Year: 2024
From the Record Shelves #288 – What Kind O’ Man Is You? – There are a few entries in the discographies of this wonderful Hoagy Carmichael composition. A couple are made in modern times, and among them is a version with my band, because we were (…) read more and listenread more and listen
From the Studio #50 – Deep Night Sometime in the late 1960s, I arrived at the last moment at the cinema. The movie had just started. The film was Bonnie and Clyde, and it started with the original version of this fascinating song, written and performed by Rudy Valley (…) read more and listenread more and listen
From the Record Shelves #287 – All the Whores Like the Way I Ride – This happens sometimes. I’m not very inspired to listen to something, but I put on a record anyway with a very familiar sound, like with Louis Armstrong’s All Stars or, very differently (…) read more and listenread more and listen
From the Record Shelves #286 – Sho’ Is Hot – In the beginning, the voice sounds like a radio announcer of New Orleans jazz in the 1940s, but then it evolves into something else: a kind of vaudeville number with a good trumpet playing in the back and sometimes (…) read more and listenread more and listen
From the Studio #49 – Song of the Wanderer Here is a song that is not so complicated and thus fits well for use in a collective ensemble format. The lyrics are, as you see, utterly basic, and life is not easy for the wanderer… (…) read more and listenread more and listen
From the Record Shelves #284 – The Terror – On the label, it reads “Marvin Smoley and his Syncopaters.” Many record collectors coming across this very hot record may have scratched their heads wondering who this obscure band leader was. In fact, he wasn’t one (…) read more and listenread more and listen
From the Studio #48 – Wasting My Love on You I need to practice a song that will soon be featured in a concert, so I played the verse, the melody in 1920s style, and a solo chorus. I don’t sing it myself, but if you want to give it a try, I give you the lyrics below (…) read more and listenread more and listen
From the Record Shelves #284 – Riverboat Shuffle – As always when he is present, Bix Beiderbecke, with his cornet, is the protagonist here. There are several facets of his genius, and here on this session with Frankie Trumbauer’s Orchestra in 1927 (…) read more and listenread more and listen
From the Record Shelves #283 – Doin’ the New Low Down – Today I enjoy an album with music from a show called “Lew Leslie’s Blackbirds of 1928.” After having successfully produced an album with music from “Showboat,” Jack Kapp at Brunswick Records continued (…) read more and listenread more and listen
From the Studio #47 – If I Could Be with You –
This song has been in my mind always, it seems, but more precisely since I, as a teenager, heard it with McKinney’s Cotton Pickers as sung by their saxophone player George Thomas. He had (…) read more and listenread more and listen
From the Record Shelves #282 – New Vine Street Blues – This beautiful mood piece is a remake of an early Benny Moten recording from 1924. Now we are in the depression, and it’s 1930. The number is not a conventional 12-bar blues but has an unusual 24-bar structure and (…) read more and listenread more and listen
From the Studio #46 – What a Girl! What a Night! –
This song expresses the kind of happiness that a man or woman can feel when bitten by the love bug. The Coon Sanders Orchestra of Kansas City made a version that I immediately liked (…) read more and listenread more and listen