Post 611: RECOMMENDED GREAT TRADITIONAL JAZZ VIDEOS

I leave you some recommendations for videos of traditional jazz bands active in recent years. If you have not seen these videos before, I hope you will enjoy them. If you have seen them, I am sure you will enjoy watching them again!

First, for a relaxed, moving, unpretentious but beautifully-played performance, showing just how perfect a musical form traditional jazz can be, try Whenever You're Lonesome, Just Telephone Me played by members of The Shotgun Jazz Band. The video runs for about five minutes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IwUIizeLk0

For an example of a great jazz band playing one of the very complex tunes from our repertoire - Deep Henderson - watch Tuba Skinny in this next video. It runs for a little over three minutes. Notice how all members of the band, working from memory rather than printed arrangements, play wonderfully as an ensemble through all three sections of this challenging piece, not to mention taking in their stride a change of key and linking passages:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqVx9vwt2WM

Now, for some passionate 'no frills' traditional jazz, coupled with brilliant musicianship and generating great excitement, I would like to offer you a performance of Royal Garden Blues that I myself had the privilege of filming. This one runs for under five minutes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dv5RBMA_v4k

Next, I offer you a performance of a good old jazz standard - Savoy Blues - played by The Shake 'Em Up Jazz Band. This video runs for a little under five minutes. I recommend it because it shows what happens when six outstanding musicians come together and - with great respect for each other - play wonderfully as a team, just as our bands should. This performance too is unpretentious and yet you will hardly find a better rendition of this piece anywhere:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjvABe9Mvns

Finally, if you have time to sit back for a full half hour and watch six outstanding musicians play a varied programme ranging from storming stuff such as Climax Rag to the tender Love Songs of the Nile, may I urge you to watch this video? You will also hear such tunes as Oriental Man, Yearning, Mobile Stomp and I Can't Escape From You. As one observer said, 'It's the kind of music that makes you cry with joy!' Click on it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RicINWvmAcg&t=814s

In my opinion, this is the best 'half-hour live concert' video to have appeared in several years.

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 309: THE NOWHERE CHORD AND THE CLAPHAM JUNCTION CHORD

Listening to Wabash Blues, I was reminded that what 'makes' this tune is the 13th bar (measure), where we suddenly land on a note and chord that sound alien but are in fact just right.

Don't know what I mean? Well, hear what happens at 30 - 32 seconds into this video (click on to view) and again (more conspicuously) from 1 minute 42 seconds to 1 minute 44 seconds.

Checking it out, I found it's the chord on the flattened 6th of the key in which the tune is played. So, if you are playing in C, the flattened 6th would be the chord of Ab. If you're playing in F, it would be the chord of Db:

And so on.

The flattened 6th is a chord that rarely appears in our music but, whenever it pops up, it creates a special effect.

I discussed this with my friend Ralph Hunt and he told me that among banjo players such as himself it is known as the 'Nowhere Chord'. That sounded really interesting. Did it mean the chord that led nowhere? Did it mean the chord that seemed to come from nowhere? Unfortunately the explanation was much more mundane: it came from the tune 'Out of Nowhere', in which the chord plays a prominent part.

The led us to wonder what other tunes we could think of in which the listeners are hit at some point with the chord on the flattened 6th. In five minutes we came up with these:

Bye Bye Blues (on the word 'blues': you can hear it, can't you?)

Come Back Sweet Papa (very emphatically in the Verse)
I Never Knew What a Girl Could Do (both in the verse and in the main theme)

Love Songs of the Nile
Oriental Strut (in the main theme)

Oh, You Beautiful Doll

Marie (30th bar)

Mama's Gone, Goodbye (Mama's gone, Mama's gone goodbye)

My Melancholy Baby (in the second half of each of the first two bars):

San (it makes the Chorus truly distinctive)
Sorry (bars 3 & 4, for example)
Golden Leaf Strut (bars 25 and 26)

Henry Kiel reminds me that four more are:
Alabama Jubilee (in both Verse and Chorus)
Angry
Black and Blue (Middle Eight)
Dancing With Tears in My Eyes

But no doubt you will tell me there are more......

And while we're on the subject of these strange named chords, did you know there is one called 'The Clapham Junction Chord'? I learned about it from The Oxford Companion to Music. It is the chord of the 7th diminished. For example, in the key of C, it would contain B, D, F, and Ab.

Why Clapham Junction? Because that is a railway station in South London from which routes branch off in many directions. In the same way, when you play this chord, you can modulate into any one of several different chords to follow it.

Post 153: 'LOVE SONGS OF THE NILE'

Love Songs of the Nile is a beautiful tune that I first came across when I heard that very fine English trumpeter Cuff Billett playing it with his band in the 1990s. I have since discovered that it has been recorded by many of the best traditional jazz bands. The great Shotgun Jazz Band of New Orleans has the song in its repertoire. Here's their cracking version of it:
Click here to view on YouTube.

Apparently this song 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.)

You can hear it played by the band of De De and Billie Pierce (with George Lewis on clarinet and Louis Nelson on trombone) if you
CLICK HERE.

John Dodgshon of California wrote to me about this tune, pointing out that some jazz bands play a version with a 'simplified' chord sequence. John is right. There is a difficulty in bars 9, 10, 13 and 25 of the Chorus, where the 'simplified' version, possibly based on the De De and Billie Pierce recording, has for example F major chords where there should be Ab7s. Here is the recommended correct lead-sheet that John has kindly sent me. It includes the Verse.

Post 66: SHOTGUN! THE BEST VIDEO EVER?

Like many of you, I spend a great deal of time watching traditional jazz bands on YouTube. I am always excited when I discover something really good. And I am now going to recommend to you a video that appeared in 2013 and is still a contender for the prize of 'Best Traditional Jazz Video Ever'. It provides half an hour of first-class entertainment.

Of course, your taste may be different from mine. So I must declare that, on the whole, I am not keen on mere exhibitionism. And I am not often excited by bands playing from printed music or arrangements - with sheets of paper on stands in front of them - though I accept that the skills and slickness of the musicians in such bands are sometimes truly admirable.

I prefer my musicians to have memorised all that is necessary and then to play more freely - right from the heart. I like them to be spontaneous, creative, surprising, original, and - above all - ever ready to respond to each other in outstanding teamwork.

If you have not already watched this video, I urge you to sit down with a good drink, click on and then marvel at the performance.

It was filmed at The Abita Springs Opry, a few miles north of New Orleans, and features The Shotgun Jazz Band. To my mind, this was the performance that launched The Shotgun Jazz Band as one of the best traditional jazz bands in the world. Under the leadership of the dynamic Marla Dixon, there is raw, no-frills, lusty, passionate playing of such tunes as Climax Rag, The Oriental Man, Yearning, and Love Songs of the Nile. The six-piece band on the day had the great James Evans (who had recently joined them after emigrating from Wales) on clarinet and Justin Peake (who later went off to college) on drums. With Justin in the team working with Tyler Thompson and John Dixon, the rhythm section is phenomenal.

You can watch the video of The Shotgun Jazz Band BY CLICKING HERE.