For a biography of Kid Ory visit:
Wikipedia
Red Hot Jazz
BBC Jazz Profile
This solo from ‘Down Home Rag’ comes from a 1945 recording – the second period of Ory’s career. What is very interesting is that Ory’s style remained unchanged for 40 years. At the time of this recording Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gilespie were in the early stages of BeeBop.
The style of Ory’s playing was to accompany the lead instruments of trumpet and clarinet by playing bass lines and harmonies behind thier more florid lines. When moving into a solo section (as shown below) his playing departs very little from this basic premise.<!–more–>
There are a couple of basic figures that Ory uses. Firstly (as in bars 1, 5, 9 etc) he very simply outlines the root, 3rd, 5th of the Eflat chord. Then there is the widespread use of the flat 3rd – a very basic way to give a ‘bluesy’ feel but much use by Ory. Lastly there is the use of the gliss or smear – really these fall somewhere between the two.
Aside from the choice of notes the playing style is very typical of trad/dixie trombone style (and this may be because lots of others imitated Ory’s style). Short notes are clipped very short and long notes are given a wide vibrato treatment (acheived with the lips not the slide). The general sound is smaller/thinner and more direct than is common now.
Tags: jazz, kid ory, transcriptions, Trombone