Life Joseph Nathan Oliver was born in
Aben, Louisiana, near
Donaldsonville in
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 true year of birth. He moved to
New Orleans in his youth. He first studied the trombone, then changed to cornet. From 1908 to 1917, he played cornet in New Orleans
brass bands and dance bands and in the city's red-light district, which came to be known as
Storyville. A band he co-led with trombonist
Kid Ory was considered one of the best and hottest in New Orleans in the late 1910s. He was popular in New Orleans across economic and racial lines and was in demand for music jobs of all kinds. According to an
oral history interview at
Tulane University's
Hogan Jazz Archive with Oliver's widow, Stella, a fight broke out at a dance where Oliver was playing, and the police arrested him, his band, and the fighters. He was living in
Chicago with his wife, Estelle "Stella" Dominick, whom he had married in New Orleans in September 1911. He continued to work at the Dreamland, forming a band there in January 1920, which included Johnny Dodds, Honoré Dutrey, and Lil Hardin, the nucleus of his famous Creole Jazz Band. After Storyville closed, he moved to Chicago in 1918 with his wife and step-daughter, Ruby Tuesday Oliver (born 1905). In Chicago, he found work with colleagues from New Orleans, such as clarinetist
Lawrence Duhé, bassist
Bill Johnson, trombonist
Roy Palmer, and drummer
Paul Barbarin. He became leader of Duhé's band, playing at a number of Chicago clubs. In the summer of 1921, he took a group to the West Coast, playing engagements in San Francisco and Oakland, California. Oliver and his band returned to Chicago in 1922, where they started playing in the
Lincoln Gardens as King Oliver and his Creole Jazz Band. In addition to Oliver on cornet, the personnel included his protégé
Louis Armstrong on second cornet,
Baby Dodds on drums,
Johnny Dodds on clarinet,
Lil Hardin (later Armstrong's wife) on piano,
Honoré Dutrey on trombone, and
Bill Johnson on double bass. In addition, white musicians would visit Lincoln Gardens in order to learn from Oliver and his band. Because Lincoln Gardens was in Chicago's black neighborhood and only admitted blacks, the white players listened outside near the front door. A prospective tour in the midwestern states ultimately broke up the band in 1924. In the mid-1920s Oliver enlarged his band to nine musicians, performing under the name King Oliver and his Dixie Syncopators, and began using more written arrangements with jazz solos. This band led by Oliver at the Plantation Café was in direct competition with Louis Armstrong's Sunset Stompers, who performed at the
Sunset Café. In 1927 the band went to New York, but he disbanded it to do freelance jobs. In the later 1920s, he struggled with playing trumpet due to his gum disease, so he employed others to handle the solos, including his nephew Dave Nelson, Louis Metcalf, and
Red Allen. He reunited the band in 1928, recording for
Victor Talking Machine Company one year later. He continued with modest success until a downturn in the economy made it more difficult to find bookings. His
periodontitis made playing the trumpet progressively difficult. He quit playing music in 1937.
Work and influence As a player, Oliver took great interest in altering his horn's sound. He pioneered the use of mutes, including the rubber plumber's plunger, derby hat, bottles and cups. His favorite mute was a small metal mute made by the
C.G. Conn Instrument Company, with which he played his famous solo on his composition the "Dippermouth Blues" (an early nickname for fellow cornetist Louis Armstrong). His recording "Wa Wa Wa" with the Dixie Syncopators can be credited with giving the name
wah-wah to such techniques. This "freak" style of trumpet playing was also featured in his composition, "Eccentric." One of his protégés, Louis Panico (cornetist with the
Isham Jones Orchestra), authored a book entitled
The Novelty Cornetist, which is illustrated with photos showing some of the mute techniques he learned from Oliver. Oliver was also a talented composer, and wrote many tunes that are still regularly played, including "Dippermouth Blues," "Sweet Like This," "Canal Street Blues," and "Doctor Jazz." "Dippermouth Blues," for example, was adapted by Don Redman for Fletcher Henderson's Orchestra under the new name of "Sugar Foot Stomp". Oliver performed mostly on cornet, but like many cornetists he switched to trumpet in the late 1920s. He credited jazz pioneer
Buddy Bolden as an early influence, and in turn was a major influence on numerous younger cornet/trumpet players in New Orleans and Chicago, including
Tommy Ladnier,
Paul Mares,
Muggsy Spanier,
Johnny Wiggs,
Frank Guarente and, the most famous of all, Armstrong. As mentor to Armstrong in New Orleans, Oliver taught young Louis and gave him his job in Kid Ory's band when he went to Chicago. A few years later Oliver summoned him to Chicago to play with his band. Louis remembered Oliver as "Papa Joe" and considered him his idol and inspiration. In his autobiography,
Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans, Armstrong wrote: "It was my ambition to play as he did. I still think that if it had not been for Joe Oliver, Jazz would not be what it is today. He was a creator in his own right." ==Hardships in later years, decline and death==