Post 603: PLAYING THE ODJB'S 'OSTRICH WALK'

'Ostrich Walk' was first devised and recorded in 1917 by The Original Dixieland Jazz Band, so it was credited to their players Edwin B. Edwards, Nick LaRocca, Henry Ragas, Tony Sbarbaro and Larry Shields.

You can hear them over a hundred years ago playing the tune - at a good pace - BY CLICKING HERE.

This is a simplified lead sheet.

=====================

The book 'Enjoying Traditional Jazz' by Pops Coffee is available from Amazon.

Post 602: MAKING TRADITIONAL JAZZ VIDEOS

I feel hugely privileged to have lived to an age when - sitting at my computer here in Nottingham, U.K. -  I am able to click a button and watch wonderful traditional jazz performances from all around the world. We have to be deeply grateful to all the generous and hard-working video-makers who provide us with these treats.

Some of them have high-quality equipment. They use two or more cameras and have a separate sound-recording apparatus.

If it had not been for video-makers such as those codenamed digitalalexa and RaoulDuke504, I might never have discovered the wonderful traditional jazz being played by relatively young musicians in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina. Their videos convinced me that I had to get to New Orleans to see and hear for myself.

Good news is that digitalalexa (Al and his wife Judy) produced the first video of Tuba Skinny to be viewed more than a million times: THIS ONE - CLICK ON TO WATCH IT.

When I decided to try to make some videos, I bought a simple small camera from the cheaper end of the Panasonic Lumix range. It is intended mainly for taking still photographs but, like most cameras these days, it has a built-in microphone and the facility to record videos. It also has a useful 'zoom' feature.

Once you have made a video, it is easy to load it on to such a site as YouTube, thereby making it available to viewers all over the world. You have merely to follow the simple instructions on the screen.

I have had only four or five opportunities to video truly outstanding jazz bands. But I have made a number of videos and put them on YouTube. My favourite - the one with which I am most pleased - shows The Shotgun Jazz Band at The Spotted Cat Club (New Orleans) playing Royal Garden Blues when I was there for the French Quarter Festival in April 2015. The band was on absolutely cracking form and I was able to film from the side, very near the band, so I obtained some pleasing close-up shots of Haruka, Marla, James, John and Twerk.

If you have not yet seen that video, you can watch it BY CLICKING HERE.

I hope you will enjoy it as much as I still do.

I must also mention James Sterling, who discovered the music a few months after I did. Living in Florida, he has been able to travel to New Orleans far more often than I have, and he has uploaded some fine videos.

If you haven't yet explored what's up there on YouTube, you should start by looking at the offerings of the three video-makers I have mentioned.

POST 601: 'ROCK ME'; AND A BEREAVEMENT

Here's a sad tale. In 1932, Nettie Dorsey, the wife of Thomas A. Dorsey,  died in childbirth; and two days later their new-born son died too.

In his grief, Thomas A. Dorsey composed Precious Lord, Take My Hand - a tune which remains popular with traditional jazz bands to this day.

Thomas Andrew Dorsey

Who was Dorsey? Not to be confused with Tommy Dorsey (1905 - 1956), the famous trombonist and band-leader, he was always known as Thomas A. Dorsey. He lived from 1899 to 1993.

Thomas A. Dorsey was already well-known at the time of his wife's death. He was an established blues pianist, band-leader and composer. He had performed as 'Georgia Tom'. He had a hit record in 1928 with It's Tight Like That. His band had accompanied Ma Rainey. He founded the first black gospel music publishing company. He was in later life to be considered the Father of Black Gospel Music. 

A gospel number for which he is also specially known is the 1937 composition Peace in the Valley.

But what prompts me to tell you all this is that I listened earlier today to Erika Lewis singing Rock Me on Tuba Skinny's first album - the album simply called 'Tuba Skinny' and issued in 2010. Rock Me was made famous when it was recorded by Sister Rosetta Tharpe in 1938; but the song was originally composed by Thomas A. Dorsey under the title Hide Me In Thy Bosom.

Rosetta sang it in the key of Bb; Tuba Skinny prefer Ab.

You can hear Rosetta's recording BY CLICKING HERE.

To hear Erika Lewis singing the song in the early days of Tuba Skinny, you should buy the album. But if you would like to see a live version, filmed as long ago as 2010, CLICK HERE.  At the time, Tuba Skinny was in its infancy and still had no reed player; but you can hear a wonderful little solo chorus from Shaye Cohn at 2 minutes 20 seconds  that foretells the greatness to come.

We have to thank the video-maker codenamed digitalalexa for recording this early performance.

I decided to try playing Rock Me on my keyboard and trumpet. What I then discovered is that it is a 32-bar tune (you could consider it as a 16-bar Verse with a 16-bar Chorus). Also, I found the first 16 bars have virtually the same simple chord progression as the second 16 bars. Moreover, all four sets of eight bars begin with The Magnolia Chord Progression [ I  -  I7  -  IV  -  IVm ].

The Magnolia Chord progression is found at the beginning of so many of the tunes we play. Other examples are:

After My Laughter Came Tears 

Mississippi River Blues 

Brown Skin Mamma 

Carolina Moon 

Cherry Red 

'Deed I Do 

Does Jesus Care? 

Girl of My Dreams 

If I Had You 

I'll See You in the Spring

I May Be Wrong But I Think You're Wonderful 

I'm Gonna Meet My Sweetie Now 

I'm Putting All My Eggs in One Basket 

In the Upper Garden 

I Want a Little Girl to Call My Own 

I Would Do Most Anything for You

Lonesome Road 

Louisiana Fairytale 

Magnolia's Wedding Day 

My Mother's Eyes 

Old Rocking Chair 

Red Sails in the Sunset

Rolling Round the World 

Show Me The Way To Go Home

Stevedore Stomp [final strain] 

When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano

You Were Only Passing Time With Me
==============
Footnote

My books Tuba Skinny and Shaye Cohn, Playing Traditional Jazz and Enjoying Traditional Jazz are all available from Amazon.

Post 600: GETTING THOSE DARNED CHORDS RIGHT - 'LOVE SONGS OF THE NILE'

'What chord were you playing in Bar 3?' the pianist asks the banjo player.

'C minor.'

'That's odd. It's Eb7 in my book.'

Conversations of this kind can be heard constantly at rehearsals - and even at performances. The trouble is that so many thousands of chord books have emerged over the decades. Some of them have been commercially published. But most have been painstakingly built up for their personal use by individual musicians over many years, during which their repertoire has constantly increased. Here is the hand-written chord book belonging to a banjo-playing friend of mine. As you can see, it's alphabetical and loose-leaf, so he can easily add new tunes to it from time to time.

So every musician has his or her ever-developing chord book and they all like to think their chords are 'right'.

One of the problems is, of course, that there can be alternative chords in so many places in most tunes. Such alternative chords can sound correct if the entire band agrees to use them. And the truth is that there is much similarity between certain chords. For example, Bb major has much in common with G minor 7th, so it's no surprise when those chords are used by different players at the same point in the tune.

Another problem is that - over the years - the chord sequences of many of the good old tunes from a hundred years ago have been simplified for traditional jazz purposes. For example, in some of those tunes, the composer may have used four different chords over the four beats of a bar. But the chord-book writers have substituted just two chords - for two beats each. Or they may even find it possible to get away with just one chord for the entire bar.

Maybe one day a definitive 'correct' chord book for the hundreds of tunes we play will be produced. But I doubt it. While we wait, there is always something of interest to be found by those of us who enjoy investigating these matters.

I am largely self-taught and have always regretted not having had some music education that would have introduced me to more of the theoretical stuff. But even I find alternative chord structures fascinating.

Love Songs of the Nile is one of the tunes that throws up a particularly interesting conflict of opinions. It is a beautiful tune I first came across when I heard that very fine English trumpeter Cuff Billett playing it with his band in the 1990s. I also enjoyed hearing the late Lionel Ferbos singing and playing it at The Palm Court in New Orleans very shortly afterwards. I still have a treasured CD of his band and I'm pleased to say it includes that song.

Love Songs of the Nile was written for a 1933 film called 'The Barbarian'; and it was sung in the film by Ramon Navarro. The composers were Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed. (Nacio Herb Brown also wrote You Stepped out of a Dream and You Were Meant for Me.)

The chord problem arises in the Chorus. Assuming the tune is played in the key of C, some chord books have Bar 9 on the chord of F and Bar 10 also on F, while others prefer Ab and Ab7 respectively. There's a similar problem with Bars 13 and 14.

To my ear, the versions using Ab and Ab7 sound better. In fact, John Dodgshon of California wrote to me about this very matter and he is convinced that this is the correct version, meeting the intentions of the composer. Here is the lead-sheet John has kindly sent me. It includes the Verse.

Post 599: DISCARDED VERSES OF THE POPULAR SONGS

In most of the popular songs from the early days, composers wrote a Verse as well as a Chorus. But today, in the case of hundreds of these tunes, our jazz bands normally leave out the Verse and play only the Chorus. In fact, if anyone suggests playing the Verse, it usually turns out that only one or two members of the band actually know it.

Of course there are exceptions. For example, the Verse of Alexander's Ragtime Band is so much an integral part of the song that it is practically always played through, at least once. Chloe has a highly unusual spooky Verse in a minor key - well worth playing. The Verse of Everybody Loves My Baby is a good one, too, and leads perfectly into the Chorus. Exactly the same is true of I'm Gonna Meet My Sweetie Now, where the Verse is an important part of the narrative.

And the Verse of Put On Your Old Grey Bonnet is so good and substantial that it's a fine song, quite independent of the neat and merry Chorus. And - in case you don't know - I can tell you the Verse of Ice Cream, though rarely played, is very attractive. Peg o' My Heart has a pleasant 16-bar (8+8) Chorus based on the Four-Leaf Chord Progression; but to give your performance a bit of body you should also play the attractive Verse (which is also an 8 + 8)

I used to think we ought to make an effort to revive discarded Verses. So I started to seek them out, though it's often difficult these days even to get hold of the original music. Here is what I discovered: the Verses were often really dull compared with the popular and familiar Choruses! So perhaps it's no bad thing after all that so many Verses have been abandoned. Yes, it is astonishing but true that some great songs with good melodies that everybody loves actually had, in their original form, dull and forgettable Verses.

The reason why I am thinking about this matter of long-forgotten Verses is that my attention was drawn to When You're Smiling. That wonderful researcher and vintage music collector Audrey VanDyke shared the original sheet music of this song.

When You're Smiling (composed in 1928 by Mark Fisher, Joe Goodwin and Larry Shaye) is such a good song. Bands love it. Audiences love it (and often sing along); and the tune is easy to improvise upon.

Yet - be honest - do you have the faintest idea of its VERSE?

Well, thanks to Audrey, I can now tell you the Verse consists of 16 bars and the words are:

I saw a blind man.

He was a kind man

Helping a fellow along.

One could not see.

One could not walk.

But they both were humming this song:...

CHORUS

When you're smiling, etc.

The Verse is a kind of 'recitation' - the melody uses only five different notes. And whoever would have thought that When You're Smiling - as originally composed - is about two severely disabled people?
======
John Dixon of The Shotgun Jazz Band sent me these further comments:
Your post on missing verses, dead on. the Verses were often really dull compared with the popular and familiar Choruses! - too true. It’s the general reason we don’t play EVERY verse to every tune. Many times we’ll learn the verse and just realize it’s not very good. Same with lyrics. 'Poor Butterfly' is an outtake from the latest record and at first I wanted to do it with the lyrics but they are SO cheesy and hamfisted. Same with many verses. It’s an ongoing joke, actually… We’ll call a tune and someone will say “Know the verse?” and Tyler and I will break out in a super schmaltzy verse that’s always the same.

======

I received the following comments from James Buck - a friend and regular reader who lives in the South of England:
I was told by an old dance band musician, some dozen years ago, that in the 'dance hall days', when he was playing regularly. "The bands missed out the verses because they were often in different keys and tempos, from the choruses.  This was too much for most dancers to cope with, so they stopped dancing.  So the bands just dropped the verses!"    

I can not check with him, as he has long since died.  He being in his late 80's when he told me this.

This, as well as your comments, is another reason for the verses no longer being played.   In my mind the verse often gives another meaning to a chorus, as in "Pennies from Heaven".

Post 598: 'I CHARLESTON' VIDEOS

Just in case you are one of those people who have not come across the life-affirming, heart-warming 'I Charleston' videos, I must tell you that you have missed a treat. Do something about it and take a look at them.

What happens is that a group of enthusiasts (mostly young) make a video in which they energetically dance the Charleston in settings that highlight the sights and architecture and tourist attractions of their city.

It is great fun and mildly competitive. You can decide for yourself which city has made the best video. For traditional jazz fans, there's the added attraction that many of the videos use good recordings of our bands as the accompaniment to the dancers.

There are plenty of these videos on YouTube. You might care to start with New York City: CLICK HERE;
or London: CLICK HERE;
or with one of the less-known cities. I particularly enjoyed this one from Brest, France: CLICK HERE.

Parma has plenty of creative ideas: CLICK HERE. And Warsaw has even used music by our beloved Tuba Skinny to provide the accompaniment: CLICK HERE!

Post 597 : MIDDLE EIGHT JAZZ ANXIETIES

The band-leader announced that we would play I Get The Blues When It Rains.

The clarinet-player leaned across to me and quietly said, 'Just remind me how the Middle Eight goes.'

I hummed the tune and soon had to stop. 'Hey, wait a minute!' I said. 'I Get The Blues When It Rains doesn't have a Middle Eight. It's a 16 plus 16.'

'Ah yes. Got it!' he replied. And away we went, with no problems playing the tune.

But the incident reminded me that Middle Eights can cause problems and anxiety.

In case you don't know what I'm talking about, let me tell you most of our standard tunes are written in a 32-bar form. Sometimes (as in I Get The Blues When It Rains) the structure could be described as A1 (16 bars) + A2 (16 bars), in which A1 and A2 are very similar, beginning in identical ways for the first few bars.

But a huge number of the 32-bar tunes are structured in 8-bar segments, of which the first (A1), second (A2) and fourth (A3) are almost identical, while the third (B1) is something quite different. This 'B' section is called the Middle Eight (even though it does not come in the very middle); and it is sometimes called the Bridge or the Release.

(Incidentally I'm reminded of a very old joke. Two jazz musicians walked past a newspaper hoarding on which were the words Indiana Bridge Disaster. 'That's funny,' said one of them. 'I didn't think there was a bridge in Indiana.')

Although there are some stock patterns for Middle Eights (making it easy to improvise), there are also a few tunes that defy conventions. In these cases, you have to learn the Middle Eight the hard way and keep it in your head with regular practice.

All musicians have trouble with Middle Eights occasionally. I have even heard some of the 'big names' being flummoxed at this part of their improvisation.

Examples of tunes needing practice and care with the Middle Eight are I'm Putting All My Eggs in One Basket, Rosetta, Blue Moon, You Took Advantage of Me, Have You Met Miss Jones?, Polka Dots and Moonbeams, Yearning, Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams, Do You Know What it Means to Miss New Orleans?, and C'est Si Bon. Although very few bands play them, Body and Soul and When Smoke Gets in Your Eyes need care, too.

In more complex multi-part tunes, you may find several themes, each of which has a challenging Middle Eight. Think of Deep Henderson, which contains three themes with Middle Eights that have to be thoroughly mastered. The Middle Eight of the final theme is a real thriller (arpeggios descending over unlikely chords). But Shaye Cohn, Barnabus Jones and Jonathan Doyle make it sound easy at 1 minute 53 seconds in this video:

CLICK HERE.

Post 596: 'ALLIGATOR HOP' - A GOOD TRADITIONAL JAZZ TUNE

Alligator Hop is a good tune to have in your armoury. It sounds clever and complicated. And yet it could hardly be simpler. By the way, it was also originally called Alligator Flop.

It is one of those tunes composed by King Oliver and Alphonse Picou with a helping hand from Lil Hardin (I suspect) in 1923 for use by their band.

Listen to it by clicking here.

Although it is usually played quite fast (and can therefore sound tricky) it uses very simple melodic, harmonic and rhythmic patterns, with built-in two-bar 'breaks'. It is even normally played in the easiest keys.

The tune begins with a standard four-bar Introduction and then goes into THEME A. This is 32 bars in Bb (16 + 16) using the Sweet Sue Chord Progression and  ending each 16 on II7:V7  |  1.

A 'break' is taken on the tonic chord in bars 13 and 14 (and therefore again on bars 29 and 30). So far so good, and you have needed only the chords of:

I   and  II7    and  V7.

After a couple of times through Theme A, you burst into THEME B, which is 16 bars (8 + 8), but you have now switched to the key of Eb. A 'break' is taken on Bars 7 and 8, based on the chords II7  |  V7.

Again the chord pattern could hardly be simpler: the tonic is the chord for 13 of the 16 bars!

Next: go back and play Theme A once.

Finally play THEME C until you're ready to stop. Theme C is in Eb and it is identical in chord and general structure to Theme B. The only difference is that you may care - like King Oliver - to play a slightly different melody.

So the entire romping tune can be seen as very simple; and the chord players can get away with using only three chords - though in both Bb and Eb.

Incidentally, this is best regarded as an ensemble party piece. Everybody plays throughout: there's no call for 'solos', apart from those little 'breaks'.

Post 595: ELLINGTON'S 'BIG HOUSE BLUES'

For anybody interested in studying traditional jazz, 'Big House Blues', composed by Duke Ellington in 1930, is a good illustration of what makes the music endlessly fascinating and interesting.

For a start, like plenty of other pieces from our standard repertoire, it has two sections of which one is in a major key (in this case Eb) and the other in the related minor key (C minor).

Next, it reminds us that not all tunes in the 1920s and 1930s were structured in 12-bar or 32-bar formats. In fact, the first theme (Section A - see below) consists of 20 bars. Other examples of 20-bar tunes from our early repertoire are After You've Gone, Oh You Beautiful Doll, The Darktown Strutters Ball, I Guess I'll Have To Change My Plan, Keeping Out of Mischief Now, You've Got the Right Key but the Wrong Keyhole, You Got Me Crying Again, and Papa De Da Da.

The tune uses riffs – again typical of our music – and they are unusually pretty and rhythmically interesting. Note what happens in bars 17 and 18 of the A section, for example. 

It is possible to go straight from section A into section B , though bands with a piano often get the pianist to play a four-bar link between the two, just as Ellington did.

Now look at the second theme - section B – in the key of C minor. It has a 32-bar AABA structure, again using a pretty, dramatic riff for the A sections. The middle eight has its own striking, defiant melody ending with a powerful use of the G7 chord.

Improvisations are normally played on this B section and they can be very dramatic. The melody and the minor key lend themselves to growling, muted work, for example. Actually, the chord sequence is much simpler than it sounds: it is possible for a musician of average ability to produce something quite impressive from this material. I think that is why it is popular with trumpet and trombone players.

I have heard some bands also introducing a 12-bar blues chorus in Eb, and using this for improvisations. I think that spoils the overall impact of all the minor chord stuff. Ellington himself didn't do it in 1930, so why should we?

A very good way to end the tune is to play Section A again, with those bars 17 to 18 sustaining the drama and bar 20  bringing the piece to a striking sudden halt.

You can hear the tune being played by Ellington himself BY CLICKING HERE. And you may watch a band playing the piece in 2008 BY CLICKING HERE.

Post 594: DISENTANGLING 'TANGLED BLUES' (SHAYE COHN AND TUBA SKINNY)

An 18-bar vocal from Erika

I first heard Tangled Blues when Tuba Skinny performed it at The Louisiana Music Factory on 14 April 2015. It was a new composition by Shaye Cohn, with words by Erika Lewis.

Tangled Blues is a very pleasant tune, somewhat country-and-western in feel and played in the Key of F.

But something about it struck me as strange. You form the impression  that you are listening to one melody. But listen carefully and you find there are two separate tunes. Let's call them A and B. They have a lot in common. For example there are motifs such as this one that occur in both A and B (giving the piece that feeling of unity).

It occurs twice in A, played (I think) on the chord of F. It also occurs twice in B, but this time (I think) played on the Bb chord. So we begin to see what a clever 'tangle' Shaye has woven for us. Part A has a lyric and comprises 18 bars. How many tunes can you think of that consist of 18 bars (not counting tunes that are really 16 bars with a 2-bar tag, such as Sister Kate)? Can you think of any? Apart from Miss Otis Regrets by the wonderful Cole Porter, I can't. So Shaye has played a very clever trick here.

However, Part B is a conventional 32 bars but with no lyric.

Despite their similarity of 'feel', the two parts sound (to my ear, which may be misleading me) quite different in chord structure. It seems A starts with, and twice uses, the I - IV - V - I chord pattern whereas B starts on the V chord (dominant - C7th, followed of course by the tonic), of which it makes much use later.

The whole performance goes like this:

4-bar Introduction
18-bar A (Ensemble)
32-bar B (Cornet 16 + Ensemble 16)
18-bar A (Todd on Tuba playing the melody)
32-bar B (Clarinet 16 + ensemble 16 - trombone with melody)
18-bar A (the only occurrence of the vocal - sung by Erika)
32-bar B (Ensemble, cornet-led)

Total = 154 bars; performance time about 4 minutes 20 seconds.

What a clever, pretty and intricate tangle indeed! Well done, Shaye!

'Tangled Blues': Todd plays
the  18-bar melody.

You can watch a street performance filmed by RaoulDuke BY CLICKING HERE or digitalalexa's video (the performance at which I first heard the tune) BY CLICKING HERE.    

My friend Peter Petrovič, who lives in Maribor, Slovenia, enjoys the challenge of trying to work out tunes by ear. He sent me his attempt to decipher Tangled Blues; and I think he has done really well.