In 1919, King George V laughed and applauded a rowdy American band playing Tiger Rag at Buckingham Palace; the same tour ended with the musicians sprinting for the docks at Southampton, chased by a furious British lord. This episode tells the story of the Original Dixieland Jass Band, from a Chicago promoter's attempt to clone Tom Brown's band in 1916, the mutiny against founding drummer Johnny Stein, and the arrival of cornetist Nick LaRocca, to the February 1917 Victor session that produced the first issued jazz record.

We look at how Sicilian marching-band traditions and African-American brass bands collided in New Orleans to produce polyphonic improvisation, how acoustic recording forced drummer Tony Sbarbaro onto cowbells and woodblocks, the lawsuits that threw Livery Stable Blues into the public domain, the death of pianist Henry Raga ...