Magnolia Blues
78 rpm Parlophone R3050
In 1937 a Broadway Musical called Babes in Arms with music by Rogers and Hart included songs like The Lady Is a Tramp and My Funny Valentine. Andrew Sisters had a hit with By Mir Bist Du Schön and Maxine Sullivan recorded Loch Lomond. Count Basie recorded One O’Clock Jump and Tommy Dorsey Marie and Song of India.
Another commercial success was Benny Goodman’s Sing, Sing, Sing featuring Gene Krupa on drums. The big bands toured the US, but there were also room for smaller units on for example New York’s different venues on 52nd street. The Jazz Club Three Deuces opened the same year.
There were no signs of a comeback of the early jazz, but in the middle of all this a trombone player from New Orleans made a record in the old style. Santo Pecora that had played with and recorded with New Orleans Rhythm Kings established himself in California in this year 1937 and managed to take a traditional formation into a Hollywood studio. The only one of the other musicians known to me is Stan Wrightsman (played with Bob Crosby and Wingy Manone among others) who start the record on piano. The others are Shorty Sherock, trumpet; Meyer Weinberg, clarinet; Frank Frederico, guitar; Thurman Teague, bass and John Riley Scott, drums.
Pecora composed and recorded with New Orleans Rhythm Kings a tune called She’s Crying For Me that resembles Jelly Roll Morton’s Georgia Swing and here in this record by Santo Pecora and his Back Room Boys his Magnolia Blues has borrowed melody from both Morton’s Tom Cat Blues and the verse of See See Rider. Part of the lyrics sung here by the drummer has earlier been used by Jack Teagarden in That’s a Serious Thing. It’s nice to hear a revival of those things.