Bye and Bye
EP Storyville SEP 354
Guitar and banjo player Johnny St. Cyr was back in the business of recording at the end of the 1940s. His absence from the studios had been about twenty years long.
Here he is appointed band leader of his Hot Five in a session for Joe Mares of Southland Records.
The session produced the four numbers on this EP and was recorded in 1955, according to the Lord Jazz Discography, but 1954 if you believe what’s said on the sleeve.
It’s inspired playing by all. Thomas Jefferson is on trumpet, Willie Humphrey on clarinet, and Joe Avery on trombone. Beside St. Cyr on banjo, there is Jeanette Kimball on piano and as in the twenties with Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five, the banjo and piano rhythm team works very well thanks to St. Cyr’s assured and well-timed playing on his six stringed banjo.
Thomas Jefferson is a youngster, only in his thirties, amongst those jazz pioneers, and he is also doing the vocal.
As a bonus, we get to hear the sympathetic and rich voice of St. Cyr himself in a spoken introduction.