Texas Shout #32 White New Orleans Dixieland, Part 1

Set forth below is the thirty-second "Texas Shout" column. The initial installment of a two-part essay, it first appeared in the September 1992 issue of the West Coast Rag, (now The Syncopated Times). In New Orleans, as jazz was being developed, there were three fairly distinct styles of Dixieland. Two were played principally by Black musicians, one by whites. The "downtown" Blacks, including many Creoles, played a schooled, tech­nically accomplished type of jazz that is heard on almost all of the recordings made during the 1920s by Black musicians from the Crescent City – Oliver, Bechet, Armstrong, Ory, Noone, Morton, Dodds, etc. The "uptown" Blacks played a more functional, direct, dance-hall style that did not achieve much critical notice until the revival of the early 1940s when it was heard on the records of Bunk Johnson. The jazz style of the early white New Orleans musicians was once the most famous style of jazz in the world. It was the first kind of jazz to appear on record, bursting on the scene in 1917 via tremendously successful 78s by the Origi­nal Dixieland Jazz Band. Today this style, which I call "white New Orleans,” has virtually disappeared from the face of the earth. I think that's too bad. I'd like to devote the remainder of this column to describing the charac­teristics of white New Orleans, to offering my views as to the reason for its neglect