On this day in 1938 Joe “King” Oliver died; cornet player, trumpeter and composer, to contemporary audience almost unknown, he is for sure one of the founding names of jazz history.
King’s life is a story of success and tragedy. His success started in New Orleans in the first decade of the 20th century and continued during the following decade when Oliver founded the famous Creole Jazz Band. The tragedy followed few years later when he lost all his savings due to a bankruptcy of two Chicago based banks, caused by stock market crash.
Bad fortune will be on his side till the end of his life – he died at age 52, too poor to afford a doctor. He spent the last years of his life as a maintenance man at Wimberly’s Recreation Hall in Savannah, Georgia.
He wrote numerous compositions that became part of the standard jazz repertoire and was Louis Armstrong’s teacher and mentor. Satchmo remembers “Papa Joe” in his autobiography and writes: “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.”
Today we remember this jazz giant as the artist who played the very first solo ever recorded, as an artist who made the first significant series of jazz recordings in history and as an artist who most likely was the first to use a plunger, opening a whole new world of sound colors and effects.
At the end, let’s mention the disagreements regarding the date of his death. On his gravestone 8 April is engraved, this date is mentioned in the Encyclopedia Britannica. However, in Oliver’s biography published in Portraits from Jelly Roll’s New Orleans by author Peter Hanley it says, according to Chatham County necrology in Georgia – the date of King’s death is 10 April.
We remembered this great artist in our comment on the first International Jazz Day. You can read it here.