I Ain’t Got Nobody
CD Document Records DOCD-5324
This volume three in the complete output on records by the blues singer Ida Cox has a lot of good music. There are the duets with Papa Charlie Jackson and also “Coffin Blues” one of the saddest tales ever put on a disc.
But today I listen to a tune that stands out because it is very rare that Ida sings other songs than blues. And in the background I heard a sound that made me think about Louis Armstrong at the same time about 1925. It’s Bob Shoffner’s light cornet that we hear in the accompanying group, and he has a tone and a vibrato very similar to Louis. On another track there are also some fast licks that unite the two in style. I suppose that it is the common inspiration from King Oliver that is partly the cause of this.
On the CD there we get to hear no less than five cornet players in New Orleans style. Shoffner was one of the many cornet and trumpet players that came from St. Louis and after his settlement in Chicago he was the one to replace Armstrong in Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band and he also joined Dixie Syncopators. He was still playing in the 1960s.