Johnny Dodds was so serious, professional, and sober amid the roaring 1920s jazz scene that he stuck out among his peers, yet his blues playing was so gritty that colleagues nicknamed him “Toilet.” Born in 1892 in Louisiana or Mississippi (the archives disagree), he grew up in a musical household, sang high tenor in the family quartet, and started on a toy flute meant for his younger brother Warren, better known as Baby Dodds, seeding a lifelong sibling rivalry.

This deep dive follows his move to New Orleans in 1909, his studies with Lorenzo Tio Jr. and Charlie McCurdy, work with Frankie Dusen and Kid Ory, and his 1923 recordings with Joe “King” Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band in Chicago, which he left over his hatred of touring and Oliver’s declining playing due to gum disease. It covers his 1924 to 1930 residency at Kelly’s Stables, recordings with Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five and Hot Seven and Jelly Roll Morton’s Red Hot Peppers, the double embouchure and hard reed behind a tone Benny Goodman called unsurpassed, his refusal and eventual agreement to play with his hard-drinking brother, the Great Depression’s toll on his career, and his death from a stroke in 1940 at 48.

• The toy flute hijacking that started the Dodds brothers’ rivalry
• Why he walked away from King Oliver: integrity over prestige
• Double embouchure and a hard reed: the painful technique behind the “Toilet” sound
• Recording with Baby Dodds in the New Orleans Bootblacks in 1926 despite the arguments
• Only two studio sessions in the 1930s, and a 1987 Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame induction