It’s been 100 years since the first commercial jazz recording.
And, on Friday, the Creole Jazz Band will be in Coquitlam to retell the two tunes famously cut in New York on Feb. 26, 1917.
Coquitlam resident Kevin Yeates and his ensemble will be at the King of Life Lutheran Church to perform the A and B sides of the original album: Dixieland Jass Band One-Step and Livery Stable Blues — songs that are now part of the traditional jazz repertoire.
Composed by the Original Dixieland Jass Band —a group of Caucasian musicians from New Orleans made up of Tony Spargo, Edwin “Daddy” Edwards, D. James “Nick” LaRocca, Larry Shields and Henry Ragas — the songs were released on March 7, 1917, as an instrumental under the Victor label; the album sold more than 1 million copies.
Many jazz bands sprung up in the wake of their success and versions of the band’s songs were covered extensively including later that year by W.C. Handy’s Orchestra of Memphis, on Columbia Records.
The Creole Jazz Band’s performance ties in with Mardi Gras — also called Shrove Tuesday or Fat Tuesday — the annual Carnival celebrations landing on or after the Christian feasts of the Epiphany.
The Creole Jazz Band is best known for its New Orleans Jazz Funeral, which started in Coquitlam on New Year’s Day last year and has since moved to a larger site in New Westminster.
Yeates said the Dixieland sound “is a very popular form of music especially with older people and swing dancers. They live off this stuff,” he told The Tri-City News last week.
As well, many British expats who grew up in the 1950s and ’60s in England enjoy the tunes as the style had a resurgence then.
Proceeds from their Feb. 17 show will support a newly settled family from Syria, now living in Coquitlam; that family is also being helped by a Lutheran church in Seattle that had difficulties with the government supporting a refugee family there, Yeates said.
• Tickets to The Mardi Gras Show at the King of Life Lutheran Church (1198 Falcon Dr.) at 7:30 p.m. are available at the door on show night or online at creolejazzband.yapsody.com. Refreshments will be served by the church’s youth group.
