Gee that Mills Blue Rhythm Band is good.
I keep forgetting, and then I come back to them, and my mind is blown again. The ‘band’ itself has an interesting history, and is worth looking up.
I’ve just relistened to this song, Let’s Get Together (1937). There’s something about the relationship between bass and guitar driving the beat that really makes the whole thing swing.
I adore the Chick Webb band version (1936, and with Ella leading them LIVE in 1939), but this one is the SHIT.
Look at the people in that band!:
Charlie Shavers, Carl Warwick, Harry Edison, Al Cobbs, Wilbur DeParis, Tab Smith, Eddie Williams, Ben Williams, Harold Arnold, Billy Kyle, Danny Barker, John Williams, Lester Sonny Nichols, Chuck Richards, Lucky Millinder.
Yes, Lucky Millinder. But also Charlie Shavers. I follow his recordings across the jazz landscape, and there are some real gems. But Millinder, of course, went on to greater fame.
There was a really great thread on the MBR on the (lovely) Swingdjs.com discussion board, and that’s how I heard about the band. Then I went into the incredible Hobart music shop Music Without Borders in 2006, where the unusual owner gave me a MBR CD and told me to buy it. So I did.
I tried DJing from it in Melbourne over the next year, but I remember being audibly shouted at by the groove-loving fools. That was my first lesson in how not to DJ: don’t DJ to ‘teach’ people anything, or they will kick your wanky arse off the stage.