Sam Morgan’s music, first recorded in 1927 at Werlein’s in New Orleans, will be performed and recorded by the Louisiana Repertory Jazz Ensemble on October 30 and 31, 2020. Rehearsals and interviews will be held October 30, 1-4 p.m. at St. Alphonsus Community Center, 2029 Constance Street. The recording sessions and interviews will be held October 31, noon-4 p.m. at Esplanade Recording Studio, 2540 Esplanade.

Sam Morgan was a noted jazz trumpet player and bandleader in New Orleans during the 1920s.  Unlike many of his contemporary jazz band leaders, he never left New Orleans to go to New York or Chicago. He stayed and played locally. The Louisiana Repertory Jazz Ensemble led by Fred Starr, author and past president of Oberlin College and Dr. John Joyce, drummer and Tulane Emeritus professor, in partnership with the New Orleans Jazz Restoration Society will record the recently transcribed music of Sam Morgan.

The American Musicological Society engaged Dr. Joyce to do the transcription of Morgan’s 1927 musical recordings to preserve his authentic New Orleans Jazz sound.

The Sam Morgan recordings are the first of an early jazz band recorded in New Orleans.  They are highly regarded by jazz historians as rare sound documents of early jazz in its pristine local form.  This new volume of Sam Morgan Jazz Band transcriptions offers an opportunity for jazz scholars to gain a deeper understanding  of African American jazz as it continued in New Orleans in the 1920s and for educators to explore this important source material.

The Sam Morgan Band played in the “raw” and “raucous” idiom of original New Orleans Jazz and their music documents the transition of Ragtime into the new art form of early jazz.  Sam Morgan’s original compositions of “Mobile Stomp” and “Bogalusa Strut” are jazz standards to this day but were not available in print until Dr. John Joyce transcribed them in 2014. 

In 1927 Philip Werlein brought Columbia Records to New Orleans to record Sam Morgan and his band as they were still playing the original New Orleans Jazz. Early jazz music was played strictly for dancing and without star soloists commanding center stage.  Morgan’s popularity throughout the Gulf Coast was at its peak but jazz bands were transiting and conforming to popular influences from Chicago and New York. 

The recording is part of the filming of the story of Sam Morgan and his Hot New Orleans Dance Music.  The film is entitled, “Everybody’s Talkin’ About Sammy.”

The New Orleans Jazz Restoration Society promotes, celebrates, teaches and studies the only original art form created in America: Jazz.  This project and performance fits with our purpose of revitalizing the music of one of the greats who has been forgotten.