Kid Ory is known best for the work he did in the mid-1920s with the men who had once been his employees. Many essential King Oliver recordings feature Ory, and he is perhaps most famous as the trombone voice on Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five sessions. Ory’s ensemble playing on “Struttin’ with Some Barbecue” would be enough, by itself, to earn Ory pride of place among tailgate trombonists.
Come the Depression, Ory hung up his horn and went to work on a chicken farm outside of Los Angeles. Later, he found employment in a railroad office. It wasn’t until 1942 that Ory got back into the music business: His career enjoyed a renaissance starting in 1944 when Orson Welles hired the pioneering trombonist to lead a band for his radio broadcasts.
By the mid-’50s, when Ory started recording for Norman Granz at Verve, Ory’s second blooming was in full flower. He was touring Europe and the United States to packed houses. Audiences in France were so enthusiastic that Ory supposedly mistook their exuberance for aggression-he thought he was being jeered when he was actually being cheered. A recording of that night’s performance opens the Mosaic set, and in that hyper-charged atmosphere one will hear the closest Ory comes to the sort of raw rowdiness that is typical of so many trad trombonists today.
- Kid Ory - trombone, vocals
- J.C. Higginbotham, Jack Teagarden - trombone
- Alvin Alcorn, Red Allen, Teddy Buckner, Andrew Blakeney - trumpet
- Phillip Gomez, Buster Bailey, Caughey Roberts, Robert McCracken - clarinet
- Cedric Haywood, Claude Hopkins, Lionel Reason, Bob Van Eps - piano
- Wellman Braud, Frank Haggerty - guitar
- Johnny St. Cyr - banjo, guitar
- Arvell Shaw, Charles Oden, Morty Corb, Bob Boyack - bass
- Kansas Fields, Earl Watkins, Jesse Sailes, Alton Redd, Doc Cenardo - drums
