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What are you listening to?

Fletch

I'll Lock Up
Messages
8,865
Location
Iowa - The Land That Stuff Forgot
90° and sunny in Minneapolis

...and I'm fighting a slow hotel wireless feed to listen to http://jazz-on-line.com - a great resource, but enjoy it while you can because the cats are giving the stuff away. Not just jazz, either, but vocal & dance pop, even some 'billy & blues.

White Lightning - Mills Blue Rhythm Band, 1932. Despite the title, a rather stereotypical hot instrumental, full of the keyed-up staccato 8th note phrasing of the immediate pre-swing era. How did these guys sound so raggedy and so right-on-the-beat at the same time?

Traffic Jam - Artie Shaw & Ork, 1939. If the last tune was primitive swing, clanking, shuddering and sputtering, this one is pure streamlined supercharged capital-S Swing. In fact the feeling of motion and power is too intense to call it Traffic Jam, unless it was the track to a never-made Vitaphone Melody Master with collegiate youngsters dancing on car hoods and swiping policemen's hats.

Gold Diggers' Song (We're in the Money) - Benny Morton & Ork, 1934. A little belated, but full-on swinging, rendition of the movie hit of mid '33. Teddy MacRae, tenor soloist on this date, has co-writer credit with Artie Shaw on Traffic Jam. Small world, wasn't it.
 

Bustercat

A-List Customer
Messages
304
Location
Alameda
21st Precinct (Murdered Twins episode), later some Nightwatch, and a some Artie Shaw.
Enjoying some scotch and my new WE302 phone I got working.
 

LizzieMaine

Bartender
Messages
33,766
Location
Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
78s to wait for the phone to ring by --

Starting off in 1934 with Ramona and Her Park Avenue Boys -- a sub-group of the Whiteman ensemble -- declaring "We're Out Of The Red." Huh, must be nice.

Next, still in 1934 the Master Himself, Cole Porter, performs "You're The Top." You know, cellophane really is pretty darn neat at that.
 

Fletch

I'll Lock Up
Messages
8,865
Location
Iowa - The Land That Stuff Forgot
Anything you can do...

...I can do. Not better. Just different.

We're Out of the Red - Dave Harman & Ork, 1934. Bluebird's San Antonio sessions had an echoy, humid ambience. The band and singer attempt to imitate the Lombardos but are too Southernly languid to bring it off. The overall effect is slightly decadent - kinda Paper Moon, that is, if Bogdanovich had gone a little more verité.

You're the Top - Paul Whiteman & Ork, 1934. For some reason this side gets less attention than its flip, Anything Goes. Maybe the snappy unison brasses and solid beat don't kick up the required campy nostalgia, but John Hauser and Peggy Healy do their best to make up for it in the choruses, backed up by trippy-skippy strings and skeleton-ribcage mallets.

Lagniappe: Nina Rosa - Isham Jones & Ork, 1930. What was Brunswick's artists & rep man thinking, giving this stormy, husky, brawny Band of the Big Shoulders a tune from a Sigmund Romberg show? They play it with infinite finesse but entirely too much oomph. Old Rommie must have torn out his sidelocks grousing, "Ve did not schlapp ze bass in Budapest!"
 

Chas

One Too Many
Messages
1,715
Location
Melbourne, Australia
Shakin' off the cobwebs from a nightshift in the psych. ward.

Jimmie Lunceford's "White Heat", the original release on Bluebird- whose B side is "Jazznocracy"

Count Basie "Jumpin' At The Woodside" original Decca release. B side: "Dark Rapture", Helen Humes vocal.

Pete Johnson and Big Joe Turner "Roll 'Em, Pete" on Columbia
 

Bustercat

A-List Customer
Messages
304
Location
Alameda
I Have my ipod on random, hooked up to my old Sparton.

"Sorry wrong number" just came on. Haven't heard it yet! Time for another Rob Roy...
 

Fletch

I'll Lock Up
Messages
8,865
Location
Iowa - The Land That Stuff Forgot
Poddin' it in the navigator's seat heading down to Ames...The theme seems to be "Old Standards Gone Modernistic."

Bugle Call Rag - Raymond Scott 5tet, 1937. The old standard gets a Machine Age revamp with autistic-savant tenor saxophoning from Dave Harris and some vaguely "oriental" harmonies (maybe they shoulda called it Kugel Ball Rag?).

When You and I Were Young, Maggie - Roane's Pennsylvanians, 1932. The oldest tune you commonly heard foxtrotted before the ASCAP strike of the early 40s - it dates to something like 1871. Sung first in wholesome workmen's chorus fashion, then they take up the horns and give out a solid 8-part wall of hot.

Lime House Blues (sic) - Joe Haymes & Ork, 1933. Nothing at all Oriental here, just 11 slick Midwesterners kicking out art deco riffs so luminous they're like a Century of Progress pavilion rendered in sound. No one told Joe that "Limehouse" is London's Chinatown, not the place where they keep the cocktail garnishes.
 

Fletch

I'll Lock Up
Messages
8,865
Location
Iowa - The Land That Stuff Forgot
Ahh, gotta love Rex. Did you know that Boy Meets Horn was going to be called Twits and Twerps? I suppose the British fandom clued him in on what a twit really was.

Twits and Twerps would be a great name for a blog about jazz in the pomo era - as a social, or antisocial, phenomenon.
 

Lenore

Practically Family
Messages
758
Location
Houston, Texas
Just got in from the Big Bad Voodoo Daddy show at House of Blues Houston. Great show live. Definitely went away happy.

As it is, I'm listening to their Cab Calloway Tribute album. I won't be sleeping for a while. :)
 

Fletch

I'll Lock Up
Messages
8,865
Location
Iowa - The Land That Stuff Forgot
Play-A-Longing

...earlier today, giving the 1935 Buescher Aristocrat alto sax an airing with the Woodwind Model '36 mouthpiece.

Beebe - Jimmy Dorsey, 1929. His first attempt at the solo showpiece that over the years got faster and faster and faster and...hell, I can only just keep up with this one.

It Don't Mean A Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing) - Duke Ellington & His Famous Ork, 1932. Still the best and definitive of all the many versions. There ain't no keeping up with Johnny Hodges' solo.

Sweet Georgia Brown - Oliver Naylor's Ork, 1925. Infectious electrical cut by an Atlanta band that mostly made acoustics and never sounded this good. Jazz feeling as straight up-and-down bouncy as a ride in a brand new Model T sedan.

All Together and Streamline Susie - The Beau Hunks, 1995. A couple of tracks off the beautifully played and recorded Little Rascals albums. When I grow up I want to be a Beau Hunk, and radiate that mellow old So. Cal. sunshine from my bell.
 

LizzieMaine

Bartender
Messages
33,766
Location
Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
78s to corner the market on Excedrin by --

Starting off in 1934 with Bing, accompanied by Irving Aaronson and his Orchestra and the definitive recording of "Love In Bloom." People forget what a lovely song this was before Mr. Benny got hold of it.

Next, ahead to 1938 and Dick Powell, with Victor Young and his Orchestra, and a dandy Mercer and Whiting tune from "Hollywood Hotel," "I'm Like A Fish Out of Water." In the picture he does it as a duet with Rosemary Lane, here he goes solo -- either way it's proof that Mr. Porter wasn't the only one who could do a great list song -- "I'm like Eddie Cantor doing a Vandeventer" has to be one of the slickest rhymes of the decade.
 

HadleyH

I'll Lock Up
Messages
4,811
Location
Top of the Hill
"I'll Be A Friend With Pleasure" (1930) Bix's solo here must rank as one of his most melodic and poignant ... :eusa_clap



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Tommy Dorsey on the right with glasses , and Bix standing next to him . (1925)
20090501100506Bix_Beiderbecke_and_R.jpg
 

Nik Taylor

One of the Regulars
Messages
114
Location
Edge of Forever
McKinney's Cotton Pickers - It's A Lonesome Old Town (When You Are Not Around) - Victor 22628

Don Redman, cl, as, bar, speaks, a, dir: Buddy Lee, Rex Stewart, Langston Curl, t / Quentin Jackson, t / Ed Cuffee, tb / Benny Carter, cl, as / Edward Inge, cl, as, ts, v / Prince Robinson, cl, ts / Todd Rhodes, p / Dave Wilborn, bj, v / Billy Taylor, bb / Cuba Austin, d, Louis Deppe, v. Camden, NJ, February 12, 1931.


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McKinney%27sCP_1930-31_DonRedman_1939-40_CC649.jpg
 

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