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Showing posts from November, 2022

JAZZ ~ An American History (1913-2022)

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Many people say that "Livery Stable Blues" was the first jazz music put on record. That was in 1917, by a group of white musicians who called themselves the Original Dixieland Jass Band. However, Wilbur Sweatman, a successful African-American composer and musician, made a few jazz recordings several months earlier, near the end of 1916.  Wilbur Sweatman (1882-1961) You can hear one of Sweatman's 1916 recordings ("Down Home Blues") as well as Dixieland's 1917 recording of "Livery Stable Blues" near the top of my Spotify playlist, "JAZZ ~ An American History (1913-2022)."   It contains over 1,700 songs, ordered chronologically, covering every year from 1913 to 2022. The whole thing is over 170 hours long.  Here is a spreadsheet with detailed info . Scroll down for an embedded preview of the playlist. The list started off as a way for me to expand my own experience of music, and to fill in gaps in my knowledge of jazz history. My aim was ult