JOE "KING" OLIVER
(1886 - 1938)
Joe "King" Oliver -- a legend in Jazz history.
As a trumpet player, he was strongly influenced by Buddy
Bolden whom he imitated, but Oliver soon became a Jazz stylist in his
own right. In the end, the designation of "king," which Bolden had
long assumed, became Oliver's -- particularly after one memorable night
in Storyville.
On that occasion, Oliver walked up and down Iberville Street playing
on his trumpet the most varied and fanciful improvisations and defiantly
pointing the mouth of his trumpet toward the cabarets and honky-tonks where
such Freddie Keppard, trumpet, and Emanuel Perez, cornet, held sway.
They say that on that night, lovers of Jazz music began to drift out of
all the honky-tonks to follow Joe Oliver on his march through Storyville
into the Aberdeen Cafe where he was then performing. They overcrowded
the place to listen to Joe Oliver playing for hours at a stretch.
Before he left for Chicago in 1918, Oliver had played with various groups
in which some of New Orleans best loved Jazzmen could be found. Oliver
was the benefactor of young Louis Armstrong, and much that young Armstrong
learned about playing the trumpet in his apprentice years in New Orleans
was learned from Oliver. As Armstrong later recalled: "We got
all of King Oliver's extra work. Joe was looking out for this boy."
David
Ewen - All the Years of American Popular Music
