Post 429: 'VIPER MAD'

Trying out 'Viper Mad' at Foxton Locks.

My friends and I added Viper Mad (sometimes called Pleasure Mad) to the tunes we regularly play. I believe it was written by Sidney Bechet and Rousseau Simmons as long ago as 1924.

It is great fun to play and improvise upon, especially if taken at a pretty fast speed.

It has a 12-bar introduction, followed by a 32-bar chorus (16 + 16 pattern, rather than with a middle eight). Here's our version.

In my view, the A7ths followed by the D minor in the Chorus are what give the tune its special flavour.

The original words are politically incorrect and are usually changed when sung these days. But they are full of youthful exuberance (I'm twenty-one, I've just begun, I'm far from done) and I like that aspect. It's a happy song that is both fun and effective to play.

If you wish to listen to this tune on YouTube, it is easy enough to find it played by Sidney Bechet himself. But if you would like an easy-paced more recent version (by The California Feetwarmers - with Chloe Feoranzo no less on clarinet) CLICK HERE.

Post 187: 'STACK O' LEE BLUES'

I got round to a task I had put off for months. I would sort out and learn - once and for all - Stack o' Lee Blues.

I always knew there was confusion about this tune, and also that its origins were obscure. That's why I had avoided it.

According to Wikipedia, 'Stagger Lee' or 'Stack Lee' of 'Stag Lee' was Lee Shelton, an underworld character who in 1895 murdered a rival called Billy Lyons. The original song (probably written in 1897) was a kind of folk-song about this event.

But a quick survey of bands and individuals performing it on YouTube shows that the confusion is even greater than I thought. I found 12-bar blues versions but with differing tunes. One version sounds the same as Frankie and Johnny. And there was an eight-bar version (played by Johnny Wiggs) with yet another quite different tune, sounding suspiciously like the final eight bars of Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor:

Click here.
Of all the variants, my favourite is the version played by Sidney Bechet and actually entitled Old Stack o' Lee Blues. It's a 12-bar, with a pleasant, simple melody and some interesting chord changes, including what sounds like a tonic diminished on the eighth bar. (It happens to sound very simiar to Faraway Blues.) Have a listen:

Click here.

Post 31: 'DANS LES RUES D'ANTIBES'

A couple of years ago, my friend Jonathan Graham suggested we should have a go at playing Dans Les Rues d'Antibes. I believe it was written in 1955 by the great clarinet and saxophone player from New Orleans - Sidney Bechet. It was a tune I did not know well enough to attempt there and then.

So I worked it out. I got it into a shape that seemed reasonably good. I put it into my mini filofax (see below). Since then I have played it many times with bands. It's pretty easy to improvise on the main theme (because it has few and predictable chord changes) and the tune goes down well with audiences.