Redhotjazz.com was a crown jewel of the early internet. Starting in the mid ’90s it made the offline discographies and biographies of early jazz available to the online public. It also hosted thousands of audio files donated by people who were digitizing their 78 RPM record collections, making many obscure recordings available for the first time. This all started long before Youtube and even before Wikipedia was much more than an idea.
We are duplicating the content of the Red Hot Jazz Archive from a snapshot saved in Archive.org’s Wayback Machine. Keeping with both the original intent and mission of Redhotjazz.org everything will be publicly available outside of our paywall. For ease of use we are improving each entry to meet the norms of the phone friendly modern internet.
The downloadable music files are mostly MP3s but some are in the ancient Real Audio (.ra) format. Rather than opening a new tab so you can stream or download them the Real Audio files will immediately download when you click them. Don’t be frightened. You don’t need Real Audio player to play them but they won’t work on Windows Media Player. We recommend the free and open source VLC player.
For more information read: About the Archive
A pseudonym for the Duke Ellington Orchestra. Title Recording Date Recording Location Company Sing You Sinners (Harling / Coslow) 3-1930 New York, New York Hit
The Jungle Band was a pseudonym for the Duke Ellington Orchestra. Title Recording Date Recording Location Company Accordion Joe (Dale Wimbrow / Charles Cornell) 4-22-1930 New
<Mill’s Ten Black Berries was a pseudonym for the Duke Ellington Orchestra. Title Recording Date Recording Location Company Black And Tan Fantasy (Duke Ellington / Bubber Miley) 6-12-1930
The Harlem Footwarmers was a pseudonym for the Duke Ellington Orchestra. Title Recording Date Recording Location Company Big House Blues (Duke Ellington) 10-14-1930 New York,
The Whoopee Makers was a pseudonym for the Duke Ellington Orchestra. Title Recording Date Recording Location Company Hot And Bothered (Dorothy Fields / Jimmy McHugh)
Title Recording Date Recording Location Company Bill Brown Blues (Bill Brown) 3-17-1927 New York, New York Brunswick 7003-A E-21986 Hot Lips (Henry Busse / Jack Lange
Title Recording Date Recording Location Company Mean Baby Blues 2-4-1930 Richmond, Indiana Champion 16607 Artist Instrument Jimmy Blythe or Alexander ‘Bob’ Robinson or Leroy Carr
Title Recording Date Recording Location Company Boot It, Boy 3-12-1929 New York, New York Brunswick 7064 Sho’ Is Hot 3-12-1929 New York, New York Brunswick
It was not uncommon for record companies to release instrumental jazz tracks by famous Blues singer’s backing bands. In the case of some of the
An architectural student, Frank Winegar organized a college dance band at the University of Pennsylvania in 1922. It was through Ted Weems that the opportunity
Title Recording Date Recording Location Company Alligator Crawl (Fats Waller) 12-14-1934 New York, New York Bluebird B-5803 Baby Brown (Alex Hill) 12-14-1934 New York, New
The Hotel Biltmore was located at Madison Avenue and 43rd Street in New York City. Additional records by this group were released simply as Roger Wolfe
When Mamie Smith recorded “Crazy Blues” for Okeh in 1920, little did she or her Svengali-like manager Perry Bradford have any idea what effect this would have
Title Recording Date Recording Location Company Blue (Grant Clarke / Edgar Leslie / Lou Handman) 9-4-1922 New York, New York Gennett 4943-B Haunting Blues (Walter
The Tampa Blue Jazz Band was a pseudonym for Joseph Samuels’ Jazz Band. Title Recording Date Recording Location Company Ain’t Got Nothin’ Blues (Lemuel Fowler) 3-27-1922
DePriest E. B. Wheeler (March 1, 1903 – April 10, 1998), born in Kansas City, Missouri, was the eldest son of Rev. William Henry Wheeler,
The Missourians were a mid-western band that was greatly influenced by Benny Moten. In the mid-1920s they relocated to New York and played at the
The Cotton Club Orchestra was the name that the Missourians used when playing at the Cotton Club which was located on the second floor of 644
Title Recording Date Recording Location Company I’m Afraid To Care For You (Dave Frank / Harry Owen) 1-22-1925 New Orleans, Louisiana Okeh 40297 Artist Instrument
Charles A. Matson was an African-American pianist and arranger who was very active in New York during the mid-twenties. He accompanied various blues singers as
Ted Claire was a vaudeville performer who was touring the Orpheum circuit when these recordings were made. Charles A. Matson’s was the musical director of
Charles A. Matson was an African-American pianist and arranger who was very active in New York during the mid-twenties. He accompanied various blues singers, including
The euphemistically named Dixie Daisies were not so much a name as a catch all pseudonym for a variety of groups that recorded for the
The Six Brown Brothers who recorded for Victor and Emerson between 1914 and 1920 evolved from a saxophone quartet in the 1906 edition of Ringling
