greeted their opening at Reisenweber’s 400 Club Room on January 27, 1917. Within hours the word was out that something very new and very hot had come to town, and the quintet’s first Victor recordings, cut on February 26 and rushed into print nine days later, introduced a generation of listeners—and musicians—to the raucous music that would give a name to the coming decade. Other jazzlike music had previously been recorded, but “Livery Stable Blues” and “Dixie Jass Band One-Step” were among the first 78 sides to be cut by jazz musicians from New Orleans, as well as the first whose label described them as jazz (or, rather, “jass”). Newspaper ads in New Orleans called the combined results “positively the greatest dance record ever issued,” and purchasers throughout the country agreed: Victor 18255 is believed to have been one of the earliest popular records to sell a million copies. Its success put an end to what was left of the ragtime craze, for other bands rushed to record in a similar style, and their music became the gold standard in dance halls across America. The Jazz Age had arrived.
Two and a half years later, a promising young bandleader who had served his apprenticeship as a sideman placed an ad in the Washington phone book:
IRRESISTIBLE JASS
FURNISHED TO OUR SELECT PATRONS
The Duke’s Serenaders
COLORED SYNCOPATERS
E.K. ELLINGTON, Mgr.
“Irresistible jass”: The Duke’s Serenaders, c. 1920. Sonny Greer is the drummer, Sterling Conaway the banjo player. The fledgling bandleader specialized in “under-conversation music,” not full-fledged jazz, but few Washingtonians knew the difference, and Ellington profited handsomely from their ignorance
----
Not that E.K. Ellington, Mgr., was anything like a fully grown jazzman in 1919. Few East Coast musicians were—even the best of the stride pianists were still feeling their way into the new rhythmic language of jazz—and it was not until 1923 that Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bechet started making the records that taught their contemporaries how to swing. Ellington was a mere purveyor of jazz-scented dance music that was played at parties, some black and others white, by bands that he led or booked. He later described what they played as “under-conversation music,” which sounds about right. Nor were his early clients discriminating about the songs to which they chatted and danced:
All the embassies and big shots in Washington were hiring small bands to play for parties. It didn’t seem to make much difference what band—they just hired a band. . . . I went down to the telephone office and arranged for a Music-for-All-Occasions ad in the telephone book. It was during the war, and there were a lot of people from out of town, war workers, who didn’t know Meyer Davis and Louis Thomas from Duke Ellington. My ad looked just like theirs, and I began to get work. And give it. It got so that I would sometimes send out four or five bands a night, and work in them, too.
Meyer Davis, Ellington’s chief competitor, had just launched his own long career as a society bandleader specializing in “music for exclusive and smart parties.” Like Davis, Ellington made a handsome living dishing out the unexceptionably bland commodity that was (and is) society-band music. In 1966 he told an interviewer that he had brought in $10,000 a year, the equivalent of $123,000 today. “Well, he picked up the piano by ear and now he’s making more money than I am,” J.E. boasted. His son may have been stretching the truth, and part of that sum came from the sign-painting business that he had launched around the time that he became a professional musician: “When customers came for posters to advertise a dance, I would ask them what they were doing about their music. When they wanted to hire a band, I would ask them who’s painting their signs.” But he was still doing well for himself—and for his wife and son.
We know little about Edna Thompson,
Two and a half years later, a promising young bandleader who had served his apprenticeship as a sideman placed an ad in the Washington phone book:
IRRESISTIBLE JASS
FURNISHED TO OUR SELECT PATRONS
The Duke’s Serenaders
COLORED SYNCOPATERS
E.K. ELLINGTON, Mgr.
“Irresistible jass”: The Duke’s Serenaders, c. 1920. Sonny Greer is the drummer, Sterling Conaway the banjo player. The fledgling bandleader specialized in “under-conversation music,” not full-fledged jazz, but few Washingtonians knew the difference, and Ellington profited handsomely from their ignorance
----
Not that E.K. Ellington, Mgr., was anything like a fully grown jazzman in 1919. Few East Coast musicians were—even the best of the stride pianists were still feeling their way into the new rhythmic language of jazz—and it was not until 1923 that Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bechet started making the records that taught their contemporaries how to swing. Ellington was a mere purveyor of jazz-scented dance music that was played at parties, some black and others white, by bands that he led or booked. He later described what they played as “under-conversation music,” which sounds about right. Nor were his early clients discriminating about the songs to which they chatted and danced:
All the embassies and big shots in Washington were hiring small bands to play for parties. It didn’t seem to make much difference what band—they just hired a band. . . . I went down to the telephone office and arranged for a Music-for-All-Occasions ad in the telephone book. It was during the war, and there were a lot of people from out of town, war workers, who didn’t know Meyer Davis and Louis Thomas from Duke Ellington. My ad looked just like theirs, and I began to get work. And give it. It got so that I would sometimes send out four or five bands a night, and work in them, too.
Meyer Davis, Ellington’s chief competitor, had just launched his own long career as a society bandleader specializing in “music for exclusive and smart parties.” Like Davis, Ellington made a handsome living dishing out the unexceptionably bland commodity that was (and is) society-band music. In 1966 he told an interviewer that he had brought in $10,000 a year, the equivalent of $123,000 today. “Well, he picked up the piano by ear and now he’s making more money than I am,” J.E. boasted. His son may have been stretching the truth, and part of that sum came from the sign-painting business that he had launched around the time that he became a professional musician: “When customers came for posters to advertise a dance, I would ask them what they were doing about their music. When they wanted to hire a band, I would ask them who’s painting their signs.” But he was still doing well for himself—and for his wife and son.
We know little about Edna Thompson,
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