Post 540: LOOSE MARBLES IN 2008

I have written before about the band Loose Marbles.

I argued then, and I still believe, that this group has been the most important and most influential traditional jazz band to emerge in the Twenty-First Century. To read that article, CLICK HERE.

But how on earth did I miss, during all these years, some wonderful videos of the band that appeared on YouTube as long ago as 2008? I am thrilled to tell you that I have recently discovered them.

A generous video-maker whose name is given as Wayne G. Harvey attended a concert by the band at the Delaware County Institute of Science, which is situated in the Borough of Media, Pennsylvania. The Loose Marbles played on a stage in front of glass cases exhibiting mounted birds.

Mr. Harvey uploaded videos of twelve tunes from the concert. He could not have known at the time that these videos would become precious historical documents.

Why are they so important? For the following reasons.

They show the state of evolution of the Loose Marbles at that time. Ben Polcer on first trumpet and Michael Magro on clarinet were firmly in control (and how well they played together!). The repertoire was mainly very familiar tunes, but played in a thrilling way. Tuba Skinny had not yet formed; but we get to see three musicians who were to become founder members (Shaye, Barnabus and Kiowa) honing their skills in the company of Ben and Michael.

They show how the band liked to produce music without any electronic assistance. That's the way they still like it, whenever possible, and so do I. Even vocals were clearly delivered without amplification.

It is hard to believe that Barnabus and Shaye had taken up the trombone and cornet respectively only a year or two earlier, having previously played other instruments. Barnabus, in the trombone chair, is brimful of confidence. And Shaye - here playing second trumpet to Ben - is already showing great technique and harmonic creativity. She has spoken in an interview of how important this stage of her career was: playing second trumpet to Ben taught her to keep things simple and to complement his playing harmoniously.

It is interesting to see how Ben gave the illusion of adding a percussion player to the band with his devices operated by foot and hand. I believe he still does this occasionally.

The music always sounds exciting, mainly because of the energy and talent of the players, and partly because - with a 'front line' of four and Ben's percussive additions - it sounds almost like a 'big band', especially with the assistance of the Museum's acoustics, as the sound bounces off those glass cases!

The videos are also historically interesting because they show us those great dancers - Chance Bushman and Amy Johnson - sharing the little stage and contributing hugely to the audience's enjoyment. As we now know, the migration of dancers as well as of instrumentalists to New Orleans in the years after Katrina was a very important factor in the revival of traditional jazz in the streets of that City and has remained so.

You can find and enjoy all twelve of these videos easily enough on YouTube. But if you would like me to get you started, may I offer these contrasting tunes?

For Tiger Rag, CLICK HERE. (There's fine dancing in this; and listen carefully to Shaye supporting Ben in the opening minutes of full ensemble.)

For Some Day, Sweetheart, CLICK HERE.

For Whenever You're Lonesome, CLICK HERE. (You may be surprised to hear Barnabus providing the vocal, and Shaye confidently taking a lovely and unpretentious solo chorus.)

Among the other fine videos from the concert are Over in The Gloryland, Isle of Capri, Willie the Weeper, 'Taint Nobody's Business If I Do and Ice Cream.

Post 538: FLATTENED SIXTHS AND 'SAN' - FROM LOOSE MARBLES TO TUBA SKINNY

Imagine you are playing a standard tune in the key of F. The chords you are most likely to use are F major, B flat major and C 7th. In fact some tunes can be played using only these three chords. But there's a fair chance you will also need G minor 7th, A 7th and a few more.

But an unlikely chord is D flat 7th.  Based on the flattened 6th note in the scale of F, it has a clashing, 'depressing' effect on the melody at any point where it is played. However, it crops up briefly, for special purposes, in quite a few of our tunes.

In the Chorus of the popular tune San, composed in 1920 by Lindsay McPhail and Walter Michels, this chord occurs an exceptional number of times. In total, it occupies 18.75% of the Chorus. This gives the tune its distinctive character. I can think of no other tune in which this chord is used so much.

I recently came across an interesting video that had been put up on YouTube at the end of 2013. The generous video-maker was a person codenamed twobarbreak and the video was of Loose Marbles playing San.

By the way, my friend Bob Andersen in San Diego has emailed me to say that twobarbreak is in fact Peter Loggins, the well-known jazz trombone player, dance teacher and jazz researcher.

You can watch his video BY CLICKING HERE.

They are playing the tune in the key of F. Listen for that D flat 7th chord: you hear it forty-two times, first at 03 seconds, and then at 05 seconds. See what I mean?

This video also appeals to me because it provides a glimpse at what was going on behind the scenes in those days when Loose Marbles was still evolving and Tuba Skinny was in its early stage of development.

There is no audience. The band seems to be rehearsing in an otherwise deserted New Orleans bar. Chord books lie around on the floor; and Shaye is directing proceedings: for example, she sets up a washboard Chorus by the hugely energetic Robin. This is accompanied by stop chords - a device that was to occur very often in later Tuba Skinny performances. 

San has a 24-bar Verse in a minor key but Loose Marbles choose not to play this at all. Instead, they simply romp through the Chorus seven times in a pretty exciting manner. The distinctive clarinet sound of Michael Magro is much in evidence. There is the usual Loose Marbles emphasis on ensemble playing, and they ensure that the tune is not always led by the cornet. Note how Barnabus on trombone leads in the second and fifth Choruses. 

Already in 2013, Shaye's wonderful gift for intuitive improvisation and harmonisation during ensembles was much in evidence. The actual notes she plays in the fourth Chorus (that runs from 1 minute 45 seconds to 2 minutes 20 seconds) repay close attention. They are so much more inspired and original than what we hear from so many players. It is amazing to think she had taken up cornet-playing only three or four years earlier.

The musicians are all familiar faces, though a couple of them seem to have since departed from the New Orleans scene.

In more recent times, Tuba Skinny have been playing San frequently. You can easily find videos of them doing so on YouTube. Watch an example filmed by my friend James Sterling BY CLICKING HERE.

But Tuba Skinny are now including the Verse - usually playing it at the start and again later. They are also pitching the tune three semi-tones higher, having switched to the key of Ab, in which it works very well. However, I don't think these later performances are necessarily more exciting than that original Loose Marbles rehearsal!

Post 522: LOOSE MARBLES JAZZ MASTER CLASS!

I must thank blog reader Phil Lynch for recently advising me to watch a particular YouTube video. It has given me huge pleasure.

I am referring to a video of The Loose Marbles playing at Abita Springs in 2016. It runs for over 50 minutes and I will give you the link to it later.

Craig and the Bass Sax

The band on this occasion comprised no fewer than ten musicians. Normally, such a number could be a recipé for disaster. I dread to think what a horrible din would result if three guitarists, a banjo player, a drummer and a double bass all got together in the rhythm section of some of the English pub bands I have seen.

And yet, such a combination in The Loose Marbles is so disciplined and restrained that it underpins the music with a gentle foot-tapping pulse. Here, because the musicians are all virtuosos, all conforming to the house-style set by the leader Michael Magro, the music throughout is beautifully melodic and played with a loving delicacy. There is no mere exhibitionism, no attempt by any of the players to show off their own technical prowess. Instead, there is huge respect for melody, balance and for each other.

The reeds set the tone. Such tunes as Song of the Islands, A Flower Lei, Postage Stomp, Last Night on the Back Porch, The Isle of Capri (played briskly) and Home on the Range are all led by the clarinet. And in Take Me Out to the Ball Game, the first chorus is played on the bass saxophone by the versatile Craig Flory.

Yes, the tunes feature the bass saxophone; and Craig has an important rôle in this line-up, especially as - despite having ten musicians - there is no trombone.

Multi-instrumentalist Tyler Thomson is seen here among the guitarists; and he even gets to take a neat little solo in Isle of Capri. And that fine and sartorially-elegant musician Matt Bell plays slide guitar - with the instrument on his lap, producing some lovely Hawaiian effects. (Friend James Sterling has told me Matt is playing a resonator all-steel guitar and that the correct terminology for what he is playing is 'lap steel'.)

You have only to catch the happy look on Matt's face at certain points in this video to see that he knows the music this band is making is something really special.

The great Marla Dixon provides some very sweet vocals, for example in 'A Flower Lei' and 'Last Night, on the Back Porch'. And in her trumpet-playing, she adapts brilliantly to the requirements of the Magro style. We find her often playing deft, muted phrases in support of the melodies of the three reed players in this unusual 'front line'.

I must mention that the programme includes the song The Sweetheart of Sigma Chi. It is a lovely waltz tune. It is very rarely played and I guess many of my readers will never have heard of it. I can tell you Sigma Chi was a college fraternity founded in the mid-19th Century at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. The song was composed in 1911 by Byron D. Stokes (words) and F. Dudleigh Vernor (music).

The final tune in the programme is Tight Like This - a catchy minor-key number composed by trumpeter Langston Curl in 1928 and made famous by Louis Armstrong.

The musicians I have not yet mentioned are Julie, Tomas, Max, Robin, and John - all of them superb and on absolutely cracking form.

I have written before about The Loose Marbles and the importance of this band in 21st-Century traditional jazz. To read my article, CLICK HERE.

To enjoy the video for yourself:

CLICK HERE.

Post 497: JOY FROM 'THE LOOSE MARBLES'

The most important and influential traditional jazz band to emerge anywhere in the world in the Twenty-First Century has undoubtedly been The Loose Marbles. This band was given its name by its founder, Michael Magro, who grew up in Philadelphia. Its first performance was in Providence, Rhode Island, way back in September 2000.

I have explained in the past why this band is so important in the history of our music. To read my article, CLICK HERE.

The good news is that Michael is still leading the band and setting an example to us all. A 26-minute video of Loose Marbles in one of its latest manifestations - as a six-piece - has recently appeared on YouTube; and I commend it to you.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW.

There is nothing exhibitionist or pretentious in this music. Leading from the clarinet, Michael likes to play good, simply-structured, pretty tunes in a relaxed way, with the emphasis on melody and teamwork. He is often the first to state the melody, usually (as in Winin' Boy Blues) in a very interesting way. Michael's playing is reminiscent of his heroes George Lewis and Albert Burbank. And it is interesting to hear Marla playing one complete chorus with a double-section stonelined 'cleartone' mute. (I must remember to add one to my Christmas wish-list!) The three rhythm players are exemplary throughout, with their clockwork 4/4 support.

I hope you will enjoy this entertaining and sincere performance, filmed in Frenchmen Street, New Orleans, at The Louisiana Music Factory, which, in case you don't know, is a very large shop with a terrific stock of jazz recordings.

Post 472: 'CRUMPLED PAPERS' - MYSTERY SOLVED

A few years ago, a new tune appeared on the streets of New Orleans.

I heard that it had been used in the TV series Tremé, where it had been played by the most important band in the 21st-Century Revival of traditional jazz - Loose Marbles.

It is a tune I like and recommend, for several reasons. It is short (essentially a 12-bar theme), lively  and very catchy. It is in a minor key (D minor) and it's good to have a minor-key tune in our programmes occasionally. As it seems to use a very small number of chords (possibly only D minor, G minor and and A7th), it is also easy to improvise on.

It was called Crumpled Papers and I could find no reference to it in earlier jazz literature. So where had it come from? Who was the composer?

For a long time, that was an unsolved mystery. However, John Dixon has let me know it is a Michael Magro tune. John told me: Michael ‘wrote’ this, as in just came up with a nice simple melody for a basic 12-bar minor blues. We actually recorded this a couple years ago with him on clarinet, Marla on trumpet, Tyler on bass, Justin on snare drum, and Ben Polcer on piano. Not sure if the recording will ever see daylight though.

So the mystery is solved. Michael, as you probably know, founded Loose Marbles way back in September 2000 and he still runs that band in New Orleans today.

Michael Magro

Modest though its beginnings may have been, Crumpled Papers is a great little tune, given the way it lends itself to improvisations. Have a listen to it, as played by Tuba Skinny. There's a choice of videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSLTjnqs648

For a slightly more pedestrian performance, but less affected by audience noise:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mzwmIzkB4w

Thanks as ever to those two great video-makers digitalalexa and RaoulDuke504.

Post 394: THE LOOSE MARBLES

If you were asked to name the most important traditional jazz band so far in the 21st Century, what would your answer be?

My own, unhesitatingly, is The Loose Marbles.

Why?

To put it briefly, because this band has done the most to regenerate our music and to encourage and stimulate the terrific resurgence of traditional jazz among the younger generation (particularly those now based in New Orleans) and because, with the help of YouTube and CDs, it has also encouraged a resurgence of our music throughout the world.

Many people believe (I used to be one of them) that The Loose Marbles were formed in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The truth is, however, that The Loose Marbles gave their first performance much earlier - in Providence, Rhode Island, way back in September 2000.

The band was given its name by its founder, the clarinet-player Michael Magro, who grew up in Philadelphia, and he is still running the band today. I have met Michael only once - in New Orleans on 11 April 2016. I found him most friendly, serious-minded and eager to talk about his music.

Michael Magro

After all these years, none of his enthusiasm has diminished. Deeply influenced by the recordings of George Lewis, Albert Burbank and Jim Robinson, he is as passionate as ever about the music; and he is clear about how he wants to play it. I think it's fair to say that he likes to put the emphasis on ensemble work. He prefers the kind of traditional jazz that was played before Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five set the fashion for sequences of 'solo' choruses.

Yet Michael did not begin to teach himself the clarinet until he was in his mid-twenties.

Michael told me about those early days. He chose the memorable name Loose Marbles partly because of the connotations of the expression but also because the concept of 'looseness' was always part of his plan. This was to be a band without a regular fixed line-up. All good and like-minded musicians would be welcome in his pool of players. The Band played for a year or so before a break in its history.

Then Michael met Ben Polcer (trumpet and piano). Ben, the son of Ed Polcer, the traditional jazz trumpeter, had graduated at the Music School of the University of Michigan. He joined Michael in the Loose Marbles enterprise and has been driving The Loose Marbles along ever since. For a while they were based in Brooklyn, New York. In 2006 they developed for a few months by playing street music in Washington Square Park, New York City.

Then, the year after Hurricane Katrina, Michael and Ben permanently relocated to New Orleans, trying their luck by playing for tips on the streets. They have been based there ever since. On occasions, they would return to New York City in the summer months, again giving street performances.

I heard that they sometimes had so many musicians available that there would be two Loose Marbles bands in two different locations simultaneously.

The early days in New Orleans.
Michael is on the right. Shaye Cohn is playing piano.

During the following three or four years, so many of today's great traditional jazz musicians migrated to New Orleans and appeared as Marbles, honing their skills in the company of Ben and Michael. These included such people as Charlie Halloran, Aaron Gunn, Tomas Majcherski, Jason Jurzak, John Rodli, Robert Snow, Jon Gross, Dan Levinson, Alynda Lee Segarra, Kiowa Wells, Ryan Baer, John Royen, Peter Loggins, Robin Rapuzzi, Joseph Faison, Matt Bell, Max Bien-Kahn, Jonathan Doyle and many others. Shaye Cohn frequently worked with the band, but mainly on piano in the early post-Katrina days; and Barnabus Jones, who had recently taken up the trombone (in addition to being already a good violinist and banjo-player), was frequently present. They had a powerful vocalist in Meschiya Lake.

There is a video of considerable historical interest of The Loose Marbles in a 2008 configuration, performing at Preservation Hall. You can watch it by clicking here. And see them in the street the same year (with Kiowa singing and Shaye on piano) by clicking here.

As dancers migrated to New Orleans, they tended to join the Loose Marbles family too - stars such as Chance Bushman and Amy Johnson; and they became part of the spectacle. The band busked in Europe in 2007: enjoy the dancing by clicking here.

John and Marla Dixon (now at the heart of The Shotgun Jazz Band) arrived a little later, but they too intermingled with the Marbles and still work closely with them to this day.

Some of the musicians who played in The Loose Marbles have gone on to form bands of their own. Think of Tom Saunders and the Tom Cats, for example. And Meschiya Lake, branching out into a wide range of musical styles, now sings with her own very popular band Meschiya Lake and The Little Big Horns. Above all, there is Tuba Skinny. Shaye Cohn of Tuba Skinny has said: 'One thing really important to The Loose Marbles was ensemble playing. When I first started with them, I was playing second trumpet. So I had to work to find a voice where I could fit in. It taught me to play very simply, and to listen.'

So The Loose Marbles still exists and is attracting plenty of gigs. As the sixty or so musicians who have played in Loose Marbles all still feel part of the family, it is easy enough for Ben and Michael to put together half a dozen of them to play at a gig.

To view a really pleasing and exhilarating video of the band in 2015 CLICK HERE. Michael is still in a central rôle, leading off with the melody in the first chorus. Marla is on trumpet and vocal.

Interesting to think that, although we fans in our eighties regard all those musicians currently working so well in New Orleans as the 'young generation', the years seem to have passed so rapidly since Hurricane Katrina that it won't be long before Ben and Michael are considered the 'elder statesmen' of traditional jazz!

Having said that The Loose Marbles is the most important traditional jazz band of the early Twenty-First Century, I must add that I consider Michael Magro himself as the most important individual musician. If you speak, as I have, to some of those slightly younger musicians who have settled in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina, you find they all have immense respect for him and they are all grateful for what he has done. Another reason why I consider him so important is that he has a very clear idea of how he wants a band to sound. As soon as he takes charge of a group of musicians, something magical happens. He is one of the few great leaders who can immediately impose a style that brings out the collective best in his colleagues. For proof of this, even as recently as 2016, watch this wonderful programme:
CLICK HERE.

Finally, here is a picture Bob Andersen sent me of a Loose Marbles 2009 line-up (including himself on this occasion). He scanned it from a newspaper of the time.

Bob says the picture was taken at the Portland, Oregon, Blues and Jazz Fest. You see Shaye on piano, Robert Bell on guitar, Jason on tuba, Ben, Michael and also Benji Bohannon on drums.

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