Original Dixieland Jass Band itself as the Creators of Jazz. It was the first band to record jazz commercially and to have hit recordings in the genre. Band leader and cornetist Nick LaRocca argued that ODJB deserved recognition as the first band to record jazz commercially and the first band to establish jazz as a musical idiom or genre. In early 1916 a promoter from Chicago approached clarinetist Alcide Nunez and drummer Johnny Stein about bringing a New Orleans-style band to Chicago, where the similar Brown's Band From Dixieland, led by trombonist Tom Brown, was enjoying success. They then assembled trombonist Eddie Edwards, pianist
Jazz the 1950s and 1960s, Dixieland was one of the most commercially popular jazz styles in the US, Europe, and Japan, although critics paid little attention to it. In 1944, jazz impresario Norman Granz organized the first Jazz at the Philharmonic concert in Los Angeles, which helped make a star of Nat "King" Cole and Les Paul. In 1946, he founded Clef, discovering Canadian jazz pianist Oscar Peterson in 1949 and merging Clef with his new label Verve in 1956, which advanced the career of Ella Fitzgerald. By the end of the 1940s, the nervous energy and tension of bebop was