A Tribute to Johnny Dodds

A story, pictures and music for clarinet and piano (with optional backing tracks).

Imagine a place where live music is a personal soundtrack to your life. Where a beat turns every single rhythm of your day into a party. Dances, dinners, bars, banks, working-days, holidays, weddings, funerals, advertising, boat trips, picnics, theatres and casinos. Imagine a town where musicians become famous for expressing themselves and their individuality, where celebrated players are seen as celebrities that live among us, are us. A place where everybody plays an instrument, and everyone has several professional musicians in their immediate family.

Imagine a town bursting with SOUND.

Well dear reader, that place was real. And it’s still there today. New Orleans. It was the town that gave birth to jazz music, to the drum set, to the bassline, to the beat. You still hear its legacy today: in rock, rap, pop, hiphop, funk, soul.

New Orleans also gave birth to Johnny Dodds.

Johnny Dodds was born in 1892. He was known for his virtuosic and seminal clarinet playing with the first generation of jazz masters – “King” Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, Lovie Austin and the most famous jazz musician of all time Louis Armstrong. Dodds was the older brother of drummer Warren “Baby” Dodds, one of the first jazz drummers.

Dodds is an important figure in jazz history. In an era of incredible clarinettists, he was considered the elite of elites. He was posthumously inducted into the Jazz Hall of Fame. He has been described as “a prime architect in the creation of the Jazz Age.”