Post 348: DO-IT-YOURSELF 16-BAR TUNES

Today, in case your band does not already have this type of tune in its repertoire, I am going to recommend a simple 16-bar theme. I have put it in my example in the key of D; but C or Bb would work just as well.

Take a look at this:

As you can see, it has an easy chord progression and an A  -  A   -   B  -  A  structure. The 'B' section (bars 9 - 12) lend themselves effectively to being played as breaks (though I would not recommend doing this in every chorus). The tune should be played at just above medium tempo, at which you could get the whole band swinging and the audience dancing. If you want to include a vocal, you have a choice between devising one yourself (easy enough) or using one from the past (see examples below).

As an added refinement, you could append a tag, turning it into an 18-bar chorus, like this:

You would have to decide whether to use the tag on every chorus or perhaps just on some - notably the final chorus.

This pattern of tune, with pretty well this chord sequence and with a melody very similar to what I have used above, was popular between 1900 and the 1930s, when many famous bands had at least one tune of this kind in its repertoire.

Think of  Hot Nuts! Get 'Em From the Peanut Man, Droppin' Shucks, If It Don't Fit, Don't Force It, Everyone's Talking About Sammy, Low Down Papa, The Alligator Pond Went Dry, My Sweet Lovin' Man, If You Don't Like It Like I Like It, It's So Nice and Warm, Keeps on a-Rainin', I'm a Ding Dong Daddy from Doumas, Don't Care Blues, Don't Go Away, Nobody, How Come You Do Me Like You Do Do Do?, Prove It On Me Blues, Gimme Some of that Yum Yum Yum, Walk Right In, Forget Me Not Blues.

[NOTE: There is another group of good 16-bar tunes (18 including tag) that use the Sweet Sue Chord Progression and have the 'breaks' on bars 7 and 8. These include most famously I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate, South (Theme B), and Up Jumped the Devil. But they will be a subject for another day.]

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 22: 'NEED A LTTLE SUGAR IN MY BOWL'; AND THE RESEARCHER DICK BAKER

Click on THIS VIDEO. It is concise (only 30 bars in total) and therefore simple for musicians to learn and memorise. It has a good, strong, easily-singable melody and a very pleasant down-the-ladder harmonic progression (plus The Sunshine Chord Sequence at the end). Bars 7 and 8 of the Chorus can be played as a 'Break' - to be taken either by a singer or by a member of the band; and Bars 17 and 18 of the Chorus are an appealing 'Tag'. For all these reasons, I Need A Little Sugar In My Bowl is a very good tune for jazz bands to have in their repertoire.

I have written before about the amazing Dick Baker who has spent decades researching the origins and histories of tunes played by traditional jazz bands. He now has information about nearly 4000 tunes on his website, which runs to over 400 pages of closely-typed information: CLICK HERE; and then go to Stomp Off Records Project.

Dick has been tracing the origins of I Need A Little Sugar In My Bowl, the song made famous by Bessie Smith and - more recently - brilliantly revived by Tuba Skinny and their fine singer Erika Lewis.

Dick sent me an email:

Ivan, In my quest to update and improve the Stomp Off index, I went hunting for this on a trip to the Library of Congress in January. The composers were actually Dally Small, Clarence Williams and J. Tim Brymn, and the filed copyright was "I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl." The original lead sheet, possibly in Clarence Williams's handwriting, is attached. The copyright as printed in the book reads I need a little sugar in my bowl words and melody by C. Williams, Dally Small and J. T. Brymn. © 1 c. Jan. 14, 1932; E unp. 50141; Clarence Williams music pub. co., inc., New York. The record label, alas, screwed things up a bit. The initial "I" was dropped (but it's common for record companies to shorten, streamline, or otherwise change titles for their labels), but the composer credit on the Columbia 14634-D label is Williams, Byrne [or poss. Byrns] and Small. There WAS a composer named W. A. D. "Danny" Small, but this evidently isn't that guy.

Here is the leadsheet Dick discovered. What is interesting about it? It is dated (rubber stamp) '1932'. The composers are given as stated by Dick. The tune is set in the key of Ab, with a melody line and no chords for the Chorus and a melody line and a few hints at chords for the Verse. The Verse has 16 bars. The Chorus has 18 bars (really 16 bars plus a two-bar tag).

The 16-bar Verse is typical of its time - not specially interesting melodically, simple and with a repeated phrase, and ending with a dominant 7th to lead into the Chorus.

What I find strange is that Bessie Smith recorded it (in a musically very good version) in 1931; and yet the copyright manuscript (not such good music - especially the Verse) is dated 1932. I would have expected it to be the other way round.

Bessie Smith sang a shorter (12-bar) verse which is better than the 16-bar Verse in the manuscript.

Turning to the Chorus, Bessie's version is very close to the manuscript version of the melody.

Bessie, by the way, sang the song in the key of F, though the manuscript is in Ab.

When Tuba Skinny recorded the song (on their first CD, in May 2009), they based their performance on the Bessie Smith version, including the 12-bar Verse and using the key of F.

Here are the lyrics Dick Baker discovered. Bessie Smith kept close to the first three lines of the Verse, but scrapped the remaining three, replacing them with one line (thereby reducing the Verse to 12 bars). With regard to the Chorus, Bessie pretty well kept the words as in the manuscript, though she slightly amended a couple of phrases.

Bessie then went on to sing a second Chorus (not typed into the manuscript above). This second Chorus was based on the first, but with cruder metaphors.

I'm pleased Tuba Skinny's version omits Bessie's second Chorus altogether. Erika Lewis sings the Verse and first Chorus only, following Bessie Smith but with a little toning down of the language, conveying a mood rather than archness. And Tuba Skinny abbreviates the title even further to Need a Little Sugar.

Writers of jazz history books in the past used to snigger like schoolboys at the 'innuendos' in the lyrics of songs performed by the likes of Bessie Smith, Victoria Spivey and Lucille Bogan.  (In England, we had the songs of George Formby: their 'cheekiness' was fashionable at one time.) But we live in an age when people are neither amused nor shocked by the metaphors used; and today there is little appetite for this kind of verbal humour.

So, regardless of the lyrics, let us value this tune for its conveying of mood, its conciseness, its simplicity, its strong melody, its harmonic progression, its 'Break' and its 'Tag'.

Long before I received the photocopy of the manuscript above from Dick Baker, I did my best to pick the tune out by ear. This is the 'Need a Little Sugar' leadsheet that I came up with (as in the recordings: 12-bar verse and an 18-bar chorus). It's good enough for me.

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Footnote

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