“The ‘trap drummer, who plays the big drum with his feet and a side drum, the cymbals, and heaven knows what besides, is the most important man of all” – London Daily News, 1919

KEY RECORDINGS:
With THE ORIGINAL DIXIELAND JASS/JAZZ BAND (ODJB) 1917-24.

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When I first started making a list of ‘Twenties jazz drummers to write about, I inevitably first thought of my current favourites – lesser-known musicians whose work I’ve been researching recently, and which is slightly off the beaten track. But I soon realised that if these little essays were to mean anything to the casual reader, I ought to begin with the big boys; the drummers who most influenced the subsequent course of jazz. Having ticked off Baby Dodds and Zutty Singleton – the two peerless and undisputed Heavyweight Champions of 20s drums – I found myself at a crossroads. Who to write about next? Which other drummers were so innovative and influential as to completely alter the way percussionists approached their instrument in the early 20^th century? Despite two considerable caveats surrounding him and the band he played in, it’s Antonio Sbarbaro (later Tony Spargo, self-styled), who must come next.

To be writing about him this year also feels particularly appropriate: 2017 marks a century since the Victor Talking Machine Company in New York issued a shellac disc – catalogue number 18255 – performed by the Original Dixieland ‘Jass’ Band of New Orleans, or ODJB. Side A was ‘Dixie Jass Band One-Step’ and on the reverse side ‘Livery Stable Blues’. This was ostensibly the first jazz record ever released: March 5^th, 1917. Tony Sbarbaro played drums.

The recordings were made acoustically, with the musicians crowding around a large horn (rather like an old-fashioned gramophone horn – which in essence is exactly what it was, working in reverse), the sound being cut instantaneously into a wax disc. Victor’s recording engineer, Charles Sooy, was able to ‘mix’ the record only by physically positioning the musicians closer or further from the horn. For more infomation on this process please see ‘Library #7: Drums And Acoustic Recording Technology’. That all the instruments are not only audible but sound reasonably balanced is proof of Sooy’s skill at this arcane science. Despite the supposed problems surrounding the recording of drums – demoting drummers to mere cymbal-tappers even on many much later recordings – Sbarbaro is very present in the mix and is playing a complete kit:

“Tony used a gigantic, twenty-eight-inch street drum and made himself heard blocks away. At least one and preferably two cowbells were essential to the new style, plus a large-sized woodblock for continuous use during the choruses, when it replaced the snare drum. Sbarbaro’s practice involved use of the snare on verses, ‘minstrel style’ woodblock on choruses, returning again to the snare drum on the last half of the last chorus.” – H.O. Brunn.

Brunn’s inventory of Sbarbaro’s equipment is accurate – we can tell as much from the photo at the top of the page – but he neglects to mention that, at least on the 1917 recordings, Sbarbaro did not have a reliable bass drum pedal. Photos of the band during that year reveal what appears to be an ‘overhang’-style pedal, one of many archaic contraptions which predated the Ludwig pedal which was the eventual forerunner of all modern bass drum pedals. In addition to this, Sbarbaro also utilised the lost art of ‘double drumming’, an early attempt to combine the job of a bass drummer and a snare drummer in one person. Ragtime drummers would often play the usual vertically-positioned bass drum with one hand and a snare drum with the other, inclined steeply to allow ease of access to the playing surfaces of both drums (see picture). Thus, when Sbarbaro plays the bass drum on these early recordings it’s with his left stick, and he has had to lean down slightly to reach it – in other words, those deep booms you hear (0:57, for example) are important moments that he’s gone out of his way to accentuate. The early ODJB sides are some of the only recordings we have of this style of playing. It’s also worth listening to his imaginative use of the cowbell, often playing variations on a classic ragtime motif – accenting every third 8^th-note – which implies a 3-over-2 ‘clave’-type rhythm also associated with the traditional music of New Orleans and the Caribbean. The snare drums used by Sbarbaro and his contemporaries were usually single-tension instruments tuned with t-rods similar to the 1910s ‘Snapper’ design.

As far as he could himself remember, Antonio Sbarbaro was born on Frenchman Street, New Orleans, on June 27, 1897 into a thriving Sicilian immigrant community which was to produce an amazing abundance of great musicians in the years to come. In his 1961 book ‘The Story Of The Original Dixieland Jazz Band’, Harry O. Brunn describes the febrile musical world Sbarbaro entered as a child:
“There was music at picnics, outings and conventions; at weddings, birthdays and funerals; at prize fights, ball games, and track meets; at nickelodeons, cafés, and beer gardens […] With so much music around, it is not difficult to understand why so many New Orleans kids grew up to be musicians.”
Despite not coming from a family that was in any way musical, Sbarbaro began playing the drums in amateur ‘spasm’ bands at an early age, and made his first steps in the world of professional music at just fourteen, with the local Frayle Brothers band. By 1913, he recalled, he was ‘making a dollar’ in the music business. Paul Blum’s Café in Exchange Alley near Canal Street was famous as the spot where musicians would congregate to socialise, hire others for casual musical work or themselves be hired. An important fixer on this scene was the legendary ‘Papa’ Jack Laine, a drummer, bandleader and entrepreneur through whose bands nearly all the great generation of New Orleans musicians seem to have passed at some stage in their young careers. The music they predominantly played was likely a form of loose ragtime, with brass, reeds or violin lead supported by a rhythm section of drums, guitar and double bass, piano being added if the venue had one. Sbarbaro later recalled playing hit rags like ‘Maple Leaf Rag’, ‘Too Much Mustard’ and ‘Down Home Rag’ during these important early years. Whilst working part-time in an office, Tony also began frequenting Exchange Alley and soon fell in with a number of men around his own age including a clarinettist named Larry Shields and two best friends who worked by day as electricians; trombonist and semi-pro baseball player Eddie Edwards, and a fellow Sicilian boy – cornet player Dominic ‘Nick’ LaRocca.

In December 1915, a café owner from Chicago, Harry James, was visiting New Orleans to watch a prize fight and was impressed by a Laine-organised band playing at the Haymarket Café, led by LaRocca’s cornet and featuring Johnny Stein (another forthcoming Hero) on drums. In February of the following year James contacted Stein, asking him to bring the band North to Chicago. Stein and LaRocca between them selected a team, including Edwards, pianist Henry Ragas, and clarinettist Alcide ‘Yellow’ Nunez. ‘Stein’s Band From Dixie’ began their residency at Schiller’s Café on the Chicago’s South Side in early March, but by May tensions between the bandleader and the other four over their earnings came to a head, ending with Stein being biffed on the nose by Edwards and abandoned to go it alone. The four rebels, now led by LaRocca with Edwards as manager (Larry Shields had also replaced Nunez on clarinet), in need of a replacement drummer, recalled their keen young acquaintance from New Orleans. Tony Sbarbaro hadn’t rested on his laurels in the intervening period, gaining valuable experience playing in Ernest Giardina’s band and at the Tango Palace with the famous Brunies brothers. He made the trip to Chicago and joined the newly-renamed Original Dixie Land Jass Band on June 5^th, a few weeks shy of his twentieth birthday.

The band caused a sensation in Chicago, opening in June at the Café de l’Abée, then moving up to the Casino Gardens the following month. New York-based theatrical agent Max Hart, following a tip-off from singer Al Jolson, who’d been impressed with the band whilst passing through, travelled to hear the ODJB and immediately signed them to travel East for a fortnight’s residency at Reisenweber’s Café in Manhattan. The band made even more of a huge hit (‘a musical cyclone’, according to Brunn) with young New Yorkers than they had with those of Chicago, and a renegotiation with Reisenweber’s soon had them earning $1000 per week before tips –  astonishingly high wages for the time. Max Hart was inundated with lucrative offers of work for the band, including an approach from the Victor phonograph company, resulting in the previously discussed début session. Over the course of the next few months the ODJB embarked on a furious recording schedule, making twenty-three sides (some repeats of previously-recorded compositions) for Victor and Columbia.

Their records – initially intended mainly as novelty, rather than dance music – spread rapidly across America and this rowdy, syncopated music branded ‘Jass’ (later ‘Jazz’) became a household word.

On ‘At The Jazz Band Ball’ – taken at a frenetic pace for those more accustomed to later renditions of it! – we can clearly hear Sbarbaro pumping the band along with a pedalled 2-beat feel on his bass drum, augmenting it at moments of high drama (such as the end of the verse at [0:31] with ‘double drumming’ accents played with his left stick. During the choruses [such as 0:32] when he moves to playing the woodblock, we can hear this bass drum even more clearly, and at this point it becomes clear that in fact there’s more than just 2-beat going on there; on listening very closely hints of syncopated bass drum patterns reminiscent of New Orleans parade music reveal themselves.

The appeal of the new music was generally put down to its ‘savage’ and ‘wild’ atmosphere – even in the marketing material of the record companies themselves. The 1917 Aeolian record catalogue described jazz as a music of ‘barbaric abandon’, with ‘weird characteristics’ including ‘bizarre instrumentation’ and ‘unique rhythm’. Its counterpart from Victor records meanwhile declared of jazz bands that, “…it may be said the worse it is, the better it is […] if you feel that you already know the worst [band], try this record […] one that not merely invites you, but almost forces you to dance.”

Disaster struck, however, in July 1918. With America mobilising for the trenches, trombonist and business manager Eddie Edwards’ draft number came up. (Sbarbaro, being only twenty-one, was exempt). Whilst the band returned to New Orleans to scout out a replacement, their place at Reisenweber’s was taken by another pioneering proto-jazz group – the Louisiana Five, starring erstwhile former clarinettist Alcide Nunez and led by Hero #16, Anton Lada. On the ODJB’s return in September with new man Emile Christian in tow, the two bands waged something of a musical and business feud for several uncomfortable months.  In the spring of 1919, however, with the Great War at an end, an unexpected opportunity suddenly appeared in the form of a contract from British impresario Albert deCourville to appear at the London Hippodrome for a six-week engagement. Before they could sail, however, tragedy was to strike the band when pianist Henry Ragas, who had been with the group since its beginnings in New Orleans, unexpectedly succumbed to the great 1919 influenza epidemic and died, aged only 28.

With hastily-recruited pianist J. Russel Robinson on board, the ODJB set sail for London on the RMS Adriatic in late February. Appearing for their début in the Joy Bells revue at the Hippodrome, they caused first outrage and then sensation, recieving an ovation that annoyed comedian George Robey, the star of Joy Bells, so profoundly that he had them fired from the show that same night. Meanwhile the press went into raptures: “The Original Dixieland Jazz Band has arrived in London. We are grateful for the warning” – Punch.

After their one-night stint at the Hippodrome, the ODJB opened at the London Palladium theatre on April 12. Previous bands to have visited London from America had been string ensembles like the Versatile Four and Ciro’s Club Orchestra, which brought a slightly earlier form of what-would-become-jazz, closer to what might be called ‘progressive Ragtime‘. These groups often performed with similar insistent rhythm, energy, and even loud volume to the ODJB (including ‘trap’ drummers like Louis Mitchell, Buddie Gilmore and Charles Johnson) – but the New Orleans group’s use of wind and brass instruments was something entirely new to British audiences, and just as they had in Chicago and New York, the band soon took London by storm. Whilst resident in London for around a year and a half, the band delighted dancers in residencies at Martan’s and Rector’s nightclubs and packed out the Hammersmith Palais de Danse, and also served as the house band at the official Armistice Victory Ball held at the Savoy Hotel, which was attended by Allied Generals Pershing and Pétain, and all the crowned heads of Europe.

The British branch of Columbia Graphophone also enlisted them to make a series of records, initally reprising tunes they had already recorded for the American market, but soon (with Robinson leaving to be replaced by local pianist Billy Jones) cutting new compositions to disc, fresh for 1920.

On ‘Lasses [i.e. molasses] Candy’, Sbarbaro’s drums are the most clearly-recorded of all the group’s British efforts, and we can hear him pounding out his usual loping rhythms on deep-toned snare drum, interspersed with explosions on Chinese cymbal. On the chorus at [0:40], his complex, rudiment-based woodblock rhythms are beautifully captured and throughout the side his bass drum spurs the ODJB along with a rock-steady 2-beat feel. Hearing the focussed, percussive attack on the front end of each bass drum stroke on sides like this leads me to suspect that Sbarbaro (the first drummer to be regularly recorded using a pedal) perhaps used a harder beater than later players would customarily do. Generally the larger a drum is, the slacker the head can be tensioned, and thus the spongier and woollier its sound – and since we can clearly see from photographs that Tony’s bass drum was enormous, a hard beater seems to me the most likely answer. Contemporary London-based drummer Alec Williams of the Savoy Quartet also recorded using a very pingy, sharp-sounding bass drum during 1919 and 1920, so pehaps this was usual practice – or, perhaps it’s an early example of Sbarbaro’s influence on British drumming being felt.

When it comes to that, it’s undeniable that the ODJB as an entity profoundly affected young European musicians, in a manner that no other visiting band ever had. And Sbarbaro’s impact on the percussive community of these isles was no less keenly-felt. The great Irish drummer Bill Harty, who really came to prominence in the dance bands of the later ‘twenties, attested to Sbarbaro’s significant stature in London musical circles immediately following the Armistice:

“One of the outstanding drummers of this period was Tony, of the Original Dixieland Jazz band. Tony’s set consisted of a bass drum, pedal, side drum, a wood block, one cow bell and an enormous Chinese cymbal. Tony could not read, but produced a fine rhythm, using four-in-a-bar on the bass drum which could pass muster even today.” – Bill Harty, 1934.

The ODJB eventually returned to America in July 1920, chased to Southampton docks (as legend has it) by a disgruntled aristocrat with a shotgun, with whose daughter LaRocca had been dallying. The America they returned to was a fundamentally different one to that they had left in early 1919; the craze they had a significant hand in igniting had truly taken hold in their absence – the Jazz Age had truly arrived. The ODJB had been the first significant band to make use of the word ‘jazz’ to describe their music – and their nationwide and later worldwide success ensured that the term, initially used in a disparaging sense for music with ‘low’ associations, had become a buzzword for all that was hip amongst the post-bellum generation. The ODJB’s marketing as ‘The Creators Of Jazz’ now acted to cement their position as the pre-eminent popular music group at the beginning of the 1920s.

However, as the new decade got under way, things didn’t turn out quite as well as the ODJB might have hoped. They returned to New York and initial success but Victor record executives imposed alto saxophonist Benny Krueger upon them, and sometimes a vocalist as well. They also had the band record new Tin Pan Alley repertoire composed by professional ‘song-pluggers’, in place of their own original compositions. A futher problem they encountered was that by this point, the ODJB’s revolutionary rhythmic approach and ensemble style had firmly entered the musical lexicon of cutting-edge American musicians. Their winning format had been been lovingly (or perhaps some might say, cynically) adopted by a host of other small groups made up mostly of white Easterners usually referred to collectively as the Fabulous Fives. These were the aforementioned Louisiana Five (with Anton Lada on drums), as well as the Original Memphis Five (Jack Roth), Original Indiana Five (Tom Morton), and Earl Fuller’s Jazz Band (John Lucas). Other small groups on the New York scene cut from similar cloth included the Georgians (Chauncey Morehouse), the Synco Jazz Band and several others. Despite the inferred compliment, all these groups were rivals and competitors, taking what the ODJB would always consider to be ‘their’ music and eventually eclipsing them both artistically and commercially with fresher ideas and better training. Jazz had come of age, but its originators were no longer in the vanguard. The band had gradually drifted apart socially too, and LaRocca decided to call it quits suddenly in January 1925. However, he allowed Sbarbaro the rights to the band’s name and the drummer would soldier gamely on, recording an electric ‘reunion’ session with the surviving ODJB members for old times’ sake in 1936 and keeping the flag flying even until the 1960s. He died in New York in 1969.

Why, then, did I choose Tony as our third-most-important Hero? The two main arguments against his position of importance with regard to ‘twenties jazz drumming are thus: firstly, that he came to prominence and made many of his key recordings before the 1920s even began; secondly, that the ODJB didn’t really play ‘true’ jazz, as it would later be understood (i.e. using pronounced swing rhythm, proper improvised solos, etc).

I would refute the first point by observing that no musical style comes from nowhere, and that close examination of the work of Sbarbaro and his 1910s drum contemporaries reveals that a good deal of the phraseology, textural devices and rhythmic language developed by later drummers can be heard in rudimentary forms much earlier. As the most famous and widely-heard drummer in the late 10s and early 20s, Sbarbaro’s influence was profound and far-reaching. The second point is more contentious, but once again reference to the records reveals that whilst his ODJB colleagues limit themselves to repeating the same apparently pre-rehearsed phrases over and over, Sbarbaro’s playing is much more unpredictable and heterogeneous – he does seem to be improvising his part, to some degree at least. No less a musicological authority than Gunther Schuller observed that compared to his bandmates, Sbarbaro was: “the only player who tried to vary his playing, not only […] from performance to performance, but within a piece […] he achieved considerable variety by the clever use of a large collection of drums, cowbells, woodblocks and cymbals”. I would contend therefore that Tony at least was playing jazz, regardless of how you might wish to label the ODJB as a whole.

Tony Sbarbaro and the Original Dixieland Jazz band made an indelible mark on the world, though they enjoyed their best years and made their masterpieces before the Jazz Age to which they eventually gave their name had even begun. However, they had clearly set the agenda for the next generation of musicians, and Tony can rightly be acknowledged as the very first individual to win fame as that most invidious of creatures – the Jazz drummer.

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Many thanks to Paul Archibald and Paul Scott for their assistance with this article.