Voices on King Oliver

It was my ambition to play as he did. I still think that if it had not been for Joe Oliver, Jazz would not be what it is today.

I never did try to over-blow Joe at no time when I played with him… He still played whatever he wanted to play, and I always played pretty under him.

Joe, you know, he was getting up in age and he didn't preserve his chops… I would never play over Joe because that's the respect I had for him… It's too bad because that was my man, and he'll be my idol.

King Oliver always played from the heart. When he led the band, you had to play your best — he brought it out of you.

Joe Oliver had a beautiful tone and a way of leading the band that made the music come alive.

Joe Oliver had the finest band in Chicago. He had the best trumpet in the world.

Joe Oliver's horn had a human sound. He talked with it.

King Oliver's band had a majesty that stayed with me all my life.

Oliver's band was the model for all of us arranging in the early days.

The Oliver band of 1923 was the first great jazz band.

As Oliver's recordings of 1923 recede further into the historical past, each succeeding generation will undoubtedly find it harder to relate to them. Forty years or so of solo-oriented jazz make it difficult for people to understand the collective music-making conception the Creole Jazz Band represented… For me they have a lovely sound all their own, as nostalgic and personal as the sound of a Model T.

Armstrong was skillfully treading the fine line between the functional requirements of second cornet to King Oliver and his own burgeoning solo tendencies.

If we could preserve only one document of New Orleans jazz, the 1923 Oliver recordings would be the ones to choose.

Oliver's 1923 recordings are central documents of early jazz… ensemble music of great sophistication and emotional power.

Early New Orleans jazz was about the quality of sound rather than the quantity of notes, and Oliver was the great master of getting the cornet to speak with a vocal tone. His down-and-dirty sound captures the ethos of jazz as it emerged at the dawn of the American century.

The Creole Jazz Band recordings from 1923 represent the purest recorded example of early New Orleans ensemble practice.

King Oliver and Louis Armstrong of New Orleans conjured jazz in Chicago… Almost every aspect of American music during the past seventy years, the modern era, is prefigured in the flurry of activity documented in recording studios between 1923 and 1927.

African American musical tradition is built on collective expression. The Oliver band, in its recorded form, gives us the most complete early account of that principle in jazz.

The 1923 recordings by King Oliver's working Chicago band are the stuff of legend. Nothing like them had ever been heard on record before, and nothing in jazz would be the same afterward.

From Verdi and Caruso to Jones and Panico to Oliver and Armstrong, all of this music seemed to be in a state of constant conversation with each other and with anyone who was listening.

There is nothing in early jazz more perfect than the ensemble of King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band.

Oliver's band stands as the purest expression of genuine New Orleans jazz on record.

In Oliver's band, collective improvisation achieves a level of balance and refinement unmatched in early jazz.

King Oliver's music is the foundation. Everything we play in New Orleans comes from that sound.

Oliver's band shows you exactly what the banjo's role was in early jazz: rhythmic propulsion with harmonic clarity.

Those recordings give us the clearest picture of how clarinet functioned in early ensemble jazz.

I started listening to King Oliver after buying a 78 of his while on tour in England in the fall of 2009. I became intrigued with his music, and with him as an individual; not only did I begin to listen and learn his music, but I read about his life journey. So in 2010 I decided to pay tribute by playing his music in a respectful, genuine, contemporary fashion that is unique to my musical experience.

I enjoy King Oliver's sense of rhythm and timbre. I like the way he made his horn sort of speak. We like to expand the language of the instrument, and so did King Oliver. So it's a continuum.

He had a tragic life… But he was strong and determined to make a positive statement in a world that was negative all around him. So there's a beauty, a kind of majesty to his music and his affirmative look at life.

Joe 'King' Oliver (1881–1938) was a cornerstone figure in Jazz, largely due to the prominence of the Creole Jazz Band that he led in Chicago 1922–24. We see King Oliver now as a breakthrough artist who underscored the potentials of Jazz beyond just the novelty of its first blush. The Creole Jazz Band offered a thrilling new variant in the then-very-young music called Jazz. Oliver extruded from the glorious relentless roar of collective improvisation cameo sections for the band soloists to break out and say a soulful piece.

King Oliver was among the first recorded jazz instrumentalists to capitalize on a legitimate, believable expression using tone color for nuance and shading rather than just novelty effects.

King Oliver should be a hero for all practitioners of Free Jazz, inasmuch as he represents artistic invention at the fulcrum of grace and freedom.