Page "Joe "King" Oliver" Paragraph 3

By 1922, after travels in California, Oliver was the jazz king in Chicago, performing as King Oliver and his Creole Jazz Band at the Royal Gardens ( later renamed the Lincoln Gardens ).

Virtually all the members of this band went on to notable solo careers.

Personnel included Oliver on cornet, his protégé Louis Armstrong on second cornet, Baby Dodds on drums, Johnny Dodds on clarinet, Lil Hardin ( later Armstrong's wife ), on piano, Honoré Dutrey on trombone, and William Manuel Johnson on bass and banjo.

Recordings made by this group in 1923 demonstrated the serious artistry of the New Orleans style of collective improvisation or Dixieland music to a wider audience.