The definitive biography of the great band leader and New
Orleans jazz performer Edward "Kid" Ory (1886-1973) was a
trombonist, composer, recording artist, and early New Orleans
jazz band leader. Creole Trombone tells his story from birth on
a rural sugar cane plantation in a French-speaking, ethnically
mixed family, to his emergence in New Orleans as the city's
hottest band leader. The Ory band featured such future jazz
stars as Louis Armstrong and King Oliver and was widely
considered New Orleans's top "hot" band. Ory's career took him
from New Orleans to California, where he and his band created
the first African American New Orleans jazz recordings ever
made. In 1925 he moved to Chicago, where he made records with
Oliver, Armstrong, and Jelly Roll Morton that captured the
spirit of the jazz age. His most famous composition from that
period, "Muskrat Ramble," is a jazz standard. Retired from music
during the Depression, he returned in the 1940s and enjoyed a
reignited Drawing on oral history and Ory's unpu