In May 1922 Kid Ory’s Jazz Band entered Andrae Nordskog’s studio in Santa Monica, California, and made the first recording of a Black New Orleans jazz band. The 1811/Kid Ory Historic House in LaPlace, Louisiana, is marking this historic occasion with a performance by Hal Smith’s On the Levee Jazz Band on Wednesday, May 4, beginning at 4 p.m.
Hal Smith leads this band modeled on the musicality of the Ory’s Creole Jazz Band. The event is being taped for a future documentary on the significance of the 1922 Kid Ory recordings. John McCusker, a biographer of Ory and founder of the museum will offer brief remarks on the impact and context of the recordings and will also discuss the early, mechanical recording process. Blaine Miller will supervise a mechanical recording with no microphones of the On the Levee Band directly onto a wax cylinder using a century-old Edison phonograph.
One of the oldest structures in St. John the Baptist parish, the 1811 Kid Ory Historic House figures in two noteworthy moments in American history: The 1811 rebellion of enslaved people and the dawn of jazz.
The first blood of the rebellion was drawn in the house and pioneering jazz bandleader, composer, trombonist, and recording artist Edward “Kid” Ory was born in the quarters there in 1886.
Both stories come alive in exhibits that include antique, homemade instruments, interpretive story panels, period maps, working antique phonographs, interactive displays of music and video, and Ory’s century-old trombone.
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