Post 272: 'NEW ORLEANS HULA' AND 'THE GIRLS GO CRAZY'

Sadly, the great jazz clarinet-player Monty Sunshine died on 30 November 2010. He was born in London, England, in 1928. I enjoyed his recordings over fifty or more years and had the pleasure of being in the audience at some of his concerts.

One of his recordings was of New Orleans Hula, a tune of which I was only vaguely aware.

However, listening to it again recently, I noticed that it is virtually identical to another old jazz classic - The Girls Go Crazy.

And if you are interested in jazz chord progressions, as I am, here's a curiosity for you. Take a standard twelve-bar blues chord sequence, for example (in the Key of C):

  C | C | C | C7 | F | F | C | C | G7 | G7 | C | C

(This was the basis of so much rock 'n' roll and all that followed.)

Then chop off the first four bars, leaving you with a sequence of eight bars:

 F | F | C | C | G7 | G7 | C | C

And what do you have?

None other than the chord sequence for New Orleans Hula and The Girls Go Crazy.

It also happens to work for the chorus of the spiritual It is No Secret - except that you have to go through the sequence twice to make up the 16 bars. And it works for the Chorus of Redwing and of Down By The Riverside.

If you don't know these tunes, I am sure you can find them easily on the internet. They are fun to play.