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FIRST YEARS (1900 – 1930)

WARREN “BABY” DODDS

Baby Dodds was one of first great drummers of Jazz and the
brother of Johnny Dodds. Baby got his start playing in parades
in New Orleans, occasionally with Frankie Dusen's Eagle Band.
He played briefly with his brother in Kid Ory's Band, but was
embarrassed when all the musicians walked off stage because
of his poor playing. This incident spurred him on to become a
better musician. He played in several other bands in New
Orleans before joining Fate Marable's riverboat band in 1918.
While working on the riverboat he played with Louis
Armstrong, Johnny St. Cyr, Pops Foster, among others. He
stayed in Marable's band until King Oliver asked him to join his
band in San Francisco in 1921. Dodds followed Oliver to
Chicago and was the drummer in King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band. After the breakup of that band
Dodds worked with Honore Dutrey at the Dreamland in Chicago and with several other bands in
the city. From 1927 to 1929 Baby Dodds played in his brother's band at Kelly's Stables along
with Freddie Keppard. He was the drummer on many of the classic Chicago Jazz recordings of
Jelly Roll Morton's Red Hot Peppers and Louis Armstrong's Hot Seven. Throughout the
Depression, Baby played in many of the small groups led by his brother Johnny Dodds and helped
run a taxi cab company in Chicago. When his brother died in 1940, he went on to play with
Jimmie Noone and with Bunk Johnson. After 1949 Dodds had a series of strokes that left him
partially paralyzed, but still managed to play from time to time up until his death.

Gene Krupa said:

"...there was only one Baby Dodds. He was at Kelly's Stable with his brother Johnny, cornetist
Natty Dominique and a piano player. Baby taught me more than all the others - not only
drumming but drum philosophy. He did all that the others did, and more. He was the first great
drum soloist. His concept went on from keeping time to making drums a melodic part of jazz. It
was partly the way he tuned his drums - the intervals he used. I got that from him. And it was
partly his concept of tone. Baby could play a tune on the drums, and if you listened carefully, you
could tell the melody! I kept going back to hear Baby - though it sometimes was a hassle getting
into the place because of being underage. Not only was he a great showman, the man played with
fantastic drive. Those press rolls! He could really get things moving." "I remember all the guys
in the Dodds band wore white barber coats. Baby was the band's central strength; the way he
used the drums, the rims, the cymbals was just marvelous. He developed ideas and built
excitement through a tune, playing mostly on the snare drum in a somewhat military fashion. He
was both a source of pulsation and musical color. Right before going to the cymbal for the ride
out, Baby would move into this press roll, dragging the sticks across the snare drum.
Man, the place rocked!" "It soon became clear how much I admired him, and we struck up a
friendship that was only broken by his death in 1959. Until I got to New York a bit later and
heard Chick Webb at the Dunbar Palace, a ballroom in Harlem, Baby was my biggest influence."
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JAMES “JIMMY” BERTRAND

Percussionist and xylophonist Jimmy Bertrand moved to Chicago in

1913 and played in the State Theatre Orchestra before joining
Erskine Tate's Vendome Orchestra from 1918 to 1928. He also did a
great deal of teaching in the 1920s. His pupils included Lionel Hampton
and Big Sid Catlett. He often worked with pianist Jimmy Blythe who
was the musical director of Jimmy Bertrand's Washboard Wizards.
Bertrand went on to play with Doc Cooke and Lee Collins. He led his
own band in Chicago in the 1930s and early 1940s, and then retired
from music and worked in a meat packing plant. Jimmy Bertrand was
the brother of Mabel Bertrand a Chicago show girl and the wife of
Jelly Roll Morton from 1928 until his death.

“PAPA” JACK LAINE

"Papa" Jack Laine is often credited with being the

first White Jazz musician. He was a drummer and
saxophonist. He formed his first brass band in 1888.
The band performed Ragtime and marching music.
He went on to lead the Reliance Brass Band, which
became popular enough for him to have several units
playing under that name. Many of the early New
Orleans White Jazz musicians such as Tom Brown,
Johnny Stein, Albert and George Brunies, Tony
Parenti, Nick La Rocca and all of the other members
of the Original Dixieland Jass Band played in the
Reliance Brass Band at one time or the other. In
1917, Laine quit music and worked as a blacksmith, and later managed a garage. He never
recorded.

VIC BERTON

The word child prodigy doesn't even begin to describe Vic Berton
who was playing drums in a Milwaukee pit orchestra at the age of
seven. By age sixteen he was playing with the Milwaukee and
Chicago Symphony Orchestras. During the First World War Berton
enlisted and played drums with John Philip Sousa's Navy Band.
After the war he returned to Chicago and played with several of
the top dance bands in the area. In 1922 he wrote the song,
"Sobbin' Blues" with Art Kassell with became the standard of hot
bands of the 1920s. In 1924 he formed a friendship with Bix
Beiderbecke and started managing and occasionally playing drums
with the band that Bix was in at the time, the Wolverines. Berton
moved to New York and played with Red Nichols and his Five
Pennies, the Roger Wolfe Kahn Orchestra, and the Paul Whiteman Orchestra. By the end of the
decade Berton was considered the greatest of all Jazz drummers by many. He often played in
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commercial bands that paid him a top notch salary but didn't showcase his talents as well as
they might have. He moved to California in the late 1920s and formed his own band. The group
had several successful recordings in the mid-1930s, like, "Taboo", "I've Been Waiting All
Winter"and "Dardanella". In 1930 Berton was busted for smoking a marijuana cigarette with
Louis Armstrong and Frank Driggs in Culver City. Vic Berton worked at Paramount studios in the
1930's and even returned to symphonic work in the 1940's. During World War II he worked as a
musician with the Air Force and returned to being a studio musician for the movies after the
war. He died in Hollywood in 1951 of lung cancer.

PAUL BARBARIN

Paul Barbarin was from a musical family. His father Isidore

was the leader of The Onward Brass Band, and all of his
brothers were very involved in the music of New Orleans.
Unlike most of the other famous musicians from the city,
Barbarin never cut his ties with the city, but returned again
and again throughout his career. As a teenager, he started
drumming with bands like Buddy Petit's Young Olympians. He
left the Crescent City in 1917 and found work in the Armour
and Company stockyards in Chicago, while still managing to
play music by night. By 1920 he was touring with bands,
working with Freddie Keppard and his brother-in-law Jimmie
Noone. He returned to New Orleans to play with Luis Russell
and other bands in the city, but left again in 1924 to play with King Oliver's Dixie Syncopators
in Chicago. He stayed with Oliver until 1927, and then once again returned home. In 1928 he
moved to New York to play with Luis Russell's Orchestra. He played in various bands in New
York before returning once again to New Orleans in 1932. In 1935 he rejoined the Luis Russell
Orchestra which was fronted by Louis Armstrong at the time, and remained with them until
1938. Then it was back to New Orleans again until he rejoined Armstrong briefly in 1941 and
then went on to play with Red Allen and led his own band. In 1944 he played with Sidney Bechet.
After World War Two he stayed in New Orleans, leading his own bands and marching in brass
bands. In 1960 he re-formed his father's Onward Brass Band and played at Preservation Hall
and also made several recordings. He died in 1969 while he was leading The Onward Brass Band
in a street parade.

TONY SBARBARO (SPARGO)

The Original Dixieland Jazz Band, who billed

themselves the originators of Jazz, have long been
dismissed as the White guys who copied African-
American music, and called it their own. There is a
lot of truth to that statement, but on the other
hand, The Original Dixieland Jazz Band's recordings
still hold their own unique charm, over 80 years
after their initial release. However unfair and
indicative of the racism of the era, the record
"Livery Stable Blues", coupled with "Dixie Jass Band
One Step" became the first Jazz record ever released on February 26, 1917 for the Victor
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Talking Machine Company. It was wildly successful. Its release signaled the beginning of the
Jazz age and helped define the wild, exuberant era we call the "Roaring Twenties". The Original
Dixieland Jazz Band had recorded for Columbia in January 1917, but the session was
unsuccessful and the band had to come back and re-record the songs, thus the release of the
Columbia sides did not come about until after the amazing success of the Victor records. The
group had formed in New Orleans; all of the musicians had played in “Papa” Jack Laine’s Reliance
Brass Band at one time or another. In 1916 the band moved from New Orleans to Chicago, just
like so many of the African-American and Creole musicians from that city. In Chicago, they
played a season at the Booster Club under the name of Stein's Dixie Jass Band. At the
beginning of the following year the band ditched Stein and moved to New York where, on the
recommendation of Al Jolson, they landed a gig at Reisenweber's Café on Columbus Circle and
58th Street, a fashionable restaurant and night-spot. The band created quite a stir and
Columbia rushed to record the band only two weeks after they had arrived in the city. The band
was an immediate success, with their wacky stage antics, like wearing top hats that spelled out
"Dixie", playing the trombone's slide with the foot, and so on. The band's slogan was "Untuneful
Harmonists Playing Peppery Melodies", and their leader Nick La Rocca and cornet player
delighted in stirring up the press, describing themselves as musical anarchists and coining fun
statements like "Jazz is the assassination of the melody, it's the slaying of syncopation". The
Original Dixieland Jazz Band went on to record and play in London, producing 20 tracks for
Columbia, including another big hit, Soudan. They returned to America in July of 1920. They
signed a new record contract with Okeh, but the public began to tire of them and they never
regained the sales or popularity of their initial success. The group broke up in 1925 after La
Rocca suffered a nervous breakdown. The surviving members briefly re-formed in 1936 and
recorded some sides for Victor. In 1940 the band re-formed yet again, but this time without La
Rocca and recorded six sides for Bluebird and played up until 1940. Eddie Edwards formed a
version of the band that recorded a V-Disc during World War II and for Commodore Records in
1945 and 1946. Tony Sbarbaro was the only other original member to perform on those sessions.

ARTHUR “ZUTTY” SINGLETON

Zutty Singleton was one of the most influential drummers of

early Jazz. He popularized the use of brushes and drum solos in
Jazz and had some of the best technique of the era. Zutty got
his start at the Rosebud Theater in New Orleans with Steve
Lewis in 1915. During World War I he went to Europe to fight
and was wounded. Zutty played in several bands in New Orleans
after the war, including Papa Celestin, Luis Russell, and with
Fate Marable on the riverboats. He moved up to St. Louis to
play with Charlie Creath and married his sister Marge. He
moved back to New Orleans for a year and then moved to
Chicago where he worked with Doc Cooke and others. While in
Chicago, he and Louis Armstrong and Earl Hines tried to open a
club, but it was unsuccessful. Zutty played on several of the Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five
sides, including "A Monday Date", where Armstrong says, "Come on Zutty, whip those cymbals
Pops!". In 1931 he moved to New York City to play with Fats Waller. Throughout the Depression,
Singleton managed to keep working, often in traveling vaudeville shows. In 1933 he moved back
to Chicago and joined Carroll Dickerson at the Grand Terrace (3955 South Parkway).
Throughout the rest of the Thirties he with a number of bands, including ones led by Roy
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Eldridge, Mezz Mezzrow and Sidney Bechet. In 1941 he moved to Los Angeles and led or played
in a series of bands there. He continued to play up until he retired in 1970 after suffering from
a stroke.

GEORGE WETTLING

George had a lengthy career that spanned over forty years.

He transcended musical styles, playing in Dixieland bands,
swing and traditional New Orleans outfits during that time. He
spent most of the 20s in Chicago and went on to work with the
orchestras of Artie Shaw, Bunny Berigan, Red Norvo and Paul
Whiteman in the 30s and 40s. In the 50s he was beatman at
ABC studios and played with Billie Holiday, Pee Wee Russell,
Bud Freeman and Sidney Bechet.