Post 358: 'BUDDY'S HABIT(S)'

'Buddy's Habits' (aka 'Buddy's Habit') was written in 1923, by Arnett Nelson and Charley Straight. Thanks to the generosity of the videomaker codenamed RagtimeDorianHenry, you can see the sheet music and hear the piece played on the piano by clicking here. And you can hear the original recording by Charley Straight's own Orchestra by clicking here.

The joint composer, Arnett 'King Mutt' Nelson, was a clarinet and saxophone player. He was born in Gulfport on 8th March, 1890 and died on 14th March, 1959. His first job was with the band of John Collins, Lee Collins' father, around 1907. Arnett moved to Chicago in 1914 and is not known to have returned. He was a member of Jimmy Wade's band in Chicago and New York, 1922-27, and was in pickup bands with Punch Miller in the late 1920s and early 1930s. He later worked with Chicago blues bands.

The other joint-composer, Charley Straight, was born in Chicago, Illinois in January 1891. He apparently had Bix Beiderbecke in his band for four months in 1925, but fired him! Charley Straight started his musical career in the early 1910s as a solo piano player and by circa 1917 led his first band. Charley's important contribution to the piano roll industry should also be noted. His early career was on the vaudeville circuit; during that period, from 1912 to 1914, while they worked in England, he issued with his partner Gene Greene several double-faced records. Shortly thereafter he became Musical Director of the Imperial Piano Roll Company (later to become QRS, the most prolific piano roll manufacturer in the world), where he made numerous rolls, collaborating with Roy Bargy on quite a few. According to The Music Trade Review, he left Imperial shortly before January 1922 and his piano roll activities appear to have ceased around 1926. Although his was basically a hotel dance band, Straight appreciated jazz and some of his recordings for Paramount are considered to be among the best jazz records made by a white band in the early 1920's. Straight didn't record after August 1928 but remained active as a bandleader until his death on September 2, 1940 when he was hit by a speeding car in Chicago.

The recording of 'Buddy's Habits' by Charley Straight's Orchestra was made in June 1923 and then - as 'Buddy's Habit' - it was recorded by King Oliver's Jazz Band (25 Oct 1923). Other early recordings were by The Midway Dance Orchestra (5 Dec 1923), The Bucktown Five [with Muggsy Spanier] (25 Feb 1925), Red Nichols & His Five Pennies (20 Dec 1926).

The 'Buddy' of the title was not Buddy Bolden. It was a tuba-player, Louis 'Buddy' Gross, whose habit was retiring to the rest room at the end of each set because of the vast quantity of beer he had consumed. Another 'habit' was that he got so drunk that he fell offstage backwards, with his tuba. It seems he was a member of Charley Straight's Orchestra.

When clarinetist Arnett Nelson (the other co-composer) played in Jimmy Wade's Orchestra at the Moulin Rouge Café (Wabash Ave, Chicago), the tuba/bass sax player was also Louis 'Buddy' Gross. He recorded with Wade's Moulin Rouge Orchestra in Dec 1923 and Feb 1924.

This leaves me guessing that Arnett Nelson and Louis 'Buddy' Gross played in both Jimmy Wade's Orchestra AND Charley Straight's Orchestra in 1923. This is surely probable. Clarification on this point would be welcome, if anyone knows.

There is also a party-piece for banjo players (you can find it on YouTube) called 'Take Your Pick', with the composer credited as Pete Mandell, the banjoist with the Savoy Orpheans in London, England. This was copyrighted in 1925. 'Take Your Pick' was recorded by the Savoy Havana Band, with Pete Mandell on banjo. 'Take Your Pick' - apparently considered something of a tour-de-force in the banjo-playing fraternity - seems to be a plagiarised 'Buddy's Habits'. If there was plagiarism, the dates suggest it was from west to east.

'Buddy's Habits', which has three themes, is interesting, 'catchy' and not too challenging to play, so it is hardly surprising it quickly went the rounds and is still very popular among the bands of today.

Post 357: TUBA SKINNY AND 'HILARITY RAG' BY JAMES SCOTT

While I was in New Orleans during April 2016, I had the good fortune to be in Royal Street when Tuba Skinny were busking. Their programme included Hilarity Rag. Apparently this was a tune they had only just learned and they were giving their first public performance of it. I managed to film it. You can see and hear the piece by clicking on here.

But where does Hilarity Rag come from? The answer is that it was composed in 1910 - an early piano rag by James Scott (who also composed such classics Climax Rag, Ophelia Rag and Grace and Beauty).

You can hear the original piano rag (and see the sheet music - with sincere thanks to the video-maker codenamed RagtimeDorianHenry) by clicking on here.

Like so many of those early piano rags, it had to be 'simplified' and adapted quite a bit to make it playable as a full-band piece. Bunk Johnson obviously liked it and played it with his bands. Fortunately, at the end of his revived career, he was recorded in New York, playing his version. You can hear that by clicking on here. Sounds quite a bit different from the piano piece, doesn't it?

Other bands before Tuba Skinny have taken it up from there. For example, there's a lovely clear performance by an English band with the late Norman Thatcher on trumpet. You can watch it by clicking on here. (I remember Norman Thatcher as one of the rare musicians who also had Scott's Grace and Beauty in his repertoire in the 1980s.)

And now we have the young band Tuba Skinny in New Orleans playing Hilarity Rag. Their version also closely follows the Bunk Johnson reinterpretation of Scott's original.

I must mention that they also added to their repertoire in April 2016 tunes called Frog Hop and Frog-i-More Rag. Unfortunately I did not video them playing these tunes. But I noted that RaoulDuke504 did so in the weeks that followed. For his video of them playing Frog Hop, CLICK HERE.  And for Frog-i-More Rag, CLICK HERE.

Clifford Hayes composed Frog Hop in 1929 and recorded it with his Louisville Stompers. You can hear that original performance by clicking on here.

Tuba Skinny's version, that I heard at the dba in New Olreans on 8 April 2016, was modelled very closely on this - including the sustained link notes at the ends of choruses.

Frog-i-More Rag is, of course, a much better known piece - in the repertoire of most bands. It was composed by Jelly Roll Morton in 1918.

Post 356: 'ELEPHANT STOMP'

Who composed Elephant Stomp? This has long been one of those intriguing mysteries in the history of traditional jazz.

The composer's name is sometimes given as St. Gery Alferay. More often it appears as St. Gery and Alferay. These names were long assumed to be pseudonyms.

The tune (two themes of 16 bars each) became popular after Humphrey Lyttelton began featuring it in 1954. At one time, some suspected that Lyttelton himself had composed it.

Adding to the confusion, there seems to have been at least one other Elephant Stomp (in three themes, and from the 1930s) but this was not the tune Lyttelton played.

Dick Baker (I have written before about his great website), with the help of his colleague Erwin Elvers, not long ago published a solution to the mystery. Elvers says that 'Alferay' was a French tenor sax player called Albert Ferreri and that 'St. Gery' was his French colleague, a pianist called Yannick Singery. Apparently, Singery was on piano when Albert Nicholas recorded the tune in Paris in 1953. Maybe that's how Lyttelton picked it up.

Well, all that makes sense; and it's good enough for me.

I think it's a useful tune in the repertoire because it's bouncy, simple to learn and easy to improvise on. My ear tells me it goes as below. There are two sets of 16 bars, both repetitively made up of 8 + 8. And the chord progressions are simple. A band can play it through a couple of times and then stick on B for solos.

Post 355: MAYNARD BAIRD AND 'POSTAGE STOMP'

Does your band play Postage Stomp? If not, how about giving it a try? It's a bright, chirpy, conventional 32-bar number, easy to pick up and improvise on. It has a familiar chord pattern - very similar to that of Has Anybody Seen My Girl?

Maynard Baird's 'Orchestra' - an obscure but very slick outfit - was based in Knoxville, Tennessee; and in April 1930 Postage Stomp was one of two tunes they recorded for the Vocalion label. I have been unable to discover beyond doubt who composed Postage Stomp. One source gives 'Goebel and Johnston'. So it seems a very reasonable inference that they were Sam Goble and Vic Johnston - trumpet player and pianist respectively in Baird's band. You can enjoy the recording (complete with some visual entertainment) by clicking on here. Impressive performances are given by Buddy Thayer on banjo, Harold Taft on baritone saxophone, Horace Ogle on trombone and Ebb Grubb on sousaphone. But the whole performance is polished, using a well-crafted written arrangement that treats the 32-bar theme in a variety of ways. Maynard Baird (who appears to have been the conductor and leader) chose to pitch the tune rather high - in the key of F.

From a newsreel (with no sound track):
A tantalising glimpse of Maynard and some members of his Orchestra

My attention was drawn to this tune because Tuba Skinny seem to have added it recently to their repertoire. But they have opted for the key of Bb, which strikes me as more comfortable. Listen to their delightfully brisk performance by clicking here.

(With thanks to my friend Carsten Pigott for supplying some of the historical information. In his turn, Carsten asks me to give the 'real credit to the majestic work of the great Brian Rust, without whose meticulous research we would all still be flailing around in the dark in these matters'. Thanks also to RaoulDuke504 - maker of the Tuba Skinny video.)

Post 354: 'FAR AWAY BLUES'

If you run a beginners' jazz band and you are looking for a simple, straightforward but effective tune to add to your repertoire, may I recommend Far Away Blues? The tune is sometimes called Faraway Blues.

It was written (under a pseudonym) by Fletcher Henderson in about 1923. I worked out my own leadsheet of 'Far Away Blues'.

I have arranged it at its most simple - a mere sixteen bars, to be played gently, but preferably sustained by a rock-steady and emphatic rhythm section.

One of the secrets of its appeal lies in the twelfth bar, where the diminished chord introduces a welcome surprise.

If you would like to hear the tune, you can find several versions on You Tube.

Here it is again, in C:

Note that this version includes a decorative addition in the first eight bars (shown here in the narrower print). A well-drilled band could have the trumpet playing the main melody, for example, and the clarinet playing those decorations.

In the version recorded in 1946 by George Lewis and the Eclipse Alley Five, George himself takes the melody in the opening choruses and the great Jim Robinson on trombone adds the decorations. It's a lovely recording, available on You Tube:

CLICK HERE

You can even go right back to 1923 and hear the great blues singers Bessie Smith and Clara Smith singing the song as a duet (including the decorative echoes). Click on here: they are accompanied on the piano by the composer.

CLICK HERE

If you would like a straightforward modern performance by a full traditional jazz band (the Grand Dominion), try clicking on this one from YouTube. They perform it simply, in the key of Bb. Try playing along with them.

CLICK HERE