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Gennett
Gennett (pronounced "jennett") was an American record company and label in Richmond, Indiana, United States, which flourished in the 1920s. Gennett produced some of the earliest recordings by Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Bix Beiderbecke, and Hoagy Carmichael. Its roster also included Jelly Roll Morton, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Charley Patton, and Gene Autry. History Gennett Records was founded in Richmond, Indiana, by the Starr Piano Company. It released its first records in October 1917. The company was named for its managers: Harry, Fred and Clarence Gennett. The company had produced early recordings under the Starr Records label. The early issues were vertically cut in the gramophone record grooves, using the hill-and-dale method of a U-shaped groove and sapphire ball stylus, but they switched to the lateral cut method in April 1919. Gennett set up recording studios in New York City and later, in 1921, set up a second studio on the grounds of the piano factory in Richmond unde ...
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Starr Piano Company
The Starr Piano Company was an American manufacturer of pianos from the late-1800s to the middle-1900s. Founded by James Starr, the company also made phonographs and records and was the parent company of the jazz label Gennett. History George Trayser and Milo J. Chase started the Trayser Piano Forte Company in a building near the Ohio River in Ripley, Ohio, with Chase the president and manager. In 1872, the company moved to Richmond, Indiana, after receiving financial help from James Starr and Richard Jackson, both residents of Richmond. When Trayser retired six years later, the company was renamed Chase Piano Company, Starr became president, and Jackson secretary-treasurer. In the 1880s Chase moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, to establish his own piano factory, leaving the Richmond operation to be renamed James Starr and Company, with James Starr as president and his brother Benjamin the manager. One of the retailers that sold Starr pianos was the Jesse French Piano & Organ ...
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Hoagy Carmichael
Hoagland Howard Carmichael (November 22, 1899 – December 27, 1981) was an American musician, composer, songwriter, actor and lawyer. Carmichael was one of the most successful Tin Pan Alley songwriters of the 1930s, and was among the first singer-songwriters in the age of mass media to utilize new communication technologies such as television, electronic microphones, and sound recordings. Carmichael composed several hundred songs, including 50 that achieved hit record status. He is best known for composing the music for " Stardust", "Georgia on My Mind" (lyrics by Stuart Gorrell), "The Nearness of You", and " Heart and Soul" (in collaboration with lyricist Frank Loesser), four of the most-recorded American songs of all time. He also collaborated with lyricist Johnny Mercer on " Lazybones" and "Skylark". Carmichael's "Ole Buttermilk Sky" was an Academy Award nominee in 1946, from ''Canyon Passage'', in which he co-starred as a musician riding a mule. " In the Cool, Cool, C ...
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Bix Beiderbecke
Leon Bismark "Bix" Beiderbecke (March 10, 1903 – August 6, 1931) was an American jazz cornetist, pianist and composer. Beiderbecke was one of the most influential jazz soloists of the 1920s, a cornet player noted for an inventive lyrical approach and purity of tone, with such clarity of sound that one contemporary famously described it like "shooting bullets at a bell. His solos on seminal recordings such as "Singin' the Blues" and " I'm Coming, Virginia" (both 1927) demonstrate a gift for extended improvisation that heralded the jazz ballad style, in which jazz solos are an integral part of the composition. Moreover, his use of extended chords and an ability to improvise freely along harmonic as well as melodic lines are echoed in post-WWII developments in jazz. "In a Mist" (1927) is the best known of Beiderbecke's published piano compositions and the only one that he recorded. His piano style reflects both jazz and classical (mainly impressionist) influences. All five of hi ...
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New Orleans Rhythm Kings
The New Orleans Rhythm Kings (NORK) were one of the most influential jazz bands of the early to mid-1920s. The band included New Orleans and Chicago musicians who helped shape Chicago jazz and influenced many younger jazz musicians. History The New Orleans Rhythm Kings in its earliest stages was the creation of the drummer Mike "Ragbaby" Stevens, solely in that he sent the first telegram to Albert Brunies about going to Chicago to form a band and find better gigs than New Orleans had to offer. Albert "Abbie" Brunies and his younger brother, the trombonist George Brunies, were initially hesitant but suggested the idea to a friend, the trumpet player Paul Mares, who immediately took the opportunity. "So I says Paul, I says, Abbie don't want to go to Chicago and I'm kind of leery, I'm afraid", George recalled. "Paul says, 'man, give me that wire. I'll go.' So Paul went up o Chicagoand introduced himself to Ragbaby Stevens and Ragbaby liked him… and Paul got the railroad fare f ...
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Richmond, Indiana
Richmond is a city in eastern Wayne County, Indiana. Bordering the state of Ohio, it is the county seat of Wayne County and is part of the Dayton, OH Metropolitan Statistical Area In the 2010 census, the city had a population of 36,812. Situated largely within Wayne Township, its area includes a non-contiguous portion in nearby Boston Township, where Richmond Municipal Airport is currently located. Richmond is sometimes called the "cradle of recorded jazz" because the earliest jazz recordings and records were made at the studio of Gennett Records, a division of the Starr Piano Company. Gennett Records was the first to record such artists as Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, Jelly Roll Morton, Hoagy Carmichael, Lawrence Welk, and Gene Autry. The city has twice received the All-America City Award, most recently in 2009. History In 1806 the first European Americans in the area, Quaker families from the state of North Carolina, settled along the East Fork of the Whitewater R ...
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Jaybird Coleman
Burl C. "Jaybird" Coleman (May 20, 1896 – January 28, 1950) was an American country blues harmonica player, vocalist, and guitarist. He was a popular musical attraction throughout Alabama and recorded several sides in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Biography Coleman was born to a family of sharecroppers in Gainesville, Alabama, United States. While he and his three brothers endured hard physical labor, he was exposed to musical influences from his fellow sharecroppers in singing and discovering traditional folk songs. At age 12, he was introduced to the harmonica, in large part teaching himself, and was encouraged by his parents to hone his skills as an alternative to their wearying occupation. He performed locally for small wages at dance halls and parties. In 1914, upon the outbreak of the First World War, Coleman joined the United States Army and was stationed at Fort McClellan for the entirety of the conflict. At the fort, he developed a reputation for being stubbornly ind ...
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Louis Armstrong
Louis Daniel Armstrong (August 4, 1901 – July 6, 1971), nicknamed "Satchmo", "Satch", and "Pops", was an American trumpeter and vocalist. He was among the most influential figures in jazz. His career spanned five decades and several eras in the history of jazz. Armstrong was born and raised in New Orleans. Coming to prominence in the 1920s as an inventive trumpet and cornet player, Armstrong was a foundational influence in jazz, shifting the focus of the music from collective improvisation to solo performance. Around 1922, he followed his mentor, Joe "King" Oliver, to Chicago to play in the . In Chicago, he spent time with other popular jazz musicians, reconnecting with his friend Bix Beiderbecke and spending time with Hoagy Carmichael and Lil Hardin. He earned a reputation at "cutting contests", and his fame reached band leader Fletcher Henderson. Henderson persuaded Armstrong to come to New York City, where he became a featured and musically influential band soloist ...
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King Oliver
Joseph Nathan "King" Oliver (December 19, 1881 – April 8/10, 1938) was an American jazz cornet player and bandleader. He was particularly recognized for his playing style and his pioneering use of Mute (music), mutes in jazz. Also a notable composer, he wrote many tunes still played today, including "Dippermouth Blues", "Sweet Like This", "Canal Street Blues", and "Doctor Jazz". He was the mentor and teacher of Louis Armstrong. His influence was such that Armstrong claimed, "if it had not been for Joe Oliver, Jazz would not be what it is today." Biography Life Joseph Nathan Oliver was born in Aben, Louisiana, near Donaldsonville, Louisiana, Donaldsonville in Ascension Parish, Louisiana, Ascension Parish to Nathan Oliver and Virginia "Jinnie" Jones. He claimed 1881 as his year of birth in his draft registration in September 1918 (two months before the end of World War I) but that year is open to debate, with some census records and other sources suggesting 1884 or 1885 as his ...
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Sam Collins (musician)
Sam Collins (possibly August 11, 1887possibly October 20, 1949), sometimes known as Crying Sam Collins, was an early American blues singer and guitarist. His style has been described as "South Mississippi", rather than Delta blues and "The Jail House Blues" is his best-known recording. Biography Collins was born in Louisiana and grew up in McComb, Mississippi, just across the state line. By 1924, he was performing in local barrelhouses, often with King Solomon Hill; both of them sang falsetto parts and played slide guitar. Collins's first recording in 1927 was "Yellow Dog Blues", made for Gennett Records and recorded in Richmond, Indiana Richmond is a city in eastern Wayne County, Indiana. Bordering the state of Ohio, it is the county seat of Wayne County and is part of the Dayton, OH Metropolitan Statistical Area In the 2010 census, the city had a population of 36,812. Situa .... His bottleneck guitar was referred to as a "git-fiddle" on record labels of the time, and bl ...
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Gramophone Record
A phonograph record (also known as a gramophone record, especially in British English), or simply a record, is an analog sound storage medium in the form of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove. The groove usually starts near the periphery and ends near the center of the disc. At first, the discs were commonly made from shellac, with earlier records having a fine abrasive filler mixed in. Starting in the 1940s polyvinyl chloride became common, hence the name vinyl. The phonograph record was the primary medium used for music reproduction throughout the 20th century. It had co-existed with the phonograph cylinder from the late 1880s and had effectively superseded it by around 1912. Records retained the largest market share even when new formats such as the compact cassette were mass-marketed. By the 1980s, digital media, in the form of the compact disc, had gained a larger market share, and the record left the mainstream in 1991. Since the 1990s, records con ...
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Hillbilly
Hillbilly is a term (often derogatory) for people who dwell in rural, mountainous areas in the United States, primarily in southern Appalachia and the Ozarks. The term was later used to refer to people from other rural and mountainous areas west of the Mississippi river, too, particularly those of the Rocky Mountains and near the Rio Grande. The first known instances of "hillbilly" in print were in ''The Railroad Trainmen's Journal'' (vol. ix, July 1892), an 1899 photograph of men and women in West Virginia labeled "Camp Hillbilly", and a 1900 ''New York Journal'' article containing the definition: "a Hill-Billie is a free and untrammeled white citizen of Alabama, who lives in the hills, has no means to speak of, dresses as he can, talks as he pleases, drinks whiskey when he gets it, and fires off his revolver as the fancy takes him". The stereotype is twofold in that it incorporates both positive and negative traits: "Hillbillies" are often considered independent and self-relian ...
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Jelly Roll Morton
Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe (later Morton; c. September 20, 1890 – July 10, 1941), known professionally as Jelly Roll Morton, was an American ragtime and jazz pianist, bandleader, and composer. Morton was jazz's first arranger, proving that a genre rooted in improvisation could retain its essential characteristics when notated. His composition "Jelly Roll Blues", published in 1915, was one of the first published jazz compositions. He also claimed to have invented the genre. Morton also wrote "King Porter Stomp", "Wolverine Blues", "Black Bottom Stomp", and "I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say", the last being a tribute to New Orleans musicians from the turn of the 20th century. Morton's claim to have invented jazz in 1902 was criticized. Music critic Scott Yanow wrote, "Jelly Roll Morton did himself a lot of harm posthumously by exaggerating his worth...Morton's accomplishments as an early innovator are so vast that he did not really need to stretch the truth." Gunther Schuller ...
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