Rex Harris, in his influential but now dated book 'Jazz' (1952) says that '[Dixieland] has no precise meaning but is generally used for jazz which is played in a quasi-New Orleans style by white musicians.' He credits the first Dixieland musician as being Jack Laine (b.1873) who loved the brass bands of New Orleans and formed one of his own, along with a rag-time band. Harris says of Laine's ensembles that 'two Creoles were included in a band from which most "white" jazz stemmed.

He takes the story a little further by mentioning 'Tom Brown's Band from Dixieland' which was heard in New orleans by talent scouts in 1913 and then went north to Chicago in the summer of 1915.


As a jazz fan in the 1950s I can remember how 'New Orleans' jazz became the accepted 'proper' form of traditional jazz (a la Ken Colyer etc)although the term Dixieland was used by bands like Alex Walsh who played in a looser, less formulaic style.