Post 580: THE REMARKABLE 'LOVESICK DUO'

In my Post Number 542, I tried to answer the question 'How many musicians does it take to form a jazz band?'. You can read that post BY CLICKING HERE.

Today a reader of my blog, Graham Beech, would like to draw to your attention a wonderful little 'band' that consists of only two musicians. Graham writes:

They are based in Italy and their names are Paolo Roberto Pianezza and Francesca Alinovi. They perform as The Lovesick Duo.

I knew nothing about these musicians until recently, when I came across their videos on YouTube and was greatly impressed by their energy, musicianship, teamwork and their appeal to both young and old.

Paolo is brilliant on the resonator guitar and is also a very good singer, so his voice adds a third 'instrument' to their performance.

Francesca is also to be heard singing occasionally, putting in a perfect harmony. We have noticed in recent years that there has been a conspicuous rise in the number of ladies playing string bass in our kind of music. I would rate Francesca right up there with the very best of them.

They play a wide variety of music and I suppose they would not describe themselves as a traditional jazz band. But they play exactly as traditional jazz musicians aspire to do. For example, try their version of 'I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate': CLICK HERE. Great playing. Great entertaining. They are an example to us all.

And what about this 2017 video as an illustration of their talent and virtuosity? CLICK HERE.

Another good introduction to them is this video (CLICK ON HERE): you get to meet the couple at Lake Garda and can then enjoy an energetic performance of 'No Particular Place to Go'. Finally, CLICK HERE to see them busking very pleasantly in Venice.

Post 314: LISTENING TO TRADITIONAL JAZZ

An American reader wrote to me about listening skills.

He said that, if you are in a club and can see the musicians, it is easy to pick out the sound of each instrument. But when you are at home listening to recordings, it can sometimes be difficult to do so.

Maybe his theory is correct. I like listening to string quartets and I can tell you I find it very difficult to distinguish the viola from the cello when I'm listening to the radio or a CD.

This led me to think about wider issues concerned with listening.

Despite not being all that brilliant as a player, I am lucky enough to be asked to play in various bands from time to time. And I am often surprised at how limited the listening skills of the audience seem to be. If we make a horrible mistake (it certainly happens), nobody in the audience even blinks an eyelid. Play something really badly and people tell you how great your music is. Play something really well and nobody takes any notice.

I also have accumulated plenty of evidence that many people can't tell which instruments which sounds are coming from - except when it is blindingly obvious - when someone takes a solo at the front of the stage.

Bass players, banjo players and guitarists fare particularly badly. I'm sorry to say the typical audience member hardly notices their individual skills, except on the rare occasion when they are given a solo chorus. Ask someone what he thought of the string bass player's contribution to the ensemble and he tells you he didn't notice.

It's the same with visual skills. I remember once playing in a quartet for a couple of hours in a church with a seated audience. At the end, a gentleman came up to us to ask whether we could play at a birthday party the following month. As we reached for our diaries, he said - to our amazement - 'Now how many of you are there? Five, isn't it?'

Similar was the occasion when I played in a quartet of guitar, tuba, clarinet and trumpet. At the end of our first set, we were told: 'We're going to draw the raffle now. So can we have a roll on the drums please?'

How unobservant audiences can be!

I have also met people who have attended good jazz performances and yet can't recall anything about them - apart from a joke made by the leader or the fact that someone put some funny words to a well-known song. Ask them how good the string bass player was and they don't even remember whether there was a bass player.

Post 233: MEET TYLER THOMSON OF THE SHOTGUN JAZZ BAND

Today let's play Fantasy Traditional Jazz. Imagine you have to put together your 'dream' band - drawn from the very best musicians alive today. Who would you have on string bass?

I can tell you that I would pick the young Canadian Tyler Thomson.

Tyler comes from Toronto where he mastered his trade with The Happy Pals Band. His inspiration was the great New Orleans bassist Alcide Pavageau (1888-1969), who recorded with the bands of George Lewis and Bunk Johnson in the 1940s and who also played in the early days of Preservation Hall.

Tyler is sensationally good, whether he is playing a sympathetic background in a slow number, or pounding a solid 4/4 in a pulsating performance of a quick tune. For a fine example of his work, look at this video (CLICK HERE TO VIEW) and note especially his dazzling solo chorus in Oriental Man. It comes at 17 minutes 36 seconds. It's heartening to think he was only 25 years old at the time of this performance.

As you can see, Tyler plays now in The Shotgun Jazz Band. When I met him during my visit to New Orleans in April 2015, he told me he had gone to New Orleans 'for a vacation' in 2013 and had stayed ever since.

Of course this was one of his jokes. I quickly discovered three things about Tyler:

(1) Offstage, he hardly ever stops joking. In fact, all members of The Shotgun Jazz Band are constantly joking, teasing and laughing and I'm sure this is one reason why they strike anyone who meets them as a 'happy family' as well as a happy band.

(2) He is so modest about his music-making that it's impossible to get him to talk seriously about it.

(3) Tyler is obsessed by sport - both as a player and a spectator. Sometimes, between tunes, you see him on his mobile catching up on the latest scores. He broke his foot playing basketball early in 2015 and was going around on crutches (but still playing gigs) for quite a while. I was pleased to see him on the first day off crutches, though still hobbling.

So Tyler will tell you he has been playing string bass since his late teenage years but still has no idea what he is doing, apart from having fun.

Tyler playing in
The Shotgun Jazz Band,
April 2015.

Having followed Marla and John Dixon to New Orleans, he joined them playing on the streets, where they already had the nucleus of today's Shotgun Jazz Band. They made CDs and started to get invitations to play in the clubs, bars and festivals. By 2015, they were so busy with bookings (averaging five a week) that they no longer needed to play on the streets for tips. Tyler is pleased about that. He found the street work increasingly tiring, especially when - because of the competition - it became so hard to secure a good spot. (Some member of the band would have to grab the spot the night before and man it all through the night if they were to be sure of having it in the morning.)

Despite his jokes, Tyler clearly knows exactly what he is doing when he is playing. He doesn't put a foot wrong or hit an incorrect chord while maintaining a rock-steady four-beats-to-the-bar (sometimes eight) bass line. I have never seen him refer to a chord book. He has internalised the chord sequences of a huge range of tunes.

It's not surprising that this exciting player is now much in demand. He is booked by such long-established greats as Michael White and Greg Stafford to play in their bands from time to time.

So since 2014, Tyler has been playing about five gigs a week, mainly with The Shotgun Jazz Band. Its dynamic leader - the trumpet player Marla Dixon - is a fellow Canadian who also worked and studied with The Happy Pals in Toronto. Marla's husband John plays banjo in the band. He and Tyler together provide a formidable rhythmic backing for the band, as you must have noted from the video. John Dixon's jazz hero was the banjo player George Guesnon (1907-1968) who played in such legendary bands as those of Papa Celestin and Sam Morgan, George Lewis and Kid Thomas Valentine. Like Tyler's hero Pavageau, George Guesnon also played in the earliest days at Preservation Hall. It's easy to see how The Shotgun Jazz Band is a direct descendant from those great bands.

And (like so many of the young New Orleans musicians) Tyler can also play play a second instrument - in his case the piano. He is no mean pianist when working in a jazz band, as this video demonstrates: CLICK HERE TO VIEW.

The third member of the Shotgun's rhythm section is the drummer Justin Peake, whose light 4/4 touch has fitted in perfectly with the style of John and Tyler. Unfortunately for the band, Justin has gone off to college, but he still plays with them whenever he can.

When Justin is unavailable, John and Tyler have found they can do such a powerful job - even as a two-man rhythm section - that they are happy enough to play often without a drummer, especially in the smaller more intimate venues. Here's an example (from April 2015) of such a performance:

CLICK HERE TO VIEW.

A further interesting point about Tyler is that early in 2016 he acquired some recording equipment from the 1930s, restored it and launched into making 78 rpm records. He easily persuaded several of the very best musicians based in New Orleans to visit his 'studio' and make records, just for fun at first, I think. But by February 2017 he had started seriously to produce records likely to become historically very important.