The Original Peaky Blinders Jazz Band
I’ve been greatly enjoying the boxed set of six seasons of Peaky Blinders that I received as a gift recently. I may do a sort of review when I get to the end, but until then I thought I’d throw in a few tangential things. This post is an example. Here’s another one. This clip is from Episode 2 of Series 1, when the Shelby family are celebrating the reopening of the Garrison pub after it was destroyed by a firebomb earlier on. Listen to the background music at the start.
The music being played is Livery Stable Blues by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, a record I blogged about here. Released in 1917, it is no exaggeration to say that this was the first every commercial jazz record; I blogged about the 100th anniversary of its release.
The band was originally called the “Original Dixieland Jass Band“. A few months later they changed the “Jass” to “Jazz” – it is claimed because people kept defacing their posters by removing the letter “J” – and the new name stuck. The Original Dixieland Jazz Band is usually referred by Jazz buffs as the ODJB.
Led by cornettist Nick LaRocca and clarinettist Larry Shields, the ODJB was a group of white musicians from in and around New Orleans who had picked up their musical ideas from listening to musicians there, including playing for the pioneering mixed-race band led by Papa Laine, before moving to Chicago which is where they were spotted by representatives of the Victor label. Although the sound quality isn’t great, it gives a good insight to what ealy jazz drummers were like – thumping bass and tom-toms but little use of the cymbals – and shows Larry Shields was a dab hand at glissandi…
Series 1 of Peaky Blinders is set in 1919 (mainly in Birmingham but also with scenes in London). Not a lot of people know that the ODJB actually visited England in 1919. They performed in review at the Hammersmith Palais and then did a command performance in front of King George V, who (apparently) particularly enjoyed their version of Tiger Rag. There is no evidence that they visited Birmingham, but we get a glimpse before the above clip of a band decked out to look like them, laying live in the Garrison pub. I very much enjoy little details like that!
In the Dark 
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