Skills and Roles in early Jazz Bands (Continued)
Pictured here, is the early twentieth-century Dixieland jazz clarinetist "Big Eye" Louis Nelson Delisle with the Superior Orchestra in 1910.
Some bands, such as William Ridgley and Oscar Celestin's Original Tuxedo Jazz Orchestra, before they split in 1925, maintained a stable roster of players over time. These groups sought to achieve chemistry, or identifiable sound of their own, by combining readers, spellers, and fakers at rehearsal sessions. During these sessions, "head" 
SIDE NOTE "Head" arrangement is a roughly outlined musical arrangement that is played from memory and is often learned by ear. arrangements of blues, rags, marches, ballads, and popular songs of the day (many composed and published locally) were hammered out by rote. On the streets, marching bands read dirges before the deceased was "cut loose" at funerals but played jazz-inflected numbers based on head arrangements for the "second line" dancers in the street.
Big Eye Louis Nelson Delisle and the Superior Orchestra
Sometimes musicians who grew used to each other in one format evolved into another, as illustrated by the transformation of the Invincibles string band into the New Orleans Owls (1922-1929). This jazz band featured intricate mandolin and guitar breaks on several of its recordings. In other cases, local bands conformed to outside influences. For example, between 1924 and 1928, the Original Tuxedo Jazz Orchestra grew from eight to eleven pieces (including an arranger), responding to radio broadcasts featuring larger bands from the Northeast.
Heebie Jeebies
Say, I've got the Heebies
I mean the Jeebies
Talking about
The dance, the Heebie Jeebies
Do, because they're boys
Because it pleases me to be joy
Louis Armstrong
Very few of the men whose names have become great in the early pioneering of jazz and of swing were trained in music at all. They were born musicians: they felt their music and played by ear and memory. That was the way it was with the great Dixieland Five.