On this day in New York · March 7, 1917
The First Jazz Record Goes on Sale
Five New Orleans transplants cut a barnyard-noise novelty tune in a Manhattan office building, and by accident put jazz on a disc for the whole country to buy.
The facts
- Recorded
- February 26, 1917, at Victor's studio on the 12th floor of 46 West 38th Street in Manhattan
- Released
- March 7, 1917, as Victor 18255, backed with 'Dixie Jass Band One-Step'
- The band
- Nick LaRocca (cornet), Larry Shields (clarinet), Eddie Edwards (trombone), Henry Ragas (piano), Tony Sbarbaro (drums)
- Sales
- By some estimates, more than a million copies sold
On February 26, 1917, the Original Dixieland Jass Band packed into the Victor Talking Machine Company's studio on the twelfth floor of 46 West 38th Street and recorded two sides in a single session. One of them, "Livery Stable Blues," set a real twelve-bar blues under a novelty stunt: the clarinet crowing like a rooster, the cornet whinnying like a horse, the trombone mooing like a cow. Victor released it on March 7, 1917, as Victor 18255, backed with "Dixie Jass Band One-Step," and it is widely acknowledged as the first jazz recording ever commercially released. The five musicians, all white New Orleanians playing a style rooted in Black New Orleans music, sold the disc by the hundreds of thousands, and some estimates put the total past a million copies, an enormous number for the era.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
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This recording, long argued and debated, is likely the first jazz recording ever issued.
Smithsonian Magazine, on "Livery Stable Blues"
Source: Smithsonian Magazine
Why it still matters
This is the moment jazz stopped being a thing you had to hear live in New Orleans or Chicago and became something you could buy on a disc in New York, and it's the record that kicked the whole industry's appetite for jazz, and the Jazz Age that followed, into gear.
Sources
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