* En anglais uniquement
Cornetist and bandleader Dominick "Nick" La Rocca was a white pioneer in the largely black world of early jazz. Born in New Orleans in 1889, he started his professional career playing with the Reliance Brass Band (organized and led by Papa Laine), and then in 1914 formed his own group, the famous Original Dixieland Jazz Band, which successfully migrated north to Chicago during the early days of World War I. The group, which featured La Rocca on cornet, Alcide "Yellow" Nunez on clarinet, and Eddie Edwards on trombone, was originally led not by La Rocca, but by drummer Johnny Stein. Before long, however, the Original Dixieland Jazz Band named La Rocca their captain and moved east to New York City, where they drew large crowds at Reisenweber's Restaurant on Eighth Avenue and where, in 1917, they became the first group to put the cutting-edge sounds of jazz on record; the tunes "The Original Dixieland One-Step" and "Livery Stable Blues," which have since been transferred to digital disc and can still be enjoyed today.
In 1919, La Rocca and his band sailed to London, where they met with success equal to what they enjoyed on America's East Coast. But the cost of such fame and fortune was steep and the Original Dixieland Jazz Band broke up in 1925 when La Rocca's mental and emotional state became dangerously fragmented. They reunited during the late '30s for some recording sessions, after which La Rocca permanently withdrew from life as a professional musician. He died in his hometown of New Orleans in 1961 after working many years as a building contractor. Years later, his son rebuilt the Original Dixieland Jazz Band. After his retirement from music, Nick La Rocca claimed, inscrutably, to have "invented" jazz, and tried unsuccessfully (and with results that were unhappy for all involved) to downplay the integral role of African Americans in its proliferation.