Baby, I'd Love To Steal You is a lovely, simple 16-bar tune. So why are bands not playing it? Why have very few people even heard of it?
It's one of those tunes with an interesting and obscure history and it seems it has never been published in sheet music form.
Here's the story behind it.
It's one of those tunes with an interesting and obscure history and it seems it has never been published in sheet music form.
Here's the story behind it.
The great composer, researcher and record producer Bill Russell (1905 - 1992) was the most important force in the revival of New Orleans jazz in the early 1940s. He founded his company, American Music Records, and set about finding and recording forgotten New Orleans performers. Among them was, of course, Bunk Johnson. Russell's recordings are still available on over 100 CDs.
In one of the recording sessions, Bunk tells him a story about pianist Tony Jackson composing Baby, I'd Love to Steal You in the back room of Dago Tony's club in Storyville. (This must have been about 1910.) Bunk goes on to play the tune on the piano.
Bunk's band probably played it at gigs but it was never sold to a music publisher.
Another great reviver of past glories, cornet-player Chris Tyle, picked up the tune from Bunk's piano version and arranged it for his Silver Leaf Jazz Band. They recorded it, together with nineteen other fine old tunes, on their CD The Smiler in 1993 (Stomp Off Records). In Chris Tyle's band at the time were such players as Lars Edegran, Tom Saunders, Tom Fischer and (on piano) Steve Pistorius. These players are still around and I am sure they remember this tune. So it is not surprising that Steve Pistorius included it in his own 2014 CD New Orleans Shuffle.
So the tune has been brought back to life yet again.
More recently, it has been taken up by a band led by Twerk Thomson and also by Tuba Skinny, who play it in the key of Eb, like Chris Tyle, and closely follow his arrangement:
More recently, it has been taken up by a band led by Twerk Thomson and also by Tuba Skinny, who play it in the key of Eb, like Chris Tyle, and closely follow his arrangement:
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As a self-taught musician, I struggle when trying to write out tunes and chord sequences by ear. But here is the best I can do with Baby, I'd Love to Steal You. I have entered this in my Moleskine pocket music book. As you can see, I have put it in F rather than Eb, because that suits me better.
As a self-taught musician, I struggle when trying to write out tunes and chord sequences by ear. But here is the best I can do with Baby, I'd Love to Steal You. I have entered this in my Moleskine pocket music book. As you can see, I have put it in F rather than Eb, because that suits me better.
