The Wild Wild Women - Murray Pilcer's Jazz band, January 1919

The first Jazz recording made in London! Recorded in January 1919, a few weeks before the Original Dixieland Jazz Band.

Pilcer had come to London in 1916, and played at Lyon's restaurant in Oxford Street (as the American Sherbo Sextette) - so you could hear the most modern music for the price of a cup of tea, rather than having to go to a night club! The band personnel had changed completely by 1919, but the idea clearly hadn't. Pilcer was the drummer - the photo from 1916 shows all the whistles and bells mounted on the drum set - so naturally he quite dominates the performance.

Despite historically ill-informed statements that this isn't 'real' jazz (made, of course, by those who feel their favourite style is the real thing), this is precisely what jazz was thought of in 1919! Busy, exciting, lively and great fun. Just the thing for teenagers demobbed from wartime service and needing stimulation to try block the horrors they'd seen (read the Bulldog Drummond stories by Sapper to get the idea). Ideas of jazz changed throughout the roaring 20s, of course, but this is where it was in 1919. (In 1920 the commuter trains into Liverpol Street, with their brightly-coloured doors to speed boarding, and astonishingly-rapid turnaround, were called the 'jazz service', using the meaning of the period.)

From an original disc in my collection, transfer by Julian Dyer

Видео The Wild Wild Women - Murray Pilcer's Jazz band, January 1919 канала Julian Dyer