Editing New Orleans Rhythm Kings (section)

==Recordings==

{{Listen
| filename     = Panama - New Orleans Rhythm Kings (1922).mp3
| title        = Panama
| description  = A 1922 recording by the band
}}
In 1922 the group released the first of several records for [[Gennett Records]], located in Richmond, Indiana. Gennett's studio was next to a railroad track, which was cursed by many frustrated musicians whose recording sessions were disturbed by the rattling trains.<ref name="bix">Kennedy, Rick (1994). ''Jelly Roll, Bix, and Hoagy: Gennett Studios and the Birth of Recorded Jazz''. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.</ref> In the first session at Gennett, the Friars Society Orchestra (the name under which the recording was released) recorded eight songs: "Panama", "[[Tiger Rag]]", and "[[Livery Stable Blues]]", representing the [[Dixieland|New Orleans jazz]] standbys;<ref name="LostChords"/> the original compositions " Oriental", "Discontented Blues", and "[[Farewell Blues]]"; and a never-released [[Original Dixieland Jazz Band]] song, "Eccentric".<ref name="LostChords"/>

Paul Mares scheduled another two-day recording session at Gennett later, but the band had recently dissolved somewhat, moving in different directions following their stint at the Friar's Inn. For the session Mares got Brunies, Roppolo, Stitzel, and Pollack together to release a [[Gramophone record|record]] as the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, the first time the name had been used since it had referred to Bee Palmer's travelling vaudeville act.

The group's recordings demonstrate a more serious, crafted style than that of the then-famous [[Original Dixieland Jazz Band]] (ODJB). While the ODJB advertised their music as a novelty act, the NORK sought to distance themselves from the popular image of jazz as a novelty and instead marketed it as a genuine musical [[genre]].<ref name="LostChords"/>

The third recording session occurred after Mares and Roppolo had spent some time playing in a small band in [[New York City]]. They returned to Chicago and scheduled another session with Gennett Records as the New Orleans Rhythm Kings. This session is notable because of the participation of famed jazz pianist and arranger [[Jelly Roll Morton|Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton]]. Morton was a [[Creoles of color|Creole]] from New Orleans, and though he identified strongly with the white "French" side of being Creole, he was generally viewed by society as black (though he was fairly light-skinned and could sometimes "pass" as [[Latin-American]])<ref name="LostChords"/> and therefore was subjected to many of the same social pressures as other blacks of the day. In 1923 the country was still largely [[racially segregated]], as were jazz bands. White bands were beginning to spring up attempting to imitate the "hot" jazz style that the black musicians played, but rarely did any racial mixing occur in a professional setting (In a non-professional setting, however it was becoming more and more common). Jelly Roll Morton's participation in recording with the all white New Orleans Rhythm Kings was history in the making: it is an early example of mixed race recordings. 
	
Mares and Roppolo went on to conduct two more recording sessions in New Orleans as the New Orleans Rhythm Kings in 1925 before the group dissolved altogether and its members went their separate ways.<ref name="NewGrove"/>

===Record reissues===
A significant period of time after NORK disbanded, several record labels began reissuing the band's material. The first revival was by [[Riverside Records]], which reissued NORK's Gennett recordings.<ref name= "bix" /> The second reissue was from [[Milestone Records]]. Both of these reissues were important in keeping NORK's music commercially available and boosting their visibility to critics and historians. In the 1990s Milestone released the band's Gennett sides on compact disc.<ref name= "bix"/> Six of the first eight recordings for Gennett under the Friars Society Orchestra name are on disk A of the four-CD ''Gennett Jazz'' set issued by JSP Records (JSP926). In 2019 [[Rivermont Records]] released a two-CD set featuring new transfers by Doug Benson. Using newly developed restoration technology, Benson stabilized the intermittent speed fluctuations that affected records from the band's 1922 session as Friar's Society Orchestra.

Compositions and arrangements by the New Orleans Rhythm Kings continue to be played by "traditional jazz" or [[Dixieland]] bands all over the world today. Some of their famous compositions and contributions to the jazz repertory include "[[Bugle Call Rag]]", "[[Milneburg|Milenburg]] Joys", "[[Farewell Blues]]", "Angry", "Baby", "Discontented Blues", "She's Crying for Me", "Oriental", "I Never Knew What a Girl Could Do", "Everybody Loves Somebody Blues", and "[[Tin Roof Blues]]".

"[[Make Love to Me (1954 song)|Make Love to Me]]", a 1954 pop song by [[Jo Stafford]], using the New Orleans Rhythm King's music from the 1923 jazz standard "Tin Roof Blues", became a number 1 hit. [[Anne Murray]] and [[B. B. King]] also recorded "Make Love to Me". Jo Stafford's recording of "Make Love to Me" was number 1 for three weeks on the ''Billboard'' chart and number 2 on the ''Cashbox'' chart.

===NORK sound===

The ODJB and the NORK were the two leading white bands of the day, but their musical styles were very different. As opposed to the short, choppy style of the ODJB, NORK played more [[legato]] pieces.<ref name="NewGrove"/> [[Leon Roppolo]]'s famous clarinet sound gave the band its characteristic, bluesy feel.
	
Richard M. Sudhalter, in his book ''Lost Chords: White Musicians and Their Contributions to Jazz'', wrote that 
"Three takes of '[[Tin Roof Blues]]' exist, three opportunities to listen to Roppolo's mind at work, arranging and rearranging the pieces of his elegiac little statement. He begins all three on his high G (concert F), ends all three on the same two-bar resolution. But the differences in between, matters of [[Pitch (music)|tone]], [[dynamics (music)|dynamics]], and [[shading]] as much as specific notes, are spellbinding.

"This solo, in each of its three variants, contains many 'bent' notes, the exact pitches of which resist attempts at formal notation. In certain cases…. a sustained note will have both a 'sharp' sign and a 'flat' sign above it, indicating a progression from one pitch variation to the other, in the order given."<ref name="LostChords"/>
	
Earlier in the same chapter, Sudhalter described the full band's sound in their first Gennett recordings:

"The notion of tunefulness implies particular attention to the aesthetics of sound. The [[tutti]] passages on '[[Farewell Blues]]', with their echoes of railroad whistles, the carefully arranged interludes and fadeout ending on Schoebel's unusual 'Discontented Blues', bespeak rehearsal and behind-the-scenes work aimed at achieving a polished and varied band sound. Nothing on any record by a black band of the early '20s is anywhere near as aesthetically venturesome.<ref name="LostChords"/>