digging – Page 7 – dogpossum

Campus Five

I have been playing the two Campus Five songs I have (Squatty Roo and Hop Skip and Jump) over and over.
I want the CDs to arrive NOW.

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.

Hamp & slow-mid range swing

My 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.

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.

the hamranos

Prompted by marking quite a few essays about The Sopranos of late, I brought home the first few discs of season 1 from the video shop.
The Squeeze was instantly enthralled, and I was more than happy when he brought home our very own copy the other night. We are enchanted.
It seems we are bound to adore all gangstah action, after our brush with the Godfather, Raging Bull and assorted others.
So it seems strangely fitting that Laura posted this Sesame Streets clippy today:

The Count Basie Story – Count Basie

This lovely thing came in the mail today. Recorded in 1957, 58 and 1960, this is a collection of Basie’s big hits re-recorded by his ‘new testament’ band. It’s interesting stuff.
I’m not usually such a big fan of new testament Basie, but I do find him useful for DJing, as it’s a nice cross-over point for old school scratchy fans and hi-fi kids. This CD is great because it’s such good quality, is an interesting idea (especially in reference to Basie, whose earlier band(s) had such different sounds to his later big band(s)). If you don’t think about the ‘originals’, this is one sweet album. I know a few DJs/dancers who’d love it.
I’ll go through and listen to each song in comparison to the ‘original’ or earlier recordings and let you know what I think.
I don’t doubt that this will give me some useful fodder for my sets at SLX… now, if only I could figure out how to reinstall my bpm counter after the Great Reinstallation of 2006, prompted by the incredible CRAPtitude of itunes 7.0. BPM counter tips for mac would be very welcome.

Gastropodry: bunny and Jay

Right now I have a bunny (on) the oven… oh, look, I’m sorry. That was far too desperate.
To restart: I’ve finally succumbed to the temptation and am cooking my first rabbit. It’s the perfect opportunity: The Squeeze (who loathes meat on the bone, and finds the thought of eating bunnies distressing) is out, it’s Friday night so I can stop worrying about all the things I have to do – until tomorrow, and my new Jay McShann album arrived today. Gotta love that Kansas City action.
I’ll report back later on the bunny.

Duke Ellington’s House of Lords

Ok, so a little while ago I crapped on about Bluesology.
Today I’d like to crap on about House of Lords, which I have on acomplete centennial something or other collection (well worth the (massive) cost – it truly is a ‘complete’ collection… well, for that one label. whatever that may be). It’s live, recorded in 1966 and it’s five minutes and thirtyfive seconds long. It’s also 136bpm and I classify it as ‘groovy swinging’, which means that it has the tsi-tsi-tsii high hat sound and rhythm section, but trucks along – not that sort of formlessly swingingly groove that irritates old scratchy fans. Because it’s Ellington, it really cooks. And it really feels like it’s trucking along – grooving, but rocking. Chunky but still palatable for the smoothy types.
So, anyways, the thing I like about it is a) it’s live, and b) you can hear Duke laughing – no, chortling – away in the solos. The band are really enjoying this stuff, and it’s really rolling along – you feel like it’s going somewhere. Kind of makes me feel like this is the type of stuff Oscar Peterson would do if he had more guts. Guts as in, if his music was a little more visceral.
I’d certainly like to dance de lindy hop to this song. Which sounds as if it’s really just drums/percussion, piano and bass. And groaning adn chortling.
Matter of fact, I wonder if there aren’t two pianos in there – could it actually be Peterson? Or maybe it’s Basie? I’d hazzard the former, though I don’t think they really worked together (actually, what would I know).
Dang! I just NEED to rush home and look at the liner notes!
At this point I really wish I could insert a sound clip so that you could all listen along with me, but of course, there are copyright problems there. Maybe I need to get into that streaming radio action?