CHAPTER 12 | THE RISE OF JAZZ 289
collective improvisation comes the most celebrated part of Dippermouth Blues:
Oliver’s cornet solo in choruses 6–8. All of the Oliver trademarks are here. The
solo is played with a variety of muted effects, placing the emphasis on timbre;
prominent among those effects is the “wah-wah” sound of the plunger mute,
the rubber end of a plumber’s helper, which Oliver uses to partially open and
close the bell of the trumpet, sounding eerily like a human voice. There is also
a focus on the middle register, especially in his fi rst solo chorus, which worries
the blue third much as Bessie Smith does in “St. Louis Blues” (see LG 11.1). This
was a “set” solo: a melody in the style of an improvisation that Oliver worked out
and repeated when his group performed this piece—and that other musicians
sometimes emulated when playing it.
Oliver’s last chorus ends with a two-bar break: a brief span of time during
which the accompaniment drops out, creating a gap in the otherwise continu-
ous musical fabric. Breaks are typically fi lled with an instrumental solo, but here
the bass player, Bill Johnson, shouts, “Oh, play that thing!”
The limitations of acoustic recording (in 1923 the electric microphone was
still two years in the future) make the piano and bass all but inaudible and
force drummer Warren “Baby” Dodds to restrict himself to woodblock—drums
overpowered the delicate recording equipment. Digital restoration has done
something to clarify the murky sound of the original. Still, only intermittently
audible is the twenty-one-year-old musician playing second cornet to Oliver’s
lead: Louis Armstrong, who has already appeared in chapter 11 accompany-
ing Bessie Smith and who was soon to leave Oliver’s organization for a brilliant
solo career. Oliver thought enough of his deferential sideman to name this
tune after him: “Dippermouth” was one of several nicknames bestowed on
Armstrong in reference to his large mouth, along with “Gatemouth” and “Satchel
Mouth,” the latter misheard by a British reporter when Armstrong was touring
England and transformed into “Satchmo,” the name long used by the jazz vir-
tuoso’s adoring fans.
Dippermouth Blues and the other sides recorded by Oliver’s band at the Gen-
nett Studio in Richmond, Indiana, in 1923 are a landmark in the history of jazz.
Not only do they represent the fi rst major set of recordings by black jazz musi-
cians, but they also seem to have broken the color barrier. From 1923 on, the
music of black jazz performers as well as white was preserved and circulated
on record. The Oliver band’s remarkable blend of freedom and discipline
has been taken as another kind of landmark: an exemplar of classic New Orleans
jazz.JAZZ AND THE PUBLIC
Well before these black New Orleanians began recording, the American pub-
lic had discovered jazz as a riotous new form of popular entertainment. In late
1916 the Original Dixieland Jazz Band was hired for an engagement in New York,
and in 1917 they became the fi rst jazz group to make recordings, for Victor. The
ODJB, made up of fi ve white New Orleans players (cornet, clarinet, trombone,
drums, and piano), caused a great stir. Livery Stable Blues featured rooster sounds
from the clarinet, cow moos from the trombone, and a horse neighing from the
cornet. In the hands of the ODJB, jazz was thus introduced as a nose-thumbing
parody of standard music making, and the public found the result hilarious.plunger mutebreak172028_12_280-304_r3_ko.indd 289 23/01/13 8:40 PM