UPDATE:
The Ollie Powers Harmony Syncopators, playing at the
Vendome Theater, most likely around 1923.
This photo was published in Destination Chicago Jazz, by Sandor
Demlinger and John Steiner (Charleston, Arcadia Publishing, 2003), p.
16.
It is an enormously improved reproduction over the only previous
available version known to me, which appeared in
A Pictorial History of Jazz: People and Places from New
Orleans
to Modern Jazz, by Orrin Keepnews and Bill Grauer, Jr. (New York: Crown
Publishers, 1955), p. 37
Many thanks to Brian Goggin for alerting me to this much more detailed
rendering!
Previously, it was thought that this photo was taken at the Dreamland
Café, which was one of the venues in which the Ollie Powers
Harmony Syncopators played.
However, another photo identified as the Dreamland (here) shows a very
different background. The railing, on the other hand, is nearly
identical, perhaps leading to the confusion.
Since the two sides Ollie Powers recorded for Paramount a
month apart
in
1923 had entirely different personnel (Brian Rust: Jazz Records
1897-1942,
4th ed., p.1245), it is not certain exactly who is present in this
picture--with
the exception of Ollie Powers, behind the drums!
Possibilities: PIANO: Glover Compton* or Cassino Simpson;
BANJO: John
Basley
or Mike McKendrick; CLARINET: Jimmie Noone or Stump Evans; TUBA:
William “Bass” Moore; SAXOPHONE: Horace Diemer; CORNET: Alex Calamese,
Tommy Ladnier*,
or Bernie Young; TROMBONE: Eddie Vincent or Preston Jackson. Or none of
the above!
*Brain Goggin writes that it is Glover Compton on piano and definitely
Tommy Ladnier on cornet.
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