Brotherly Love
LP Historical Jazz Records vol. 16 ASC-16 5829
There are several good and interesting and for the most part obscure recordings on this LP. It’s difficult to make a choice of one.
But here’s one from September 1926 that contains some seconds that constitutes the high point for me. It’s the cornets that attracts me! The two unknown cornetists in Elgar’s Creole Orchestra play a duet. I imagine that this is the way they often did it when they had two cornets back in New Orleans in the early days of jazz. Playing close to the melody first, then in the bridge they unleash and spur each other and in the end of the tune they let go of the arrangement, and it gets real hot.
I don’t know if the personnel has been established later by the jazz researchers, but it was speculated that the legendary Emmanuel Perez was one of the two musicians in question and the name of the other one could be Joe Sudler.
Darnell Howard is suggested to be the clarinet player and Lawson Buford could be the bass player and Ben Thigpen (the father of Ed) the drummer. Band leader Charles Elgar was a classically trained violin player, born in New Orleans in 1879 with a career in Chicago, where this was recorded, already from 1902.