Dixieland at Disneyland: Performing “New Orleans Jazz”
Location
Rosen Classroom 111
Start Date
21-6-2024 11:45 AM
Description
In the 1962 television feature Disneyland After Dark, Louis Armstrong, Kid Ory and other veteran New Orleans musicians reunite to play aboard the Mark Twain riverboat. As dancing waiters distribute (non-alcoholic) mint julep to a large, multi-generational audience, we witness “the improbable spectacle of Walt Disney [acting] as a godfather to traditional jazz” (Down Beat). Since its opening in 1955, Disneyland had featured New Orleans jazz, beginning with a house band of Disney animators, the Firehouse Five Plus Two. From 1961, banjoist Johnny St Cyr, famed for his 1920’s recordings with Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton, led a band of fellow old-time musicians, the Young Men from New Orleans, in nightly performances.
This paper explores the mutual attraction of Disneyland and Dixieland, in the context of a revival of traditional jazz that was especially strong on the West coast. As the revival helped to secure a place for New Orleans musicians and their city in jazz historiography, a burgeoning tourist industry constructed “New Orleans jazz” not as a time that was past but as a place one could visit. If Preservation Hall’s establishment in New Orleans in 1961 was a small sign of that movement, Disneyland’s first major extension five years later brought a (still extant) replica of the city’s jazz-infused French Quarter. Drawing on oral history, reception texts, and assorted media, I argue that Disneyland at once cemented New Orleans jazz’s place in American history, and relocated its story in the register of myth—if not fantasy.
Recommended Citation
Fry, Andy, "Dixieland at Disneyland: Performing “New Orleans Jazz”" (2024). Theme Park Music and Sound. 6.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/tpms/2024/friday/6
Dixieland at Disneyland: Performing “New Orleans Jazz”
Rosen Classroom 111
In the 1962 television feature Disneyland After Dark, Louis Armstrong, Kid Ory and other veteran New Orleans musicians reunite to play aboard the Mark Twain riverboat. As dancing waiters distribute (non-alcoholic) mint julep to a large, multi-generational audience, we witness “the improbable spectacle of Walt Disney [acting] as a godfather to traditional jazz” (Down Beat). Since its opening in 1955, Disneyland had featured New Orleans jazz, beginning with a house band of Disney animators, the Firehouse Five Plus Two. From 1961, banjoist Johnny St Cyr, famed for his 1920’s recordings with Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton, led a band of fellow old-time musicians, the Young Men from New Orleans, in nightly performances.
This paper explores the mutual attraction of Disneyland and Dixieland, in the context of a revival of traditional jazz that was especially strong on the West coast. As the revival helped to secure a place for New Orleans musicians and their city in jazz historiography, a burgeoning tourist industry constructed “New Orleans jazz” not as a time that was past but as a place one could visit. If Preservation Hall’s establishment in New Orleans in 1961 was a small sign of that movement, Disneyland’s first major extension five years later brought a (still extant) replica of the city’s jazz-infused French Quarter. Drawing on oral history, reception texts, and assorted media, I argue that Disneyland at once cemented New Orleans jazz’s place in American history, and relocated its story in the register of myth—if not fantasy.