Last week I had the good fortune to be in the Tulane Jazz Archive in New Orleans, looking at the scrapbook collection of Nick LaRocca with the guidance of his trumpet-playing son Jimmy LaRocca - the only serious musician among the LaRocca children. In the old scrapbooks, which had been haphazardly put together by Nick, there was a good deal of press coverage of the ODJB's zoological/musical exploit in Central Park. But how does the movie we now see come to be copyrighted to British Pathe? There must have been far more prints of it at large in the USA.
A much later incident drew my attention - something that took place at a local New Orleans TV station. For some sort of retrospective item in a chat show, both Nick La Rocca and Tom Brown had been invited, evidently to talk about their respective contributions to the early fame of "jass". In the still photograph I have seen, Nick is holding forth in his characteristic fashion, and Tom Brown is standing by with a disgusted expression on his face. And apparently as soon as the cameras moved away, a fist-fight broke out between the two vintage bandleaders. Is this indeed authenticated, and if so, do we know the exact terms of the quarrel? It would be too much to hope that any sort of tape survives.
R.D.