Enjoy my new series with Records from the Shelves
I started out in the 1960s buying vinyl records and some 78’s. Most of the records I bought at any price because I just had to have them. My mother could send me out with money to buy new trousers, but I came back with a record. In the beginning it was mostly the milestones of classic jazz and records by blues artists alone with guitar, because that was the music that I wanted to play myself.
When the CD’s came in the 90s I bought many recordings again since they were more practical to work with, and they often contained transfers of better originals. Furthermore, you could sometimes get everything recorded by a special artist in chronological order. Today I’m back to buying vinyl again most often because I find them cheap, and thus I can take a chance to listen to music that I may or may not like.
I have made many discoveries over the years. Things that may not be as important to me as the cornerstones of classic jazz but are still enjoyable and that gives me a wider spectrum.
Now I’m going to play a record every day and present a tune with a short comment. Early jazz, blues, modern jazz, operatic arias maybe and some bygone popular artist’s recordings. Let’s listen together, and we’ll see what comes up!
From the Record Shelves #292 – Panama – This is probably one of the best Dixieland sessions ever made. Four tunes were recorded on November 27, 1943, and this is one of them. The group was called “Wild Bill” Davison and his Commodores. Extatic, exiting (…) read more and listenread more and listen
From the Record Shelves #291 – Then I’ll Be Happy – The LP starts with 1923 and Fletcher Henderson had a good and interesting orchestra already. The brass instrumentalists play with conviction and feeling and the saxophone team of Don Redman and (…) read more and listenread more and listen
From the Record Shelves #290 – I Love a Piano – This double LP with more or less well-known tunes from the great Irving Berlin contains a rarity. It is very unpretentious, and that is the point here. Just a man with a piano love song (…) read more and listenread more and listen
From the Record Shelves #289 – She’s Just My Size – I was lucky to be able to hear the two most famous big bands in the world when I was very young. Duke Ellington and Count Basie had in common total control over their orchestras (…) read more and listenread more and listen
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 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 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 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 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 Record Shelves #281- You Call It Madness – I have about five or six favorites among tenor sax players, and Don Byas (1912–1972) is one of them. He had big band experience from Lionel Hampton’s, Don Redman’s, Andy Kirk’s, and Count Basie’s great orchestras (…) read more and listenread more and listen