Category Archives: music

i yearn

Today I saw the Basie Mosaic set at Basement Discs for only $150. I could only let myself listen to one CD (including the finest version of Jive at Five recorded in the 50s) before thrusting the headphones away. I. Do. Not. Have. One. Hundred. And. Fifty. Dollars. In fact, I don’t have any dollars, nor any way of earning any for the foreseeable future (well, unless you count those massively lucrative DJing gigs – that’s me. Earning my way to prosperity $25 at a time).
But it was just so sweet.
I yearn.

Campus Five and Mosaic sets

Because I’m busy marking (up to 20 a day, mate – I am one speedy mofo), I can only blog really dull things.
Right now I’m pining after this:

for no real reason other than the fact that Trev said he was getting it, and now I want it too. Well, actually, I love Ellington a whole lot, and have a real passion for small group/combo swinging jazz. And we’re talking a Mosaic set here – 7 CDs worth of phenomenally good quality remastered hotness. That costs $US119. A little too rich for my blood, unfortunately. Especially since the scholarship ended (months ago) and the teaching paychecks are about to dry up. I do have a wad of cash squirrelled away from my DJing pay, but that $500 for a year’s worth of DJing… she ain’t going to go too far.
So I just think about that Mosaic set and then think about how I could arrange my life so that Trev lives in my house and lets me pretend that all his music is belong to me.
On other musically related fronts, I didn’t let that whole poverty thing stop me from buying myself these 2 Campus 5 albums:

I was convinced by the versions of Squatty Roo and Hop Skip and Jump on Crazy Rhythm (you can listen to them there on the site). I adore those songs (especially the former), and while the Artie Shaw and Ellington versions of these songs (respectively) are far superior, the appeal of a good quality recording of each cannot be ignored (particularly not when the issues I raised here are concerned).
If only I had some logic and didn’t impulse-purchase music in times of stress or overwork. I’d figure out that if I just restrained myself from these little splurges I’d have enough dosh to buy those sweet Mosaic sets.
But I don’t buy music sensibly. I am an artist – my musical selections are guided by impulse. Creative impulse.

The Charleston Chasers

The Charleston Chasers (self-titled).
Not the modern-day recreationist Charleston Chasers, but the early days doods from the 20s/30s.
Only existing as a studio-group (ie recording together but not performing live for audiences), the Charleston Chasers feature a pretty white cast of musicians (and sound it too), including Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Pee Wee Russell, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Gene Krupa, Jack Teagarden. Goodman was the focus of my interest in this album.
I haven’t really had a chance to listen to the album properly, but I can say, the quality is surprisingly good for such old recordings, the ‘sound’ is pretty dang white (check out that above link for a discussion of this stuff in one of my earlier posts), but the music is still good stuff. Think ‘charleston’, a few slow drags/blues numbers, all with a bit of a ‘society’ edge (no guts, no buckets here).
Considering the cast on this one, I think my appreciation for this album will only grow over listens.

Maxine Sullivan’s My Memories of You


Maxine Sullivan’s 1955 album My Memories of You (remastered, etc) is very like Ella’s These are the Blues in its groovy, later-era swinging jazz vibe. I’d pop this one in the same family as Ella and Louis Again (Ella and Louis Armstrong), Billy Holiday’s later stuff from Verve (including Songs for Distingue Lovers) and some of the Oscar Peterson/late Louis Armstong All-Stars stuff.
Small combo, sweet production, older artist with a less-excellent voice, but nice phrasing and sophisticated musicianship. You have to love the way these ladies hang on the beat – they just wait out there til the very last minute.
My Memories of You is a really nice album – almost all very danceable/DJable (for a groover crowd, mind you), as I discovered at the Spiegeltent this weekend. I played far too many songs from the album, but it was just so appropriate for the dancers who were there – a version of Massachusetts which went down really well as a birthday song (and I like it because it reminds me of her much earlier version which I really prefer), as did Christopher Columbus which doesn’t really hold up to too many replayings, but has a sweet sparcity and velvety sauciness which plays on the memory of Fats Waller’s (decidedly dirty) version in a nice way.
Max manages to avoid the dirty lyrics, but their absense (if you know the Fats version) is emphasised rather than coyly ignored (as in the horrible Andrews Sisters versions of things like Hold Tight), so ends up feeling saucy – the delay in her phrasing, while not a patch on Billy Holiday, seems to let you know that she knows this is saucy stuff, but won’t go so far as to piss of her record company with dirty lyrics.
This is a nice album. I’ve listened to it a bunch of times, and I know it’ll be a sure-fire winner when DJing for groovers. But after about a half-dozen, or maybe 10 times through, I feel like I’ve pretty much heard all there is to hear. Unlike Billy Holiday’s later stuff, where you feel you can keep going back and finding more interesting things. Max isn’t the consumate muisican Billy is. Nor has her voice weathered as well as Ella’s in that period. But there’s something really appealing about this mature voice with a mature approach to swing.
[NB: I heard Jesse spruiking this one on his radio show and made an immediate impulse purchase. It’s a damn good thing I really don’t like Earnestine Anderson or I’d have spent my (non-existant) savings on groover crowd-pleasers by now)]

Ella Fitzgerald’s These are the Blues

Just a quick entry to blog the lately arrived members of my CD collection.

These Are the Blues by Ella Fitzgerald.
Ella really rocks, and this is a really great album. One of the late-Ella recordings (1963), there’s some sweet organ action, some lovely solos, etc etc from the combo supporting her (I don’t have the linter notes handy, sorry – story of my laptop-life). It’s all blues, and it’s all very blues-danceable.
Yet I am not entirely convinced that Ella really knows how to sing anything other than happy. She has an amazing voice, amazing musicianship, but it feels like she has a limited emotional range. Listening to a version of Christopher Columbus on another album last night, I speculated to The Squeeze that Ella could sing the naughty version of that song have it come off sounding entirely innocent.
But this is still a great album – truly great. If you like groovy, smooth blues. And Ella, of course.

animal encounters

Last night riding home from die Spiegeltent (where I am currently doing a few DJing gigs – Nov 4th and 18th and Dec 2nd if you want to catch up – it’s a glorious venue, there’s a cheesy dance class (which every one loves – especially the kids) and there are cheesy performances (which you can’t help but enjoy) and cheesy jokes (and I don’t care if it’s only me who adores them) and some fricking AWESOME DJed music – all for $10. Though it’s $10 for a beer(!!!!) )
… yeah, so on the ride home, we saw ten cats. I kid you not – ten cats. I usually see three (often the same ones, though not always), but last night we saw four ordinary cats and then six feral cats down near the railway line. I don’t know who thinks feeding feral cats is a good idea: if you do, you’re ON CRACK. The Squeeze got off his bike and tried to chase one to give it a squeeze. He stopped when I warned him that he’d have to sleep in the shed if he caught one.
I don’t much care for cats. I certainly don’t like to see them out on the street, looking for things to kill.
We have also seen a lovely small corgi tied up outside our local shops a couple of times lately. Last time it was outside the Safeway, yesterday it was outside Nino and Joes. I think I’m in love. I suggested The Squeeze squash it into his backpack and then make a quick getaway, but the owner overheard and didn’t look too impressed.
That is one fine corgi – it is gentle and sweet and has lovely fur and huge ears. Unfortunately, generations of inbreeding have left it with stunted feet.
Tomorrow is dentist appointment #3. The second one wasn’t so bad (just two small fillings), but tomorrow is the follow up on the surprise root canal. I am a bit scared, as it seems that side of my jaw is more sensitive than the other. I have promised myself another trip to the cinema (we went to see Children of God tonight at the Nova) and I think I’ll let myself see anything I want, even if it’s Little Miss Sunshine which The Squeeze wants to see as well. Either that or that dullish biodoco* about that architect bloke. I like films about buildings. Really, I’d prefer a chick flick, but they’re all out of them at the cinema. And I doubt they’d have it at the Kino, which is across the road from the dentist. Nor the Nova, which is my second choice.
So I guess I’ll just have to settle for some insane spontaneous CD purchasing instead.
*Sounds like something I’d buy at Nino and Joe’s, huh? Nope. But I did buy a lovely rolled turky roast this weekend. I love turkey, and this was some great action. Stuffed with something sweet with nuts (shh, don’t tell The Squeeze – he hates nuts but didn’t realise). Took two bloody hours to cook, but man, was that some tasty giant fowl.
–edit–
Note to self: turkeys aren’t big on the swimming.

Hamp & slow-mid range swing

hamp.gifMy love for Lionel Hampton continues in an unnatural way*. Unnatural in that I have not only abandoned my qualms about DJing jump blues for lindy hoppers for Hamp’s sake, but in that I have also decided that boogie woogie is Fun. I have also (quite unashamedly) overplayed my favourite Hamp songs (eventually, I guess, I will tire of songs like Drinkin’ Wine spo-de-oh-doh, Hey ba-ba-re-bop! and Lavender Coffin (yes, despite all evidence to the contrary, they are actually different songs)) and will continue to do so.
I think my love for Benny Goodman’s small groups is in part (perhaps a large part) owing to my love of the Hamp.
Right now, I am declaring a love for Don’t be that way (you can hear it here). I have already played it far too many times, and will continue to do so. I just love the way it chuggs along. And you get the feeling that there’s some joking going on in the band there. I love the saucy brass with the brruurp brruurp trombone underneath. I love the twinkly vibes. I love the chunky beat (bass, guitar esp). I even love the sax (and really, who could love sax?). I love the restrained, but kind of bursting-at-the-seams feeling of momentum building. It’s only 137bpm, but it feels like it’s going somewhere.** It feels like… like… like bounce feels – like energy stored in your body, that might bust out any old how.
This brings me to a comment another dancer made the other day. After I’d just played a set of old scratchies that were all between 120 and 167 at a sedate after-class gig.
The comment involved these points:
– I wish that guitar would move away from the microphone. It’s so dull – clunk, clunk, clunk
– that older clunky music sucks when it’s under 180 – it’s really boring.
I didn’t really lay much value on these observations.But it made me think a lot about the issue (of course). And here are the things I came up with:
– that slower stuff sounds dull if you’re looking for tinkly, complex melodies and delayed timing, a la Oscar Peterson. But if you’re into combining moves, and working with phrases as the markers for your complexity (ie, working on a larger scale), or perhaps looking at the layers of sound only a big band can offer, and which are clear markers of that earlier, late 30s sound, then this stuff is quite interesting. It begs a combination of moves and a use of lateral or horizontal space, rather than micro-movements on the spot. It says ‘think of each note or each beat or each chunk of rhythm as part of a bigger pattern’ not ‘think of each note or beat or chunk of rhythm as something you have to echo in your body exactly’.
The free-er, riff-based and improvisation-heavy nature of Kansas City jazz (in particular) encourages musicians to think of how they can combine improvisations and solos within a looser musical framework. For dancers, that approach encourages contributions to the rhythms going on, rather than a strict representation of what they can hear. So, for example, a Swede would add a bit of syncopated footwork at the end of an 8 to add rhythm to the song, rather than simply making flesh exactly what they can hear. They would also make greater use of a dynamic, lateral energy rather than just a restrained, micro-movement and energy-contained.
So, really, this stuff is actually very interesting and challenging for dancing. Even at slower tempos. I actually feel that slower tempos can offer greater scope for improvisation and interest – you have time to add stuff in. When you’re moving to 200bpm, you don’t have time to add in extras – you pare down the movement to basic moves simply because you don’t have time. It’s about combinations of moves rather than individual movements.
When you’re working at a slower tempo, you can add in all the interesting visual ‘commentaries’ and social interaction that faster tempos prevent. And if you’re working with the more open, improvised connection of a Swedish or old skool swingout, for example, both partners can happily add in variations and jazz steps, breaking out into open to do ‘solo’ stuff as well. And all that in addition to the combinations of moves and use of lateral space that says ‘hey, I can hear more of this song than just the three or four notes in my immediate vicinity’.
I also find that phrasing becomes more important with this sort of music – you work in combinations of 8s rather than within an 8 for variation and interpretation and improvisation.
So my love of the mid/slower tempo chunk-chunk songs by people like Lionel Hampton run in the face of arguments challenging their aural interest. But I must admit – 120 is the lowest I’ll go in that style, and really, it’s better if it hits 140.
*a love that will never be realised as this fan’s was here
**a lot like the slower version of Flying Home that’s about – it builds to a frenzy of almost-fastness. It’s at least 20bpm slower than the version most dancers know.

Henry ‘Red’ Allen’s World on a String


I have my eye on Henry Red Allen’s World on a String after reading about the version of St James Infirmary discussed on SwingDJs here. The song caught my ear while watching the ULHS finals (which I talked about here).
I don’t have any Red Allen, but I’m definitely interested.
As for my stalking yet another version of SJI, alls I can say, is that if obsessing about multiple versions of particuar songs is good enough for Jesse in his October show, it’s certainly good enough for me.
Although, on a side-note, one of my reasons for seeking out the older or ‘betterer’ versions of particular songs is motivated by the current musical clime in Melbourne lindy hop. There’s been a recent rash of new DJs in our town, which I do applaud. I am particularly happy about the fact that most of (if not all of) these noobs are women. But I do have a great deal of issue with the fact that they’re all into boring old groove, and that most of the Melbourne DJs playing this sort of action don’t actually own their music – they’ve ripped it off someone else. Which is problematic not only for the fact that they’re, well, ripping people off, but just as importantly for a community of dancers, it means that the same old music is being recycled through the speakers every night. We hear no music – only poor quality versions of ordinary songs someone’s downloaded illegally (in a shitty mp3) and then shared around.
So when I hear a particularly shitful version of a song, I’m immediately motivated to play a betterer version so people can hear that there is more to the jazz world than fucked up versions of goddamn Lou Rawls goddamn version of SJI!
Dang – I am SO on my high horse here!
…the thing of it is, though, that un-groove is out of style here in Melbourne town, and even if I do play a ‘better’ version, it’s unlikely that there’ll be any dancers there who’d value it in the same way I do!
argh.
So, yeah, I’m hot for that Red Allen album, but goddess knows when I’d get to play it for dancers. Guess I’ll just have to love it on my own. Like I loves de McKinney’s Cotton Pickers and early Cab on my own…

Hot Lips Page’s Jump for Joy


Hot Lips Page’s Jump for Joy!
I’m not sure how I feel about this album. I have been a bit keen on Hot Lips Page playing with Billie Holiday in the Olden Days of Scratch, but this album is an overview of his career ranging from 1937 to 1950 and the later stuff really isn’t that amazing. I quite like a couple of the tracks for novelty’s sake – The Hucklebuck is a cutey, I like the melody/vocal line of I’ve got an uncle in Harlem, but the rest of the band is kind of annoying…
There is a nice, higher tempo version of St James Infirmary which clocks in at 122bpm, as opposed to the <100bpms of most versions other than the Cab Calloway 1930 version which is 125bpm and my current favourite). Nothing like a little necrophiliac blues to kick start your evening, huh? But the Count Basie Story CD is still winning – it’s a great band doing great music.