March 2024 - Paul – and some of that Jazz

From the Record Shelves #204 – Dinah – The Jean Goldkette Orchestra is known mostly for the classic recordings it made when Bix Beiderbecke and Frankie Trumbauer were featured jazz soloists in 1926-27. How did the band sound prior to that? In January -26 (…) read more and listenread more and listen

From the Record Shelves #203 – Black Dog Blues – Among the good music on this CD there is the ragtime guitar master Blind Blake who is in a class by himself. Further on the disc, there is this track that made me think of early Bob Dylan. I don’t think that he would (…) read more and listenread more and listen

From the Studio #9 – That’s How I Feel About You – came to like this tune. There is no well-known recording of it. Here my new mute came to good use. Last autumn I tried some different ones in a shop in Paris. In the end I bought the one that is still made under the (…) read more and listenread more and listen

From the Record Shelves #202 – Rose of Washington Square – Milt Gabler had a record shop since 1926 in Manhattan, across the street from the Commodore Hotel. In the thirties, he sold mostly reissues of the jazz classics from the 1920s, and one day he said to (…) read more and listenread more and listen

From the Record Shelves #201 – Memories of You – Even if I often delve into more obscure things, I now and then have to play a Louis Armstrong record just to set things straight. Like many other successful artists in the US, he and his managers could choose to (…) read more and listenread more and listen

From the Studio #8 – Four or Five Times – Here is a jam on a tune that I think is quite suitable for just that. Often, when we play at parties, we don’t have a list of tunes to choose from, and this one is frequently there. Here I play it in Eb. To get further inspiration there are (…) read more and listenread more and listen

From the Record Shelves #200 – Bill Bailey Won’t You Please Come Home – “Big Bill certainly was big, and his death in 1958—when he succumbed to cancer— removed one of the greatest singers from the active blues scene.” The uncredited comment on the sleeve (…) read more and listenread more and listen

From the Record Shelves #199 – 18th Street Strut – Kansas City had a hectic nightlife in the twenties, and on the music scene Bennie Moten’s Orchestra was dominating. Among their early output on records, there are many nice things with a blues feeling and hot playing (…) read more and listenread more and listen

From the Record Shelves #198 – Karneval i Venedig – Today I listen to another sort of trumpet playing than the jazz trumpet I usually digest at all hours. It’s like it was an altogether different instrument. I know a couple of jazzmen that took lessons from Knud Hovald (…) read more and listenread more and listen

From the Studio #7 – Through – Today, it became a clarinet and muted cornet duet. After that, a solo with a saxophone background. It’s a nice song, and I could have made a vocal effort, but for once the lyrics don’t appeal to me (…) read more and listenread more and listen

From the Record Shelves #197 – Day Break Blues – When interviewed late in his life, the fantastic trumpet player Jabbo Smith spoke about his morose background in the Jenkins Orphanage Band. There was another trumpet player about six years Jabbo’s senior (…) read more and listenread more and listen

From the Record Shelves #196 – Bye and Bye – Guitar and banjo player Johnny St. Cyr was back in the business of recording at the end of the 1940s. His absence from the studios had been about twenty years long. Here he is appointed band leader of (…) read more and listenread more and listen

From the Studio #6 – C’est si bon – C’est si bon was recorded by Yves Montand and had, as far as I know, a moderate success in France, but when Louis Armstrong did his version, “C’est si bon, people say that in France,” (…) read more and listenread more and listen

From the Record Shelves #195 – Honey That Reminds Me – There is a lot of hot swinging stuff on this LP, most of it rather well known, but today this medium recording caught my attention. There is no composer listed on the LP, but I’ve learned from another source (…) read more and listenread more and listen

From the Record Shelves #194 – After Tonight – Clarence Williams’ vast output on records can roughly be divided into three periods. First, we have the acoustic ones, with great participation by Sidney Bechet and Louis Armstrong and banjo player Buddy Christian (…) read more and listenread more and listen

From the Record Shelves #193 – Gypsy – There was a time—it seems long ago now—when all the early recordings of jazz were not available. Originals were hard to come by, and the reissues were not plentiful. It was an exciting age in which (…) read more and listenread more and listen

From the Studio #5 – Here Comes the Sun – This song has such a positive title that it has been used for several ones. It’s not the one by George Harrison, but he might have heard and liked it since he played the ukulele and was a fan of 1920s songs (…) read more and listenread more and listen

From the Record Shelves #192 – Mamie’s Blues – Sometime last year, I came into a second-hand record shop and heard this. I’ve heard it many times before, but it was still magic, especially among young people in the present world we live in. I had to have it! (…) read more and listenread more and listen

From the Record Shelves #191 – Alligator Blues – Today I listen to a 78 rpm record with material from a classic session. Between May 7th and 14th, 1927 Louis Armstrong recorded one masterpiece after another when his studio group had been augmented from (…) read more and listenread more and listen

From the Studio #4 – Alexander’s Ragtime Band – I don’t know if it is this, White Christmas, or maybe another tune that was the most successful in the eyes of their composer, Irving Berlin (…) read more and listenread more and listen