Post 554: THE MAGIC OF THE SONG 'YEARNING' BY JOSEPH BURKE AND BENNY DAVIS

We had just finished playing Yearning - the 1924 tune by Joseph Burke and Benny Davis. My good friend Al Harris, the string bass player, said: 'I love that tune. There's something really gorgeous about the Middle Eight.'

How right Al was! The tune is a standard aaba in structure. The 'a' sections are simple, catchy and, of course, repetitive. But that 'b' section - the middle eight - really does take the breath away. Quite apart from its emotional melody, can you think of any other middle eight in which the central four bars are based on the VII⁷ chord? The only one I can think of is Am I Blue?

This very unusual Middle Eight is:

III^m     III^m    VII⁷   VII⁷   VII⁷   VII⁷   III^m   V⁷

Lasse Collin, the great benefactor of jazz musicians the world over, has produced on his website [ http://cjam.lassecollin.se/ ] this excellent lead-sheet of the song. We must be grateful that Lasse includes even the Verse, which is all too rarely played:

You can hear a lovely relaxed performance of this tune played in 1961 by the great Jim Robinson band, including Slow Drag and George Guesnon, by CLICKING HERE.

Or, for a fine performance by one of the best bands in the world today, go to 27 minutes 18 seconds into this video. Better still, sit back and enjoy the entire video. It is one of the finest traditional jazz concerts of recent years: CLICK ON HERE TO WATCH IT.

Post 553: THE THREE-CHORD TRICK

Everyone who is learning to play jazz should know about 'the three-chord trick'.

What are the three chords? They are the tonic, the dominant seventh and the sub-dominant – the very three chords beginners need to learn first. They are almost certainly the chords you will most frequently use in your career.

It is possible to accompany some songs – particularly blues, folk tunes and spirituals – by using only the three chords. Of course, this is sometimes just a lazy way of keeping things simple. You blank out any subtle and transitional chords and stick with the three easiest chords. But the truth is that most members of your audience will hardly notice.

So in the Key of C, they would be
C (Major)

G (7th)

F (major)

A very basic 12-bar blues might well follow this pattern:

   C | C | C | C | F | F | C | C | G7 | G7 | C | C 

That pattern started with the Blues of the Deep South and eventually became the basis of rock’n’roll.

Here’s an example of the three-chord trick applied to a complete tune. This is Stephen Foster’s Way Down Upon the Swanee River: 

One of the most exciting tunes that requires only three chords is Dallas Rag. It is amazing to find what a great band such as Tuba Skinny can do with simple three-chord material. Click on this video to see what I mean:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbQaZWVS3lY

And here is 'Sing On', composed and recorded in the 1920s by the great New Orleans band leader Sam Morgan. It can be played perfectly well using only three chords. In the key of G, they are of course G, D7th and C.

And here's one from the wonderful website provided for us all by Lasse Collin:

Other examples of tunes that can be satisfactorily played with only three chords include Pass Me Not O Gentle Saviour,  Mama Inez, Nearer My God to Thee, the old Mississippi gospel number Mary Wore a Golden Chain and Take My Hand, Precious Lord.

Post 523: 'CREOLE JAZZ' OR 'CREOLE SONG'?

It was one of those pub lunchtime informal jazz sessions. An elderly customer asked us whether we could play 'Creole Jazz'.

The other band members said they did not know it.

I said I had a vague memory of it, so I hummed what I thought was the tune. But the gentleman replied, 'No, it's not that. It's something Acker Bilk recorded'.

Back home, I consulted YouTube and chord books. I soon discovered how I had been mistaken.

The song I had hummed can be heard in this Kid Ory (1944) YouTube video, in which it is the first tune to be played:

CLICK HERE TO VIEW.

Although the video as a whole is called 'Creole Jazz', this particular tune is definitely entitled 'Creole Song'. It is so 'Creole' that it has words in Creole Patois (Madame Feydeaux,..etc.) and Kid Ory can be heard singing them. Mutt Carey is on trumpet.

I found that the great Lasse Collin on his site had produced a leadsheet for this number.

As you can see, Lasse attributes the song to Kid Ory; and, fair enough, it was certainly Ory who introduced it to our repertoire. Some believe, however, that the song was already familiar in New Orleans when Ory was a young man there.

But, to get back to the pub customer and his request, I sought out the Acker Bilk recording of 'Creole Jazz'. This is also available on YouTube:
CLICK HERE.
I was instantly reminded that this recording had been popular at about the time when Kennedy was the President of the USA and MacMillan was our Prime Minister here in the UK. Acker played the lively tune as a brisk clarinet feature, with only his rhythm section in support.

This tune is quite different from the Ory song. It was composed very much later by Claude Luter, the Paris-based musician who was a friend of Sidney Bechet.

This was the tune our customer had requested. Fortunately, the great Lasse Collin had done the trick again! He had produced this leadsheet for it.

I shared this with my colleagues, though I must admit we transposed it to Concert Bb to make it a little easier for us old chaps to learn and play.

And then, at our next visit to the pub, we surprised the elderly gentleman by playing it for him.

Another satisfied customer!

And if you haven't already come across the wonderful website of Lasse Collin - in which he supplies hundreds of leadsheets and is constantly adding more, please may I recommend it to you?
http://cjam.lassecollin.se/
Lasse Collin is generously providing an invaluable service to the whole world of traditional jazz.

ADDITIONAL NOTE added in August 2023 : Sadly, I have just heard that Lasse died on 23 December 2022.

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 501: CALL ME BACK, PAL O' MINE

The morning started with a run through the new additions to YouTube from some of our favourite video-makers.

I soon had a very pleasant surprise. Louisiana-based RaoulDuke504 had filmed Maddy and Her Jazz Friends in the French Quarter on 27 April 2017, performing Call Me Back, Pal o' Mine. I do not think I had ever heard this song before, and certainly not played by a jazz band.

So it is yet another obscure tune from long ago. Maddy has a knack for unearthing really good ones. Remember Hold You Hand, Madam Khan, Baltimore and Buy Me a Zeppelin?

This tune, Call Me Back, Pal o' Mine, struck me as very pleasant indeed. It has a good melody and it feels as though it is based on familiar chord changes that should present no difficulty to jazzmen. So I hope very much that other bands will adopt it - with or without the vocal. You can watch Maddy's performance BY CLICKING HERE.

I immediately contacted that great benefactor of traditional jazz musicians the world over - Lasse Collin. He has made leadsheets for hundreds of tunes freely available to us on his website. I was so pleased that he also liked the tune and promised to produce a leadsheet for it without delay. A few hours later, he had completed the job, and he let me know that the result can be found at:
http://cjam.lassecollin.se/songs3/callmebackpalomine170428.html
Meanwhile, I had sought out the origin of the song and found that it was recorded in 1922, having been composed in 1921 by Harold Dixon, with words by Lawrence Perricone.

Maddy sings and plays it (in the key of Bb) in 4/4 time. But it seems it was composed as a WALTZ (as, indeed several of our 4/4 tunes originally were).

To hear a lovely but ancient piano roll recording of it (played in Ab) in lilting waltz time, CLICK HERE.

There is also an early Gennett waltz-tempo recording available BY CLICKING HERE.

In 1949, the song was recorded (this time in the key of F) by blues guitar legend Blind Willie McTell. You can hear it BY CLICKING HERE. My guess was that Maddy had probably learnt the song from this version; and indeed she has kindly confirmed this was so. In an email she kindly told me: 'Yes, I did learn it from the Blind Willie McTell recording which was on a compilation my dad listened to all the time when I was growing up.'

Conclusion: let's start playing this tune, with a big thank you to Maddy for reviving it, to Randy for filming it, and to Lasse for working out a leadsheet.

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

Footnote:

Do not confuse this song with Dear Old Pal of Mine, composed during the First World War by Lieutenant Gitz Rice while he was serving in Belgium - though his song also went on to be famous at the time. If you seek it out on YouTube, you will find it is a quite different song from the one sung by Maddy.

POST 491: BELLAMINA - THE CARIBBEAN INFLUENCE ON TRADITIONAL JAZZ

A long time ago (in the 1920s) there was a white ship named Bellamina, based at Nassau in the Bahamas. It was used for smuggling spirits 200 miles across the sea to Florida. But the American Coast Guards intercepted it.

After the boat's release, it was taken to dry dock in Nassau - this time to be painted BLACK!

The Bahamians loved inventing songs about anything in the news; and so a great 16-bar simple rhythmic song soon appeared.

Bellamina, Bellamina!

Bellamina's in the harbour.

Bellamina, Bellamina!

Bellamina's in the harbour.

So put the Bellamina on the dock

And paint the Bellamina black, black!

Oh put the Bellamina on the dock

And paint the Bellamina black!

In fact, there were at least three more ships that had to be repainted in this way. They are all mentioned in the version of the song that you can listen to BY CLICKING HERE. At 2 minutes 47 seconds, Blind Blake (who was recording this in 1952) sings several verses, mentioning other ships too; and you can pick out the words very clearly.

That great benefactor of all jazz musicians - Lasse Collin - has provided us with the music. See:

http://cjam.lassecollin.se/

Put simply, the chord sequence is:

  I   |   I   |   I    |  V⁷

 V⁷ | V⁷ |  V⁷  |  I

  I   |  IV |  V⁷  |  I

  I   |  IV |  V⁷  |  I

Lasse was doubtless inspired to do this by Tuba Skinny, who in 2017 revived this fine old song, with Greg Sherman singing the vocal and the whole band showing what great jazz musicians can do with a simple theme: their performance of Bellamina lasts five and a half minutes.

As you can see, Lasse has put it in the key of Eb (as played by Tuba Skinny) and he has provided a lead-sheet in F for the benefit of Bb instrument players.

James Sterling kindly videoed the Tuba Skinny performance for us:

CLICK HERE TO VIEW.

James has pointed out to me that there is also a recording of this song by The Nassau String Band made on a field trip by John Lomax as long ago as 1935: CLICK TO HEAR IT.

There! With so much to help us we have no excuse for leaving this number out of our repertoire. It's a good one to play. It's catchy, extremely easy to improvise on; and it offers some rhythmic variety to our programme.

This is one of the many excellent 16-bar tunes available to traditional jazz bands. We should always have two or three of them in our programmes. Others include Up Jumped the Devil, Winin' Boy Blues, Satan Your Kingdom Must Come Down and Rip 'Em Up Joe.

Let's hear more bands playing Bellamina!

Post 450: JAZZ TUNES - WHERE CAN I FIND THE SHEET MUSIC?

I often receive emails from people who ask me whether I can help them by providing music, usually for particular tunes that have taken their fancy. More often than not, I am unable to do so.

I was also approached after a performance by a young man in the audience who said he was learning the trumpet and asked whether he could 'borrow the music for a few days' so that he could learn the tunes our jazz band had just played. Unfortunately, I could not oblige: the 'music' was in our heads and not on paper.

So, if you are learning to play a musical instrument and want eventually to be in a traditional jazz band, where can you get the music? 

Unfortunately, it is virtually impossible these days to go into a music shop and buy off the shelf a dixieland band arrangement of, say, Maple Leaf Rag, or sheet music for Steamboat Stomp.

So picking tunes up from old recordings by ear is one solution. And it is a method we occasionally resort to.

But if you hunt on the Internet, you can find some sites that will help you. In particular I recommend the site of that fine, generous, Swedish musician Lasse Collin:

CLICK HERE.

If you use Lasse's materials, you will have enough to keep your band going for years. He provides clear lead sheets, giving the melody line and the chords in a simple form. That's just what you and your band need.

Another possibility is to buy buskers' books (fake books). These also provide collections of lead sheets.

Second-hand copies of these are cheaply available on Internet auctions. But be careful to buy those that contain tunes that will definitely be of use in traditional jazz. Many fake books - despite their bulk - contain very little that will be of use to you.

Post 436: YOUR LOCAL BAND NEEDS YOU!

The world of traditional jazz desperately needs more musicians - especially young ones. I have written on this subject before (about three years ago) and hundreds of people read the article, so it seems to be a topic worth considering again.

Would you consider playing in a traditional jazz band? How should you go about it?

You must start by reaching a reasonable level of technical proficiency on your chosen instrument. If you are a complete beginner, you will need lessons to get you started, mainly to set you up with good habits. I would recommend finding a qualified professional music teacher rather than someone who happens to play traditional jazz. (Players do not necessarily make good teachers.) Make sure you learn about scales, keys, chords and arpeggios and it will help if you learn to read music, at least at a basic level. After that, practice will be your main pursuit.

If you are already a competent musician, it does not follow that you will move easily into traditional jazz. Good piano soloists sometimes find it hard to adapt to their rôle in a band. Teamwork is the key to success in traditional jazz and players of the piano, guitar and banjo have to accept that for most of the time their job is simply to lay down the correct chords, firmly and clearly, rather than display virtuoso skills.

The one exception may be highly-skilled double bass players. If they are willing to adjust to the style and hardly use the bow at all, they can contribute extremely well with nothing more to guide them than the band's chord book. I remember how, during the 1950s, there were some double bass players, members of the symphony orchestras based in London, who would finish a concert with their orchestra and then head to a jazz club where they would join a traditional jazz jam session. It was easy enough for them to jump from Handel to Handy and from Mozart to Morton.

Becoming good enough to perform traditional jazz in public doesn't mean passing lots of exams. But be warned: it can take hundreds of hours of hard work in the woodshed.

You should start early on learning some tunes from the traditional jazz repertoire - easy ones to begin with. Laissez Les Bons Temps Rouler is a particularly good and easy one as it is fun but uses very few notes and virtually only two alternating chords.

Soon you could try Algiers Strut, Tin Roof Blues, When The Saints Go Marching In, Careless Love, Down By The Riverside, and Lily of the Valley.

There are plenty of sources of printed music, such as busker's books. But an excellent site you should consult is Lasse Collin's, where there's enough to keep you going for years: CLICK HERE TO VIEW.

And here's an important tip: when you first learn a tune, make sure you learn it accurately. If you get into a habit of playing a phrase or a sequence of chords wrongly, it is very hard to unlearn them later, after the tune has become embedded in your brain and fingers.

Develop an understanding of and fluency in different keys. Those most commonly (but by no means exclusively) needed in traditional jazz are Bb, Eb and F. Next most common are Ab and C.

Listen to lots of traditional jazz - especially noting the part played by your chosen instrument - to get a feel for what is required. Use the wonderful resource of YouTube. When you are ready, try playing some tunes along with bands on YouTube. That's almost as good as 'sitting in'.

A similar idea is to play along with backing tracks. Some of these are also freely available on YouTube. This will give you a great chance to assess your progress because, if you are confident and not discordant with a backing track, the chances are you will fit in with a jazz band.

Link up with other musicians. Maybe you can form a band in your town, starting with a nucleus as a trio or quartet. Meet regularly in one of your houses to rehearse and expand your repertoire.

How do you find these musicians? Put the word around among all your friends and acquaintances. Chat in the local music shop. Advertise in the local newspaper. See whether anybody in a social group is interested (e.g. in England, the U3A). There may be a regional website on which you can seek (free of charge) other musicians.

Listen to live traditional jazz bands and talk to the musicians: they are very good sources of information about both learners and established players in the area and may be able to put you in touch with people who could join your group.

For information on which bands are playing where, there is probably a regular publication you can consult. For example, here in England we have the monthly Jazz Guide - available in clubs and from bands and also by post if you pay the very reasonable subscription (payments by PayPal are accepted). You should be able to see a sample page and full information by clicking HERE.

And specifically for the North-West of England, a gentleman called Fred Burnett altruistically runs a website giving full bulletins concerning jazz in his region: click here.

When you feel ready, begin to practise more challenging and more complex tunes: there are hundreds in the repertoire.

Unless you are a born genius, you will need to learn the standard chords and also practise improvising your way though common chord progressions. In particular, work on the Circle of Fifths and The Sunshine Sequence and the basic 12-bar Blues Sequence as these will be useful in hundreds of jazz tunes. If you don't know what I mean, look at the blog posts in which I have written about them.

Are you worried about improvising? Watch Charlie Porter's excellent videos. For an example CLICK HERE.

When your group is good enough at fifteen or so tunes, start playing gigs! You can give your band a name and offer yourselves for free to a local pub or residential home and get your band officially launched.

Also, when you have built up confidence by playing along with YouTube, ask whether you may sit in for a couple of tunes with an existing band. Most bands are so keen to keep the music alive that they readily give opportunities to anyone who shares that mission.

Make sure you give your telephone number and email address to everyone who may be able to help you in the future - especially band-leaders. It may be worth having some business cards printed.

Band-leaders and agents keep lists of musicians within a radius of seventy miles. You never know when you may receive a call to deputise for a musician who is ill or on holiday.

Eventually you may succeed in obtaining a place in a reputable well-established band. There is a rapid turn-over of personnel and a need for new blood, especially these days when many elderly musicians are hanging up their trumpets and clarinets.

Most of today's traditional jazz musicians have gone through the stages I have described above, except that in their day they did not have the enormous benefit of YouTube and such sites as Lasse Collin's to help with learning and training. In years gone by, players had to listen to records and later to cassettes in order to pick up tunes by ear and learn from the masters.

Post 361: 'ENJOY YOURSELF (IT'S LATER THAN YOU THINK)'

When my grand-daughters were little, I had the pleasant duty once a week of collecting them from school. In the back of the car, on their way to their house, they always loved to sing at the tops of their voices. I taught them one or two silly songs.

Coffee Popsicles - Ellen (left) and Marianne

A particular favourite was Enjoy Yourself; It's Later Than You Think.

For a clear performance of this song on YouTube (by Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians), click here.

So I had a pleasant surprise when I discovered recently that Lasse Collin - on his wonderful website (click here to visit the site) had published a lead-sheet for the song, complete with the words.

For years, Lasse has generously provided a wonderful service to traditional jazz all over the world by making lead-sheets freely available. I do not know how many lead-sheets there are on his site, but my guess is there are about 1000. Many of them are supported by recorded performances.

Enjoy Yourself; It's Later Than You Think is not a song many bands play. But I recommend it. Why? Because every concert needs at least one 'fun' song or silly song, as a gentleman in an audience told me a few weeks ago. Also, this tune has the advantage of being very easy to play and improvise on. (That also makes it a good one for beginners, by the way.) It is fairly similar in its chord progression to Royal Telephone.

Somebody in the band should provide the vocal, as that is essential in a song where the fun is in the lyrics. You have the words provided by Lasse, but there are in fact more verses (not needed, in my view, but you can find them on the internet if you wish).

My friend Barrie in Lancaster, England, has told me this song is currently popular with Ska Bands.

The song belongs in our repertoire to the group that gives sound advice on how to conduct our lives. (I'm thinking of such as Pick Yourself Up, When You're Smiling, Try a Little Tenderness, 'Taint What You Do, Button Up Your Overcoat, Pennies From Heaven, The Clouds Will Soon Roll By, Smile, and If You Can't Be Good, Be Careful.)

Post 287: LASSE COLLIN'S GREAT CONTRIBUTION

Scattered around the Globe there are many individuals who have voluntarily and generously given hundreds of hours of their time to help support and propagate traditional jazz.

I can not list them all. But I personally am specially grateful to the anonymous person (?Scott Alexander) who created the highly-informative 'Red Hot Jazz' website:

CLICK HERE. (Unfortunately, I am told that nothing new has appeared on this site for several years, even though it is a 'work in progress'. It is possible that the creator has died, though obviously we must hope this is not the case.)

And I am grateful to the people who run the CD-publishing company Document Records. They have enabled us to hear so much of the almost-forgotten music of the 1920s and 1930s:

CLICK HERE.

Then there is the great Dick Baker, about whom I have written before. For years he has been tirelessly researching the old tunes, trying to establish who composed what and to tidy up hundreds of confusions:

CLICK HERE.

And I have a huge admiration for John Birchall, who has spent years building up a massive library of tunes our bands play, all in Band-in-a-Box form:
CLICK HERE.
There are also many great video-makers, who have done us huge favours by making the best music available on YouTube. I follow several of them, and have long been impressed especially by the work of the video-maker codenamed digitalalexa:

CLICK HERE

and the video-maker codenamed RaoulDuke504:

CLICK HERE.

But today, especially on behalf of all of us who try to play the music, I want to praise Lasse Collin - a man who - month after month for many years - has been creating HUNDREDS of Lead Sheets from which we may learn the tunes.

It is virtually impossible to find or buy the sheet music for the wonderful tunes the bands played in the first half of the Twentieth Century. Lasse Collin has been working them out by ear to the best of his ability and publishing his findings (usually complete with lyrics where possible) - free to everyone - on his web-site.

Lasse says:
New Orleans jazz is played by heart and ear. You fake some good old tunes and improvise on the melodies and the chords they are built on. Most of the tunes were forgotten a long time ago;, nobody asked for them. ...... To preserve these tunes is more of a cultural achievement. Often you have to transcribe them from old recordings, because there has not been any sheet music available for many decades, if ever.


Lasse adds (with undue modesty) that his transcriptions 
are mostly an interpretation of the song and don't claim to be quite right, simply just "good enough for jazz". The upper section with the chords is for C-instruments (banjo, guitar, piano, bass), the lower with the melody is for instruments tuned in Bb (trumpet, clarinet, soprano- and tenor sax, trombone). Have a look at the tune, memorize it, put in your soul, and play it hot!

Here is an example of what he offers on his site.

You can also click on examples of Lasse's bands playing most of the tunes. Pretty good, eh?  And extremely useful to all of us who try to play the music. Well done, Lasse. We are all indebted to you! To explore Lasse's wonderful site for yourself,

CLICK HERE.

ADDITIONAL NOTE added in August 2023 : Sadly, I have just heard that Lasse died on 23 December 2022.

Post 168: 'MAGIC IS THE MOONLIGHT' - A GOOD ONE FOR BEGINNERS

I was having a look at Magic is the Moonlight (with music composed in 1930 by Maria Grever) and it occurred to me that this tune has all the ingredients to make it useful for anyone learning to play traditional jazz.

Why?

Well, it has a simple 32-bar a-a-b-a structure, like hundreds of our tunes. The (a) part comprises eight bars taken at only moderate speed and they are virtually the same each time they are played, so the melody is easy to learn. The Middle Eight - the (b) part - is easy too, and is based on a progression of chords with which you need to become familiar and totally at ease as you progress in your playing. On top of all this, the tune is a pleasant one - much enjoyed by audiences.

The wonderful Lasse Collin, whose website I have often praised, has kindly supplied a lead-sheet for this tune. If you look at it carefully, you will see how simple the tune is. Improvising is helped by the fact that you need work only with the major tonic chord in the first four bars of each Section (a). The Middle 8 is essentially a IV - I - II7 - V7 sequence of chords, such as you will encounter in hundreds of tunes.

If you would like to hear a jazz band having a go at this tune, CLICK HERE.