[Dixielandjazz] Roof Garden Jazz Band Concert

[Steve Barbone]

If you are in to Re-creations of Early Jazz, this concert is for you.
Monday, 8 PM in The Bickford Theatre at the Morris Museum, Morristown NJ.
Tickets are $15 at the door. Call 973-971-3706 for directions. This is an
excellent band with Kelso, Reinhart, Levinson, Dorn and Barnhart.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone



Morris concert marks birth of jazz recording

BY ROBERT HICKS  - SPECIAL TO THE DAILY RECORD 2/25/07

Dan Levinson has spent the better part of his music career reproducing early
jazz. At times, he's been disconcerted by racial politics that have
attempted to sully the reputation of white jazz musicians in the early
1900s.

What keeps bringing him back to those early recordings, though, is the
energy of the music.

"Jazz was dance music in those days," he said. "People danced fox trots,
two-steps and waltzes to the music."

Levinson's Roof Garden Jass Band will perform at the Bickford Theatre in
Morris Township Monday. The concert will celebrate the 90th anniversary of
the first jazz recording, performed by the Original Dixieland Jass Band for
the Victor Talking Machine Co. on Feb. 26, 1917, in New York City.

The lineup includes clarinetist Levinson, cornetist Jon-Erik Kellso,
trombonist Randy Reinhart, pianist Jeff Barnhart and drummer Kevin Dorn. The
quintet also will perform music by the Frisco Jass Band, The Louisiana Five
and The Original Memphis Five from the early 1900s.

Special guest Peter Sbarbaro will talk about his grandfather Tony, the
drummer in the Original Dixieland Jass Band.

After performing at Riesenweber's Café on Columbus Circle in January 1917,
cornetist Nick LaRocca's Original Dixieland Jass Band signed with Victor to
record "Livery Stable Blues" and "Dixie Jass Band One Step" for its first 78
rpm record.

Public response to the animal noises worked into these two novelty tunes set
new sales records for the record company, surpassing Enrico Caruso and John
Phillip Sousa in popularity and marking the beginning of recorded jazz.

The first jazz recording predates the music that King Oliver and Louis
Armstrong recorded in 1923 by six years.

Levinson, 41, first discovered the Original Dixieland Jass Band's recordings
in a local library during his teens in California, and he immediately fell
in love with early jazz.

"It's right on the cusp between ragtime and jazz. I like to call it
rag-a-jazz. It's sort of ragtime and sort of jazz. It doesn't really have a
lot of improvisation. There are almost no solos, except for two-bar
instrumental breaks," he said.

Levinson met jazz musician James Eugene "Rosy" McHargue, who became his
friend and mentor. A clarinetist himself, McHargue heard the Original
Dixieland Jass Band recordings when they first came out in 1917. He learned
how to play clarinet by copying ODJB clarinetist Larry Shields. McHargue
played early jazz recordings for Levinson and emphasized their importance.

During his remaining 15 years, from age 82 to 97, McHargue taught Levinson
much about music and life.

As a budding jazz musician in 1987, Levinson transcribed the Original
Dixieland Jass Band's early recordings and formed his own band to reproduce
them to mark their 70th anniversary in concert at Eisner and Lubin
Auditorium at New York University. The concert was a big success.

Over the years, Levinson has repeated the tribute at various concerts in New
York, Los Angeles and New Jersey, and he has devoted his jazz career to
reviving music from 1917 to the end of the Swing Era.

"I've always been a musical iconoclast," he said. "I did things because of
what my heart told me to do."