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New Orleans To Chicago With The NORK |
The New Orleans Rhythm Kings in 1922: (left to right) Leon Roppolo, Jack Pettis, Elmer Schoebel, Arnold Loyacano, Paul Mares, Frank Snyder, George Brunies
Cornet player Paul Mares tells the story .....
'The New Orleans Rhythm Kings have taken a rotten shoving around as the story of the birth of jazz is told.
Well, maybe we were a bunch of kids in knee pants playing around the corner from a red light, but just show me a band today that can play Dixieland like the Rhythm Kings. There aren't any - and I know. I was in the NORK and I'm still kicking around. But I'm not hearing Dixieland.
When the Original Dixieland Band left Chicago for New York, the people in the 'section' in Chicago yelled for a substitution .....Well, there was no place but New Orleans to find music like that .... Abbie Brunies got a telegram asking him to come to Chicago to work in a new Dixieland band. Abbie figured that the cab business was a better deal, so he gave me the telegram, I packed my horn and suitcase and came up to take the job. I played around up here principally at Camel Gardens with Tom Brown, but also in a lot of other places.
Then came the job at Friar's Inn for a Dixieland band. I had gotten Leon Roppolo up here and I sent for George Brunies to take the trombone chair. George had to have train fare and a new overcoat before he would leave New Orleans so I sent those to him and he came to join the band. The rest of the band was composed of Jack Pettis, C melody saxophone; Arnold (Deacon) Loyacano, bass; Louis Black, banjo; Elmer Schoebel, piano; Frank Snyder, drums; and - well, there was a guy by the name of Paul Mares on cornet......
[Listen to the New Orleans Rhythm Kings playing Tin Roof Blues in 1923. One YouTube commentator says: "How many groups, if any, recorded a slow(ish) blues with full-length solo choruses before this? The N.O.R.K. is hugely underappreciated. Mares isn't any challenge to King Oliver etc. But Brunies and Rappolo are full-fledged jazz voices, at a time when most 'white jazz' groups were raggish novelty bands."]
Friar's Inn was in a basement. It was cabaret style, with tables and a dance floor. There was a post on one side of the bandstand, 
and Rapp used to play with his clarinet against it for tone. He used to like to play into a corner, too.
Something happened every night at Friar's. There was always lots of fun and lots of clowning in the band. I remember we used to put oil of mustard on each other's chairs on the stand. Fritzl could never figure out what all the confusion was about at the beginning of a set. Jack Pettis would always go to sleep on the stand during the floor-show, and we'd wake him up by holding the oil of mustard to his nose.*
We knew all our customers. Friar's was a hangout of the big money guys. Al Capone and Dion O'Bannion used to come in.
Nobody drank much at Friar's. We were all too young......
We used to try to hold rehearsals, but no one would show up. So we did our rehearsing on the job. The crowd never knew the difference. Elmer Schoebel was the only man in the band who could read, and he made arrangements for us, which we'd try out on the stand. We'd kid Elmer and play it all wrong, with lots of bad notes, the first time, just to make him sore. Elmer wrote and arranged Nobody's Sweetheart, which we introduced......
We used to play Farewell Blues a lot; Rapp wrote that one, you know. Also we played Bugle Call Rag and Tin Roof. Bix - he was in school at Lake Forest Academy then - used to sneak down and pester us to play Angry so he could sit in. At the time, it was the only tune he knew.
From Hear Me Talkin' To Ya edited by Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff
*Mustard Oil has a pungent smell. It is used in Asian cooking but is now banned in the USA as its health risks are questioned - more information.
[Listen to the New Orleans Rhythm Kings playing Angry]
Visit some of our other Take Two pages:
Behind The Chorus Line
Sidney Bechet Coming Of Age
Recording The ODJB
Blind Willie Johnson
