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New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park
Music
Early New Orleans Jazzmen
(l-r) Louis Cottrell, Lorenzo Tio Jr., Louis Warneke, Bob Ysaguerra John Lindsey, Peter Bocage, Steve Lewis, Henry Bocage. Sitting - Armond Piron.

The All-American Music
A Chronology of New Orleans Jazz
Featuring the Arrowhead Jazz Band

The Park’s mission is to preserve information about New Orleans' participation in the development of jazz. To spotlight the significant efforts of early New Orleans players, the National Park Service has prduced this unique pair of CDs featuring a specially assembled group, the Arrowhead Jazz Band, named, appropriately, after the Park Service's familiar logo.

These CD's can be purchased from our bookstore

 


On Volume One, the Arrowhead Jazz Band plays 14 tunes that were originally recorded in New Orleans by New Orleans jazzmen during the jazz era. These hometown recordings are important aural documentations of the sounds heard in the city's parks, cafes, dance halls, cabarets, barrel houses, and hotel ballrooms.

 
 


The tunes played by the Arrowhead Jazz Band on Volume Two are based on material recorded in New Orleans years after portable equipment was brought to preserve the sounds of the "Early Years." Ironically, as the "Revival" period was developing in the '40s, recording facilities were available locally, but they did not allow black musicians in the studios. As a result, most of the masterful records that inspired this program were made on portable eqipument in store rooms, radio stations, dance halls, etc. The musicians who recorded these historically important recordings were born before or near the turn of the twentieth century and enjoyed careers that significantly contributed to the development of New Orleans jazz.
 
Original Dixieland Jazz Band (1916)  

Did You Know?
The Original Dixieland Jazz Band is credited with making the first jazz recording in 1917. Cornetist Freddie Keppard was offered the chance to record first, but refused for fear that other musicians would steal his ideas.

Last Updated: July 11, 2006 at 10:21 EST