Post 311: EXPAND YOUR REPERTOIRE - JUST LIKE TUBA SKINNY

Can you name ANY band that plays five or more of the following twenty-five tunes? Big Chief Battleaxe, Billy Goat Stomp, Cannon Ball Blues, Carpet Alley Breakdown, Chocolate Avenue, Dear Almanzoer, Dreaming The Hours Away, Fourth Street Mess Around, Gladiolus Rag, Good Time Flat Blues, In Harlem's Araby, Jazz Battle, Jubilee Stomp, Kansas City Stomps, Michigander Blues, Minor Drag, New Orleans Bump, Oriental Strut, Perdido Street Blues, Pyramid Strut, Russian Rag, Skid-Dat-De-Dat, Variety Stomp and Wild Man Blues.

I certainly can't - apart from Tuba Skinny.

These are just a few of the tunes - mostly tricky and complicated in structure - that this wonderful band has magnificently mastered in its short existence. Yes, Tuba Skinny plays all twenty-five.

Listen to any programme given by your average traditional jazz band and the chances are that more than 90% of the tunes will be the usual standards structured in 32 bars (measures) or - in the case of blues - 12 bars. Of course a tune may have a short introduction and possibly a coda, but essentially the 32-bar or 12-bar melodies dominate our music.

But - as in so many other respects - the great young band Tuba Skinny is making us re-think this aspect of our playing.

How many bands do you know who play 10-bar tunes? Tuba Skinny do. Think of Frisco Bound.

How many bands do you know who play 11-bar tunes? Absolutely none, I guess. Apart from Tuba Skinny, with Jackson Stomp.

And what about 24-bar tunes? Can you even name one such tune (not counting 12-bar blues with two themes)?

Well, Tuba Skinny play a 24-bar tune: I'm Blue and Lonesome (Nobody Cares for Me). It is in no sense a double 12-bar. It begins with The Sweet Sue Chord Progression and then in bars 17 - 20 incorporates The Magnolia Chord Progression.

They introduced us to Ice Man (8 bars and only two chords!), a fun number with a simple theme.

Then there's Crow Jane - another tune well established in their repertoire. How many bars long is it? It uses both 8-bar and 10-bar lengths.

We have to admire Tuba Skinny for their fearless tackling of these unusually shaped tunes and the enormous range of their material.

They enjoy mastering difficult old classics, such as Fred Rose's Deep Henderson. This tune presents a challenge to any musicians. It is usually played by jazz bands in the key of F, modulating to the key of Db in Theme C (the Trio). Fred Rose's original piano music showed no key change.
Here's how it is structured:

8 BARS : Introduction, with various instruments taking a bar each in Bars 5, 6, 7 and 8.

32 BARS : THEME A. Rapid, tricky work for the reed player and a thrilling free-style middle eight.

32 BARS : THEME B. Interplay between two melodies. With a famous leaping middle eight that has to be played just right.

4 BARS : MODULATION, normally ending on Ab7, neatly leading into the key change to the unusual key of Db.

32 BARS : THEME C (THE TRIO). A super rhythmic riff in the new key. The middle eight is thrilling, with the cornet tearing through eight arpeggios on tricky chords including B7 (that's an awkward C#7 to the Bb instrument player!).

That gives you a total of  108 bars to be mastered and memorised, not counting any repeats or solo choruses that the band chooses to insert. Tuba Skinny play it magnificently. You can see and hear them do so on YouTube:

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

Post 270: 'CROW JANE' AND 'JACKSON STOMP'

Erika Lewis

I continue to marvel at the wonderful playing of Tuba Skinny, that great young band based in New Orleans. What a privilege that they have produced five CDs - all downloadable from their internet site:

http://tubaskinny.tk/

- and that generous folk have put up dozens of videos of their performances on You Tube.

I've been listening this morning to two of the tunes on the CD - 'Rag Band'.

'Jackson Stomp' is a tune about which I have written before. The extraordinary thing about it is that it is 11 bars (measures) in length.

Virtually all traditional jazz tunes (in common with most popular music of the first half of the Twentieth Century) are in multiples of FOUR bars. Musicians feel, think and play the music in four-bar phrases.

So eleven should not work!

Jackson Stomp is really a 12-bar blues with the ninth bar missing. In theory, it should sound awkward. Yet Tuba Skinny sail through it, chorus after chorus, with their usual brilliant collective improvisations, as if an eleven-bar song was the most natural thing in the world. (Unusually - and this is another illustration of the band's versatility -  on the CD  they even record it without trombone or cornet: Shaye switches to violin.)

Shaye Cohn

And what about Crow Jane? I had never heard of this song before Tuba Skinny introduced me to it. Apparently it was made up and recorded by Nehemiah 'Skip' James 85 years ago!

The tricky thing about this number is that, although it is basically a repetitive eight-bar tune, it also has an optional 2-bar tag.

Tuba Skinny deal with this tag in different ways in their various You Tube performances. On the CD version, they choose to have the band playing four choruses of eight bars, then Erika singing five choruses in 10-bar form - apart from the penultimate, which she takes as 8 bars. The band then plays more eight-bar choruses, Erika returns with some ten-bars, and the band rounds things off with choruses of eight bars; and yet there is one more twist: a TWELVE-bar chorus (including a four-bar tag) to finish. Sounds complicated? Yes. But such is the discipline and understanding within this band that nobody trips up, nobody puts a foot wrong. They play it as one. And, as usual, the improvisations on the basic theme are mind-boggling.

Post 227: AN 18-BAR TUNE - 'TANGLED BLUES' BY SHAYE COHN

There are dozens of tunes in the traditional jazz repertoire that consist of 16 bars (measures).

Shaye Cohn
What a Player!
What a Composer!

But can you think of any that comprise 18 bars?

If we exclude tunes that are really 16-bars plus a two-bar tag (tunes such as I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate and She Drives an Oldsmobile and Baby Won't You Please Come Home and Don't Go Away, Nobody) how many genuine 18-bar tunes are there?

I am unable to think of a single one, apart from Miss Otis Regrets by the wonderful Cole Porter - but that is rarely played by traditional jazz bands.

At least that was the case until the ever-amazing Shaye Cohn came along with her 2015 composition Tangled Blues. You can watch a performance of this remarkable song by clicking here.

The 18-bar melody is part of a very clever 'tangle' indeed, because Shaye alternates the 18-bars (which Erika Lewis sings on the recording) with a related 32-bar theme.

But we should not be surprised to find Tuba Skinny coming up with something as unusual as this. After all, they also astonished us a couple of years earlier by adding an 11-bar tune -  Jackson Stomp - to their repertoire. I have not come across any other tune in the traditional jazz repertoire with that unusual number of bars, either.

Post 176: 'JACKSON STOMP' - ELEVEN BARS!

Here's something surprising - a tune comprising ELEVEN bars (measures).

I am acquainted with perhaps a thousand tunes played by traditional jazz bands, but virtually all the tunes contain multiples of four bars. Most common are the 12-bar blues and 32-bar standards.

In all those hundreds of tunes, the only one made up of eleven bars is Jackson Stomp. 

Yes. Jackson Stomp really has eleven bars. When I first noticed this, I could not believe my ears. Had I miscounted? I checked and re-checked.

It felt like a 12-bar blues but sure enough it really was complete after 11 bars.

I found out that it originated with Cow Cow Blues, written and recorded in 1928 by Cow Cow Davenport. You can hear this on You Tube. In this form, it was a standard 12-bar, played in boogie woogie style.

But the tune was taken up by Charles McCoy ('Papa Charlie'), who lived from 1909 to 1950. He slightly adapted it into Jackson Stomp and recorded it with his colleague Bo Carter in The Mississippi Mud Steppers. It was at this point that it became the tune of eleven bars.

They also recorded it again (this time eleven bars with lyrics) as  The Lonesome Train That Carried My Girl Away.

Now how is it possible for an 11-bar tune to sound right? What is the trick?

I'm not sure that I have the answer, but let me try.

Taking the chords of a 12-bar as (at their most basic):

I   I   I   I   IV   IV   I   I   V   V   I   I

we find that Jackson Stomp IS essentially a 12-bar, but with the clever twist of omitting Bar 8. 

I   I   I   I   IV   IV   I   V  V   I   I

To hear Jackson Stomp pleasantly played by a modern Jug Band, try this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76OP2FVRvt0

or watch the great Tuba Skinny play it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGuLZfMqIoc

Tuba Skinny play it in Bb. (That means C for the Bb trumpet.) I worked it out for inclusion in my mini-filofax for my trumpet and now I have a go at playing it from time to time.

And here's another curiosity - the only 13-BAR blues I can think of. It occurs as the Interlude in Blind Boy Fuller's Untrue Blues. This is essentially an eight-bar tune, but he has two guitar links of 13 bars, which seemed to be based on the 12-bar blues, but with Bar 10 repeated. When Tuba Skinny revived this tune in 2014, they scrupulously followed the original and kept the 13-bar section.

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FOOTNOTE
The book Playing Traditional Jazz by Pops Coffee is available from Amazon.

Post 166: WHEN YOU TRIM THE 12-BAR BLUES

The standard, basic chord structure of a 12-bar blues (without any subtleties) is this:

I | I | I | I7 | IV | IV | I | I | V7 | V7 | I | I | 

Hundreds of tunes are based upon it.

But there are some curious variants that are arrived at by chopping out some part of the structure.

For example, lop off the first two bars and you have this:

 I | I7 | IV | IV | I | I | V7 | V7 | I | I | 

This is exactly what you get in the 10-bar tune Frisco Bound, composed in 1929 by Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe.

Lop off the first four bars:

 IV | IV | I | I | V7 | V7 | I | I | 

... and you have the chord progression for The Girls Go Crazy (and many other tunes with 8-bar themes - such as the second part of Down By The Riverside).

Omit Bar 9 and you get:

I | I | I | I7 | IV | IV | I | I | V7 | I | I | 

...which is what you have with the possibly unique 11-bar blues that is Jackson Stomp, composed in 1930 by  Charlie McCoy and Walter Vincson.

Memphis Minnie

And here's a curiosity - the only 13-BAR blues I can think of. It occurs as the Interlude in Blind Boy Fuller's Untrue Blues. This is essentially an eight-bar tune, but he has two guitar links of 13 bars, which seemed to be based on the 12-bar blues, but with Bar 10 repeated. When Tuba Skinny revived this tune in 2014, they scrupulously followed the original and kept the 13-bar section.

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Footnote

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