Post 570: TRADITIONAL JAZZ? LET'S PLAY 'NEW ORLEANS WIGGLE'

Today I would like to bring to your attention another early classic from our heritage - one I haven't heard played much in the last couple of years. I think it deserves a revival.

I am speaking about New Orleans Wiggle. This was one of the tunes given to us by the violinist, composer and bandleader Armand J. Piron. 

Between 1923 and 1925, his orchestra made about fifteen influential recordings. The tunes included Bouncing Around, Red Man Blues, Kiss Me Sweet, Bright Star Blues and Mama's Gone, Goodbye - all of which were originals that Piron himself helped to compose.

But there was also New Orleans Wiggle, jointly written by Piron and his trumpet player Peter Bocage.

You can hear the recording they made of this tune BY CLICKING HERE.

What makes it such a good tune for our bands to master?

First, it provides a contrast with the many war-horses that most bands play. It offers the musicians more of a challenge and more interest than many tunes in our repertoire, because it has a structure that you need to study, and includes a key change. It offers plenty of syncopation and plenty of breaks - both of them essential elements in classic New Orleans jazz.

Despite what I have just said, the tune is easy to learn, without being too easy. This is because all three of its themes are underpinned by pleasant, straightforward chord progressions.

There is a four-bar introduction. Then comes Theme A, 16 bars in length. The melody takes us up through a series of syncopated arpeggios. This is great fun. The Piron Orchestra plays it twice.

Then Theme B begins with a sequence reminiscent of I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate (which Piron also wrote, a few years earlier). But at the second round of this chord priogression, it is extended beyond the 'Sister Kate' structure to 20 bars, with a series of breaks that occupy six bars. The Piron Orchestra also plays this theme twice, with the clarinet taking the breaks both times.

We then go straight into Theme C, with the key change. (Usually it means going from Bb into Eb.) This final theme consists of 32 bars and lends itself to breaks at several points. The melody is merry enough. And you will find the chord familiar from dozens of other tunes. It even ends with that simplest of progressions - The Sunshine Chord Sequence. Piron plays Theme C twice, doing some clever things with the breaks.

Finally, there is a neat 4-bar Coda, well worth learning and playing.

Piron's recording lasts only two and a half minutes, partly, no doubt, because of the restraints of recording processes at the time. But of course today's bands could extend it by playing Theme C more than twice.

However, as I have mentioned in earlier articles, there is much to be said for brevity.

I noticed that when Michael McQuaid's Piron's New Orleans Orchestra played the piece at the Whitley Bay Festival in 2015 (CLICK HERE to view), they paid due homage to Piron, strictly retained his structure, and finished the piece in an even shorter time.

Post 556: 'MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS' - A TUNE WORTH PLAYING

It struck me recently that a very good tune to play is Meet Me in St. Louis, Louis. Why?

First, it is a good melody but is rarely heard these days. With or without a vocal, it is a great tune to include in a programme.

Next, if you examine its structure - particularly the chord progression - you will find it is very simple, and therefore a good one for learners to master. And it trains you in so much that will be the basis for more difficult tunes as you progress in your studies.

For example, it is a 32-bar tune, with an AABA structure. You will discover that about 80% of all the traditional jazz tunes we play are based on such a structure.

The Middle Eight uses the chord progression:
III7  -  III7 - VI7  - VI7 - II7  - II7  - V7  - V7.

It is essential to become fluent in improvising over this progression because dozens of our tunes use it for the Middle Eight (sometimes with very slight variations).

The 'A' sections also use essential, basic chord progressions, all beginning with three bars on the tonic chord (I).

So beginners would do very well to practise improvising over this tune. It is an archetype for so much of the music you will have to learn to play in a traditional jazz band. If you can succeed with this tune, you are launched on your career as a jazzman.

I was surprised to discover that this song is well over 100 years old. It was composed in 1904. The music is by Kerry Mills, who also contributed such tunes as At a Georgia Camp Meeting, Whistling Rufus and Redwing to the repertoire that our bands still play. The words are by Andrew Sterling, who collaborated with several well-known composers over a number of years. (He also wrote the words for Wait Till The Sun Shines, Nellie, for example.)

In original performance, it had seven narrative verses (interesting in the context of their time), each followed by the Chorus. But generally it's best these days to forget the verses and work with the very fine Chorus. Here's my attempt to write it out. I hope this helps someone. By the way, it was originally composed - like several of the tunes we play - in waltz time (3/4) but it works very well as a typical jazz number in 4/4.

Finally, here, as a matter of interest, is how the beginning of the first verse looks in the original sheet music:

Post 544: AL BOWLLY

A slightly unusual topic for today, as some of you may think it has little to do with traditional jazz. I want to say a few words about Al Bowlly.

My attention was first drawn to him a few years ago by my friend Carsten, who enjoys both traditional jazz and the dance band music from the Golden Era. And I have since found that many traditional jazz musicians have great admiration and respect for Al Bowlly.

So what made him special? Listen to a couple of his performances (available on YouTube) and I think the answer will be obvious. You could start with this one (My Melancholy Baby), where he actually appeared on film: CLICK HERE.

Note what he achieves, through sheer quality of voice and expression, without any more support than a very good pianist. And from 2 minutes 04 seconds, when the pair begin to swing the tune, you can't help wishing he were with us today and available to sing with our bands.

Of course, he was what we would call a 'crooner' rather than a jazz singer, but there is such a massive overlap between what the crooners and the jazz singers were doing, and the tunes they were playing in those years. It is easy to see how he must have influenced and inter-acted with the development of traditional jazz. Among the tunes he recorded, for example, were All of Me, Blue Skies, Dark Eyes, Please, Roll Along Prairie Moon, All I Do is Dream of You, Whispering, Isle of Capri, Goodnight Sweetheart, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, South of the Border, Guilty, What a Little Moonlight Can Do, The Very Thought of You, It Had To Be You, Marie, The Old Spinning Wheel, Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen, True, and Blue Moon. These are tunes being played by traditional jazz bands in Royal Street and in the Frenchmen Street Bars of New Orleans to this day. I doubt whether such tunes would be in our repertoire if the likes of Al Bowlly had not first popularised them.

Try this 1931 recording of Guilty. Isn't it lovely?  

CLICK HERE.

There are plenty more performances for you to enjoy on YouTube. And if you are sufficiently enthused to wish to buy some Al Bowlly recordings, I can assure you there are more than a dozen different CDs available.

Al was born in 1898. He had an unusual and tempestuous life, during which he knew both the highs and lows of show business. There is plenty about him on the internet - for example in Wikipedia - so I will not repeat all that may be easily found elsewhere. Sufficient to say that his parents were Greek and Lebanese, that he grew up in South Africa, that he had various jobs before getting into singing and playing guitar with dance bands, and that between 1929 and the late 1930s, he made hundreds of recordings (mainly with Lew Stone's Band and Ray Noble's Orchestra), and became a big star on the radio both in the United Kingdom and America.

My friend Carsten told me: Both Noble (who composed songs specifically with Bowlly's voice in mind - many of which remain 'standards' to this day) and Stone were excellent arrangers and knew exactly how to blend Bowlly's singing talent and vocal range with that of their bands, and the results were exceptionally good, whether in ballad or 'hot' number mode.

Carsten also told me that Ray Pallett, owner and publisher of the Memory Lane magazine, brought out a 400-page meticulously-researched biography - They Called Him Al - which may be considered the definitive work, if you should wish to explore Mr. Bowlly's life in greater depth.

Sadly, Al Bowlly was killed on 17 April 1941 in his London apartment when it was hit by the blast from a parachute mine dropped by the Luftwaffe. He was only 43 years old. I was also in London that night, surviving the bombing in our family's Anderson shelter. But I was too young to understand what was going on; or to be aware that, a mile or two away from me, the life of one of our finest singers had been cut short.

Post 490: 'DOING A STRETCH' - TUBA SKINNY TURNING WATER INTO WINE

Blind Blake

My regular correspondent Phil Lynch in the USA, who knows a great deal about our music and its history, often sends me interesting and useful bits of information.

In his most recent email, he made a great point and expressed it very well. It was about the way Tuba Skinny can take a very ordinary tune from long ago and somehow recreate it as a great piece of jazz music. He is so right.

Here's what Phil wrote:

As you well know, part of T.S.'s genius is finding average string band songs and creating something unique...turning water into wine.

Doing a Stretch (slang for spending time in prison) is, I think, one of Blind Blake's more mediocre tunes, but T.S. turns it into something special.

CLICK HERE for the Blind Blake original.

And now CLICK HERE for Tuba Skinny's version.

Phil is right, isn't he?

Post 479: 'MOOSE MARCH'

My introduction to 'Moose March' was hearing the Ken Colyer band play it about 50 years ago. Probably Ken had picked up the tune during his time with the musicians in New Orleans.

In order to learn tunes to play on my cornet and keyboard, I like first to try to establish the dots and chords for storage in my mini-filofaxes. Here's what I came up with for 'Moose March'.

You will note that it has two themes - the main 32-bar melody and the 'fanfare' interlude. This is how jazz bands can still occasionally be heard playing it.

What I did not discover until very recently is that this traditional jazz 'standard' is in fact taken from a quite long and complex good old-fashioned brass band march, called The Moose. It was composed in 1909 by Mr. P. Hans Flath (about whom I know nothing). It has a 4-Bar Introduction, followed by a first Theme of 32 bars. Then comes another Theme, also of 32 bars. Next there is a four-bar link (the start of 'The Trio' - see below) leading to a change of key from Eb to Ab and ONLY THEN comes the 32-bar Theme and 16-bar Fanfare Interlude as played by the jazz bands. So the truth is that when we play Moose March we are really using only 48 bars of a much longer composition. That's the kind of thing that happened in the early days of jazz repertoire creation.

Post 478: 'THE MINER'S DREAM OF HOME'

It has been some time since I heard a band play The Miner's Dream of Home - one of the oldest tunes in our repertoire: it was composed in 1891.

It used to be a favourite of the late English trumpet-player and bandleader Sonny Morris. His playing was always tasteful and he enjoyed sentimental and gentle melodies such as this.

It is easy to play, since it has a simple 32-bar melody, to be taken only at a moderate pace; and the chord sequence is basic - pretty well intuitive.

So may I recommend it to you, especially if you are a 'learning' band wishing to increase your repertoire? Here's how I have it in my mini-filofax collection.

If you would like to hear the tune performed very pleasantly and with appropriate unpretentiousness by an English jazz quartet, click here. Should you wish to offer a vocal, the words are:

I saw the old homestead, and the faces I love.
I saw England's valleys and dells.
And I listened with joy, as I did when a boy,
To the sound of the old village bells.
The log was burning brightly.
'Twas a night that should banish all sin,
For the bells were ringing the old year out
And the new year in.

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 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 332: 'SOMETIMES MY BURDEN' AND 'SILVER BELL'

The popular traditional jazz number Silver Bell, with music composed in 1910 by Percy Weinrich, has two themes, the first comprising 16 bars in the key of F. The melody 'bounces down the ladder', you may recall. Then it modulates into the key of Bb, for a Chorus which also comprises 16 bars.

There is also a popular spiritual called Sometimes My Burden is Too Hard to Bear, played by many jazz bands. I have heard people wonder whether the music for this spiritual was 'lifted' from the Chorus of Silver Bell.

Well, the original Weinrich sheet music proves that they are indeed exactly the same tune.

So I think we should credit the composer of Sometimes My Burden as Percy Weinrich and not as 'Anon' or 'Trad'. According to one source, the words for Sometimes My Burden were added in the 1940s by someone called Eugene Williams.

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 244: 'IN THE UPPER GARDEN'

It's confusing but there are two lovely gospel numbers entitled In the Garden (1912) and In the Upper Garden (1900) and they are both played by traditional jazz bands. As far as I can tell - and by a strange coincidence - they were both composed by Charles Austin Miles. He was born New Jersey in 1868; he died in 1946. After a short career as a pharmacist, Charles became a full-time composer and music-publisher, specialising in gospel songs, of which he wrote several dozens.

My friends and I decided to add one of them to our repertoire. It is the one composed in 1900, known as In The Upper Garden. 

The Verse begins with the words Just beyond the River Jordan and the Chorus with We shall meet them some bright morning.

Having listened to it on YouTube, I decided it went like this. I put it in F:

For Bb instruments such as mine, it transposes into G:

And (better still) I'm very grateful to Ron Flack in Australia who, since reading the above, has sent me his transcription (for Bb instrument, but with concert chords) of the George Lewis version:

And more recently still, Brian Hutchinson - also in Australia - kindly sent me photocopies of the sheet music.

In The Upper Garden has to be played at a slow tempo, with much caressing of the simple harmonies.

As for the other In The Garden hymn, it is beautiful too and is written in 3/4 time. This is indeed the time signature in which even jazz bands usually play it. But that may be a subject for another day. It begins with the words:
I come to the garden alone
While the dew is still on the roses
And the voice I hear falling on my ear
The Son of God discloses.
(Chorus)
And He walks with me, and He talks with me,
And He tells me I am His own;
And the joy we share as we tarry there,
None other has ever known.

Post 229: GUS KAHN - HIS LEGACY

Gus Kahn

Having written recently about the great, though brief, song-writing partnership of Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh, it occurred to me that we traditional jazz lovers are also deeply indebted to the lyricist Gus Kahn for many of the songs in our standard repertoire.

In his main partnership with the composer Walter Donaldson, Kahn gave us such songs as:

My Baby Just Cares For Me
That Certain Party
Making Whoopee
Carolina in the Morning
Love Me or Leave Me
I Never Knew That Roses Grew
Yes, Sir, That's My Baby
I Wonder Where My Baby is Tonight

In fact, Kahn wrote over 100 songs with his friend Walter Donaldson.

But Kahn also wrote (with Isham Jones):

I'll See You in My Dreams

Spain

It Had to be You

And with Egbert Von Alstyne he gave us:

Pretty Baby

Memories

On the Road to Home Sweet Home

It Looks Like a Big Time Tonight

With other collaborators he wrote:

Coquette

Crazy Rhythm

Toot Toot Tootsie

Ukulele Lady

Ain't We Got Fun

Chloe

Side by Side

On the Alamo

Nobody's Sweetheart Now

You Stepped Out of a Dream

Dream a Little Dream of Me

What a man!  You can't attend traditional jazz concerts without frequently hearing songs with lyrics by Kahn.

So who was Gus?

Like so many of the people involved in American popular music in the first half of the Twentieth Century, he came from a family of immigrants. Gustav Kahn was born in Koblenz, Germany, in 1886 but his family had gone to seek their fortune in the USA by the time he was four. They lived in Chicago. After working in a mail order business, Gus became successful in his mid-twenties at writing lyrics and soon had hits with Memories and Pretty Baby.

Taking on the career full-time, Gus wrote for stage revues and Hollywood movies, collaborating at various times with pretty well all the contemporary big names in American popular music. Sadly, he died following a heart attack at the age of only 54.

Post 177: 'CHICKEN AIN'T NOTHIN' BUT A BIRD'

Chicken Ain't Nothin' But a Bird? It's a simple, romping 32-bar a - a - b - a tune.

You can find some enjoyable examples of this song on YouTube.

At first a source who is normally reliable gave me the (incorrect) information that this song was composed in 1899 by Bob Cole and J. R. Johnson. (They wrote the famous jazz number Under The Bamboo Tree.) However, I was unable to find any evidence to substantiate the theory that they wrote Chicken Ain't Nothin' But a Bird. Then reader Stan Cummins discovered that there was a 'chicken' song that Bob Cole performed at about that time, but it was a different song, so that must have caused the confusion.

A more convincing source said the song was composed by Emmett 'Babe' Wallace (born in Brooklyn, 1909; died 2006). He was a singer, a composer, an actor and a writer. I think he must have written the song in about 1939, in time for such performers as Cab Calloway (1940) to make a feature of it.

This information has since been confirmed for me by an email from Jimy Bleu (see below) who tells me he is Mr. Wallace's grandson.

The song appears to go something like this.

My name is Jimy Bleu & I'm writing to give you some information about my grandfather Emett 'Babe' Wallace who is indeed the writer of "Chicken Ain't Nothing But A Bird" (I still receive royalties on his composition) as well as standards he wrote for Benny Goodman, Kenny Durham, Django Reinhard & many others. He actually wrote "Chicken" for Ella Fitzerald whom he was dating at the time, but she was under contract to record other material, so Cab Calloway picked it up from him. In the mid '90's Burger King licensed the Cab Calloway version for their chicken sandwich campaign in which Babe received a very large amount for the use of the tune........Ella did record a few of his tunes eventually, one of them "Old Mother Hubbard" becoming a relative hit, especially when it was picked up to be used in a 'Betty Boop' cartoon.

I am actually in post-production on a documentary about him. He was a gifted singer, pianist, guitarist, composer/arranger & actor who just happened to be sort of like the character "Forrest Gump", a person who can be seen in various photographs or movies with major stars. Below are the links. However, what the writer of the blog leaves out about Babe fronting Ella's band was that they were dating. Ella was only around 18 (?) & didn't know anything about fronting & maintaining a band, so Babe took the band over for a time when Chick Webb died & left her the band in his will. I attached a photo of him with Ella as well as stills from the classic movie "Stormy Weather" he starred in. I also attached a picture of him & I about a year before he died at the age of 96.

What happened with "Stormy Weather" is that Babe was the leading man to Lena Horne. A few months before the film's wrap, the studio heads decided to cast Bill "Bojangles" Robinson as the leading man to have another top name (Lena wasn't yet well-known) & they put Babe as the 2nd lead. Bill was then in his mid '60's & they dyed his grey hair black. Babe was 34, Lena 26. The positive note about the whole incident is that Babe renewed his friendship with Harold Nicholas ('The Nicholas Brothers') & they would often go double-dating with the Dandridge sisters (Dorothy whom Harold eventually married & Vivian whom Babe has a son with)..................7 years before "Stormy Weather", Babe was given the lead with Nina Mae McKinney in a Black film classic called "Sugar Hill" (also known as "The Black Network") with Harold. I attached a pic collage of him in that film. They remained close friends until Harold's death. I took Babe to Harold's memorial here in NYC & before the memorial when Harold's wife saw Babe standing in the back, they stood up & made the usher go get him to sit up front with them.

http://illkeepyouposted.typepad.com/ill_keep_you_posted/2008/05/fine-and-mellow.html 

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0908627/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm

Post 107: HOW THOSE OLD TUNES WERE PASSED DOWN

The names, content and shapes of some of the good old jazz tunes have become confused over the past century. Studying the old classics can be hard work.

Here's the kind of thing that happened over the decades.

First, in 1908, an American composer (classically-trained and influenced by the structures of classical music), composes a tune he calls Moss Point Rag. It is published as piano sheet music, running to 6 sides of paper. Moss Point Rag comprises three sections in G, followed by a change of key to C for the fourth theme - the 'Trio’.

It is an attractive, merry piece of music, full of subtleties, syncopations, elaborate decorations of the melody and complexities:

Between 1910 and the Second World War, music of this kind (of which there is plenty preserved in the university archives of America) gives the pianists in the bar-rooms of New Orleans and Chicago the chance to show off their considerable skills.

At the same time, the early dance-bands and jazz-bands (with anything from three to ten musicians) are attracted by Moss Point Rag and want to play it. But they cannot possibly play it as written: the complexities you see in the music above are fair enough for a pianist’s fingers, but the melody-playing trumpet or cornet at the heart of the band could not be expected to cope with such melodies. Even a virtuoso player would soon be exhausted if he had to produce such a flow of notes (including many high ones) for a whole evening’s gig.

So the bands play Moss Point Rag in their own way. They simplify the melodies, sometimes using a cornet (or violin in the earliest days) with clarinet to do what they can to share the tricky bits. They capture the essence of the melody, rather than its many decorative notes. Some of them leave out the section called the 'Trio', because they find it less interesting or too difficult. They add a new section, either of their own invention or plagiarised from a different composition.

(For an example of this sort of thing happening, consider Hilarity Rag, composed by James Scott in 1910. To see the sheet music and hear how it sounded as a piano piece, CLICK HERE. But to hear how it was re-interpreted when a jazz band got hold of it, CLICK HERE. You see what I mean?)

In 1928, a band based in Chicago uses just the first two themes (much simplified) from Moss Point Rag, puts them into the key of Bb for convenience and records this version under a new name, Uptown Strut.

Towards the end of this period, a clever bandleader-arranger in New York records with his band a new tune called Spring Street Stomp but later researchers will find it is suspiciously similar to Moss Point Rag!

After the War, during the Bebop era, the tune is rarely heard in any form.

But twenty years later, in what has been called the New Orleans (or Dixieland) Revival, young traditional jazz bands again blossom in the USA, in Europe and in the rest of the world. A bandleader in England picks up the old 78rpm Chicago recording of Uptown Strut from 1928, works out his own version of it by ear and gets his band to record it. Many pub bands buy the record, like it and introduce it into their repertoire.

In their turn, these Revivalists inevitably and unwittingly make further slight changes. Maybe they have to guess at some of the notes that are indistinct on the scratchy old records.

So the band (I’m now talking 1950 – 1965) plays its own version: each player has it in his head but the chances are that it is never written down.

The late Ray Foxley (he died in 2002) was the pianist in Ken Colyer’s band. Ray once told me he would learn tunes from those old 78 rpm records a few bars at a time – first listening and then working out the notes and chords on his piano.

Move on another 30 years and you find traditional jazz in decline again, though still with enough bands and enthusiasts throughout the world to keep it going as a minority art form. Uptown Strut is in their repertoire, with the composer usually credited as 'Anon' or 'Trad'.

==========
Footnote

Here are some of the old tunes still passed on from band to band in one form or another:

Blame it on the Blues (also known as Quincy Street Stomp), At a Georgia Camp Meeting, Big Chief Battleaxe, Bluebells Goodbye (also known as Bright Eyes Goodbye), Bugle Boy March (also known as The American Soldier), Ce Mossieu Qui Parle (maybe originally C’est Moi Seul Qui Parle), Chrysanthemum Rag, Climax Rag (also known as Astoria Strut), Creole Belles, Dill Pickles, Don’t Go ‘way, Nobody (almost identical to several other tunes, such as Everybody’s Talking About Sammy), Dusty Rag and Thriller Rag (both composed by a lady from Indianapolis), Golden Leaf Strut (also known as Milenberg Joys - main theme), Grace and Beauty, Gettysburg March, Hiawatha Rag, Jenny’s Ball, Kinklets, Maple Leaf Rag, Moose March, Shim-Me-Sha-Wobble, 1919 March (also known as The Rifle Rangers), Ostrich Walk, Panama Rag, Salutation March (probably a Victorian quadrille originally), Silver Bell (also known as Sometimes My Burden - second theme), Smoky Mokes, Snake Rag, That Teasing Rag, and Uptown Bumps. And how on earth did Ta-Wa-Bac-A-Wa become The Bucket's Got a Hole In It?

I doubt whether you could walk into a music shop today and buy the authentic printed original music for any of these. Please let me know if I'm wrong.