Every year is now a centennial year for historic jazz. Between 2017 and 2023 we didn’t commemorate that many recordings. The ODJB got their articles in 2017, Mamie’s Smith was memorialized for kicking off the blues craze in 1920, Kid Ory’s 1922 records had a mention, and The NORK we covered far ahead of their centennial when Rivermont had a major re-issue. Nearly everything else rolled by without acknowledgment. That changed with the centennial of King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band’s 1923 recordings. From here on out there’s hot jazz galore. You could spend the rest of the 2020s making daily playlists of jazz records celebrating their hundredth birthday.
But just because a birthday has passed doesn’t mean you should forget those great recordings another hundred years, and just because we didn’t cover the Secret Six Jazz Band’s Centennial Tribute To King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band in real time doesn’t mean it isn’t worth your time. Recorded at the New Orleans Jazz Museum in April 2023 and released on Bandcamp in September it is a professionally recorded set featuring 14 of the titles recorded by the Creole Jazz Band in 1923. Those sessions featured the earliest recordings of Louis Armstrong but is also the first we hear most of the rest of the band: Baby Dodds on drums, Johnny Dodds on clarinet, Lil Hardin on piano, Honoré Dutrey on trombone, and Bill Johnson on ba
