But I do like the New Orleans Jazz Vipers.
They play olden days music with a nasty olden days energy that gets me all excited. I can’t wait to DJ this stuff.
I couldn’t help but buy all their CDs from www.cdbaby.com. And I love shopping at CDbaby – they got these kids to me in about 10 days from the States, they send nice thank you emails, and they pimp indy music. There’re quite a few artists I like DJing who sell their gear through CDbaby – Gordon Webster, who’s a really great pianist and also a nice guy and a lindy hopper. I’ve had my eye on that CD for a while – that’s some sweet action for blues dancing. His other half (oh, how they’d hate me describing them that way), Solomon Douglas is also sold through CDbaby… I can’t think of any others just now, but I’ve bought a few CDs through them.
And I love love love these Vipers CDs. I also have my eye on a Tshirt.
Category Archives: digging
sinner, you better get ready: more liveblogging unpacking
My mum got me a few great CDs when she was in Washington (DC, that is). She went to about a million Smithsonian museums, and gotted me some great CDS. Just in case you didn’t know, the Smithsonian collection includes some freaking amazing recordings of American folk music (including jazz, blues, gospels, spirituals, etc etc etc). I am a big old nerd for late 19th and early 20th century American music. I prefer jazz and blues, but I’m also a nut for some of the sort of music you might have heard on the Cohen Brothers’ film O brother, where art thou?. Anyhow, one of the CDs mum got me is called VA/Classic Southern Gospel From Smithsonian Folkways. I know my grammar is broken, but I am suddenly very tired.
Any how, I have moved on from Leadbelly (which was another mum gotted CD, btw) to this stuff. Beginning with The Lilly Brothers singing ‘Sinner, you’d better get ready’. Sweet. I like this sort of southern gospel/bluegrass type stuff for the obvious development of British/European folk forms. I’m a nerd for being able to hear the history of a music/see the history of a dance in its current form. Especially when we’re talking about diaspora. I likes folk music and dance because they change – they’re not institutionalised and static. They’re constantly changing to suit people’s needs and interests. Just like language. Fully sick.
(If you’re interested, mum also got me a couple of Harlem Hamfats CDs: a document self titled job (vol 3) and Let’s Get Drunk and Truck. I love that shit).
Mora’s Modern Rhythmists
In a fit of frivolity the other week I picked up this bundle of four Mora’s Modern Rhythmists/Swingtet CDs:
These guys are from the US and specialise in creating ‘authentic’ recreations of 20s, 30s and 40s dance music (mostly 20s and 30s, really). I’m a big fan. I already had Call of the Freaks and 20th Century Closet, but this 4-pack was too good to pass up (and I’ve already found someone who wants the doubled up copy of 20th Century Closet, which is (in my opinion), the best). As I said, I really like this group – they’re recreating music I really like, which means I have nice quality versions of good songs for playing to crowds who aren’t really comfortable with serious scratch. These better quality versions are also a nice way of changing the vibe or lifting the energy in a set without moving away from this nice musical period.
Their latest CD Devil’s Serenade reminds me of the Melbourne band The Red Hot Rhythmakers (which we’ve featured at MLX a few years in a row now) – earlier dance band stuff. Hot and seriously fun.
The Rhythmakers are a good example of the music that’s quite cool with some of the younger American dancers atm, especially in places like Seattle. It tends to the super fast and is really quite freakin’ good fun. The Rhythmakers have just realised their new CD, actually (the launch was this past Monday). Though I couldn’t make the launch, friends have managed to secure copies of the CD for me, which is also very neat. I really like their first one and am looking forward to this one.
Any how, I’m very happy with these Mora CDs – it was a bargain and this stuff is very useful for DJing, even if though I tend to prefer the ‘originals’ for home listening. These guys are also useful for performances – good quality but also ‘authentic’ and not bullshit neo rubbish.
happy day
This lovely thing just arrived! Sure, it was a little embarrassing opening the door to the post dood wearing only a (very) short, light cotton dress, but I like to think I made his afternoon a little more interesting. But it was just GREAT to see a giant Mosaic cardboard box under his arm.
I love Lionel Hampton very much. He’s one of those guys I got into when I was first interested in DJing. In fact, I think his album Tempo and Swing was one of the first I bought thinking ‘this is DJing music’. I’m still a massive fan. He made great dancing music – stuff that’s really stompy and makes you want to get up and stomp around. Probably has something to do with his being a percussionist.
Anyhoo, it was interesting to see Ziggy Elman‘s name on the first page of the first CD’s liner notes. Elman’s interesting, not just because he’s responsible for the freakin’ awesome solo at the beginning of Tommy Dorsey’s song ‘Well git it!’. He caught my interest initially because he was a Jewish musician ‘performing’ whiteness – he changed his name.
This is something that Dean Collins also did (Saul Cohen originally). And all of this rings a bell with me because I keep coming across articles about Jewish musicians and actors who performed ‘blackness’ in the early days of radio and vaudeville – putting on ‘black’ accents and black face paint. It’s something I’d like to follow up in greater depth at some point, not only because of the interesting Jewish history of American show business, but also because of the ideological ramifications of ‘performing’ ethnicity in swing culture generally.
Because, of course, when we lindy hop, we are dancing what was an African American dance. Dancers who are into historical recreationism are particularly keen on emulating ‘black’ ways of moving and movement aesthetics. Which is problematic, when you remember that these are predominantly white, middle class kids (especially in America). But all this gets even more interesting when you take into account the fact that lindy hop is getting very popular in places like Korea. A recent exchange guest was telling me that there are thousands of swing dancers in Seoul, and that he social dances every single night of the week – far more often than we can here in Melbourne. And then, remember that not all Australian dancers are white – we see an increasingly multicultural local swing community here in Melbourne (though still not entirely multicultural or diverse).
But back to Ziggy Elman. His solo in ‘Well Git it!’ has particular cultural resonances for contemporary lindy hoppers, as mediated by the internet. The Mad Dog people performed a routine in Danvers to this song in 2002 which proved very popular with Australian dancers, particularly in the then-very-introverted Melbourne scene. Here was a group of young people dancing crazy, wild lindy hop without rules or costumes! Suddenly, there was an alternative to the carefully ‘safe’ teaching of the larger school, dancers who weren’t the ‘old’ recreationists (‘old’ being over 30, mind you). Suddenly, lindy hop got cool. Coolness which seemed to manifest in dancers wearing jeans in performances. And, most refreshingly for olden days music nerds like me, an increased general interest in music from the 1930s rather than 50s and 60s.
The Mad Dog troupe featured a bunch of young dancers who’re now rock stars, some of whom learnt to dance in Ithaca with Bill Borghida (and other teachers), and some of whom were in the Minnie’s Moochers dance troupe (circa 1999, 2000), which I remember being very influential. In fact, I remember watching this 2000 comp performance in my first year in Melbourne. This is as white a lindy hop performance as you’re going to see, but holy smokes, it’s tight. And these guys were young teenagers. If you’re familiar with Borghida’s teaching, you can see his sound technical foundations in there, and you can’t help but envy those kiddies their early start on lindy hop.
This performance is an interesting contrast with the Mad Dog routine in part because it is so tight and carefully choreographed – each dancer is attempting to dance and move in exactly the same way (here‘s an interesting clip of the girls doing solo charleston). In the Mad Dog routine we see choreographed steps, but each couple (and dancer) is quite unique. And of course, if you watch this composite clip of old school lindy hoppers, you can see that though the routines are really tight, each dancer has a unique style. The Big Apple contest is probably the best example of this. So this representation or performance of ‘individuality’ through improvisation and ‘styling’ signalled a shift away from very white, studio ballroom/concert dance aesthetics and towards a more ‘vernacular’ dance ethos. Vernacular in that people were actually dancing how they felt, in clothes they wore every day, with their own particular ‘accents’. And of course, lindy is just made for young people – it’s fast music, it’s crazy dancing, it’s irreverent, it’s badass*.
It’s probably worth pointing out that the American lindy hop competition culture in 2000 was very strictly regimented. The scoring was complicated, there was a whole range of weird rules about what you could and couldn’t do or wear in the competitions, and the type of dancing produced by these competitions was kind of… well, boring.
Competitions were kind of the same in Australia at the time, though there were no competitions run by lindy hoppers with specific ‘lindy hop’ categories. The biggest Australian competition at the time was ‘Best of the Best’, run by the VRRDA (Victorian Rock and Roll Dance Association), similarly constrained and rules-bound. It was also very much a ‘rock and roll’ competition – it was unusual to see ‘real’ lindy hop performances until about 2002.
In 2002 the MLX hosted the first Hellzapoppin’ competition, a model borrowed from the American Hellza competition – no rules, an impetus towards historical ‘authenticity’, run as part of an African American cultural history festival in Harlem. Though the American Hellza comp has been largely superseded by the ULHS (Ultimate Lindy Hop Show Down) competition for wild, crazy, ‘authentic’ lindy hop – not to mention popularity – Hellza is the only competition in Australia which actually carries on this particular ethos. All other large competitions in Australia are run by one school, and this school’s teachers tend to dominate the field, with the general tone being a little… straight.
So the 2002 Mad Dog performance is important as it signaled a diversion from the rules-bound competitions of previous years. The Mad Dog routine is probably more significant in American lindy as it was a very public diversion from the supergroove style that was popular at the time. I recently heard one of those dancers make a general comment about how ‘we’ used to dance ‘groovier, smoother’ and are not into ‘rawer’ dancing. It struck me as an example of how American dancers often generalise their experiences to the international community. But this is important stuff because these dancers were very young (and still are – under 30) and have been very influential in Australia.
So Ziggy Elman’s name probably carries a little more interpretive weight for me than for most people, and one day I’m going to read up on all that stuff on Jewish showbiz history. I promise.
For now I’m busy filling up the last tiny bits of space left on my hard drive with Lionel Hampton goodness. Yeah!
* old people like it too. Frankie is 93 and he still likes it.
fats waller v duke ellington
It’s been tricky fitting in all my listening this past weekend.
Will it be Fats, or will it be Ellington? Witherspoon and Sam Price don’t even get a foot in the door, I’m afraid.
I have 8 Ellington CDs to get through, and 3 Fats CDs to get through, and I’m not rushing, mind you. I like to listen to new CDs really slowly, lots of repeat listens to individual songs, lots of skipping back to check out a particular section.
So I’m not exactly running through my new goodies. And when I’m reading, I simply don’t hear the music at all, so I never know when a song’s finished. Or a CD’s finished. I think this is partly why I hate having music on when I’m working – it’s a waste. Music also tends to stop being music and just turn into the odd sound or bump or squeak which I catch every other minute as my attention shifts back to the aural world. I also really hate having that annoying background buzz distracting me from ideas when I’m thinking. So I like Total and Complete Silence when I’m working.
But I was all about Fats at first:
Fats Waller and His Rhythm the Last Years ( 1940-1943 ) to be precise. This is the other goody that came for me last week. It’s really, really wonderful. I adore Fats, and this is perhaps the best collection I have (so far – there’s no end in sight). So, seeing as it was the first collection that arrived, this was where my listening was at. But then the Ellington Mosaic arrived, and now I’m all about Ellington.
It’s not a real competition, not really. But I’m finding it tricky getting through all these. And it feels like every single song on this Mosaic set is wonderful – I have to keep stopping to put songs into my ‘should play’ list for DJing. Luckily there’s quite a bit of stuff I don’t already have (I love, love, love the smaller group stuff, and have the Columbia 2-CD ‘Duke’s Men’ vol 1 and vol 2.
I really should get my finger out and properly research all these guys, get a proper idea of who recorded with which companies when. Get some sort of clue as to who was in whose band at what time. But I really can’t be arsed devoting valuable research time to something that’s meant to be fun. There’s so much other stuff I should be researching (let’s not talk about reality TV, ok?), I just don’t want to ruin music for me. I have read bits and pieces, but I just don’t have a sensible, comprehensive set of facts and figures and names at my disposal.
I mean, I am totally crap with that sort of thing normally (my memory is so crap it’s a joke), and I find it really difficult to remember the names of songs. I can pick the musicians or the bands (mostly because they tend to have quite distinct musical ‘styles’ or ‘accents’, so you can guess who’s playing what), but names of songs? Nope. I can generally guess the era (30s, 40s, etc), but not reliably. This means that it’s always a nice surprise to discover I actually own that song that such and such just DJed. But it also means my learning curve re jazz history is more of a plateau.
I’ve also noticed that a song seems to sound completely different when you’re dancing to it than when you’re DJing it or sitting at home listening to it. I think it’s because when you’re DJing or listening, you pay really close attention, in a conscious-brain sort of way. But when I’m dancing, I’m responding unconsciously, not actually consciously thinking ‘oh, muted trumpet’ or ‘huh, chunky bass’. Plus there’s a bunch of other things going on when you’re dancing that distract you.
Anyways, the bottom line is, Ellington is winning, but Fats is kind of niggling in my hindbrain. It’s high-brow versus visceral, bodily goodness – Ellington is clever, Fats is fun (Ellington is fun too, and Fats is clever, but Ellington is telling you he’s smart and Fats is telling you he’d like you to sit a little closer and pass him a drink).
Sam Price and His Texas Blusicians 1929-1941
Sam Price and His Texas Blusicians 1929-1941 is the other CD that came this week, part of the Big Binge. It’s a Chronological Classic, which is important because this series of albums feature artists in chronological order – so you get a series of Duke Ellington CDs featuring songs in the order they were originally recorded.
It’s the most comprehensive series of albums, and they’re quite sought after. You can pay zillions of dollars for the rarer ones. But I’ve picked up ones that are cheaper and really great. My favourite is the Duke Ellington and his Orchestra: 1949-1950 one, which I picked up quite cheaply. It featured a song called B Sharp Boston which I really like and play quite often at late nights (it’s a bit slower). It also features Joog Joog, which has some nice female vocals (again, the CD’s in the other room, so I can’t check the name for you, sorry, but I think it’s a combination of Ivie Anderson and someone else [EDIT: I just checked and I think the notes are screwy, or I don’t understand, as it has a bloke’s name for the vocals, when I’m certain it’s Ivie Anderson and someone else…]). It’s quite an interesting album because it’s later Ellington (round about the time of some of the late testament Basie stuff that I really like), but Ellington is quite a different band leader. Most of these songs aren’t that wacky arty stuff he got into in the later period, but are much more popular songs. So it makes for interesting listening. And some great dancing.
Any how, this Sam Price action was drawn to my attention by Trev, king of fun scratchy music. And I’m quite in love. He apparently played with Lester Young’s band (or at least Lester – this is another CD I have to check the liner notes on. It’s only new, so I’m totally clueless on specifics). Sam Price, not Trev, that is.
One of my favourite bits of this album is in the song ‘Do you Dig My Jive?’ where he sings:
Ain’t nothin’ new about jive,
Believe it or not,
I know when jive first started,
The time and the spot,
Way back yonder,
In the year one-ty-one,
You can bet your sweet life,
That’s when jive begun.
I like ‘onety-one’ – the first year. It makes me giggle.
So, of course, I’m swimming in lovely music today. And trying to pretend I don’t have a dentist appointment this afternoon. I think I’ll follow that up with a nice film. Probably Jumpers rather than the more serious things I want to see (There Will Be Blood, No Country For Old Men, American Gangster), as I’m always a bit traumatised after the dentist. Thing kind thoughts for me, will you?
mosaic Duke Ellington: 1936-40 Small Group Sessions and Witherspoon-McShann Goin’ to Kansas City Blues
…and the last of my Big Binge CDs arrived today, along with a lovely needlepoint pack. It was just like christmas.
Let’s start with the needlepoint. I bought it from this slightly dodgy looking site. I’ve recently gotten returned to needlepoint, c/o a christmas present Margarate Preseton job, and have gotten a bit obsessive about it. Had to have another to do, though I’ve managed to sate some of that obsession with a nice blue patchworked crocheted blanket for The Squeeze – I can’t bear large crochet projects in summer, but the smaller squares are easier – remind me to post pics of my fabulous red flowered job. Note the price – $55 for printed canvas + all wool. That’s not bad at all. And it’s an Australian company, so there’s less postage to pay.
Jimmy Witherspoon with Jay McShann Goin’ to Kansas City Blues from Mosaic. I’m a big fan of Jay McShann, and while I don’t like Witherspoon’s politics, he can sing like a mofo. I’m still keen on that big, fat 50s sound. This one has lovely quality recording, and the band is so freakin’ good (Emmett Berry, J. C. Higginbotham, Hilton Jefferson, Seldon Powell, Al Sears, Kenny Burrell, Gene Ramey and Mousey Alexander). Some of it veers off into post-swing (this is a 1957 recording after all).
Most of my Jay McShann is earlier – nice, dirty Kansas City stuff. Though I do have this album Hootie!, a live job by his trio in… damnit, I haven’t entered the date! [EDIT: just checked it – it’s 1997] And the CD is far away… Anyhow, that’s a great album, but it’s supergroove. Lots of long, tinkly songs with tinkly piano, often at supersonic speeds. Not really the best dancing (except for the odd blues track), but really good listening music. I really like McShann’s piano style – it’s so different to people like Basie and Ellington and Junior Mance and Oscar Peterson.
So, anyhow, this new CD is really fun. Lots of great, upenergy songs. As I said, though, it’s a bit post-swing, in that it stops swinging quite so much. The slower ones are better, but the uptempo ones are kind of staccato or abrupt. Don’t swing so much. What this means for dancers is that it feels like you’re rushing from beat to beat, and that songs feel faster generally. This can be good for lifting the energy in the room every now and then (especially if it’s a more recent recording), but ultimately, it does bad things to your lindy hop. We need that gushy, delayed timing to really make us swing, to keep us hanging back and soaking every last moment out of each beat.
My other lovely present is Duke Ellington: 1936-40 Small Group Sessions, another Mosaic set I’ve had my eye on for ages. Cost a freakin’ bomb, but oh-baby, I have a serious thing for Ellington that’s just not going away. I have quite a few Ellington CDs and collections, but I couldn’t resist some lovely Mosaic remastering goodness (that’s what makes these expensive things worth it – good remastering, not to mention fab liner notes and packaging and great service).
This is completely different stuff to the Witherspoon CD – 20-odd years earlier, different approach to the rhythm section, very different approach to composition/arrangement. Really, this is a nice comparison between classic 30s swinging jazz and the ‘next generation’. While I adore the Witherspoon/McShann CD, this is where my heart truly lies. I love Ellington for the complexity and sophistication of the arrangements and plain old management of the band. Each musician has a very particular job, and they do it just wonderfully. I also prefer this bouncy old school sound – makes me want to lindy hop. None of that shuffle-rhythm going on in the drum kit area. Nice shouty choruses at the end of songs. Yes, please.
I also like these big ‘complete, collected works’ sets because they include multiple takes of the one song. This means you get to hear the band make minute variations in the way they play, and you really begin to understand how the band work together as a team, and how a slightly shorter solo can change the whole song. I also like hearing the people in the studio talking – it’s like we’re just that little bit closer to a world that feels imaginary, most of the time. They way they talk, the things they talk about – are all so far away from us. But when you hear them swearing about fucked up takes or laughing at jokes, it becomes a bit more real.
So, sitting up in bed looking through all these goodies this morning (it was an early delivery), it felt like my birthday. And it was lovely.
Now I just have to score a few more DJing gigs to cover these extravagances.
slim gaillard’s Laughing in Rhythm and Fats Waller and his Rhythm, the Last Years 1940-1943
Two new arrivals:
Slim Gaillard’s Laughing in Rhythm. Can’t believe I’ve only just bought this. I am so the slowest, uncoolest DJ on the block. I mean, I’ve bought bits and pieces from places like itunes, but still. It’s a bit late. I’d still like the giant Gaillard Proper set, but I just can’t bring myself to buy all that nonsense singing…
Fats Waller and his Rhythm, the Last Years 1940-1943. I now own about 60 million Waller CDs. And I’m not quite sure that’s enough.
Bunk Johnson’s Bunk and the New Orleans Revival 1942-1947
Bunk and the New Orleans Revival 1942-1947. Not something you’d like if Sidney Bechet gives you the shits. I’m not really the hugest fan of revivalist stuff any more. I did go through a massive phase, but I’m kind of coming out the other side… I mean, I like it, but I have limited tolerance for it. It can go badly when DJing, and I know I’ve had moments when I’ve really not liked dancing to it. I think you have to pick your songs and artists carefully, otherwise it can just be a bit too annoying.
But this was an interesting CD (another from the Tasmanian jazz shop guy – gotta keep supporting him as they’ve just opened a JB in Hobart. Argh!), and I’m kind of interested in the parallels between the revivalists in Australia and the US. In fact, jazz in Australia is kind of interesting, when you consider the fact that there weren’t any African American artists in Australia to keep things fresh…. I’m sure you could make all sorts of provocative arguments about white Australian jazz… but I won’t.
The Jimmie Noone Collection
I’m especially liking The Jimmy Noone Collection from Collectors’ Classics.
Favourite tracks? Very scratchy versions of familiar songs like:
After You’ve Gone by Jimmie Noone’s Apex Club Orchestra (1929)
Love Me or Leave Me by Jimmie Noone’s Apex Club Orchestra (1929)
My Melancholy Baby by Jimmie Noone’s Apex Club Orchestra (1929)
Ain’t Misbehaving’ by Jimmie Noone’s Apex Club Orchestra (1929)
And a few others, including
Wake Up! Chill’un, Wake Up! (as above)
My Daddy Rocks me (as above, with female vocals)
The vocals aren’t all ok for dancing – they can be a bit cheesy, but there are some goodies. Love Me or Leave Me is really fab. As is My Daddy Rocks Me. I’m not sure any of it’s really of a high enough quality for DJing, though it’s better than a lot of the really old recordings I have. Once you get into the 1920s, unless it’s a super Mosaic set, you really can’t be sure the quality will rock.
But I’m quite keen on Jimmie Noone atm. And Wingy Manone. It’s all pretty olden days, and not necessarily something I’d DJ for lindy hoppers, but it’s definitely stuff I like to listen to.