Livery Stable Blues Music Analysis

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The recording of the Livery Stable Blues is one of the most important moments in the jazz history, which helped this genre of music get wide recognition outside of New Orleans.
In New Orleans, where the jazz music started, music was not a luxury, it was a necessity. Ethnicities represented in New Orleans were as follows: French, Spanish, and African, Italian, German, and Irish (Herbert Asbury, 1938). This unique combination provided a unique mix of cultural influences which gave birth to such unique styles of music: ragtime, blues, spirituals, marches, and of course jazz. The workers needed the music as a way of communication, relief, and hope for freedom, during the mind-numbing labor.
Ragtime started its wide spread after the abolition of slavery in 1865 and during the times of segregation. During those times African Americans did not have access to most employment opportunities and were mostly able to find work in entertainment. “Black musicians were able to provide entertainment in dances, minstrel shows, and in vaudeville, during which time many marching bands were formed. Black pianists played in bars, clubs and brothels, as ragtime …show more content…

xv) in the studio of New York company “Victor”, by five white musicians from the New Orleans, “Original Dixieland Jass Band”. The importance of this event is impossible to overrate. Before this recording jazz was a little branch of music and had only been played by a small group of musicians in New Orleans. After the record was published on the 7th of March 1917, within weeks’ jazz had taken over America.
'Livery Stable Blues' was the first jazz product to hit the market in broad distribution," Bruce Boyd Raeburn, curator of the Hogan Jazz Archives at Tulane University said, “It sold 1.5 million copies and was the biggest hit of that time. The band could travel around the country, but the record could go all over the world. (Eric Elie, 1997, p.

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