Post 450: JAZZ TUNES - WHERE CAN I FIND THE SHEET MUSIC?

I often receive emails from people who ask me whether I can help them by providing music, usually for particular tunes that have taken their fancy. More often than not, I am unable to do so.

I was also approached after a performance by a young man in the audience who said he was learning the trumpet and asked whether he could 'borrow the music for a few days' so that he could learn the tunes our jazz band had just played. Unfortunately, I could not oblige: the 'music' was in our heads and not on paper.

So, if you are learning to play a musical instrument and want eventually to be in a traditional jazz band, where can you get the music? 

Unfortunately, it is virtually impossible these days to go into a music shop and buy off the shelf a dixieland band arrangement of, say, Maple Leaf Rag, or sheet music for Steamboat Stomp.

So picking tunes up from old recordings by ear is one solution. And it is a method we occasionally resort to.

But if you hunt on the Internet, you can find some sites that will help you. In particular I recommend the site of that fine, generous, Swedish musician Lasse Collin:

CLICK HERE.

If you use Lasse's materials, you will have enough to keep your band going for years. He provides clear lead sheets, giving the melody line and the chords in a simple form. That's just what you and your band need.

Another possibility is to buy buskers' books (fake books). These also provide collections of lead sheets.

Second-hand copies of these are cheaply available on Internet auctions. But be careful to buy those that contain tunes that will definitely be of use in traditional jazz. Many fake books - despite their bulk - contain very little that will be of use to you.

Post 449: BAND-LEADER'S HEADACHES

I have written before about how hard it is to be a good and successful band-leader. Special skills are needed, as well as the capacity to remain cheerful and optimistic even when things are going against you. I think it is very important for all musicians to be supportive of their leaders. It is the leaders who obtain the gigs and who have all the hard work behind the scenes.

I would not want the job. I don't consider myself capable.

However, I receive an occasional request (perhaps once a year) to provide a band for an event; and I do my best to oblige.

I was once asked at about a month's notice to provide a band for a birthday party to be held during a Bank Holiday (i.e. a national holiday here in England). I contacted some fine musicians and they all agreed to play. So I replied to the enquirer that I would provide a band. But in the week that followed, two of the musicians found they could not play after all. Oh dear.

I struggled to find replacements. As the gig was on a Bank Holiday, when there is a great demand for bands, most other musicians were already booked. Two string bass players were available but I obviously could not use both of them. It was almost impossible for me to recruit a satisfactory balance of instruments.  Eventually I managed to put a band together, though it involved one player kindly switching from his usual instrument to his 'second' instrument which he had not seriously played for a couple of years.

Luckily, in the end, The Pops Coffee Cappuccinos worked well together and the gentleman and his guests were very happy with our music. We were warmly received and made to feel part of the party. In addition to being well supplied with drinks, we also enjoyed the bonus of an excellent meal.

But the experience had given me a further reason for admiring our regular band-leaders and sympathising with the headaches that are part of their job.

Post 448: USING THE INTERNET TO RESEARCH JAZZ

I often receive requests and suggestions from readers concerning what I should write about. For example: 'How about an article on the life and work of George Lewis, the great clarinet player, who died in 1968?'

Writing such an article would involve me in a great deal of time and research. And I would be unable to come up with anything new - that is to say, anything not already available if you search for it on the internet.

I don't want to spend my time, as the saying goes, 're-inventing the wheel'. That is why I do not tackle such subjects.

So today may I point out to you that there is a vast amount of information available if you care to look for it. Wikipedia is obviously a possible starting point. And there are many sites specifically related to our kind of music.

I would like specially to mention one you may not have come across. The full 15-volume archive of the magazine New Orleans Music (incorporating Footnote) has been placed at our disposal by some fine, generous and dedicated people. They have gone to the enormous trouble of providing a large Index, which leads you to information about the musicians and bands (including many of the more obscure) who were important in the history of our music from the end of the Nineteenth Century onward. The magazine ceased publication in 2010.

To discover these riches, CLICK HERE.

Post 447: ENGLISH TRADITIONAL JAZZ AT ITS BEST

You may consider some sweet and sentimental tunes to be rather corny. However, I think it's a good idea to include at least one in any programme. Such tunes may not be characteristic of traditional jazz as a whole, but it is certainly true that they can work well and that audiences enjoy them.

One worth considering is Daddy's Little Girl.

First, you may care to spend a couple of minutes listening to Al Martino singing it at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18FClLOmTsY

But then sample it being played (rather differently) by a jazz band in a YouTube video featuring the late Norman Thatcher on trumpet. This may be a grainy old film, but I think it demonstrates English traditional jazz at its very best: CLICK HERE TO VIEW IT.

Sadly, several of the musicians on that video have since died. But Dave Vickers - the trombonist - is still with us. I had the great privilege of playing alongside him in a telephone band recently. He told me that film of Daddy's Little Girl was made in the course of producing a CD of 13 tracks for the Jazz Crusade label in 1995. The musicians had been very proud of it, he said. There was no rehearsal and no retakes, and yet the music came out really well.

Daddy's Little Girl was a popular song composed in 1949 by Bobby Burke and Horace Gerlash. I think they did a remarkably good job of matching the words to the melody and rhythms.

Any man who has had the most wonderful and joyful experience of becoming the father of a baby girl can identify with the emotions expressed in this song. In fact, it can be a real tear-jerker.

Yes: it is full of clichés. Even the chord progressions are familiar and simple. (If you play Candy Lips, you may well find the chord progression is remarkably similar.) And yet these are the very things that give the tune universal appeal.

You're the end of the rainbow,

You're my pot of gold,

You're Daddy's little girl 

To have and to hold.

A precious gem - 

That's what you are.

You're Mummy's bright and shining star. 

You're the spirit of Christmas, 

My star on the tree, 

The Easter Bunny to Mummy and me. 

You're sugar and spice; 

You're everything nice. 

Your Daddy's little girl.

I think I would be most comfortable in F (though the Norman Thatcher Band in the video played it in Bb, and Al Martino sang it first in G and then modulated to Ab for the second time round). We should take it slowly and if possible include the vocal. As usual with my efforts, this lead sheet I arrived at may not be 100% correct but I think it gives us something to work on:

Post 446: THE PALINGENESIS OF TRADITIONAL JAZZ

Is our music dying out? Thank goodness, despite certain causes for alarm in my country, the answer is 'NO!'

There are plenty of wonderful young musicians around the globe who have discovered the musical styles and repertoire of a century ago and are playing traditional jazz with great skill and passion. For an immediate example, have a look at a video of Over The Waves played by young musicians in Tokyo to see what I mean:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBuXLwcnvvg

But let me tell you about what has happened here in England.

Back in the 1950s and 1960s, traditional jazz was extremely popular in Britain. There were hundreds of bands, from full-time professionals performing at the Royal Festival Hall to enthusiastic amateurs who entertained in the back rooms of pubs. Their music was inspired by the New Orleans and Chicago jazz of the period 1910 - 1930 and also by the revival of traditional jazz after the Second World War by bands such as that of George Lewis.

Occasionally a record made by a British jazz band would even make it into the week's 'Top Ten'.

But from the era of the Beatles and disco music onwards, traditional jazz fell into decline. It is now given very little air time on British radio and virtually none on television.

Ten years ago, I noticed audiences at traditional jazz club concerts in England were becoming sparse and the average age of members of the bands was about 65.

Now, it's even worse: there are places where you can find trad jazz being played in Britain (usually still in the back rooms of pubs) but the musicians are dying out. A typical pub band today comprises musicians aged 75 or over.

The kind of retired people I have known in such bands over these years include men who formerly worked as a plasterer, a dentist, an accountant, an electrician, two doctors - one of them a heavy-smoker(!), two maths teachers, a laboratory technician, a car dealer, a builder, a music shop salesman, a school caretaker and a telephone engineer. On one night a week, they would come together and make pretty good music. Their reward? Nothing, other than a 'first drink free' from the bar.

Traditional jazz in Britain has become the pursuit of a tiny minority. But at least it is still alive - just about. Pretty well every month I hear of yet another jazz club (some of them that have been running for decades) closing down because of poor attendances and lack of revenue.

But I constantly hear of new young bands setting up, especially elsewhere in the world. One of the latest is The Stone Arch Jazz Band in Minneapolis, founded by the talented and tasteful clarinet-player Richard Lund. Have a look at their website: Click here to view. And note that the band has already made some stylish videos, such as this one: Click here to view.

The band called The Fat Babies, based in Chicago, are highly respected and I am told they play regularly at The Green Mill Bar in that City. You can find plenty of their videos on YouTube.

And The Dirty River Dixie Band, founded in Texas and playing a very energetic kind of dixieland music, was able to announce towards the end of 2016 that the average age of its members was under 25.

The situation in such countries as Australia, Germany, Canada, Spain, Italy and Denmark, as far as I can tell, gives some encouragement.

The Dizzy Birds Jazz Band in Berlin is terrific.

And have a listen to The Old Fashion Band of Santiago, Chile, by clicking here.

And correspondent Michael Meissner has introduced me to Queen Porter Stomp in Sydney, Australia. Here they are, and you can easily find examples of this fine young band's work on YouTube:

Regular correspondent Robert Duis recommends looking at videos of Malo's Hot Five and Attila's Rollini Project; and my friend Anders Winnberg in Sweden has assured me there are plenty of good bands operating in his country, where the Gothenburg Jazz Festival is a major event. And Ray Andrew in Perth, Australia, has told me the traditional jazz scene is very strong in his city and that the young are being attracted to it. Even Finland - a country remote from New Orleans and with a population of well under six million - has the very pleasant Birger's Ragtime Band. Also in Finland there is a band called Doctor Jazz: it seems to me to be bright and recently formed; and several of the players are relatively young.

Regular reader Phil in the USA has recommended the Moscow-based young bands The Kickipickles and The Moscow Ragtime Band. You may find their work on YouTube.

And in Japan, especially, as I indicated above, traditional jazz seems to be going through a boom period. Some of the best in the world is being played in Tokyo. Seek out the performances on YouTube uploaded by the video-maker codenamed ragtimecave.

One of the newest Japanese bands seems to be The High Time Rollers:
CLICK HERE.
So, we do not have to accept that traditional jazz is on the way out!

Above all, I can tell you there is great old-time jazz being played by YOUNG people on the streets of New Orleans. They are the hope for the future; and I believe the Internet is spreading their influence so rapidly that there will be yet another big revival of this kind of music.

In the days before Hurricane Katrina, you would have thought of Bourbon Street as the main hub for jazz in New Orleans. But now it is Frenchmen Street, in the Faubourg Marigny - a road full of jazz bars and clubs. There are over twenty traditional jazz bands playing professionally in New Orleans - more than at any previous time in jazz history.

To see what I mean, even if you can't get to New Orleans, try spending some time on YouTube. You will be amazed at the quality of the traditional jazz being produced by instrumentalists mostly in their twenties and thirties; and there are plenty of singers of outstanding ability too.

I have written before about Tuba Skinny - currently considered the best of all the groups. They are not only technically brilliant; they also take great care over arrangements and presentation of tunes, and they have been reviving great old melodies that were in danger of being forgotten. Have a good look and listen to their work. But you may also care to try any of these groups on YouTube. Just type their names in and indulge yourself with some fine music:

Tuba Skinny

Rhythm Wizards Jazz Band (CLICK HERE to sample their tasteful playing)
Loose Marbles
Little Big Horns
The Cottonmouth Kings
The Dapper Dandies
Smoking Time Jazz Band
Jessy Carolina and the Hot Mess
Jenavieve Cook and the Royal Street Winding Boys
Yes Ma'am String Band
The Shotgun JazzBand (led by the dynamic Canadian trumpeter and singer Marla Dixon: CLICK HERE for an exciting example of their work)
Stalebread Scottie and His Gang
The Gentilly Stompers
Emily Estrella and the Faux Barrio Billionaires (Emily is originally from Cincinatti)
Hokum High Rollers
The Messy Cookers
The Sluetown Strutters
The Palmetto Bug Stompers
John Zarsky and the Trad Stars
The Jazz Vipers
The New Orleans Swamp Donkeys
Orleans 6 (led by the excellent Ben Polcer)
Sour Mash Hug Band
Baby Soda

There is a band called Ragstretch, formed by young people in 2012. It is confusing to work out where this band is based, because its members are Australians and Scandinavians and some of them seem to be living in New York. The musicians also play in other bands and some of them are already well-known on the traditional jazz scene. But when the band Ragstretch comes together, they give brilliant, sparkling, tasteful performances. There are plenty of videos of them for you to explore on YouTube. You could try this version of Panama (played in Copenhagen) for starters: 
CLICK HERE.

In St. Louis, Missouri, The Sidney Street Shakers play exactly the kind of jazz I like best - unpretentious, straightforward, exciting, with good teamwork and just right for dancers. And note elsewhere The California Feet Warmers - a fairly young band playing slick, well-prepared traditional jazz.

All terrific stuff. So heart-warming; and giving great hope for the future.

And even in Britain there is hope. Have a look at the videos of The Brownfield/Byrne Hot Six to discover some technically-brilliant swinging jazz being played by chaps who seem to be still in their twenties.

Also from Britain, seek out the videos of Adrian Cox, or Ben Cummings, or The Graham Hughes Sunshine Kings, or Giacomo Smith, or The Basin Street Brawlers. You will have a pleasant surprise.

And in May 2017 a band called The Ten Bells Rag Band was formed in London. The musicians are relatively young and are inspired by such bands as Tuba Skinny in New Orleans. They play some very pleasant traditional jazz.

Elsewhere, you may find such good young bands as Magic Shook Heads and The Hippocampus Jass Gang in the south of France: their videos are worth watching. And in Buenos Aires, you have the Jazz Friends - a terrific, fluent band, whose range of instruments sometimes includes the 'pinkullo' - a South American flute.

In the North-Eastern corner of Italy we find the young Adovabadan Jazz Band of Treviso playing some very tasteful traditional jazz. For example, click here to see them performing Cake Walking Babies From Home.

In Horten (population 27,000), Norway, a group of beginners aged 35 to 55 got together in 2016, modestly called themselves The Sloppy Jazz Newbies, and by the following year were making good progress and starting to attract gigs. You can hear them tackling Big Chief Battleaxe BY CLICKING HERE.

In the Rhine-Neckar area of Germany, a newly-formed band of energetic and enthusiastic young musicians has shown what can be achieved even with a limited range of instruments. They call themselves Die Selbsthilfe-Gruppe (The Self-Help Group) and you can find examples of their work on YouTube.

I am sure there must be many other such bands around the world. I would be pleased to receive more information.

And on top of all that, the astonishing response to this blog proves there is still great interest in the music. I started the blog in 2013 - just as a little hobby in my old age - and I am amazed to find that it is now being looked at more than 15,000 times a month by people from all over the world.

Post 445: MEETING DAVID JELLEMA, JAZZ CORNET PLAYER

I first noticed and admired the cornet player David Jellema in 2014, when on YouTube I discovered videos of The Thrift Set Orchestra, which is based in Austin, Texas. David was playing some fine music in the company of other outstanding musicians - among them, Albanie Falletta, Westen Borghesi and Jonathan Doyle. If you don't know this group, you may sample one of their performances BY CLICKING HERE.

But I didn't meet David until 20 October 2016 when, during a very brief visit to New Orleans, I literally bumped into him. I pushed open the door to the Yuki Izakaya Bar in Frenchmen Street, and David was immediately on the other side. He was guesting in Haruka Kikuchi's Band.

During the interval, David kindly and generously joined me for a very interesting chat.

In particular we discussed how he goes about mastering tunes and improvising upon them. He felt that, although it is obviously crucial to know the tune's melody and its chords, it becomes more important to internalize those elements (relegating them to the subconscious through repetition and practice - to the point where you would be able to play the song even in an unfamiliar key). With the music thus internalized, the conscious mind can be free to engage with the immediate demands of the performance in the present, i.e., listening and responding to the other musicians, making split-second choices within a solo, etc.

Beyond mastering the scales and arpeggios of chord shapes and inversions in all keys, David said, what is most important in developing jazz improvisational language, style, and a personal voice is to study many masters (by copious listening, transcribing, and copying their solos and licks) in order to let their influence percolate into your playing as you mature into your own voice.   The music you most love will help inform and shape your first steps towards developing your own improvisational style. In his own case, he said the most important master had been Bix Beiderbecke.

I was not surprised. In his fluency, creativity, attack, tone and technique, David's playing always reminds me of Bix.

But here's something astonishing. David plays a cornet that is over 120 years old; and he still gets a beautiful tone from it. The cornet is an 1893 English Besson, a vintage 'Prototype' (serial number 48XXX). David knows that F. Besson was at the time located at 198, Euston Road, London; and that the instruments were distributed in the USA by Carl Fischer of New York. David bought this cornet from an antique store in Annapolis, Maryland, in the 1990s. As the US Naval Academy is based in Annapolis, David surmises that the instrument may originally have been played by someone in the Navy band.

After a few years, David passed the cornet on to his friend Dave Sager, a jazz trombone player in the DC area. Mr. Sager spent a deal of money in having it brought back to a pristine condition. Since about 2011, it has been back in the hands of David Jellema:

and from the other side:

But David has four other very special cornets, including a Conn from the 1890s. I hope - with David's help - to write an article about them for publication early in 2017.

I remember hearing the late great British jazz trumpet-player Humphrey Lyttelton say that some instruments (such as Stradivari violins) improve with age but that brass instruments begin to deteriorate from the first time they are played and go on getting worse.

Well, David's cornets seem to discredit that theory. Or perhaps it is simply that they really knew how to make solid and enduring brass instruments in the Victorian Age.

Post 444: THE SIDNEY STREET SHAKERS - CD WITH A MISSION

An exciting discovery has been The Sidney Street Shakers, a new young band based in St. Louis, Missouri. In particular, important jazz-history research has led to their first CD - Laughing My Weary Blues Away.

This band (basically an eight-piece) was formed in 2013 and is managed by multi-instrumentalist Kellie Everett. The musicians take pride in the contribution of St. Louis to early jazz history. They have set out to revive and recreate tunes composed and played by St. Louis musicians in the 1920s.

They claim the early history of jazz in St. Louis (as compared with that of New Orleans) has been relatively neglected. For example, quoting from their CD's liner notes: 'The greatness of St. Louis' music is due to St. Louis talent. Music didn't come to the city via the river; and that kind of thinking obscures the important contributions of St. Louis artists like Charlie Creath. Louis Armstrong was in the Waifs' Home in New Orleans when Creath was playing cornet in P. G. Lowrey's travelling show circulating early music ideas.'

They also want to remind us that some of the earliest recordings were made in St. Louis and that mixed-race bands performed there surprisingly early in the history of jazz. 

Kellie Everett must have done a phenomenal amount of work in researching the bands (most of whom left no recordings) and the jazz music they played. I guess you - like me - have never heard of the bands from whose work Kellie made her selection - The Missourians, Harry's Happy Four, Dewey Jackson's Peacock Orchestra, Powell's Jazz Monarchs and others. Kellie must have spent hundreds of hours transcribing the music from old recordings. Eventually she settled on a representative 15 tunes for inclusion on this CD.

You can find most of the 1920s performances of the originals on YouTube. Doing so helps you appreciate how meticulously the transcriptions have been made and how very closely these recreations follow the originals.

Accompanying the CD is a booklet largely written by historian Kevin Belford. Into eight small pages it crams a mass of information about the bands and the 15 tunes.

The CD has been really well recorded. The acoustics and balance are just right. You can hear every instrument clearly.

The music is played in a bright but respectful, accurate, tight, non-exhibitionist style by a group of fine musicians. They obviously work from Kellie's detailed transcriptions. The tunes invariably have arresting introductions and neat, clever codas. There is a clockwork, pulsating rhythm. Two-bar 'breaks' are well organised and constantly crop up (Jelly Roll Morton would have approved!). The trumpet - mostly stating the melody, is usually muted, and there is strong flavouring from the saxophones, including the bass sax which Kellie herself plays, Adrian Rollini-style. There are solos against stop chords; and you find 'Doo Wacka Doo' riffs here and there. Occasionally you may detect a kazoo, or even a comb-and-paper; and the voices of the musicians are built in to some of the arrangements - most noticeably in Laughing Blues, where an entire chorus of this 12-bar tune in F is filled with half the band laughing while a few keep the rhythm going - just as on the original 1926 recording by Powell's Jazz Monarchs.

The performances are peppered with short improvised 'solos' but these are always pretty, melodic and unpretentious rather than flashy - and that's just how I like them.

The great Chloe Feoranzo constantly provides flowing, lyrical decorations, whether on Clarinet or C Melody Sax, and she takes some sweet solo breaks. In Hot Stuff, Chloe shares a 32-bar theme with pianist Mary Ann Schulte (this is similar to what happens on the original 1929 recording of this tune by Oliver Cobb's Rhythm Kings). What a good player Mary is! She constantly provides the perfect underpinning of the music but she also shows herself very capable when given a chance to take a solo, as in Blue Grass Blues. This piece is extraordinary: it begins like something out of Chopin; and ends reminiscent of the final theme of 'Wolverine Blues'! To sample that track, you are welcome to CLICK ON HERE FOR A VIDEO THAT I HAVE PUT TOGETHER.

Mary also has a pivotal rôle in Market Street Stomp. Chloe and Mary produce some fluent and pretty work on East St. Louis Stomp.

Kellie Everett herself plays so well throughout (bass and tenor sax) - showing that the bass sax can be a punchy alternative to a sousaphone or string bass and also that the instrument is capable of decent melody-making in its own right. The strings (Joe Park, Joey Glynn and - on some tracks - Jacob Alspach [he also plays trombone]) are always solid and have a chance to shine in Blue Blood Blues. The washboard and drums are played sympathetically by Ryan Koenig and Matt Meyer. Student percussionists could learn a lot by listening carefully to their discreet, sensitive support of the rest of the band. Kyle Butz is also very good on trombone: he plays on six of the tracks. Timothy John Muller, who, I gather, is also the on-stage music director of the band and helped Kellie considerably in preparing the scores, is - I'm proud to say - a fellow countryman of mine! He comes from Penrith in England. Tim leads with a mainly-muted trumpet, stating the melodies and producing variations very tastefully. 

The tunes are all new to me. I was specially impressed by Soap Suds which seems to be a complex piece with a final theme that reminds me (harmonically) somewhat of Bogalusa Strut, though it's played in the unusual key of G. The little solos by Chloe and trombonist Kyle Butz are good examples of those pretty improvisations I mentioned.

Ozark Mountain Blues - an up-tempo number in Ab and anything but 'bluesy' - brings out powerful performances from all the band, and gets the CD off to a good start. And Swinging The Swing is a brisk, merry tune to add to our collection of tunes using the Bill Bailey chord sequence.

Hot Stuff is a tune we could all easily and profitably add to our repertoires - a medium-tempo straightforward AABA 32-bar in Eb, with a familiar chord progression.

The band takes its name from the Sidney Street that is a thoroughfare running west for over two miles from the Mississippi in St. Louis. The band used to rehearse in an apartment on that street when they first formed. On the evidence of Google Maps, it is a mostly leafy residential street with some attractive-looking houses.

Some videos of The Sidney Street Shakers have been put up on YouTube. But these videos fail to do justice to their music. Some present only fragments of tunes. CLICK HERE for part of a performance of 'San', which at least gives a reasonable idea of how the band looks and sounds.

In most of the videos, the background noise or the acoustics of the venue make it very difficult to appreciate what the band is doing. In some, the visuals are poor, with jerkiness, persons blocking the view, or a lack of focus on those who are actually playing. So, if you are interested in hearing this band or learning more about early St. Louis music, you need to obtain the CD. It's available at:

http://bigmuddyrecords.com/product/laugh-my-weary-blues-away/

By the way, Kellie Everett, the driving force behind the whole project, and who plays the saxes so well, has also been playing the banjo for twelve years. With two other members of the band, she belongs to the St. Louis Banjo Club. Trumpet-player T. J. Muller has also become a fine plectrum banjo player.

Further good news is that the jazz scene in St. Louis is growing, in combination with the local swing dancing revival.

Post 443: W. C. HANDY AND MEMPHIS

Only once in my life have I been to Memphis, Tennessee. That was on 17 October 2016. Naturally, I headed to Beale Street.

And of course I had to be photographed with the statue of the great William Christopher Handy.

I also enjoyed seeing the house where he lived for the eight years during which he led his own band playing on Beale Street, and wrote some of his best-known work, establishing the importance of the 12-bar blues. In fact, a few recordings of Handy and his Memphis Orchestra, made in 1917, still exist (you can find them on YouTube).

The house was originally located at 659 Janette Street, but was transported in 1983 to this new site tucked away just behind Beale Street, near the statue. 

Handy in 1892

And here is his band in Memphis in 1918.

Handy lived from 1873 to 1958. Apart from being a trumpet-player and band-leader, he is best known as a composer - 'The Father of the Blues'. Among his compositions are some of the most enduring pieces in the traditional jazz repertoire: Memphis Blues, St. Louis Blues, Beale Street Blues, Ole Miss Rag, Chantez Les Bas, Atlanta Blues, Yellow Dog Blues, and Aunt Hagar's Blues.

Unfortunately, on the one day when I was in Beale Street, the live music in the bars was disappointing. But I guess I was just unlucky. Apart from 'meeting' W. C. Handy, my greatest pleasure in Memphis was a lovely stroll by the Mississippi.

And Mrs. Pops Coffee was thrilled to meet local resident Melvin - just three weeks old. Melvin's ambition is to become a jazz trumpet player.

Post 442: 'ROOT, HOG! OR DIE!'

Times are hard. You can no longer afford to feed your pig. So you turn him loose to fend for himself. You say to the pig: 'Off you go, Piggy. Root around and find some food for yourself. If you don't, you will die.'

Or you may simply say: 'Root, hog! Or die!'

From early colonial times, this became a familiar expression in American English of the Southern States (but never in English English). An American friend in Connecticut tells me it is now considered antiquated, even in the USA. Root, hog! Or die!, meaning Be resourceful and self-reliant, was once proverbial. And John Dixon told me: 'It IS an antiquated term, but you still hear it out in the country. It wasn’t a regular expression but I remember both my paternal grandma and my dad both saying it a few times on occasion'.

The expression made its way into a folk song (a song quite different from the one currently played by The Shotgun Jazz Band), even long before The Harlem Hamfats recorded their Root, hog! Or die! in 1937.

The Harlem Hamfats were founded in Chicago, primarily as a studio band. Not one of the band's eight members was actually from Harlem! Their leaders were Herb Morand (trumpet and vocals) and Kansas Joe McCoy (guitar and vocals). They developed a riff-based style, which is conspicuous in Root, hog! Or die!

This minor-key tune uses virtually the same chord sequence as Blue Drag and Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen. To see what I mean about the riffing and the chord sequence, listen to the Hamfats' recording (apparently in the very unusual key of Gb minor) of the song BY CLICKING HERE.

But why am I telling you all this?

Because on 19 October, during a fleeting visit to New Orleans, I caught The Shotgun Jazz Band playing Root, hog! Or die! at The Spotted Cat Music Club. John Dixon told me they had recently introduced the tune into their repertoire, having picked it up from The Harlem Hamfats.

I made a video of their version. Playing (in the key of C minor) at a slightly faster tempo than the Hamfats, they had that wonderful combination of John Dixon and Tyler Thomson powerfully laying down the rhythm and chords, while Craig and Tomas offered some good solo choruses.

By the way, John also told me: 'It differs from the Blue Drag form by adding a #5 over the words ‘root hog or die’. If you divide those words up in time,  it’s:  -   (#V)root - (V)hog or - (1)die - instead of just V-I.'

Marla lustily provided the vocal and showed in her trumpet solo chorus what can be achieved by using a mute while lingering on the most bluesy notes. I hope you will enjoy watching my video. You may do so BY CLICKING HERE.