Post 519: 'GRAVIER STREET BLUES' AND JOHNNY DODDS

The year was 1954 and I had discovered the wonderful early New Orleans-style jazz music coming to us in London on recordings from America. One of the first - what a great introduction to the heady effects of raw New Orleans jazz! - was Gravier Street Blues, composed by Clarence Williams in 1924 and played by Johnny Dodds and His Orchestra. The recording was made in 1940. I have recently learned Johnny recorded it, in fact, just two months before he died.

Johnny Dodds

This tune - catchily melodic, even though largely made up of simple riffs played in a 'bluesy' manner - galvanized my interest in this branch of music. I loved the combination of Johnny's clarinet with Natty Dominique's cornet. 

On the recording, there are, incidentally, good solo choruses from Johnny himself and from Lonnie Johnson on guitar.

As was often the case in the days of 78rpm recordings, the whole piece is completed in about two and a half minutes - a lesson to us all in the impact value of brevity.

A Johnny Dodds enthusiast has generously put this recording on YouTube for us all to enjoy. So please see whether you can share my enthusiasm:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIRKIP_k1Tw

Gravier Street, by the way, is very central in New Orleans. It runs parallel to - and between - Tulane Avenue and Perdido Street, not far from 723 Jane Alley, where Louis Armstrong was born.

I struggled to work the tune out for my mini filofax system and came up with a version typical of my amateurish approach. But then I found the great Lasse Collin had put up a leadsheet on his site: http://cjam.lassecollin.se
So here is Lasse's, followed - for what it's worth - by mine.

Many thanks, Lasse:

Mine:

Post 417: KING OLIVER'S CREOLE JAZZ BAND: THE GENNETT RECORDINGS

Some of the most important recordings in the history of our music were made in 1923. I am referring to the 14 tunes King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band recorded in April and October that year for Gennett Records in Richmond, Indiana.

You can enjoy all of the tunes on YouTube and I hope you will have great pleasure discovering them - or exploring them again - for yourselves. You could start by clicking here.

The Gennett Company had been set up only six years earlier and was still using fairly primitive pre-electric recording methods.

The tunes were:
Alligator Hop
Canal Street Blues
Dippermouth Blues (King Oliver was nick-named 'Dippermouth' because he used to keep on the bandstand a bucket of water with a dipper in it)
Chimes Blues
Just Gone
Snake Rag
Sugarfoot Stomp
Working Man Blues
Zulu's Ball
(all the above were composed or co-written by Oliver himself)
AND
Froggie More
I'm Going Away to Wear You Off My Mind
Krooked Blues
Mandy Lee Blues
Weatherbird Rag.

We have only to read that list to appreciate what a contribution Oliver made to the history and repertoire of traditional jazz. (It is often forgotten that he also wrote Doctor Jazz. I have sometimes heard band-leaders, announcing this tune, wrongly say that it was composed by Jelly Roll Morton. We must also remember that it was Oliver who later composed those classics Snag It and West End Blues.)

But these Gennett recordings are also important because they are regarded as the first to document well an authentic black traditional New Orleans jazz band. (In fact, Kid Ory's band had made half a dozen recordings just  a few months earlier - for the Nordskog company.)

So who was Oliver?

Cornet player Joe Nathan 'King' Oliver was born on 11 May 1885. Unfortunately, he lost the sight of one eye in his childhood. But by 1908 he was playing in several bands in New Orleans, including the famous marching bands. He worked with Kid Ory and the two of them moved to Chicago in 1918. They joined Bill Johnson's Original Creole Jazz Band. Bill Johnson at the time was 47 years old. He played bass and banjo and was an elder statesman and entrepreneur in the music business. He had toured and made New Orleans jazz known outside the South. His band currently played at The Dreamland Ballroom in West Van Buren Street, close to the centre of the City of Chicago. (The building has long since disappeared.)

We have to remember that, in those days, the movies and radio were in their infancy; television and computers were things of the future. Most people went out for entertainment. So this was a boom time for dancing, for dance bands and for jazz bands. In Chicago there were plenty of cafés, bars, ballrooms and clubs where you could hear such bands.

As well as The Dreamland Ballroom, think of The Royal Gardens Ballroom, The De Luxe Café, The Sunset Café, Kelly's Stables, The Nest (later The Apex Club - of 'Apex Blues' fame), The Plantation and Friar's Inn. The Royal Gardens Ballroom (which regularly accommodated 1000 people) burned down and was replaced by The Lincoln Gardens; and that is where Oliver's Creole Jazz Band had its residency.

This was some way south from The Dreamland Ballroom - at 459 East 31st Street. As far as I can tell, the Lincoln Gardens Ballroom was bulldozed years ago and - with the help of Mr. Google - I find a glass office block on the site today. 

It seems that Bill Johnson was quite happy to hand on his own band to the younger man - King Oliver - to develop in his own way and then to evolve it into King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band.

Who played in Oliver's Creole Jazz Band?

Everyone thinks first of Louis Armstrong, because he went on to become a big star in the entertainment world and in the movies. He was to develop a phenomenal technique, a great tone, and virtuoso skill in improvising solo choruses. But in 1923, he was a junior member of Oliver's band - and we should not forget that. However, there's a clear and very enjoyable hint of future glories in the famous solo that Armstrong takes in Chimes Blues. Oliver had invited him to move to Chicago from New Orleans and this was the launching pad for Armstrong's stellar career. When you think of the energy and stamina needed for the band's performances (playing for dances long into the night), it is easy to understand why Oliver invited Armstrong to join and help him: it must have been a huge strain on Oliver's lip to sustain such long, hard gigs, with few breaks from playing.

But more important than Armstrong at the time, in my opinion, was the clarinet player Johnny Dodds (1892 - 1940). He had also worked with Kid Ory in New Orleans from 1912. Dodds made a huge contribution to the ensemble style and sound of Oliver's band: his fluency and his soulful, bluesy playing and tone have been an inspiration to generations of clarinet players. In a tune such as Canal Street Blues, his decorative runs around the melody and his memorable solo are outstanding. But listen for him even on lesser-known numbers such as Just Gone and Mandy Lee Blues and you will be impressed. I suppose it was Johnny's good fortune that the clarinet could be heard so clearly, despite the primitive recording process of the time.

Then there was Bill Johnson himself (1872 - 1972), the bass player and former leader who had achieved much even before King Oliver (at Johnson's invitation) became established in Chicago. It is said that he had to switch to banjo in the Gennett studio because the bass would record badly and spoil the sound.

Of enormous importance (and much under-rated by jazz history in my opinion) was the band's pianist Lil Hardin. She had been born in Memphis on 3 Feb 1898 and had worked for some time on the Chicago music scene: she had studied music at Fisk University, obtaining a diploma there (she also obtained a qualification later from the New York College of Music), and had played with various bands, including one of her own, even before her partnership with Oliver.

Lil Hardin's Band playing at The Dreamland Ballroom

I think hers must have been one of the principal 'brains' shaping the band's music-making. Lil was also the co-composer (with Oliver) of Alligator Hop, Just Gone and Working Man Blues. The label on 'Just Gone' gives the composers as 'Oliver and Johnson' but it seems that the 'Johnson' was in fact Lil (not the band member Bill Johnson), because at that time she was very briefly married to a singer called Jimmie Johnson. My guess is that she had a big say in the arrangements of the band's tunes and possibly even in organizing the many two-bar breaks that occur in several of them and which listeners have often thought to be magically spontaneous (such as the famous breaks involving Joe and Louis together in Snake Rag). Lil's playing throughout these recordings is a model for all later pianists in New Orleans-style bands - solidly providing the chords on the beat and yet capable of a pretty solo chorus if required, as in I'm Going Away to Wear You Off My Mind. And how moving it is to hear those piano chimes of hers coming to us across more than nine decades in Chimes Blues!

Within the next three years, after marrying Louis Armstrong, Lil composed (originally for Louis' Hot Five) such core tunes in our repertoire as Knee Drops, I'm Not Rough, Lonesome Blues, Skid-Dat-De-Dat, Two Deuces, Hotter Than That, Jazz Lips, Droppin' Shucks and Struttin' With Some Barbecue. Her other compositions include Perdido Street Blues, Papa Dip, Tears, and Gatemouth. What an achievement!

Lil died on 27 August 1971.

The trombonist in Oliver's band was Honoré Dutrey (1894 - 1935). He had played in bands in New Orleans. He joined the Navy in 1917 and had an accident that damaged his lungs and eventually caused his premature death. Dutrey strikes me as just right for this band - keeping things simple but always accurate. A good clear illustration of his style is to be heard on Working Man Blues.

Warren 'Baby' Dodds, 24-years-old at the time of the recordings, is one of the all-time best drummers. He too had started in New Orleans and had played with Ory there, before working on the riverboats. He was of course the younger brother of Johnny Dodds. In these Gennett recordings, you do not hear the full range of his kit but his presence is strongly felt throughout. Enjoy his breaks on the wood blocks in Weather Bird Rag.

Other occasional band members (only on the October Gennett recordings) were Johnny St. Cyr (banjo) and the less-known Paul Anderson 'Stump' Evans (C melody sax).

The recordings were made without the benefit of electricity or microphones. The sound had to be picked up through a large megaphone-funnel. Certain musical instruments had to be omitted or restricted in use because their effect would spoil or unbalance the recording (Baby Dodds could use only part of his drum kit, and Johnson could not use his string bass). The players had to be positioned at various distances from the funnel, to achieve some kind of balance. This photo of a Gennett recording studio (alas, not of King Oliver's Band) gives some idea of the conditions. Note the funnel picking up the sounds.

Clearly, what we hear on the records is not exactly how the band normally sounded at Lincoln Gardens. But the wonderful polyphony and energy are captured really well.

The tunes are all multi-part, with tricky head arrangements, including introductions and codas. There's none of the simple repetition of one 32-bar theme, such as we are offered these days in most performances by traditional jazz bands. 

Oliver was proud and professional in his attitude to work and expected the  highest standards from his musicians. He was strongly self-disciplined. He drove his band hard. Baby Dodds in an interview years later  stated how strenuously all the band members worked at gigs: they would really exhaust themselves. Sure enough, all members of the band sound constantly so busy. Listen again to Dippermouth Blues and judge for yourself.

Oliver's personal interest in tone (he produced a throaty vocal sound on his cornet) and the use of mutes have had a massive influence on brass players ever since. You can sample his tone and his mutes throughout but of course they are specially conspicuous in Dippermouth Blues.

On top of all this, also in 1923, calling his band simply King Oliver's Jazz Band (drawn from a pool of players that included Barney Birgard, Paul Barbarin, Kid Ory, Luis Russell and others as well as those of the Creole Jazz Band), Oliver also recorded in Chicago for the Okeh, Paramount and Columbia labels a total of 23 numbers, such as Riverside Blues, Mabel's Dream, Southern Stomps, Tears, Buddy's Habit, Sweet Lovin' Man, High Society, Sobbin' Blues, and Camp Meeting Blues  - and others.

But Oliver's Creole Jazz Band of 1923 was short-lived. It disintegrated the following year. Oliver went on to play in various combinations and bands (sometimes run by himself). His struggles and decline have been well documented. And it is sad to think he died in poverty on 10 April 1938.

Listening to all these Gennett recordings again has made me realise what an example to us all King Oliver's band of 1923 was. That's the way to do it. Many others have set out to emulate  his music. But there's nothing quite like the originals.
------------------
FOOTNOTE
Reader Barrie Marshall sent me this email:
Hi Ivan,

King Oliver was the mute master. Considering Louis' massive respect for his playing, I have never heard Louis use a mute.

Regards

Barrie 

Post 391: BREXIT AND BLOGGING

My friends in Europe have been troubled recently by one burning question:-

Does Brexit mean we will no longer have access to Pops Coffee's Enjoying Traditional Jazz Blog?

Well, the good news is that the very first thing the new U.K. Government (led by Prime Minister Theresa May) is going to negotiate is that this Blog should have freedom of movement throughout all countries in the E.U.

She will be the 15th British Prime Minister under whose administration I have enjoyed traditional jazz. Two of them (Churchill and Wilson) were in fact Prime Minister twice.

Jazz started for me when Neville Chamberlain was Prime Minister and we almost wore out the latest Decca release by Johnny Dodds and His Chicago Boys - Shake Your Can, with a vocal by percussionist O'Neil Spencer, a workmanlike trumpet solo by Charlie Shavers and a restrained chorus by Johnny Dodds himself. Lil Hardin was on piano.

Johnny Dodds
(1892 -1940)

Post 339: WHAT IS TRADITIONAL JAZZ?

Recently I was present when two friends - both jazz musicians - got into an argument about what exactly 'traditional jazz' is. One of them took the extreme 'purist' line that traditional jazz is what was played in New Orleans by black musicians in the first half of the Twentieth Century. Only those black musicians, he said, could really feel the music and instinctively play the 'blues' scales. He said that later 'traditional jazz', largely played by white musicians, should just be called 'Dixieland' - music that was slick and often polished but lacking in the true 'blues feeling'.

It reminded me of the arguments on the same topic that my schoolboy friends John, Ian and Derek used to have in the 1950s, when the British 'trad jazz' boom began. We called the music 'trad'; but John and Derek said British bands were producing only a commercialised and sanitised copy of authentic New Orleans traditional jazz. (Personally, I kept out of these arguments. I just wished I could play it - sanitised or not!)

The argument between my pals a few days ago made me think: 'Wow! I have been writing a blog called Enjoying Traditional Jazz for several months. Do I really know what I'm talking about?'

Well, I am not going to attempt a dictionary-style definition of traditional jazz. The fact is that I do not consider the nomenclature important. But I will tell you what I am trying to cover in my blog.

The kind of music I am writing about encompasses all the following terms (and probably more):

Traditional Jazz
'Trad'
New Orleans Jazz
Dixieland
Ragtime
Chicago-Style Jazz
West Coast Jazz
Jug Band Music

In other words, for me traditional jazz is about a style of playing: a group of musicians take a tune and agree the key, the melody and the chord sequence and away they go, playing the material and improvising around it. Generally there is a fixed tempo and generally the 'choruses' are repeated end-to-end as many times as required. There may or may not be an agreed musical arrangement - either a 'head' arrangement or one on paper. The tunes are drawn largely but not exclusively from the repertoires of the classic jazz bands from the first half of the Twentieth Century and popular music generally.

I do not have a fixed idea about what instruments a traditional jazz band should contain and I do not agree that a traditional jazz band must have six or seven players. I think traditional jazz can be played by any number of players - from one to perhaps as many as ten (provided they do not tread on each other's toes).

I do not even believe that a trad band should have a 'front line' of trumpet, clarinet and trombone and a 'rhythm section' of bass (tuba or string), drums and chord instrument (guitar, banjo or piano). Although this formation has worked well for many bands for decades, I think traditional jazz being played by bands that include a violin, a washboard, a harmonica or whatever is just as valid. Look at photos from the bands of the 1920s: there are various combinations of instruments and you often find the leader was a violinist.

What I do not count as traditional jazz is 'free jazz'. And 'modern jazz' is not quite traditional jazz either, though there is more overlap with traditional jazz than some may think.

Do the musicians have to be black in order to achieve greatness? Well, certainly when you listen to such a player as Johnny Dodds, you understand why some theorists think so. But white musicians have contributed massively to the history of traditional jazz, in composing and performing. And now we have the new generation of young musicians who have gravitated to the streets of New Orleans. Most of them are white; and they play with great technique and feeling. Their music - for me - is traditional jazz. You can find plenty of it on YouTube. Try any of these bands:
Loose Marbles
Baby Soda
The Palmetto Bug Stompers
The Gentilly Stompers
The Shotgun Jazz Band
Tuba Skinny
The Smoking Time Jazz Band
The Little Big Horns

Post 273: ALLIGATOR CRAWL

In the beginning there was a composition by the young Fats Waller. He probably composed it in 1927 and he called it Alligator Crawl. It acquired words by Andy Razaf, so it was also available as a song: Alligator Crawl is so appealing - A creepy rhythm that will tickle your toes. Never fails to bring a happy feeling - Its tempo has a charm that grows and grows .... etc.

In 1934, Fats Waller himself recorded it as a piano solo. His version makes it sound like a boogie-woogie blended with a rocking catchy song. You can hear it on YouTube BY CLICKING HERE. I believe this version is still popular as a party piece for solo pianists. Bert Brandsma has kindly supplied me with an analysis of the structure:

1. 16 bars in C (2 times 8)
2. The 24 bar A B A form in C 

Modulation to F

3. Theme in F 

But in May 1927, Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven (including Johnny Dodds on clarinet, Johnny St. Cyr on guitar and Pete Briggs on tuba) had made a lusty three-minute recording in Chicago of Alligator Crawl. Their version has not much in common with the later recording by Fats Waller. Instead of the 16-bar sections (8 + 8 bars) it has four 12-bar blues sequences. It plays the 24-bar theme only once (from 1 min. 10 secs. to 2 mins. 05 secs. during the performance). Although these 24 bars seem (to my ear) to use the same harmonic sequence as Fats Waller, Louis plays a melody that is almost totally different, apart from the famous opening two bars:

so, in effect, only 55 seconds of Armstrong's 3-minute recording sound anything like Waller's. In most respects the Hot Seven interpretation is so different from the other that the two versions sound like two different pieces of music.

This led me to speculate that Armstrong (and his pianist wife Lil Hardin) took just a musical idea and the harmonies from the Waller 24-bar theme and re-structured them in their own way, allowing for some tremendous fresh invention. My guess was that Lil Hardin's was the brain behind the project. With her classical training and skills as a jazz composer and arranger (constantly in use with this band in the mid-1920s), not to mention that she plays the piano on the recording, I would not be surprised if there is as much Hardin as Waller in the Hot Seven 1927 recording. Even the four 12-bar blues sequences (especially the ensemble one that is repeated) in the Armstrong version are not any old improvisations: they are majestic - and linger in our minds.

But the great Australian jazz researcher Bill Haesler has pointed out to me that there is also a richly-orchestrated and precisely-played recording of Alligator Crawl by 'Doc' Cook and His Doctors of Syncopation. This recording appears to have been made only a month after that of the Hot Seven. You can find it on YouTube and you will note that the composer is definitely given as Waller and that it includes some 12-bar sections reminiscent of Armstrong's, as well as the 24-bar theme.

Could the Hot Seven have started by looking at the the same musical arrangement that Doc Cook used so precisely - re-interpreting it freely in their own way? Quite probably.

So I have to come to the conclusion that Waller probably wrote a 12-bar theme as well as the famous 24-theme when he originally composed the piece, but that he chose to re-write the tune, dropping the 12-bar theme and replacing it with some new 16-bar material, when he came to record it as a piano speciality seven years later.

Unless somebody finds a manuscript or orchestration from 1927, we may never know the full story.

Bill Haesler also pointed me to Ricky Ricardi's Dippermouth Blogspot, where Armstrong's performance is analysed and the writer also provides this information: 
"Alligator Crawl" was originally titled "House Party Stomp" and "Charleston Stomp" before publisher Joe Davis gave it the final title..... 

A theory of Erwin Elvers of Luetjensee, Germany, is that the Alligator Crawl played by Armstrong was based on a Spencer Williams composition from which Fats Waller adopted the 24-theme for his own composition. But this theory - though it appeals to me as plausible - seems unsupported by paper records. See Dick Baker's research at http://dickbaker.org/stompoff/index.pdf.

Parlophone put out a version with the title as Alligator Blues and the composer as 'Williams'. Perhaps that's what influenced Erwin Elvers; but both the title and the composer on this label are are surely incorrect:

Adding a little to the confusion, some early Armstrong recordings do indeed give the tune the alternative title of Alligator Blues; and there actually is a tune called Alligator Blues that was recorded also in 1927 by a band called John Hyman's Bayou Stompers, but I can assure you Hyman's is a totally different piece of music. (John Hyman was the name used at the time by the cornet player John Wigginton Hyman - later better known as Johnny Wiggs). And adding still more confusion, there is a 1927 recording by Fess Williams' Royal Flush Orchestra of Alligator Crawl. It includes echoes of the 12-bar theme but not of the 24-bar, as far as I can tell.

Whoever was responsible for 'composing' its melodies and arranging its structure, it's the Hot Seven version that most bands try to copy these days. Fortunately the Hot Seven recording has survived the passage of time really well, as you can hear on YouTube. It's there for us all to study:

Click hear to listen.

Its structure is as follows. It comprises eight segments:

1. Introduction : 2 bars (cornet) in the key of F.
2. 12-bar Blues in F, solo clarinet.
3. 12-bar Blues in F, ensemble.
4. 4-bar Modulation, clever, mainly on G7, leading to a change to the key of C.
5. 24-Bar Theme ensemble (structured a - b - a) in the key of C (the phrase given above appears in the 'a' parts; and the 'b' part uses some minor chords).
6. One bar in which Louis modulates the key back to F (making the previous theme virtually stretch to a highly unusual 25 bars).
7. 12-Bar blues in F, guitar.
8. As No. 3 above: 12-bar blues in F, ensemble, with athletic improvisations by Louis.

And if you would like to examine a 21st-Century version by the great young band Tuba Skinny, I can tell you they have recorded it on their Pyramid Strut CD, and you can watch them (on YouTube, thanks to the generosity of the great video-maker digitalalexa) playing it in public. You will find that Tuba Skinny take the tune a shade more slowly than Louis but they follow meticulously the structure and spirit of his recording, right down to that 'extra' bar I have called Segment 6 (watch out for it at precisely 2 mins. 13 secs. into the video). But of course, being Tuba Skinny, they (in particular Shaye on cornet) have introduced exciting alternative improvised phrasings of their own. Watch the performance by clicking here.
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Post 99: 'GATEMOUTH'

Here's another easy but effective tune for your band to play - if you don't already have it.

Gatemouth was written in about 1926 by the pianist Lil Hardin (possibly in collaboration with her husband Louis Armstrong). It has two catchy themes. The first is a 16-bar, using the Sweet Sue Chord Progression, and allowing for breaks - if desired - on Bars 7 - 8. You can even have breaks right through a chorus of this theme, as The New Orleans Wanderers did in 1926 when they recorded it. You can hear their performance if you

CLICK HERE.

That first theme - by the way - is virtually identical to other good old standards, such as Do What Ory Say, Mamma's Baby Boy, Get It Right and the main theme of South.

The second theme is also 16 bars. Normally, bands play both themes a couple of times and use the first for solo improvisations.

You can hear Gatemouth played more recently by The Peruna Jazzmen.

CLICK HERE.

The tune certainly lends itself to a variety of New Orleans treatments, taking advantage of the opportunities to incorporate breaks and stop chords.

It is generally played in Eb:

Post 39: 'MEMPHIS SHAKE'

This tune was recorded in 1926 by a group known as The Dixieland Jug Blowers in Chicago. Though called a 'jug' band, they had such instruments as trombone, piano and saxophone in their line-up. What made their recording of 'Memphis Shake' special was that the great clarinettist Johnny Dodds was sitting in with them, and his contribution is very effective on the old recording. (You can hear it on You Tube.)

Not much is known about The Dixieland Jug Blowers. It seems to have been a short-term amalgamation of two early 'jug' bands - run respectively by old-timer Earle McDonald (banjo and jug) and Clifford Hayes (violin). It is believed that Clifford Hayes was the composer of 'Memphis Shake'.

Actually, it's not so much a tune as a simple sequence of chords that are an effective basis for improvisation. As I have tried to show above, the tune has a four-bar introduction and then is in two parts.

The most distinctive feature of the chords is the repeated use of two bars on the diminished tonic. These give 'Memphis Shake' its particular flavour.

Part B of the tune - with the 4-beat notes over the first four bars (during which the banjo can indulge in some luscious tremolos), provides a good contrast with the bulk of the tune and improvisations, which are based on Part A.

There is a YouTube video of Tuba Skinny making a great job of this tune. Enjoy it by clicking here. Or watch a later video that I filmed of them playing the tune when I visited New Orleans in April 2016 by clicking here.

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