A., a musician who helped me find a room. Then I met a guy I had known in N. Orleans: Zack Williams. He was working in films. Thanks to him, I landed a contract with a club on Central Avenue. Zack lent me enough money to bring my musicians up from N. Orleans. As Louis had just joined Fate Marable, I hired Papa Mutt Carey”.
　

The original French article was translated into English by George Walker.

In June 1922 in L.A. he made records under the name ‘Kid Ory’s Sunshine Orchestra, (sometimes renamed ‘Spikes’ Seven Pods of Pepper’), arguably the first phonographic example of ‘real’ N. Orleans Jazz (this record being produced by the firms Nordskog and Sunshine):‘ Ory’s Creole Trombone’ and ‘Society Blues’, with Mutt Carey (cornet), Dink Johnson (clarinet), Fred Washington (piano), Ed Garland (bass) and Ben Borders (drums). But in 1924 the summonses from Chicago were becoming more and more insistent: King Oliver wanted him to join the Savannah Syncopators and Louis Armstrong had plans to make some records. Kid left, leaving his band in the care of Papa Mutt.
“I don’t know whose idea it was to record the Hot Five, maybe it was pianist Richard M. Jones who was working for Okeh in Chicago. He would accompany female blues singers and choose their material. Louis’ idea was to form a regular band to play at Dreamland and then five musicians out of that band would make records together.
As well as Louis, I already knew Johnny Dodds and Johnny St Cyr. They’d all been in my New Orleans band. The pianist, Lil Armstrong, was the only one I’d never worked with. She was a good musician and we hit it off at once. We were well-off at that time. We were lucky, the money rolled in. The records sold better than we’d hoped and sales rocketed when Okeh gave away a photo of Louis with every record”.
In 1926 ‘Heebie-Jeebies’ was what today would be called a ‘smash hit’. In that same session on 26 February, the first recording of ‘Muskrat Ramble’ was made:
“I’d written it in 1921 at the time I was playing in a Los Angeles dance hall. But it was Lil who made up the name, after the session. In the same year I recorded with Jelly Roll Morton’s Red Hot Peppers”. From 1952, as ‘Muskrat Ramble’ had become a standard, Ory was allowed to join ASCAP. Copyright of this title (Ray Gilbert wrote words for it in 1950; countless bands and singers, even Dean Martin, have recorded it since then) and a few others (‘Ory’s Creole Trombone‘, ’Savoy Blues’, ‘Sweet Little Papa’ guaranteed a comfortable retirement for their author.
Ory didn’t only record with Louis and Jelly Roll but also with Ma Rainey, Tiny Parham and Luis Russell. He worked as well with King Oliver in the dance bands of Dave Peyton, Clarence Black at the Savoy; Boyd Atkins’ Chicago Vagabonds at the Sunset Café… while he was in Black’s band he wrote ‘Savoy Blues’ . Back in L.A. in 1930 he worked for several months with Mutt Carey’s Jeffersonians, with Emerson Scott and Freddy Washington (at the Club Araby in 1931) and Charlie Echols’ Ebony Serenaders. But after 1929, ‘business’, including music, went from bad to worse. Before he gave up music altogether Ory’s last major job was with Léon René’s band:
“ He had a group of ten musicians who played at the Pantages Theatre for the operetta ‘Lucky Day’. I was getting ninety dollars a week” . But money problems got so bad that Kid Ory, like many musicians of his generation, decided to change direction.
After working in the postal sorting office at Santa Fé station, he joined his brother on a chicken farm until 1939.
He played again in 1942 at the Trouville Club in L.A., in the band of Barney Bigard, who had just left Duke Ellington. Up to 1944, Ory was mainly playing bass and alto sax, and was fronting a quartet at the Tiptoe Inn.
“ It was Orson Welles who got me started again. He wanted a band for his radio broadcast on CBS. We played ‘High Society’. Soon after, people started to get back into New Orleans jazz ”. That broadcast was when he took up his trombone again, in 1944, and got back with Mutt Carey, Buster Wilson, Bud Scott, Ed Garland and Zutty Singleton. He found he had a second career, which was helped along by the renaissance of the New Orleans style. From 1949 the work increased. Ory even appeared in several films: (‘New Orleans’ with Louis Armstrong, ‘Crossfire’, ‘Mahogany Magic’, ‘Disneyland After Dark’ and ‘The Benny Goodman Story’) and he played in Europe for the first time (in 1956 - he made a second tour in 1959).
After several years in semi-retirement in L.A. he moved to Honolulu for health reasons. On his 84th birthday he took part in an open-air concert but had to make do with singing ‘Muskrat Ramble’ as his doctor had forbidden him to play trombone.
He did however play once more, at the Festival of New Orleans. A bout of pneumonia saw him hospitalised at the start of the year, where he would die on 23 January in Honolulu. (Information gathered by Leonard Feather).  

KID ORY 1886-1973

BY LEONARD FEATHER

Jazz Magazine No 209 March 1973