The Co-Ed
LP EMI Parlophone PMC 7085
It’s interesting to reflect on how quickly the musicians and the bands influenced each other within the fast-developing early jazz idiom. Here we have a group from New Orleans that, under the name Crescent City Jazzers, recorded in that same city for a mobile recording team in 1924.
They chose a number called Sensation Rag that the Original Dixieland Jazzband had recorded six years before, and their playing is pure New Orleans jazz with good collective improvisation, clarinet ace Cliff Holman, and fluent tenor sax by Eddie Powers.
In their next session, the band recorded in St. Louis, where they had a long sojourn playing at the Arcadia Ballroom. They changed their name to The Arcadian Serenaders, and their cornet player, Sterling Bose, was replaced by another New Orleans musician, Wingy Manone. One of the numbers from this session is Fidgety Feet, where their performance is based on a recording by the Wolverines that was done earlier in the same year, 1924.
In the autumn of 1925, another group alternated with the band in the ballroom. It was under the direction of Frankie Trumbauer and included the great Bix Beiderbecke. And when the Arcadian Serenaders recorded the chosen tune, still in 1925, with Sterling Bose back on cornet, the impact on him by Bix was very clear. We hear, among other things, phrases taken from Davenport Blues, recorded by Bix and his Rhythm Jugglers earlier that year.
Bose continued to play Bix-inspired cornet in many bands and on many recordings until he tragically shot himself to death in 1958 after a long illness.