Month: February 2024

From the Record Shelves #182 – Oh Me! Oh My! – Sometimes a collector or a specialist comes up with recorded evidence that jazz was everywhere, thus debating if New Orleans really was the birthplace of jazz. But in any case, the city had more jazz than anyplace else (…) read more and listenread more and listen

From the Record Shelves #181 – Dippermouth Blues – The two musically sympathetic Dorsey brothers could still cooperate when these sessions were made. Both were already experienced in the jazz idiom and had a technique on their instruments that few could match (…) read more and listenread more and listen

From the Record Shelves #180 – My Kinda Love – This was probably the first record in the Vintage Series that I bought back in 1966. It is a retrospective compilation of trombonist Jack Teagarden’s participation on records from 1928 until 1957 (…) read more and listenread more and listen

From the Record Shelves #179 – Boneyard Shuffle – I look at the cover and see a young Red Nichols in a reflective mood, looking at his mouthpiece with his most precious belonging, the trumpet in the lap. He’s well-dressed, and everything in the music is also (…) read more and listenread more and listen

From the Record Shelves #178 – Me – It’s rewarding for me to listen to American dance bands from the 20s and beginning of the 30s. We often get good melodies and fine inventive arrangements well played by the best musicians around, and then if (…) read more and listenread more and listen

From the Record Shelves #177 – Creole Blues – Today it’s the other Dodds, the brother of Johnny, who is in focus. Warren “Baby” Dodds, six years younger than Johnny, had a tough beginning. When he had learned to play drums and wanted to sit in with (…) read more and listenread more and listen

From the Record Shelves #176 – Funny Fumble – Here is another good Ace of Hearts LP. It’s hot, well-performed and arranged music, throughout with many things happening. Still, those recordings risk falling through the cracks when it comes to re-editions since (…) read more and listenread more and listen

From the Record Shelves #175 – On the Sunny Side of the Street – This is a great recording, but somehow hidden. I don’t think that I ever had it on an LP, but I had it recorded on reel-to-reel tape from the radio. In the beginning of the 30s, Louis Armstrong (…) read more and listenread more and listen

From the Record Shelves #174 – Joe Turner Blues – This is another lucky day, starting with the big round sound from the great Johnny Dodds’ clarinet coming out of the speakers. In 1927, “Johnny Dodds’ Black Bottom Stompers” made an attempt to revive (…) read more and listenread more and listen

From the Record Shelves #173 – 31st Street Blues – When I started to listen to jazz, I learned many things from the books. One often repeated “truth” was that Fletcher Henderson’s Orchestra was nothing but a common dance orchestra until Louis (…) read more and listenread more and listen

From the Record Shelves #172 – Parlor Social Stomp – Once, when I was in Paris, I heard that the attendants of the museums held a wild one-day strike, so you could enter without paying. I made a quick visit to the Louvre to have a new look at Mona Lisa (…) read more and listenread more and listen

From the Record Shelves #171 – Fidgety Feet – On this day a hundred years ago, on February 18, 1924, Bix Beiderbecke made his first record. His sound as it came out of a cornet and his musical ideas still fascinate people all over the world, and it is (…) read more and listenread more and listen

From the Record Shelves #170 – The Co-Ed – It’s interesting to reflect over how quickly the musicians and the bands influenced each other within the fast developing early jazz idiom. Here we have a group from New Orleans that under the name Crescent City Jazzers (…) read more and listenread more and listen

From the Record Shelves #169 – High Society Blues – There is no doubt that the jazz music born in the US was superior to the European attempts in the beginning, and it still may be so today, but around 1930 England was a competitor to American dance music (…) read more and listenread more and listen

From the Record Shelves #168 – My Fightin’ Gal – Here’s a rough blues from 1940 with Oran “Hot Lips” Page, trumpet and vocal, accompanied by a trio consisting of Leonard Feather, piano, Teddy Bunn, guitar and Ernest “Bass” Hill on bass (…) read more and listenread more and listen

From the Record Shelves #167 – You – Writings about Oliver Naylor’s Seven Aces often deal with the fact that they are unjustly unknown. And indeed, they had the capacity to play hot collective choruses like few white orchestras at this time around 1924 (…) read more and listenread more and listen

From the Record Shelves #166 – Lazy Woman’s Blues – I used to transcribe what Louis Armstrong played and then go to our rehearsal place a few houses down the street and practice it. There is a lot to learn from those tracks; Armstrong’s choice of notes (…) read more and listenread more and listen

From the Record Shelves #165 – Moonlight Saving Time – When I listen to Ruth Etting I try not to think about her personal life, and I don’t either want to think about the motion picture Love Me or Leave Me starring Doris Day that is based on said tragic life. No, I prefer to (…) read more and listenread more and listen

From the Record Shelves #164 – Embraceable You – In the end of the 1930s, the commercial possibilities of the jazz music were used to great advantage. Outstanding instrumentalists with good looks and musical personality joined the big band craze and toured all over the US (…) read more and listenread more and listen

From the Record Shelves #163 – A Hundred Years from Today – This was the second LP that I bought in my life. The year was 1965, and it has many nice songs, but this one from 1933 became a special favorite with its message about to live here and now. There are other fine versions (…) read more and listenread more and listen