Post 552: BUNK JOHNSON AND THE 'BLUE BELLS GOODBYE' MYSTERY

Among the many tunes recorded by Bunk Johnson in the early 1940s, one of the favourites was Blue Bells Goodbye (available on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nGE7W-R0A4). Its appeal is easy to understand, because, following its leisurely 16-bar Verse, the Chorus breaks into 2/4 time and offers a pleasant, simple 32-bar melody.

The tune achieved even wider popularity when it was taken up by revivalists, such as the bands of Ken Colyer and Papa Bue. The first version I came across (nearly sixty years ago) was the Ken Colyer recording, which you can listen to BY CLICKING HERE.

But where did this tune come from? Bunk claimed to have recalled it from his youth. But nobody could find any evidence of a  'Blue Bells Goodbye' before his recording.

Some fans who idolised him believed that Bunk himself had composed it. Others speculated that it could have been a march dating back to the American Civil War.

Well, here is the solution to the mystery. In 1905, Egbert Van Alstyne composed a tune called Bright Eyes Goodbye. Words were provided by Harry H. Williams.

Sure enough, it has the same melodies as Bunk's tune, and the same 32-bar up-tempo Chorus preceded by the leisurely 16-bar Verse.

Our jazz bands still go on playing it as Blue Bells Goodbye. Perhaps we ought to correct the mistake and begin calling it Bright Eyes Goodbye. But titles get changed in the evolution of jazz, so would it be better to leave it with Bunk's title?

We can excuse Bunk for getting the title slightly wrong. He probably had a much better memory of the tune than of its title.

Here's the original sheet music. You can see that it's the tune in question all right. The Verse is virtually identical to what Bunk plays. The Chorus is almost so, especially at the start, though he seems to have tweaked a few of the later notes. The probable reason for this is that Bunk was further confused by memories of a song called 'Blue Bell' (not 'Blue Bells Goodbye') that had been composed in 1904 by Theodore F. Morse, with lyrics by Edward Madden. Its structure is remarkably similar to that of 'Bright Eyes, Goodbye'.

My good friend Todd Brown has not only offered me his own analysis of this matter (see foot of this post). He has also recorded 'Blue Bell' on his guitar, and you can watch his performance on YouTube BY CLICKING HERE.

Here are Todd Brown's perceptive comments: My guess is that Bunk was conflating "Bright Eyes Goodbye" with another song, known as "Blue Bell" or "Goodbye My Blue Bell" (music by Theodore F. Morse, lyrics by Edward Madden.) Like "Bright Eyes," "Blue Bell" has a lyric that begins with a soldier bidding goodbye to his sweetheart and telling her not to cry; unlike "Bright Eyes," it ends sadly, as we learn in the second verse that the soldier has died in battle, so the two will never be reunited. Interestingly, "Blue Bell" was published in 1904, while "Bright Eyes" was published in 1905. This suggests to me that "Blue Bell" came first and "Bright Eyes" was a sort of "answer song" written in response to it. (Lyrically, the first verse of "Bright Eyes" is remarkably close to "Blue Bell," and the phrase "I'll return true as blue" may have been included in the chorus as a nod to the earlier song.) Bunk Johnson had probably heard both songs and got the titles a little mixed up.

Incidentally, these days "Blue Bell" seems to be best known from an instrumental version by the American guitarist Merle Travis; the title is often rendered, incorrectly, as "Blue Belle" or "Farewell My Blue Belle." I suspect that's because here in the States, most people assume that the setting is the American Civil War and that the title refers to the young lady as a blue (i.e., sad) "southern belle." Given the spelling on the sheet music, I think we are actually meant to assume that the soldier calls his sweetheart "Blue Bell" because her "eyes so blue" remind him of the flower known as a blue bell.

Post 551: THE NEW ORLEANS OWLS 1922 - 1929

The best-known picture of The New Orleans Owls.

In addition to the bands of Sam Morgan and Armand Piron, and The Halfway House Orchestra, another band that made recordings in New Orleans during the 1920s was The New Orleans Owls.

Apparently a group called The Invincibles String Band had been formed in New Orleans in 1912 and it included seven musicians (Johnny Wiggs, Eblen Rau, Benjy White, Rene Gelpi, Monk Smith, Earl Crumb and Mose Ferrar) who went on to form The New Orleans Owls.

Their music was elaborately arranged and sweet rather than raw. But it was very dance-able and impeccable-sounding. Tampeekoe is a good example. You may sample it by clicking here.

The band made about twenty recordings between 1925 and 1927, 13 of them in New Orleans. Several of the tunes were original compositions by members of the band and – while usually having more than one theme – these tunes essentially use 16-bar and 32-bar harmonic structures that have become familiar in so many of the tunes from the 1920s that have always been loved by traditional jazz bands.

The New Orleans Owls flourished between 1922 and 1929, performing for dancers in the hotel ballrooms of New Orleans - notably the Hotel Roosevelt. Though they normally performed as a seven-piece, twenty-two different musicians were members of the band over those years. The most distinguished were perhaps Benjamin White (reeds and leader), Bill Padron (cornet), Frank Netto (trombone), Nappy Lamare (banjo), Dan LeBlanc (tuba), Pinky Vidacovitch (clarinet and sax) and Moses Farrar (piano).

You will find their style fairly sedate - even in such numbers as Blowing Off Steam and Dynamite. Everything is tidy and controlled, just right for elegant ballroom dancing.

Even in Meat on the Table (essentially a Bill Bailey variant), where there is a fair amount of room for improvisation, the emphasis is on charm and neatness rather than adventure. Click here to sample it.

Their music is energetic and lively within a tight, disciplined framework. The tunes are carefully structured, with introductions, modulations and breaks.

This is a band to divide opinions among traditional jazz fans. Some will say their music shows just how traditional jazz should sound; others will say it is not exactly gutsy: it lacks 'rawness' and risk-taking. But we have to remember The New Orleans Owls did not include the word 'Jazz' in their name. Their task was to accompany and please people who, in the 1920s, were elegantly dancing fox-trots. And they did that job supremely well.

Post 550: MAY AUFDERHEIDE'S 'DUSTY RAG' - AND THE EVOLUTION OF TUNES

I have often made the point that some of the tunes played by our bands have been transformed since the original composer penned the piano manuscript many decades ago.

What often happened - especially with those tricky early rags - was that the bands distilled the melodies from the pieces and played them more simply. This was mainly because it is not possible on a cornet or trumpet to play the range of notes and the rapid leaping semi-quavers that a pianist's fingers could cover. Also, the rags often included three or four parts, sometimes with a change of key in the final part. But the jazz bands tended to drop at least one of these parts and might have no key change in their version.

The popular Dusty Rag is interesting to examine.

The first performance I heard of Dusty Rag was a recording made in a relaxed manner by Ken Colyer's Jazzmen in about 1959. It was an attractive jaunty piece of music.

I discovered much more recently that Ken had kept very close to the version recorded by Bunk Johnson in 1942. Bunk's band had a stellar line-up:

Bunk Johnson - trumpet

George Lewis - clarinet

Albert Warner - trombone

Lawrence Marrero - banjo

Chester Zardis - bass

Walter Decou - piano

Edgar Mosley - drums

You can listen to Bunk's version on YouTube BY CLICKING HERE.

As you can hear, they play the piece entirely in the key of Eb. After a four-bar Introduction, there is a 16-bar first theme played twice through, and then a second theme (also 16 bars) played several times, always as full ensemble. The entire piece takes about three minutes and ends without a Coda. Here are the chords, as supplied to me by a banjo-playing friend.

You can hear Tuba Skinny in 2014 playing the piece quite briskly and without the four-bar Introduction (or a Coda) if you CLICK HERE. They make the tune last four minutes, with much soloing on Part B. 

More recently, I have seen the original sheet music. It was entirely in the key of C. It too began with a four-bar Introduction, not dissimilar to what the jazz bands play. And it too had a first theme of 16 bars, with a pattern very like the band version, and even including the attractive and distinctive diminished chord arpeggio in Bars 13 and 14. Then comes the second theme of 16 bars, which is very closely followed by Bunk and his imitators. Finally there is another theme of 32 bars, much in the spirit of the earlier themes. No jazz band, as far as I know, plays this third theme. Ever since Bunk, bands have decided that the first two themes give them enough to work on.

Dusty Rag was composed in 1908 by May Aufderheide of Indianapolis. This remarkable lady was only twenty years old at the time. Her proud, wealthy father set up a small music publishing business to sell her sheet music. Dusty Rag became very popular and she went on to compose many more pieces. One of them was Thriller Rag, which is also still played by our bands.

May Aufderheide lived to a good old age. She died in 1972. So she experienced the entire early evolution of jazz from Buddy Bolden until long after the death of Charlie Parker. Amazing to think she was still alive to hear The Beatles'  recordings of A Hard Day's Night and Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

She lived through nearly three decades of my own life. How I wish I had had the chance to meet her and talk about those early days, and what she thought of Bunk Johnson's and Ken Colyer's versions of her music.

Here's May Aufderheide's composition. It was orginally called just Dusty, as you can see.

May Aufderheide

Post 549: THANK YOU, STEPHEN FOSTER

I suppose most of us play Stephen Foster songs from time to time. They are among the oldest tunes in our repertoire. Foster wrote over 200 songs - an amazing output, considering that he died at the age of only 37, and that he was largely self-taught in musical theory and instrument playing.

I am particularly fond of Beautiful Dreamer (1864) and Way Down Upon the Swanee River (1851; also known as Old Folks at Home) and I get to play them quite a lot. It is always a poignant thought that Stephen died only a few days after composing Beautiful Dreamer. He did not live to see it published and probably never heard it played by a professional musician.

Foster's tunes may seem somewhat basic, compared with the rags that were added to our repertoire fifty years later. But I believe they should not be under-estimated. He was absolutely brilliant at producing a good melody within everybody's vocal range and with enough repeated phrases to make it easy to learn. His tunes also used very simple chord progressions that made the tunes a doddle to play in those nineteenth-century homesteads, where families had to make their own entertainment and where everybody aspired to own a piano or harmonium or fiddle or accordion or banjo. Also he tended to write 32-bar tunes, using the a-a-b-a structure (four eight-bar blocks) which was to become the standard in popular songs for decades.

And all those features make his tunes very pleasant and straightforward for us to play. Have you noticed how effectively The Shotgun Jazz Band (with Tyler Thomson singing) has been playing My Old Kentucky Home in recent months?

Here's how the wonderful and generous Lasse Collin has made Beautiful Dreamer available to us on his website[ http://cjam.lassecollin.se/ ]:

You see what I mean about the simple lines of the melody and the exceptionally simple chord sequence? But it is a gem of a tune to play. And audiences still love it.

Footnote added later: I noticed that on 6 November 2017 a video was downloaded on to YouTube by RaoulDuke504 in which Tuba Skinny are seen (for the first time?) playing Beautiful Dreamer. So I'm very pleased that they too have added this song to their repertoire.

Post 548: TRADITIONAL JAZZ PUZZLE - WINNERS AND ANSWERS

Here are the answers to the puzzle set in Post 547.

When You Wore a Tulip
Egyptian Ella
You’re the Cream in My Coffee
Blue Turning Grey Over You
Give Me Your Telephone Number
Red Roses for a Blue Lady
Buddy Bolden’s Blues
I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate

Congratulations to everyone who sent in the correct answers, especially the following, whose replies arrived almost instantly!

David Withers (Christchurch, New Zealand)

Chris Rule (Sheffield, England)

Henry Kiel (Hamburg, Germany)

Cleber Guimarães (Brazil)

Pat Patterson (Concord, California)

Susan Enefer (Vancouver, Canada)

Post 547: TRADITIONAL JAZZ PUZZLE FOR TODAY

Here's another of my occasional puzzles.

These are eight titles of tunes played by our bands.

They are all slightly wrong.

When You Wore a Turnip
Egyptian Fella
You’re the Fly in My Coffee

Blue Turning Green Over You
Give Me Your Cardinal Number
Red Roses for a Fat Lady
Buddy Bolden’s Boots
I Wish I Could Simmer Like My Sister Kate

What are the correct titles? Answers to:

ivantrad (@) outlook (dot) com

Winners' names will be given in my next post - Post 547 on 16 September.

Post 546: SHAKE 'EM UP JAZZ BAND TRIUMPHS AGAIN!

Once again, those of us who live thousands of miles from New Orleans are indebted to my friend Randy, who makes videos under the name RaoulDuke504. Despite his busy and hard-working life as a chef, he managed to get across the Lake to attend the performance by the all-ladies Shake 'Em Up Jazz Band at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art on 7 September 2017. 

And what a performance it was! This band - which was formed initially just to give a demonstration at a girls' summer camp in 2016 - has continued in existence, flourished and is now one of the most exciting and best traditional jazz bands in the world.

Watch Randy's video of them playing Margie in this recent concert: CLICK HERE.

Yes, I know it's a simple 'standard' that all bands play. But what musicianship!

The three rhythm players have established a kind of 'alternative' gently-pulsating New Orleans-style background that really drives the music and keeps your feet tapping. They are unusual in having no drum kit, no tuba, no banjo, no piano. It's all done in this video by Albanie's guitar, Molly's string bass and Dizzy's subtle work on the washboard (listen to the way she uses her 'cymbal' on the offbeats in the final chorus). I should explain that Julie was out of town so Albanie joined the band. In one half of the concert, she played guitar and Molly the string bass; in the other half, they switched rôles. What versatile and brilliant musicians they are!

After a neat final-eight intro from Haruka, Albanie provides a lovely clear vocal at the start.

Then excitement gradually builds, first with a super solo chorus from Haruka, and next with one of amazing fluency from Chloe on clarinet, while the three rhythm ladies keep that gentle, hypnotic pulse going. Just listen to those notes in Chloe's improvisation. Jazz doesn't get any better than that. Then we hear one of Marla's specials - a chorus brilliantly demonstrating what she can achieve with the plunger mute - hugely creative. After this we have a most exciting chorus, with all three front-line ladies collectively improvising around the melody. How well they listen to each other!

After Albanie sings the vocal again, there is a final ensemble chorus that leaves you desperate to hear more from this band.

And yet the whole performance is achieved with restraint. Everyone is relaxed, comfortable and totally in control. There is no over-blowing, no excessive noise. The notes are allowed to do the work. What we have here are great musicians with a common purpose, working brilliantly as a team and expressing the soul of the music.

I could go on about the other videos from this performance.... But seek them out for yourselves. 'Savoy Blues' and 'Shake 'Em Up' are played in ways that will also take your breath away.

By the way, the cavernous acoustics in the Museum are notoriously bad. So Randy did really well to get close to the band and capture the sound in such high quality.

Post 545: SHOCK AT THE JAZZ CLUB!

Recently, I attended a traditional jazz concert at one of the best and longest-established jazz clubs in England. It was in the outskirts of London, far from my home, and I had never been there before.

The club meets once a week in a very fine arts centre for evenings of entertainment by visiting bands. It has a large car park. The auditorium has plentiful and comfortable seating. There is a bar selling food, and drinks hot and cold. The stage is ready-equipped with a tuned piano and a splendid PA system, so the bands are well provided for.

I was most impressed by the enthusiasm, hard work and friendliness of the six committee-member volunteers who run the club.

As with so many of these clubs in England, the volunteers were elderly and had become very knowledgeable about traditional jazz because it had been one of their main interests for several decades. The audience too consisted entirely of elderly people.

Having arrived early, I was able to chat with most of the volunteers. Like others running such clubs all over the country, they were concerned that membership numbers were steadily falling. At present they had just enough regular attenders to keep the club running. But a few had died in the recent past. The gentleman who booked the bands doubted whether the club would still be in existence five years from now.

As usual, we all regretted that the younger generation in England seemed to be taking little interest in this kind of music; and that there were very few young musicians to be found in English traditional jazz bands.

A couple of them told me they spend a lot of time watching traditional jazz videos on YouTube; and they mentioned the bands (all British) that they liked to watch. I was amazed they didn’t mention the videos coming out of New Orleans or Tokyo.

It turned out that these jazz club committee members – such knowledgeable fans – were completely unaware of the resurgence of traditional jazz being played right now to the highest levels by young people in the streets, bars and clubs of New Orleans.

Of course, I told them about the New Orleans scene, and recommended that they should start watching those videos.

But this experience left me thinking. If these people, who have loved traditional jazz since the 1960s, are unaware of what is happening in New Orleans, possibly there may even be some readers of this blog who also need to make the discovery.

So, just in case you need a prompt, try these two videos. Click on to view:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RicINWvmAcg&t=799s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBFTQkZmBMI

Post 544: AL BOWLLY

A slightly unusual topic for today, as some of you may think it has little to do with traditional jazz. I want to say a few words about Al Bowlly.

My attention was first drawn to him a few years ago by my friend Carsten, who enjoys both traditional jazz and the dance band music from the Golden Era. And I have since found that many traditional jazz musicians have great admiration and respect for Al Bowlly.

So what made him special? Listen to a couple of his performances (available on YouTube) and I think the answer will be obvious. You could start with this one (My Melancholy Baby), where he actually appeared on film: CLICK HERE.

Note what he achieves, through sheer quality of voice and expression, without any more support than a very good pianist. And from 2 minutes 04 seconds, when the pair begin to swing the tune, you can't help wishing he were with us today and available to sing with our bands.

Of course, he was what we would call a 'crooner' rather than a jazz singer, but there is such a massive overlap between what the crooners and the jazz singers were doing, and the tunes they were playing in those years. It is easy to see how he must have influenced and inter-acted with the development of traditional jazz. Among the tunes he recorded, for example, were All of Me, Blue Skies, Dark Eyes, Please, Roll Along Prairie Moon, All I Do is Dream of You, Whispering, Isle of Capri, Goodnight Sweetheart, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, South of the Border, Guilty, What a Little Moonlight Can Do, The Very Thought of You, It Had To Be You, Marie, The Old Spinning Wheel, Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen, True, and Blue Moon. These are tunes being played by traditional jazz bands in Royal Street and in the Frenchmen Street Bars of New Orleans to this day. I doubt whether such tunes would be in our repertoire if the likes of Al Bowlly had not first popularised them.

Try this 1931 recording of Guilty. Isn't it lovely?  

CLICK HERE.

There are plenty more performances for you to enjoy on YouTube. And if you are sufficiently enthused to wish to buy some Al Bowlly recordings, I can assure you there are more than a dozen different CDs available.

Al was born in 1898. He had an unusual and tempestuous life, during which he knew both the highs and lows of show business. There is plenty about him on the internet - for example in Wikipedia - so I will not repeat all that may be easily found elsewhere. Sufficient to say that his parents were Greek and Lebanese, that he grew up in South Africa, that he had various jobs before getting into singing and playing guitar with dance bands, and that between 1929 and the late 1930s, he made hundreds of recordings (mainly with Lew Stone's Band and Ray Noble's Orchestra), and became a big star on the radio both in the United Kingdom and America.

My friend Carsten told me: Both Noble (who composed songs specifically with Bowlly's voice in mind - many of which remain 'standards' to this day) and Stone were excellent arrangers and knew exactly how to blend Bowlly's singing talent and vocal range with that of their bands, and the results were exceptionally good, whether in ballad or 'hot' number mode.

Carsten also told me that Ray Pallett, owner and publisher of the Memory Lane magazine, brought out a 400-page meticulously-researched biography - They Called Him Al - which may be considered the definitive work, if you should wish to explore Mr. Bowlly's life in greater depth.

Sadly, Al Bowlly was killed on 17 April 1941 in his London apartment when it was hit by the blast from a parachute mine dropped by the Luftwaffe. He was only 43 years old. I was also in London that night, surviving the bombing in our family's Anderson shelter. But I was too young to understand what was going on; or to be aware that, a mile or two away from me, the life of one of our finest singers had been cut short.

Post 543: TUBA SKINNY'S 'TUPELO PINE' - ALBUM AND CD

Tuba Skinny recorded their eighth album - Tupelo Pine - in May 2017 and released it in August.

Using the eight musicians who were appearing regularly with the band at the time (but without Erika, who was absent), it offers music ranging from 1921 right up to tunes recently composed by three of the band members. Greg provides vocals, with one by Max.

The only tune to have appeared previously on one of their CDs is Call of the Freaks. On their earlier Garbage Man CD, it was played under its alternative title - Garbage Man, in fact. In this 2017 version, there are some 'freakish' inventions, especially from the clarinet, and we still have the vocal (Stick out your can....). But the arrangement is more  elaborate, intricate, delicate, and polished than in the earlier version.

And that is exactly what will strike you about this album. Everything is so deftly executed. You have the impression that a great deal of preparation has gone into the arrangements. Backing rhythmic patterns are precise and well-rehearsed. All the little breaks are carefully worked out. A good illustration of this is the structure and use of two-bar breaks in Come On and Stomp, Stomp, Stomp, where the band precisely follows the famous recording made in 1927 by Johnny Dodds' Black Bottom Stompers. What stands out strongly compared with Tuba Skinny's earlier recordings is that everything is even more slick and polished.

As usual with Tuba Skinny, there is no exhibitionism. The emphasis is on good melodic music played with bags of intelligence and impeccable teamwork.

Several of the tunes have become familiar through YouTube videos that appeared in 2016 and 2017. For example, the 1933 Clarence Williams composition Chocolate Avenue is yet another of those good old numbers the band unearthed. It is a gently swinging 32-bar tune in Eb; and the band passes the melody around in its usual fashion. To read the article I wrote when Tuba Skinny were first filmed playing Chocolate Avenue, CLICK HERE. And to watch a video I made of them playing this tune in New Orleans when I was there in February 2017, CLICK HERE. It is interesting to compare different performances. You will notice that the structure is remarkably similar, with the trombonist (in my video Charlie Halloran, but on the CD Barnabus Jones) leading the first sixteen bars of the Second Chorus and Craig on clarinet leading from the Middle Eight to the end of the Chorus. On the new recording, in the third Chorus Todd on sousaphone is given the dominant role in the first sixteen bars but the full ensemble rounds the piece off. So: three Choruses in all. However, in my video, you can see them playing four Choruses in total, with much prominence given to the three-man string section in the third.

And Clifford Hayes' romping Frog Hop from 1929 (at two and a half minutes the shortest piece in the album) is a real foot-tapper, with good little solos and a couple of amusing 'frog' effects.

Dangerous Blues - the 1921 song with music by that tragically short-lived young lady Billie Browne - features Craig on clarinet and also has the usual collective vocal. You can read my article about this tune BY CLICKING HERE.

Come On and Stomp, Stomp, Stomp (composed in 1927 by Fats Waller et al.) is the trickiest and most complex piece in this album. Tuba Skinny's version is taken at a more leisurely pace than the one by Johnny Dodds, is fully arranged, complete with the key changes, and sets a great example to any band wishing to try this tune.

Shaye's composition Pearl River Stomp (2016) is a bouncy number with two sixteen-bar themes. In this performance the lead is passed around, the bass clarinet is strongly in evidence and there is even a 'twos' section shared by cornet and trombone. Almost imperceptibly, without any bridge, it slips into Db for the final two choruses (the second theme) after being entirely in Ab up to that point. This theme seems to be similar to the second theme of Bogalusa Strut, also using that tune's chord progression.

And Shaye's Nigel's Dream (from 2015) is another fine composition. With typical Shaye-isms, it slides neatly from C to Eb, back to C and then back to Eb to finish. It uses a thematic base reminiscent of the middle eight of East Coast Trot, and indeed the whole piece is something of a trot, played with great energy. Quite a dream our Nigel had!

I am glad the album also includes Thoughts, Robin Rapuzzi's gently rolling composition from 2015, in a lovely arrangement. I have written before about this tune. You may read my article BY CLICKING HERE. Robin originally composed it for violin but he is proud of the way it sounds when played by the band.

I'm Going to Germany (the 1929 number composed by Noah Lewis for Cannon's Jug Stompers) is a 16-bar song with a wistful melody, well presented by Greg, with good support from the band.

Greg also sings Loose Like That - one of those bright 8-bar tunes from which Tuba Skinny always manages to extract so much. It gets the album off to a fine start. (There is a YouTube video of them playing this song at the Abita Springs Buskers' Festival in April 2017.) In contrast, he also sings the 1930 Broonzy number Eagle Riding Papa, which is a brisk 32-bar tune.

Max is the singer on Right or Wrong, the pleasant love song composed in 1921 by Arthur Sizemore and Paul Biese, with words by Haven Gillespie.

Some have already said that the elegiac minor-key Deep Bayou Moan is the loveliest melody Shaye has ever written. She herself leads it off, and it is then played beautifully by all members of the band. You may well consider this track alone justifies the price of the album.

The eponymous Tupelo Pine, composed by Barnabus (maybe inspired by the band's canine musical director!), is a slow, lovely melody in Eb over a simple chord progression (plenty of Ebs, C7ths and Abs). As with all the other tunes, it provides opportunities for a variety of instruments to take the lead.

You can download the album, or individual tracks, from Bandcamp: CLICK HERE.