Larry Shields
Encyclopedia
Dixieland
Dixieland music, sometimes referred to as Hot jazz, Early Jazz or New Orleans jazz, is a style of jazz music which developed in New Orleans at the start of the 20th century, and was spread to Chicago and New York City by New Orleans bands in the 1910s.Well-known jazz standard songs from the...
jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
clarinetist.
Shields was born into an Irish-American family in Uptown New Orleans, on the same block where jazz pioneer Buddy Bolden
Buddy Bolden
Charles "Buddy" Bolden was an African American cornetist and is regarded by contemporaries as a key figure in the development of a New Orleans style of rag-time music which later came to be known as jazz.- Life :...
lived. Shields' family were musical; his brothers Harry
Harry Shields
Harry Shields was an early jazz clarinetist.Harry Shields was born in uptown New Orleans, Louisiana, the younger brother of noted clarinetist Larry Shields. Harry spent almost his whole career in New Orleans. He played with the bands of Norman Brownlee, Sharkey Bonano, Tom Brown, Johnny Wiggs,...
, Pat (guitar), and Eddie (piano) all played music professionally.
Shields started playing clarinet when he was 14 and played with Papa Jack Laine
Papa Jack Laine
George Vital "Papa Jack" Laine was a pioneering band leader in New Orleans in the years from the Spanish-American War to World War I....
's bands. He was one of the early New Orleans musicians to go to Chicago, first heading north in the summer of 1915 to join Bert Kelly
Bert Kelly (jazz musician)
Bert Kelly was a jazz band leader who owned Kelly's Stables in Chicago's Tower Town in the 1920s. His jazz band is claimed to have been the first to use that term as Bert Kelly's Jazz Band in 1915....
's band, then with Tom Brown
Tom Brown (trombonist)
Tom Brown , sometimes known by the nickname Red Brown, was an early New Orleans dixieland jazz trombonist. He also played string bass professionally....
's band, before joining the Original Dixieland Jass Band
Original Dixieland Jass Band
The Original Dixieland Jass Band were a New Orleans, Dixieland jazz band that made the first jazz recordings in early 1917. Their "Livery Stable Blues" became the first jazz single ever issued. The group composed and made the first recordings of many jazz standards, the most famous being Tiger Rag...
in November 1916. The following year that band made the first jazz phonograph
Phonograph
The phonograph record player, or gramophone is a device introduced in 1877 that has had continued common use for reproducing sound recordings, although when first developed, the phonograph was used to both record and reproduce sounds...
records, propelling Shield's playing to national prominence.
After leaving the Original Dixieland Jazz Band in 1921, he played with various bands in New York City (including briefly with Paul Whiteman
Paul Whiteman
Paul Samuel Whiteman was an American bandleader and orchestral director.Leader of the most popular dance bands in the United States during the 1920s, Whiteman's recordings were immensely successful, and press notices often referred to him as the "King of Jazz"...
) before moving to Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
where he remained throughout the 1920s, leading his own band and appearing briefly in some Hollywood films.
In the 1930s Shields returned to Chicago and joined the reformed Original Dixieland Jazz Band. He then worked for a while at "Nick's" in New York before returning to play in New Orleans and later in California. He died in Los Angeles.
His playing, especially on phonograph records, was an important influence on later jazz clarinetists, including Benny Goodman
Benny Goodman
Benjamin David “Benny” Goodman was an American jazz and swing musician, clarinetist and bandleader; widely known as the "King of Swing".In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman led one of the most popular musical groups in America...
. Larry Shields inspired Dink Johnson
Dink Johnson
Ollie "Dink" Johnson was a dixieland jazz pianist, clarinetist, and drummer.-Background:Dink Johnson was born in Biloxi, Mississippi, younger brother of the bass player/bandleader William Manuel Johnson. He worked around Mississippi and New Orleans, Louisiana before moving to the western United...
to begin playing the clarinet, in a 1950 interview with Floyd Levin he stated: "I was actually a drummer, you know. I had always wanted to play the clarinet since hearing Larry Shields with the Original Dixieland Jazz Band."