Journal
The Evidence LockerLivery Stable Blues
Original Dixieland Jass Band
The first jazz record ever released, and already an argument about who it belonged to.
Preview Recording
Vinyl Records — Archive
About the Artist
No image
on file
A five-piece group of white New Orleans musicians who reached a New York studio in February 1917, ahead of the Black players whose music they had learned in the same city. Their record sold in the hundreds of thousands and fixed jazz in the popular imagination as something it largely was not.
Why This Record Is Here
Being first to ship is not the same as having invented the thing. I keep this one because it is the cleanest reminder that history records whoever got to the studio, not whoever did the work — and that the two are worth telling apart.
◂ Vinyl Collection
Livery Stable Blues
Dixieland Jass Band One-Step
003 sealed. Go to Case Files and open any one of them. The record is filed the moment that page loads.
004 sealed. Torch work. Switch to the dark theme, strike the lamp in the header, then sweep the beam over the upper right of this Archive page — the empty margin beside the record — and hold it there.
005 sealed. Go to the Press page and read one of the clippings. Arriving is enough.
006 sealed. Torch work, but not on this page. Go back to The Evidence Locker and light the wall below the taped photograph on the left-hand rail.
007 sealed. Torch work. Open the Archive spread, take the beam down to the bottom right corner of The Story page, and hold it on the blank paper below the last paragraph.
008 sealed. Go to the Desk page. Whoever signs the book gets this one.