Flory does Ory

Another early jazz legend revisited by Flora in his later years was New Orleans trombonist Kid Ory, composer of “Muskrat Ramble.” Among Ory’s bullet points: around 1918 he had the prescience to hire a promising teen trumpeter just starting a music career: Louis Armstrong. Here’s Flora’s classic 1947 Columbia Records 78 rpm album cover:

Forty-six years later, Flora portrayed Ory shouldering a musical blowtorch:

The above unpublished 1993 pen and ink rendering was actually the third time (at least) that Flora captured Ory. The below unpublished pencil caricature was glued in a scrapbook of early 1940s sketches, and features Ory with fellow trombone legend Honore Dutrey.