By
his origins and his style, Baby Dodds (1898-1959)
was one of the pioneers of the drums, in the purest "New Orleans"
style. Born in New Orleans at the end of the 19th century, he began studying
the drums in self-taught to 14 years, all while working in a factory.
Baby
Dodds soon played with many orchestras, such the one of Bunk Johnson, performing
in cabarets and on boats climbing back up the Mississipi.
After
the closing of Storyville, New Orleans' red light district, this was at Chicago
that Baby Dodds developped his style, notably within the King Oliver Creole
Jazz Band, with, among others, Louis Armstrong playing the trumpet.
The
contribution of Baby Dodds was capital for the play of the drummers. In the
line of the first bassdrum players, he constructed his game "around"
it, putting thus in evidence the whole wealth of coordination, i.e. the game
between the bottom (the feet) and the top (the hands).
Baby
Dodds did, besides, proof of a big rhythmic audacity, developing for example
faces of "Chabada" on the cymbal, well before the revolution of Kenny
Clarke in the years 40 !
He
was equally all to his comfort in the rythmic phrases spread out over several
measures or unbalanced, prefiguring another revolution : the one of the Free
Jazz in the years 60.
His
innovative spirit nevertheless did not step attract towards the hi-hat pedal,
invented about 1926. Very demonstrative, Baby Dodds added many accessories (woodblocks,
cowbells, toms ...), perpetuating thus the play of the all first drummers.
He
was a "hinge-drummer", at once forerunner and carrier of a tradition.
He
died in 1959, after a long career and many recordings (of which a precious disc
in solo, in which the drummer explains and illustrates his own game), leaving
a huge influence on the new generation of drummers.
