Jazz Man Records | |
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Finger Buster by Jelly Roll Morton (1942)
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Founded | 1941 |
Founder | David Stuart |
Genre | Jazz |
Country of origin | U.S. |
Location | Hollywood |
Jazz Man Records was an American record company and independent record label devoted to traditional New Orleans-style jazz.
Founded in 1941 by David Stuart and later acquired by Marili Morden and Nesuhi Ertegun, the label and its namesake—an influential record shop in Hollywood, California—were in the vanguard of an international revival of traditional jazz in the 1940s.
Jazz Man Records was founded in 1941 by David Stuart, owner of the Jazz Man Record Shop in Hollywood, California. The label was an offshoot of the shop, established in 1939 as the only shop on the West Coast that specialized in used 78s for jazz collectors. Stuart was a purist who felt that traditional New Orleans jazz was the real jazz. He preserved and promoted the traditional jazz music that had fallen out of favor in the late 1920s, and regarded the swing music that had eclipsed it with contempt.
Stuart modeled Jazz Man Records after Commodore Records, released by a comparable record shop operating in Manhattan since 1938. He adopted its style of printing the names and instrumentation of the personnel on the label. The label also bore the address of the Jazz Man Record Shop, the exclusive sales outlet. Stuart produced the first recordings by Lu Watters' Yerba Buena Jazz Band December 19–20, 1941. A second recording session with the Watters band was produced in March 1942.
In June 1942 Stuart produced a historic recording session in New Orleans with Bunk Johnson, putting together a group he called Bunk Johnson's Original Superior Band.
In December 1942 Jazz Man Records released four unreleased sides by Jelly Roll Morton, recorded in 1938, in partnership with Nesuhi Ertegun. Ertegun had acquired the solo piano recordings, made in Washington, D.C., while Morton was being interviewed by Alan Lomax, from a private collection in 1941.