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 176: 'JACKSON STOMP' - ELEVEN BARS!

Here's something surprising - a tune comprising ELEVEN bars (measures).

I am acquainted with perhaps a thousand tunes played by traditional jazz bands, but virtually all the tunes contain multiples of four bars. Most common are the 12-bar blues and 32-bar standards.

In all those hundreds of tunes, the only one made up of eleven bars is Jackson Stomp. 

Yes. Jackson Stomp really has eleven bars. When I first noticed this, I could not believe my ears. Had I miscounted? I checked and re-checked.

It felt like a 12-bar blues but sure enough it really was complete after 11 bars.

I found out that it originated with Cow Cow Blues, written and recorded in 1928 by Cow Cow Davenport. You can hear this on You Tube. In this form, it was a standard 12-bar, played in boogie woogie style.

But the tune was taken up by Charles McCoy ('Papa Charlie'), who lived from 1909 to 1950. He slightly adapted it into Jackson Stomp and recorded it with his colleague Bo Carter in The Mississippi Mud Steppers. It was at this point that it became the tune of eleven bars.

They also recorded it again (this time eleven bars with lyrics) as  The Lonesome Train That Carried My Girl Away.

Now how is it possible for an 11-bar tune to sound right? What is the trick?

I'm not sure that I have the answer, but let me try.

Taking the chords of a 12-bar as (at their most basic):

I   I   I   I   IV   IV   I   I   V   V   I   I

we find that Jackson Stomp IS essentially a 12-bar, but with the clever twist of omitting Bar 8. 

I   I   I   I   IV   IV   I   V  V   I   I

To hear Jackson Stomp pleasantly played by a modern Jug Band, try this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76OP2FVRvt0

or watch the great Tuba Skinny play it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGuLZfMqIoc

Tuba Skinny play it in Bb. (That means C for the Bb trumpet.) I worked it out for inclusion in my mini-filofax for my trumpet and now I have a go at playing it from time to time.

And here's another curiosity - the only 13-BAR blues I can think of. It occurs as the Interlude in Blind Boy Fuller's Untrue Blues. This is essentially an eight-bar tune, but he has two guitar links of 13 bars, which seemed to be based on the 12-bar blues, but with Bar 10 repeated. When Tuba Skinny revived this tune in 2014, they scrupulously followed the original and kept the 13-bar section.

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FOOTNOTE
The book Playing Traditional Jazz by Pops Coffee is available from Amazon.