Artist: King Oliver

Joseph Nathan "King" Oliver  (December 19, 1881 – April 8/10, 1938) was an American jazz cornet player and bandleader. Also a notable composer, he wrote many tunes still played today, including "Dippermouth Blues", "Sweet Like This", "Canal Street Blues", and "Doctor Jazz". He was the mentor and teacher of Louis Armstrong. His influence was such that Armstrong claimed, "if it had not been for Joe Oliver, Jazz would not be what it is today."

He claimed 1881 as his year of birth in his draft registration in September 1918 (two months before the end of World War I). He played cornet in New Orleans brass bands and dance bands and in the city's red-light district, which came to be known as Storyville.

He later moved to Chicago in 1918, where he found work with colleagues from New Orleans, such as clarinetist Lawrence Duhé, bassist Bill Johnson, trombonist Roy Palmer, and drummer Paul Barbarin. He became leader of Duhé's band, playing at a number of Chicago clubs. In 1922, his band started playing in the Lincoln Gardens as King Oliver and his Creole Jazz Band. Personnel included his protégé Louis Armstrong on second cornet, Baby Dodds on drums, Johnny Dodds on clarinet, Lil Hardin (later Armstrong's wife) on piano, Honoré Dutrey on trombone, and Bill Johnson on double bass.

Recordings made by this group in 1923 for Gennett, Okeh, Paramount, and Columbia demonstrated the New Orleans style of collective improvisation, also known as Dixieland, and brought it to a larger audience. Because they were recording acousticly into a horn that was directly connected to the needle making the record master, Armstrong notably had to stand in the corner of the room, away from the horn, because his powerful playing bounced the needle off the master. In addition, white musicians would visit Lincoln Gardens in order to learn from Oliver and his band. Because Lincoln Gardens was in Chicago's black neighborhood and only admitted blacks, the white players listened outside near the front door.

In the mid-1920s Oliver enlarged his band to nine musicians, performing under the name King Oliver and his Dixie Syncopators, and began using more written arrangements with jazz solos.

As a player, Oliver took great interest in altering his horn's sound. He pioneered the use of mutes, including the rubber plumber's plunger, derby hat, bottles and cups. His favorite mute was a small metal mute made by the C.G. Conn Instrument Company, with which he played his famous solo on his composition the "Dippermouth Blues." His recording "Wa Wa Wa" with the Dixie Syncopators can be credited with giving the name wah-wah to such techniques. This "freak" style of trumpet playing was also featured in his composition, "Eccentric."