Post 603: PLAYING THE ODJB'S 'OSTRICH WALK'

'Ostrich Walk' was first devised and recorded in 1917 by The Original Dixieland Jazz Band, so it was credited to their players Edwin B. Edwards, Nick LaRocca, Henry Ragas, Tony Sbarbaro and Larry Shields.

You can hear them over a hundred years ago playing the tune - at a good pace - BY CLICKING HERE.

This is a simplified lead sheet.

POST 588 : MUSIC POCKET NOTEBOOKS UPDATE

I mentioned a couple of months ago that I had discovered for the first time pocket music notebooks (made by Moleskine). I have since had a lot of pleasure filling them with useful straightforward lead-sheets of tunes played by traditional jazz bands - particularly those that are the more difficult to remember, or that have verses worth hearing but rarely played.

I have made such progress that I have filled three books, with a total of over 400 tunes so far. Of course, I also keep and regularly update an Index, so that I can find any tune in a moment.

Although they truly are pocketable, I like their robustness, the amount of space they give on and between staves (just right for me) and the way the books stay open at the desired pages when playing an instrument.

Moleskine Pocket Music Books

I intend to start a fourth soon. However, I have noticed (as at late-February 2018) that Moleskine seem no longer to be producing the notebooks for music in pocket size. So I may have to buy a plain pocket notebook and draw the staves myself. That should work just as well.

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 387: 'WHO WOULDN'T LOVE YOU?'

My friend Chris the pianist suggested that we should learn a tune called Who Wouldn't Love You?

I had never heard of it, but I was able to find several examples of the tune on YouTube and I then discovered that it was a pop song of 1942, written by Carl Fischer (music) and Bill Carey (words).

It's a very pleasant tune, apparently in 16 bars (8 + 8), but with the possibility of extending to 18 bars, for example with a tag in a final Chorus. Who Wouldn't Love You? has some appealing harmonies. The melody note seems occasionally to be on the 6th or 9th of the chord.

I wrote it out in G (for trumpet use): this means I will be playing it in Concert F, which seems right for it, though it also goes well in Bb, as in some performances on YouTube, such as this one (click on to listen).

I store all my tunes in mini-filofaxes and here's the result. It's a bit messy: I struggled with some of the chords and changed my mind in a couple of places.

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 87: BUSKERS' BOOKS AND FAKE BOOKS

I was playing in a traditional jazz band in a Cambridgeshire pub when a young man in the audience told me he was a trumpet player and wanted to learn to play traditional jazz. Could I please lend him 'the music'?

Unfortunately, it's not that simple. The 'music' has to be inside your head. It takes months to build up a repertoire and much of your learning may have to come from picking tunes up by ear, as many of the old-time tunes are virtually unobtainable in sheet music form.

But a good starting tactic is to buy some busker's books (also called fake books).

They do not contain piano-type music, with two staves. They simply give you what is known as a lead-sheet - the melody line and the chord sequence.

That's all you and your band should need. Provided that you are all working to the same melody and chord pattern, you can improvise to your heart's content and also work out - if you like - a 'head arrangement' (i.e. a plan for who will do what, and when).

Of course, these books have their limitations. They sometimes leave out the Verse of a song, giving you only the Chorus. That's all right if you want to play only the Chorus; but it's irritating if you want to include the Verse, to provide some contrast or variety.

And with more complex old tunes (such as rags with three or more themes), it is annoying if the fake book gives only one theme and omits the rest.

Another warning: there are so many busker's books on the market. Do not waste money on chunky books that claim to contain 500 or 1000 tunes if there are not more than four or five tunes in them that you will ever be likely to play with a traditional jazz band. There are many such books available. Don't be fooled by the bulk.

Over many years, I have built up a bunch of fake books. They can be quite expensive when new; but I have noticed recently that plenty of them are available on internet auctions, so you should now be able to pick some up cheaply. Simply type 'Buskers' Books' or 'Fake Books' into your search.

After that, there are also resources on the internet where you can freely download the music for some of the rarer old jazz tunes.

For an example of dozens of tunes generously provided by a very remarkable Swedish gentleman - a musician and artist named Lasse Collin - go to this website:
  http://cjam.lassecollin.se/

It is also possible - if you search - to find downloadable books of tunes, sometimes generously provided by particular bands.

Also be warned that, when you come to play a tune with other players, you may find the band uses a version with slightly different chords or melody notes from those in your fakebook. They may even use a different key. So be prepared to adapt.
============

13 April 2013

Post 44: 'MEMPHIS BLUES'

Well, we have our ways of playing W. C. Handy's Memphis Blues. Most bands play a 4-bar Introduction. Then some play the 'Verse' as 16 bars, followed by the 12-bar 'Chorus'. I have heard others playing the Verse as 32 bars (the 16-bar theme twice). And there are even a few bands playing the Verse as 36 bars (essentially 16 + 16 PLUS a 4-bar tag).

I have heard bands playing both the Verse and the Chorus in the same key (usually F); and others playing the Verse in F and then going into Bb for the Chorus.

There is even an occasional band that plays a 12-bar theme (sometimes twice) before what I have been calling the 'Verse'. (This is probably - see below - an 'authentic' interpretation.)

It's interesting, when we come across some vintage sheet music of such a tune, to discover how the composer originally expected it to be played. As you can see from the music below, it seems that the 36-bar version of the Verse is 'correct', and that there IS a 12-bar theme BEFORE the 'Verse'. Here's the Introduction and the first 12-bar theme.

Then comes the 'Verse' theme and - as you can see - if played correctly, it contains 36 bars. The is the Verse we think of as starting with the words (added later by George A. Norton) Folks I've just been down, been down to Memphis Town, That's where the people smile, Smile on you all the while,.... (in the gravelly voice of Louis Armstrong!):

Finally we have the 12-bar theme (twice through on this last page of the sheet music). And you will notice that the key DOES change - from F to Bb.

You may recall that Norton's words to the Chorus begin They've got a trumpet man leading the band, And folks he sure blows some horn, etc.

Two other little curiosities. First, the tune is sometimes sub-titled Mr. Crump. Legend has it that this was because it was written originally (in 1909) for use in his successful political campaign to become Mayor of Memphis by a Mr. Edward Crump. Second, you may have noticed that the tune is described on the cover page as 'A Southern Rag'. It does not sound like a 'rag' when played by jazz bands today, but it could be raggy if played with certain emphases and at the right tempo in the piano arrangement above. We must also bear in mind that this was possibly the first blues ever to be published, so perhaps a distinction between rags and blues had not yet been established. Handy's Yellow Dog Blues was also originally published as Yellow Dog Rag.

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