Livery Stable Blues Music Analysis

The recording of the Livery Stable Blues is one of the most important moments in the jazz history, which helped this genre of music get wide recognition outside of New Orleans.

In New Orleans, where the jazz music started, music was not a luxury, it was a necessity. Ethnicities represented in New Orleans were as follows: French, Spanish, and African, Italian, German, and Irish (Herbert Asbury, 1938). This unique combination provided a unique mix of cultural influences which gave birth to such unique styles of music: ragtime, blues, spirituals, marches, and of course jazz. The workers needed the music as a way of communication, relief, and hope for freedom, during the mind-numbing labor.

Ragtime started its wide spread after the abolition of slavery in 1865 and during the times of segregation. During those times African Americans did not have access to most employment opportunities and were mostly able to find work in entertainment. “Black musicians were able to provide entertainment in dances, minstrel shows, and in vaudeville, during which time many marching bands were formed. Black pianists played in bars, clubs and brothels, as ragtime

developed.” Mervyn Cooke (1999)
The last decade of the 19th century Charles Bolden began improvising blues and increasing the tempo of dance music. Many early jazz-performers credited Charles Bolden as the King of Jazz. This improvised approach to music has brought more musicians into the improvising bands. Additional repressive segregation laws being passed in the 1890’s united the Creoles of color with the African Americans, strengthening early jazz. (Lemuel Berry Jr.,1991)
New Orleans jazz began to spread to other cities as the city's musicians joined riverboat bands and vaudeville, minstrel, and other show tours. Jelly Roll Morton, an innovative piano stylist and composer, began his odyssey outside of New Orleans as early as 1907. The Original Creole Orchestra, featuring Freddie Keppard, was an important early group that left New Orleans, moving to Los Angeles in 1912 and then touring the Orpheum Theater circuit, with gigs in Chicago and New York. In fact, Chicago and New York became the main markets for New Orleans jazz. Tom Brown's Band from Dixieland left New Orleans for Chicago in 1915, and Nick LaRocca and other members of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band headed there in 1916. (Andre Hodeir, 1956)
Livery Stable Blues recorded on the 26th of February 1917 (John Davis, 2012, p.

xv) in the studio of New York company “Victor”, by five white musicians from the New Orleans, “Original Dixieland Jass Band”. The importance of this event is impossible to overrate. Before this recording jazz was a little branch of music and had only been played by a small group of musicians in New Orleans. After the record was published on the 7th of March 1917, within weeks’ jazz had taken over America.

'Livery Stable Blues' was the first jazz product to hit the market in broad distribution," Bruce Boyd Raeburn, curator of the Hogan Jazz Archives at Tulane University said, “It sold 1.5 million copies and was the biggest hit of that time. The band could travel around the country, but the record could go all over the world. (Eric Elie, 1997, p.

B1)
Some of the researchers point out that Freddie Keppard was first to record a jazz record. Freddie Keppard was referenced as the Second King of Jazz and the successor of the Buddy Bolden’s sound. “While not a student of Bolden, Keppard was seriously influenced by his predecessor. No recordings of Buddy Bolden exist, so Keppard’s hint at what he sounded like.” (Cherry, H. 2012) Researchers point that in the 1916 company “Victor” made an offer to Freddie Keppard to make the first jazz recording (Turner, Frederick W., 1982), but “when first approached in 1916 to make a recording, which would have become one of, if not the first jazz outing on record, Keppard said no. For a century, people have insisted this was because he feared his style would be stolen—the same reason most other New Orleans musicians gave. In the liner notes for the collection Freddie Keppard: The Complete Set: 1923-1926, Mark Beresford reports that Keppard declined the test session because the session offered no payment, also common practice at the time. Another story allows that Keppard was offered money to record, 25 dollars, and that he laughed at the offer.” (Cherry, H,2012). Freddie Keppard did end up recording some of his songs, the most famous of them being: “Stock Yard Strut” which represented his unusual style.
We can conclude that the “Livery Stable Blues” by “Original Dixieland Jass Band” was the first recording of jazz, as other musicians at that time have rejected the offers to be recorded, or were not as widely recognized and did not get a chance to record their music.