Sun So Hot I Froze To Death

American Song # 4: Tiger Rag

2010-10-06T21:38:00.023+01:00

Ladies and Gentlemen...the TIGER RAG!

When dealing with jazz, there are lot of songs which are constantly pulled up by bands as a way of showing off their massive skillz and proving their committment to jazz history. On one end of the scale, there are the likes of "Summertime", "My Funny Valentine" and any number of Duke Ellington composition to be played "soulfully" and bore everyone to tears but make themselves seem terribly, terribly clever...

On the other end of the scale is "Tiger Rag", which what a band plays when they simply want to tear the place apart with speed, crazy solos and making animal noises. Of course, "Tiger Rag" has far more significance to it than that...let's start at the beginning...

The origins of "Tiger Rag" are highly disputed to this day - regardless, the song comes from New Orleans and was one of the first true jazz standards, perhaps THE first if you take into account that most other songs played by jazz bands were either traditional folk numbers, ragtime compositions or pop songs. "Tiger Rag" is a rag no doubt, but it is too simplisitic and repetitive for the classic ragtime style of Scott Joplin. On the other hand, it's too weird and crazy to fit into the folk/country rag grouping. It's a song which lives to be improvised upon - I doubt there is anyone who has heard the song played without improvisation and it might not even sound any good without it. The main hook of the song is "growl" of the tiger in the chorus - usually provided by trombone - which is often contrasted with the band members chanting "HOLD THAT TIGAH!" over and over until the audience is driven into an absolute fury!

Now, the largest majority consensus on the composition of the tune levels it with the group that first recorded it - the Original Dixieland Jazz Band.

It was the first song recorded by the ODJB, but not the first released - regardless, when people first heard this song being blasted out of their gramophones in 1917, they must have been scraping their brains off the back of the wall:

You get the jist. Since this record was released, the song has always been credited to the band members, Nick La Rocca, Eddie Edwards, Henry Ragas, Tony Sbarbaro, and Larry Shields with Harry DaCosta writing lyrics. But numerous people have claimed the song's origins go back much further. Jelly Roll Morton claimed to have written it at one point, advancing on an old french quadrille - while it is probably a lie to say he wrote it, it probably does have its origin as a french quadrille. It may go back as far as the 19th century and others have mentioned recalling the song as being played for a long time around New Orleans. It's very likely that the ODJB heard various parts played around the city and integrated it into a whole which was the later imitated version.

And if you will let me wax lyrically for a moment, let emphasise to you how this record would have been taken in 1917 - there was simply nothing like this, NOTHING. People have slagged the ODJB for not being black but my god, you cannot believe how this psychotic music sounded when they first let it loose upon an unsuspecting nation. Music had never been improvised like this before, nor had it ever been played at such insane tempos or volumes. It makes the rock 'n roll and punk revolutions look tame by comparison.

Their version was heavily imitated - there 136 cover versions by 1942 alone. All of them were essentially used by the respective artists as an attempt to show off their prowess in dazzling, fiery style and give the audience something to really rocked to. This should not mean that "Tiger Rag" is placed down when compared to the likes of "Summertime", it just serves a different purpose.

It would be impossible to go through all the great versions, so let me just stick to a few:

In 1932, his royal Satchness, Louis Armstrong got ahold of the tune and performed it during a tour in Germany - compare this with the ODJB version to understand how far Louis advanced jazz since 1917. It's so fast it almsot becomes a blur and Louis' solo takes the song so far from its original melody as to make it almost unrecognisable:

It was - and is - also a big string-based number. Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grapelli's guitar and violin-based version is probably how the song is best known today...

As well as another more fingerstyle version by the great Chet Atkins:

Then there was Duke Ellington's 6 minute long version from the early 30's. This version has less improvisation than most New Orleans versions bascially because it's a version from the North and as such is more of a swing arrangement. Doesn't matter, because when it's this loud, fast and furious, all's right with the world:

Finally, since it's impossible to list all the great versions of "Tiger Rag" - and since my personal favourite 8 minute version by the Preservation Hall Jazz Band seems not available on YouTube - let's end with the Washboard Rhythm Kings, whose manic version is a rare version that features the original lyrics:

The "Tiger Rag" kicked off the jazz age, an era of sex-fuelled hedonism with jazz was its aphrodisiac of choice. As the song plays, you can almost hear women tearing their dresses of to the hips, men slicking back their hair, homosexuals jumping out of the closet, bootleggers filling up their kegs and everyone going batshit in the nightclubs and speakeasies in an ecstatic, almost religious orgy of jazz fuelled mania. You can hear the KKK reeling in horror, the Catholic church crying into their alter wine and the older generations screaming for the amorality of it all! This was JAAAAAAZZZZ, man! And "Tiger Rag" was and IS it's anthem! Modern jazz musicians may have forgotten about it in favour of "respectability", but it was this that was grand artistic statement of the 20th century! It was a shotgun in the face of the Western world, a hand grenade in the camps of fascism and conservatism, the final death knell for the Victorian era and a herald for a new age! Highbrow and lowbrow, they all cry now: "PLEASE PLAY THAT TIGER RAG FOR ME!"

Robert Johnson SUCKS!!!

2010-08-24T23:45:00.037+01:00

Y'know who sucks? Robert Johnson.

"Oh no he didn't!" I hear you say. And as I hear the rampaging feet of a hundreds "blues purists" brandishing pitchforks and lynch ropes coming towards me, let me deconstruct and hopefully destroy the cult of personality that is Robert Johnson.

Now, of course, the obsession with Robert Johnson is part of a greater issue I'd like to call the "Delta Blues Mystique". The Delta Blues Mystique is that element that is called upon by every indie band and post-punk band who wants to try and seem rootsy and authentic as well the element called upon by every half-assed singer/songwriter who want to sound "dark", "gritty" and "soulful". The Delta Blues Mystique is the modern conception of "the blues" which arose some time in the 60's and it is a horribly patronising and perhaps downright racist and offensive idea which was formulated by a lot of rich, educated student-types. Basically, it is the idea that old, black (ooooh, they've gotta be black) guitar-playing musicians, who are either poorly-educated or uneducated and who prelude every song they play by mumbling something incomprehensible while journalists nod on and pat them on the head for being such good boys...

I think this is the quintessential example:

Now, it is absolutely certain that the interviewer inquiring of Son House the nature and origin of "the blues" has written out his own idea of where "the blues" came from and has studying text books and musical theory and history to culminate this idea. And you know what? It's probably right! But it's probably not "authentic" whereas when Son House mumbles some cenile shite about "it's...it's...it's a feeeeeeling!" that's so freaking "authentic" that it must be worth writing down and sticking on some poxy BBC4 documentary. (Not that I'm dissing BBC4 documentaries in general - the Folk America series was really very good)

Ah, that word "authentic" which has done more harm to blues music than any other in history. It embodies The Delta Blues Mystique and signifies a hipster attitude and an artistic worth based on a supposed insight into the way poor, stupid people live - so rich bohemians can feel they're somehow in touch with a subculture that they are in no way a part of. It's not the music, it's the association/ I mean, have you ever heard anyone insult a country bluesman? Well, you're about to! Son House is crap - I mean, his playing is the equivilent of having a seisure while slapping an out-of-tune dobro. Ah, but it's REAL! And that's what counts!

Now, I must say that the Delta blue is not my thing - I prefer piedmont and atlanta styles which use complex fingerpicking and ragtime influences, as well as witty, hip lyrics and in-key singing. Buddy Moss, Blind Boy Fuller, Blind Blake, Blind Willie McTell and the rest of those fellas. But as far as I can tell, the reason that Delta Blues, which refers to the likes of Robert Johnson, Son House, Charlie Patton and Tommy Johnson, is the most famous and lauded genres of blues is because it's simplistic. It requires very little brains or skill to play or sing, is often completely tuneless or out-of-tune and the lyrics are repetative and moronically simple. Which is, apparently, more "authentic".

This is where the root of the "authentic" issue comes from. Take a guy like Louis Armstrong and put him up against Son House. Why is Son House "authentic" while Louis Armstrong is not? They both came from the same poor backgrounds, both born around the same time (Louis Armstrong was actually one year older), both black and from the South. The difference? Louis went and learned to play an instrument, joined bands, innovated new musical ideas, learnt to read sheet music, played with a studied complexity and combined his own knowledge of folk music with modernistic ideas. While Son House sat and banged out the same out crap for 86 years without changing an iota.

All of which brings me back to Robert Johnson. Well, everything I said about Son House applies to Johnson too, but there is a lot more to it. For me, there is nothing more irritating than seeing endless 100 Best Guitarists lists online and in magazines filled to brim with the usual wankers like Slash, Jimmy Page, Eddie Van Halen and Eric Clapton and then stuck somewhere around the middle, Robert Johnson. It's ridiculous. Not just because Robert Johnson wasn't a very good guitarist, but because his style has nothing in common with anyone else in that list and you know he's only been placed as a point of hipster recognition. "Oh yes, we loooove Robert Johnson, he's sooooo dark and real! You know he sold his soul to the devil?!" Yeah, yeah, we all know he sold his soul to the devil and magically became an ingenious guitarist...in fact, more people know this than have ever even heard his recordings. More than anything it's this that embodies the Delta Blues Mystique. There is nothing special about Robert Johnson - in fact, he's not particularly good a guitarist at all. The likes of "If I Had Possession Over Judgement Day" could be played by someone who'd had about a week of guitar lessons. What counts is the hype.

Now, I must say, it's not entirely due to ignorance that Robert Johnson is so well known. When the album "King of the Delta Blues Singers" was released in 1961 it was for a lot of people, particularly in Britain, the only easily available country blues album and with the blues/folk revival kicking off it's hardly suprising that people ranted and raved about Robert Johnson in the absence of anything else. Still, that's not a complete excuse and it's certainly no excuse nowadays in this age of internet where people can find out about far superior (and far more enjoyable) blues musicians like Blind Blake, Peg Leg Howell, Bessie Smith and so on...it's all at your fingertips.

I'm not exactly one for shirking ideas of "authenticity", I would quickly mentioned. Or to put it another way, I do think that age does add value to music; surviving the ravages of time and changing culture is difficult and older music adds insight into a vanished period and provides a point-of-view and inspiration which simply can no longer exist. But that must be merely a part of it, rather than the main drive. And it often ends in hypocrisy - what's more "authentic", "Oh Susanna" or "Crossroads Blues"?

Stupid question.

The Secret Society - BLUEGRASS!

2010-06-29T00:26:00.013+01:00

Bluegrass, oh yes, Bluegrass me boys!

When people talk of music they like to refer to certain music as being "cult" movements. That is a style of music which has never (or rarely) broke into the mainstream, but which has maintained a long devoted group of followers whose very lives may revolve around the style and who can tell each other from miles away, like a secret handshake. And various genre fit neatly into this definition - krautrock, hardcore punk, cajun music, prog rock, The Grateful Dead in themselves and so on so forth. But reigning king (and certainly the longest lived) among these is Bluegrass. Perhaps nothing sums it up better than this:

There is a misconception in this post-"Oh Brother Where Art Thou" world that bluegrass and hillbilly music or old-timey music are almost synonymous, which is simply not true. Bluegrass originated in the late 1940's, post-World War II and could perhaps be seen as an evolution of hillbilly music. It took bluegrass to a new level of technical proficiency - a level of musicianship which is perhaps as technical as rural music gets.

Bluegrass is unsually in that, much like DJ Kool Herc with Hip-Hop, its creator can be narrowed down one individual - Bill Monroe.

Now, it would daft to say that Bill Monroe was WHOLLY responsible for bluegrass or that it came fully formed from him - but it almost did.

Bill Monroe started his career long before he became known as the "Father of Bluegrass" - at first in a duet with his brother Charlie. Here's a recording from the mid-1930's of them playing the classic "Banks of the Ohio":

There style at this point was basically like a more religious version of the Delmore Brothers - although Bill's mandolin playing was already reaching a high level of technical skill. In 1939, he put together the first incarnation of the Bluegrass boys, the band's name later giving the genre its name.

Perhaps it's best I now list what Bluegrass actually is and why it's different from old-timey music. As the sound of Bill Monroe's band evolved over the years from 1939 to 1945, eventually a set instrumental template came to rise. The classic bluegrass line-up is guitar, banjo, fiddle, double bass and, often, mandolin. This differs from the hillbilly line-up mainly due to the double bass, but essentially it's quite similar. It's the means of playing that makes the main difference - rather than the synchronised group playing of the old string bands, the various instrumentalists take it in turns to play the melody and variations of the melody up front as the lead instrument - as a musical form, it's very show-offy and perhaps slightly indulgent, but usually its so jaw-dropping you don't care. And the key thing is that essentially anyone can sit in a bluegrass jam and take a round with their instrument - take a look at this video of 59 people playing the bluegrass anthem, "Foggy Mountain Breakdown":

The actual position of Bluegrass music at its origin is somewhat confusing - on the one hand it was a reaction against the heavily eletric country music styles of the time, such as honky-tonk and western swing, with the bluegras boys being entirely acoustic based. On the other hand, there is often noted to be a jazz influence on Bluegrass, with the soloing concept being the most obvious example of this. Although later Bluegrass musicians would occassionally include jazz standards in their repetoires, Bill Monroe never did as far as I know. Still, the music was obviously more modernised than he would probably have liked to admit.

Bill Monroe's most famous song and biggest hit - and one of the few times Bluegrass cut the mainstream - is undoubtably "Blue Moon of Kentucky". The song is probably most famous for having been the first song ever recorded by Elvis Presley (that fella!), but the original's no slouch, from 1946:

In 1945, Bill Monroe made what is perhaps his second-most important contribution to Bluegrass after inventing it - he hired Earl Scruggs as his banjo player.

It's not really possible to put in words how important Earl Scruggs is: almost inarguably the most popular and famous Bluegrass musician of all time, he almost single-handedly revolutionised the banjo.

Before Earl Scruggs hit the scene, the banjo had rarely been used since the end of the 1920's. It was seen as a twee, old-fashioned instrument played by old men on porch swings. Although Snuffy Jenkins was a precursor - and Don Reno developed a similar style around the same time - Earl Scruggs took the banjo away from the old frailing, clawhammer and 2-finger picking techniques that had been popular with hillbilly musicians and string bands in the 1920's and created the 3-Finger Scruggs style, which favour melodic innovation in the form of rapidly played "rolls" involving long series of stacatto notes played really, really, REALLY freaking fast. This pretty much sums the man up:

Since then, pretty much every Bluegrass band has included this style and Earl Scruggs (who's still alive, in a first for this blog) remains as popular as ever to this day.

Presumably realising the potential of Scruggs as a star vehicle, Earl Scruggs and fellow Bluegrass boy Lester Flatt split off and formed The Foggy Mountain Boys.

They were perhaps the most successful Bluegrass group of all time, although it must be said that they were not as much a full-on Bluegrass bands as their predecessors or followers - presumably realising where their key selling point was, Scruggs's banjo playing (and occasional guitar playing) pretty much takes the main lead position with only the fiddle playing as another lead. I must say, I've never been terribly impressed with Lester Flatt's guitar playing - he pretty much does nothing other than play rhythm and his singing is often a bit too maudlin for my tastes. Still, it doesn't really matter when you take into account that their band was perhaps the loudest, wildest, fastest music ever produced. Oh yes. In 1949, Earl Scruggs wrote "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" the most well-known Bluegrass banjo composition of all time. I've already posted it twice on this post, but I have to post the original for consistency:

After this, Bluegrass began to take off like a shot, with groups like the Stanley Brothers (the first band to imitate the Monroe bluegrass style and determine that the style actually existed), Reno & Smiley, Jim & Jesse and more kicked off.

The Stanley Brothers have probably remained the most consistently popular over the years and particularly recently due to their inclusion in the "O Brother" soundtrack. Here's a playing of the traditional "It Takes A Worried Man" from Pete Seeger's TV show:

With the rise of Rock & Roll, Bluegrass, like all country music, faded from popularity. Except that it didn't really - it merely changed hands.

In the late 1950's and early 1960's, the Folk Revival happened and suddenly guys like Bill Monroe, Ralph Stanley and Earl Scruggs were being heralded heroes by a different institution altogether. The actual designation of Bluegrass as "Folk Music" is rather ambiguous. Certainly in the early days of Bluegrass, traditional songs were not that common, even if they did pop up occasionally. But as Bluegrass started being heralded as "folk music" rather than "country music", old-time songs started to feature much more prominently and new bluegrass bands started to focus almost exclusively on them.

Another innovation in the late 50's and early 60's was the rise to prominence of the guitar - since guitars were all the rage in the other forms of pop music, I suppose it made sense for the new generation to bring it up from merely being a rhythm instrument into a lead instrument. The Bluegrass picking style was quite different from earlier forms, though - although influenced by both jazz guitar and the bluesier stylings of honky-tonk, the main focus of Bluegras guitar was recreating fiddle tunes in a flat-picking note-based format. Perhaps the first person to do this was Joe Maphis in the late 1950's. Take a listen to this 1958 or so recording of the fiddle tune "Fire on the Mountain", here called "Fire on the Strings" (be warned, this is perhaps the most insane and fast guitar playing ever recorded...Joe Satriani and his ilk would burst into tears trying to play this):

For a better example of his insane ability to play pretty much every stringed instrument under the sun - and play them better than pretty much anyone else - take a look at this:

So yeah - that's Bluegrass! It's still a massively popular underground music form and one of the great American musical institutions. Of course, due to the influence of the likes of "Deliverence" and the "Beverly Hillbillies", it's become a bit associated with hickishness and down-home simplicity. But don't be fooled - it's one of the great virtuoso genres and worth dipping your feet into...

American Artist No. 4: Uncle Dave Macon

2010-04-21T20:15:00.014+01:00

This post has been a long time coming - Uncle Dave Macon has come up a lot in my blog posts and I do keep saying that he needs his own post - well here it is!

Uncle Dave Macon was perhaps the most influential, popular and important folksinger of the first half of the 20th century. He was known as the King of the Hillbillies (also the Dixie Dewdrop) and was consistently popular from his first single in 1924 up until his death in 1952. He was one of the very first performers on the Grand Ole Opry radio show in 1925 and people have been imitating his style, vocals, banjo-playing up to this day.

So what's the deal with Uncle Dave? Well there's a few point:

1. Age - Dave Macon was born in 1870. Think about that. It means he was born only 5 years after the end of the civil war and was a full grown adult in Victorian times. He didn't record until he was in his fifties and, as such, he gives a better insight into the folk music of the 19th century than pretty much any other perfomer - most folksingers only give their interpretations of 19th century music, Uncle Dave was actually there! He was older than any of the blues singers, older than Leadbelly, older than recorded music itself. Many of the songs which have become so well known as to merge into the public consciousness were probably written while he was adult and that's something to think about.

2. Wildness - Uncle Dave opitimised the "crazy old guy" persona. On most of his records he screams, hollers, whoops and howls out the lyrics with a reckless abandon and often the sound of him stomping his feet on the floor of the recording studio can be heard. His attitude towards folk music was at the complete opposite end from the bombastic pretentious nonsense that so many people now like to churn out. His music was wilder, faster and noisier than your average hardcore punk band and rocked mercilessly.

3. Repetoire - He had one of the widest ranging repetoires of any folk singer. Just take a look at the nine CD boxset, "Keep My Skillet Good and Greasy" and marvel at the sheer number of songs he knew and recorded. What's even more remarkable is the diversity. He played hillbilly, appalachian, proto-blues, minstrel songs, coon songs, vaudeville, cakewalks, spirituals, comic numbers and more. He played songs by both black and white musicians - some of which can be a bit, er, racially charged by today's standards. He had no qualms about using words like "nigger", "darkie" and "coon" and sometimes it can be a bit discomforting to listen to songs like "New Coon in Town" and "Run, Nigger, Run" - a song which was, ironically, originally sung by black slaves. He was, however, a man of his time; there no genuinely malicious intent behind these words, like if someone used them in today's society - the man was born in 1870 for christ's sake, concepts like racial sensitivity didn't even exist then. Not to mention he often gives kudos to the black folks at the beginning of some his songs - I dunno, it's these seeming contradictions that make the music that much more interesting.

Still, you really can't get the point about Uncle Dave until you hear his recordings - the song "Way Down the Old Plank Road", released in 1925, is probably his most famous song as it was included on Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music. And what a song it is - this is the recording that turned me forever onto the path of the old music and just listen to it and you'll know why:

Rockin' stuff. Uncle Dave's first single was "Keep My Skillet Good and Greasy" backed with "Hill Billie Blues", one of the first uses of the word "hillbilly". Most of Uncle Dave's early singles were just him by himself on banjo and, recorded before the 1926 advent of electrical recording, can sound a bit hollow, although his charisma still shines through the tinniness. In 1925 he teamed up with legendary country guitarist Sam McGee - who will also need a page of his own later - and expanded his sound to guitar and banjo in unison, with the guitar providing bass behind the banjo. These recording are where he really began to take off - other than "Way Down the Old Plank Road" he also recorded the negro spiritual "Poor Sinners, Fare You Well", the railroad classic "John Henry", crazy stomper "Whoop 'Em Up Cindy" and even dropped the banjo for "I've Got The Mourning Blues" in which Sam McGee plays some fingerstyle guitar in Open-D tuning. Here's "John Henry" in case you're one of the strange people who doesn't know this song - beginning, like many Uncle Dave records, with one of his peculiar monologues:

He expanded the line-up even further the following year adding Sam's brother Kirk on banjo and fiddle and Mazy Todd on fiddle to form the Fruit Jar Drinkers, who became the premiere string band of the 1920's. Their recordings are among the best recordings ever - I have already played "Sail Away Ladies" on an earlier blog, but screw it, I'm gonna play it again:

Perfection in music form. Another good recording from this era is "Jordan Am A Hard Road To Travel" a cover of Dan Emmett's 1853 mock-spiritual with heavily altered lyrics:

One of Uncle Dave's main points were political messages he often stuck in his songs - the above song, with lines like

I don't know, but I believe I'm right, the auto'll ruin the country,
Let's go back to the horse and buggy and try to save some money.

Before starting into music, Dave ran a horse and buggy business which collapsed due to the introduction of the horseless carriage - yeah, he's THAT old - and many of his songs have a personal beef with cars and, in particular, Henry Ford, who gets digged in the above song too.

Another, more explicitly political song of his is "Buddy, Won't You Roll Down the Line", which deals with a mining company leasing convicts to work in the mines and how free labour rebelled against this:

Way down yonder in Tennesee, they leased the convicts out
To work in the coal mines, against free labor South;
Free labor rebelled against it. To win it took some time.
But while the lease was in effect, they made 'em rise and shine.

BTW, the number of Uncle Dave Macon songs on YouTube is bloody disgraceful - it barely scratches the surface.

Anyhoo, another good example of his political style is "Wreck of the Tennessee Gravy Train". Recorded solo in 1930, the song deals with a scandal involving Henry Horton, the governer of Tennessee and the collapse of the Caldwell Company Bank in Tennessee, leaving the state $6 million in debt.

Uncle Dave kept going and touring with the Grand Ole Opry until basically the end of his life - he was beloved by everyone from his fellow old-timers, to the new breed of Bluegrass musicians, to the folkies of the 50's folk revival. In 1940, he appeared in the film "The Grand Ole Opry Movie". Here's a clip of him raving it up with his son, Dorris:

As well as a more crazed scene of him and bunch of other Opry stars playing something which sounds a bit like "Soldier's Joy":

The legacy of Uncle Dave Macon in today's day and age is that he essentially embodies the entire period of folk from after the end of the Civil War, post-Stephen Foster and post-Dan Emmett, up until the beginning of modern country music like the Carter Family their ilk. He presents folk music as it once was and, still often is, and always should be - loud, raucous, wild, accessible, moving, eccentric and unpretentious. So there!

Some of his stuff can be found on the Internet Archive, but if you're further interested, I highly recommend the boxset "Keep My Skillet Good and Greasy" which contains all his recordings. You can buy it or otherwise type it into google and see what happens...

Peng...

The History of Jazz?! Yes, the History of Jazz!

2010-03-18T14:17:00.009Z

I think it's right about time, boys and girls, that I write up a history of jazz! Not being a complete psychopath, I'm going to give you a rundown up until about 1922.

So, where does jazz start? Of course, this question is compelte bollocks - you can't say where it began officially, because no-one really knows. It began in such squallid, anti-social origins that no-one was ever really going to document it at the time. It began in the brothels and whorehouses of New Orleans around the turn of the century where the black and white working class would go to get drunk, consort with women of the night and then dance themselves in a coma to what was the filthiest, dirtiest most provocative and anti-social music ever created.

The biggest myth about jazz in the 1910's was that it was invented by white people. The biggest myth nowadays is that it was invented by black people. The fact is - and this is a fact that will never deny - it was a complete mixture of both. Jazz evolved out of an unholy union of ragtime (black music), marching bands (white music), blues (black music), hillbilly music (white music), spirituals (black music) and parlour music (white music). OK, even that's a bit of a simplification, but I still maintain that trying to racially segregate jazz is pointless and no-one understood this better than the jazz musicians themselves - in the 1920' and 30's, a time when white and black people often couldn't ride a bus together, jazz was the only institution where black and white musicians worked together on completely equal standing. In some ways, jazz is more responsible than any other popular culture for eradicating racial boundaries in society. When it came to jazz, musicians valued skill and coolness above all else and that superceded race. Black, white, jewish, italian, native american, didn't matter as long you could play that thang.

Still, for the sake of interest, I will try and form a history of the evolution of jazz through its practitioners. And of course, the name that comes on everyone's lips when discussing this is Buddy Bolden.

I've already written a lot about Buddy Bolden on the "Funky Butt" page I made earlier, so I won't go into great detail again. Let's just say that Buddy is credited with playing jazz since the late 19th century. The problem arises when you consider that he never made any recordings and no-one is alive who ever heard him play. The only evidence comes from other jazz musicians who heard him play and this is always risky - some guys, like Freddie Keppard and Bunk Johnson who allegedly played with him, claim he invented jazz, other guys like Jelly Roll Morton consider him just a loud ragtime player. When dealing with early jazz, it's soetimes hard to make the difference between jazz and ragtime, so I think it's best that the issue of King Bolden be left moot.

More importantly, we the have the aformentioned Freddie Keppard. Now the history of King Keppard is much more complicated - he inherited the jazz royalty crown from Buddy Bolden after he went mental and around 1906 he started playing in marching band and in various orchestra's. In 1914, he put together the Original Creole Orchestra, perhaps the first jazz band as would recognisable today - he threw out the violins and solidified the cornet, trumpet, clarinet, string bass, banjo, trombone set-up that would be copied by every other jazz band in New Orleans. The band toured around the country presenting, for a lot of people, the first taste of true New Orleans jazz. However, Freddie went and fucked everything up - in 1916 he was offered a chance to record his music. A lot of people think that the lack of early black jazz recordings was due to racism, but that really wasn't the case so much - Freddie refused to record because he was afraid people would steal his style. Therefore, he missed an opportunity to become the first jazz musician - black or white - to record. He did record later in the midd 1920's, but by then his style was no longer edgy. It still represents a good example of the early jazz style though - here's a recording of him playing "Hote Tamale Man" from around 1926:

Now, the evolution of ragtime orchestra's into jazz, as I mentioned in my ragtime post, was a fairly fast and unsurprising events. I mean, if you actually listen to some of them, even as early as the 1910's, the kind of syncopation in them - as well the actual songs played - already predicts jazz in many ways. Take a listen to this recording of "Alabama Bound" from 1910 by Prince's Orchestra - the guy who made the video is very keen to point out that the song was later recorded by Jelly Roll Morton. It was also recorded by Papa Charlie Jackson, Leadbelly, Lonnie Donegan and numerous others. The sound quality's pretty awesome for 1910:

Prince's Orchestra was also the first band to ever record the blues. I'll probably do a post on the group in future, because, along with the Victor Military Band, they were the most cutting edge band of the time.

However, the most important bands of the time were, arguably, those led by James Reese Europe.

More than anyone else, James Reese Europe is resposible for the evolution of ragtime into jazz. Again disputing the claim that black musicians were bound by racism, he made his first recordings in 1914 with his Society Orchestra. It's fascinating to hear - it's not jazz yet, but it's too loud and chaotic for standard ragtime either. Here's his 1914 recording of "Castle House Rag":

Moving to New York in 1903, James Reese Europe honed his skills and put together a succession of various bands including the Clef Club, the Tempo Club and the Society Orchestra. It was around this time that a certain George Gershwin hear him play and was influenced by him. His groups were exceedingly popular - playing at Carnegie Hall and earning a lot of money. He also played in Paris and London. His orchestras at one time numbered 150 musicians and included numerous later important musicians such as Noble Sissle, Eubie Blake, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson and Willie "The Lion" Smith. His most famous band came about as a result of World War 1 - after enlisting in the army, Europe was asked to form a military band. James Reese Europe's Harlem Hellfighters were the first African-American combat unit to set foot on French soil and were hugely popular everywhere they went - they were the first taste that Europe (the place, that is) got of Jazz, spreading the music around France, Germany, Italy and Britain, astonishing all that heard them. Their sound by this point had evolved into something which sounded more like jazz in the modern sense, albeit not quite as we know it today. Here's a recording from 1919 of "How You Gonna Keep Em Down On The Farm?":

The Harlem Hellfighters and James Reese Europe were memorably portrayed in the beginning of the film "Stormy Weather" from 1943, itself a biopic of band member, Bill Robinson, playing himself in the film. It's a bit overgenerous in the actual jazziness of the band, but otherwise pretty accurate and cool. James Reese Europe was sadly murdered by one of his drummers in 1919 and has passed from most people's memories. Which is sad, because he probably had more influence on the popularity and evolution of jazz - outside of New Orleans - than anyone else and he held in the highest esteem by those who knew and worked with him.

Now, turning our attention back to New Orleans, Jelly Roll Morton published the "Original Jelly Roll Blues" in 1915, the first published authentic jazz composition. Again, I'm not going into great detail on this since I already wrote a post on it, so let's move on to the big one.

The first authentic jazz recording was "Livery Stable Blues" by the Original Dixieland Jass Band in 1917:

This is commonly held up as the first jazz recording and I won't dispute this really - although some of James Reese Europe's music at the time was "jazzy" the ODJB were the real thing. Real jazz - with countermelodies, improvisation, blues influence etc. - by real New Orleans musicians. White guys, of course, which is where the controversy lies - the bandleader Nick LaRocca cost the band a lot of credibility by claiming that he invented jazz and devaluing the black influence on the music. Bytheway, they spelt jazz "jass" originally and it wasn't until a few years later that "jazz" became the common spelling. The band grew out of an earlier, unrecorded band led by Papa Jack Lalaine, which was a mixed, interracial band and thus renders LaRocca's claims even more ridiculous. The band was already deemed passed the sell-by date by the 1920's and they are given little cred beyond the fact that they were the first group. This is a bit unfair - although they were somewhat amateurish sounding compared the great early 20's jazz bands like the New Orleans Rhythm Kings and King Oliver's Creole Band, they were still genuine jazz musicians and were among the first people to record popular jazz standards like "Tiger Rag" and the quintessential jazz anthem, "Darktown Strutters Ball":

So, I guess the next important milestone would be the first African-American jazz musicians to record. Well, if we again ignore the jazz-like music being put out by James Reese Europe, we have to actually wait until the 1920's. Freddie Keppard, like I said, ruin his chance in 1916. The only other examples I can think of would be piano rolls by the likes of James P. Johnson which date back as early as 1917. However, these were mostly rags and, although more advanced from earlier ragtime, not really significantly jazzy enough to point out.

In 1920, Mamie Smith released the first African-American vocal blues record, "Crazy Blues" on which she was backed up by her Jazz Hounds. If you want you can list this as the first black jazz record. It really comes down to a matter of opinion. For me, personally, I have to back to James P. Johnson again.

James P. Johnson was the father of Harlem Stride Piano, a style of jazz piano which evolved out of ragtime in Harlem, New York in the 1910's. It will require a post of its own in the near future. Suffice to say, in 1921 James P. Johnson recorded his famous composition "Carolina Shout" in both a solo piano recording (not a piano roll) and in a full jazz band form. Both of these I credit as the first jazz recordings by an African-American artist. I can't seem to find a good link to the band version, but here's the piano version:

I will put up the band version once I can get a good link to it. The final "first" I need to mention is Kid Ory's Creole Orchestra and their recording of "Ory Creole Trombone" from 1922, the first recordings a black New Orleans jazz band. This is actually usually held up as the first African-American jazz recording rather than "Carolina Shout" and I put this down to lack of knowledge rather than anything else. It was the wildest jazz recording ever made up to that point and Kid Ory was later famous for playing with Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton - he should also be famous for being one of the very few jazz originators not to go mad, alcoholic and die penniless; he became very popular during the Dixieland revival of the 1940s and retired in the 1960's on a Hawaiian island. I can't seem to find the original "Ory's Creole Trombone" recording - youtube is crap for early jazz - but here's the 1940's recording he made of the same song. It rocks mercilessly:

So, that's JAZZ! Of course, it evolved much more beyond this point and there is far, FAR more to talk about in the 1920's, but seeing as how I'm not getting paid for writing this, I would have to be mad to write anymore now. Madder, that is.

Just about everyone I have mentioned on this post can be found public domain here:

http://www.archive.org/details/78rpm

You don't even have to feel oh so guilty about robbing some poor, innocent executive!

Jang Deuce, cruds!

On to more Spiritual matters...

2010-02-16T01:55:00.015Z

No-one would deny that Christianity has contributed a huge amount to musical culture of the world. Afterall, written music has its origins there and hymns have made up most of the backbone of modern music. Still, I personally believe that the negro spiritual has been the best expression of christianity through music. Maybe its the simple unpretentiousness of them or their association with slavery - thus lending a certain authenticity to the messages and morals - or maybe, I dunno, I just don't like white people's religious music. Regardless, they make up one of the greatest repetoires of folk songs in history and are perhaps more important than any other genre of the 18th and 19th century.

Actually, I'm going to start this post with a song that was not originally a negro spiritual, or even an American song, but which was later inaliably identified with the genre. That song is, of course, "Amazing Grace".

Now if you're one of those genuinely strange people who doesn't know this song, here's a recording by Judy Collins from the early 70's. Generally, I don't like Judy Collins, because she represents a horribly, horribly polished and fake branch of so-called "folk music", but her recording of this, backed by a choir, is pretty perfect:

"Amazing Grace" is one of the oldest songs I'll be dealing with on this blog,it was published in 1779 by ex-slave trader John Newton. This is significant - there were absolutely shiteloads of hymns written in the 17th and 18th century and if we were simply dealing with Christian hymns that influenced negro spirituals I could come up with any number by the likes of Isaac Watts. What makes "Amazing Grace" significant is that it was written by an ex-slave trade trader in (allegedly) a fit of religious and moral guilt over his profession and the song became something of an anthem for the whole abolitionist movement and later for enslaved African-Americans.

The symbol used by the Quakers and other abolitionists in Britain in the 18th century - "Am I not a man and a brother?"

Ironically, this most theistically uplifting of musical genres grew out of cultural opression and repression - when African slaves were brought to America, all elements of their African culture and heritage was obliterated; they were all brought under the arm of Christianity and had any attempts at breaking into African songs or rituals forcefully beaten out of them. When sitting in church, benches would be pushed close together to prevent the slaves from getting up and dancing.

To quote negrospirituals.com:

Rural slaves used to stay after the regular worship services, in churches or in plantation “praise houses”, for singing and dancing. But, slaveholders did not allow dancing and playing drums, as usual in Africa. They also had meetings at secret places (“camp meetings”, “bush meetings”), because they needed to meet one another and share their joys, pains and hopes. In rural meetings, thousands slaves were gathered and listened to itinerant preachers, and sang spirituals, for hours. In the late 1700s, they sang the precursors of spirituals, which were called “corn ditties”.

However, the very basis of Christianity condemns slavery as a sin and it is this fact that eventually made Christianity the enemy of slavery and a tool for its abolition. Trying to provide a timeline for negro spirituals is practically impossible, since, even compared to white folk songs, documentation of the songs is practically non-existant. However, there were a few books published in the mid 19th century that were collections of negro slave songs, often including spirituals, the first and most significant being "Slave Songs Of The United States" in 1867.

If you want to actually read the book, here's a full scan of it:

http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/allen/allen.html

Not a lot of the songs documented are that well known today, but there are a few that are pretty famous. The most famous is probably "Michael, Row The Boat Ashore". It was big during the American 1960's folk revival and, as such, here's a version by Pete Seeger from 1963:

Pete can get on my tits sometimes with his often patronising attitude, but this is pretty cool. Another well known song from the book is "Nobody Knows the Trouble I Seen", sung here by legendary "voice of God" Paul Robeson:

One of the most popular and lasting negro spirituals is "Go Down, Moses", also known as "Let My People Go". Unlike a lot of spirituals, the song is not jubilant and uplifting, but sombre and ominous - the song's relevance has no doubt been emphasised due to the obvious parallels made between the plight of the Israelites and African-American slaves. I mean, it is one of the few slave songs that actually contains the phrase "Let my people go" and so has been put forward as one of the great songs of defiance and determination. The song was first published in 1872 by the Fisk Jubilee Singers, the premiere black vocal group of the era, but some sources have dated the song as having been sung as early as 1853. One of the best versions of the song is from Preston Sturges' 1941 existentialist screwball comedy, "Sullivan's Travels":

Probably the most famous negro spiritual is "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot". Interestingly, the song had an official author, Wallis Willis, a freedman (newly emancipated slave) who composed the song sometime before 1862. Whether he based it on an earlier song he had heard or actually thought it up himself doesn't really matter, though - the song became basically the anthem for African-Americans and arguably remains so until this day, although I'd like to suggest it has more universal status. It has been suggested that the lyrics to the song referenced the "underground railroad", the secret means for slaves to escape to the freed states. It was popularised by the Fisk Jubilee Singers starting in the 1870's and took from there. If, somehow, you haven't actually heard this song, you're probably sectioned. But still, here's a version by vocalist(and clearly a massive Paul Robeson fan) Kevin Maynor. Trying to find decent versions of this song is hard, bytheway, because almost all the versions I see are either "clever reinterpretations" (shite) or sung by overdramatic "soulful" singers (really shite):

After the abolition of slavery, the most famous singers of negro spirituals were the Fisk Jubilee Singers, a group of African-American students from Fisk University who formed in 1871 as something of reaction against the blackface minstrel shows who claimed to bring the "authentic" sound of the freed black slaves to the stage.

The Fisk Singers were an acapella vocal group whose dignified and, admittedly, middle-class renditions of negro songs (and a few Stephen Foster songs) provoked both praise and criticism across America and Europe. Probably for the same reason in both cases - they didn't confirmed to the stereotyped image of blacks that had been instilled in people's minds. They still exist today as a group, albeit (shockingly) with none of the original members; it is something of a tradition in Fisk University. The original Fisk singers made recordings as early as the turn of the century, but they often sound very old and creaky today. A lot of them can be found public domain on the internet, but here's a very good recording made in 1926 of "Keep A' Inchin' Along":

With the birth of various new recording markets, spirituals became widely spread throughout popular culture. Even genres like the supposedly Satanic medium of the blues and the supposedly white-washed country music recorded a lot of negro spirituals.

Artists like Blind Willie Johnson and the Reverend Gary Davis who were usually (and inaccurately) labelled as country blues artists had repetoire composed almost entirely of religious material, albeit played with a bluesy, raggy guitar accompaniment. Here's Reverend Gary Davis playing "Children of Zion" and looking badass on Pete Seeger's Rainbow Quest in the mid 1960's:

And take this beautiful version of "All God's Chillun Got Wings" by cowboy vocal group, the Sons Of The Pioneers - a great defence against the percieved image of country music as white washed or racist:

In the 1940's, Thomas A. Dorsey combined the negro spiritual with jazz, R&B and pop influences and created gospel music. Gospel music is often thought of as interchangable with the negro spiritual, but it really is a very different kind of music - take a listen to this recording of the Golden Gate Quartet, one of the most popular gospel groups of the 30',s 40's and 50's singing the negro spiritual, "Joshua Fit The Battle" in the gospel style:

Of course, in the 20th century, negro spirituals had their biggest revival during the civil rights movements, but that's really an issue for another time....

Twang goose, muds!

American Artist No. 3: Stephen Foster

2010-02-15T20:34:00.010Z

Although I have to admit this site is getting known for insanely OTT statements like this, I'm going to say it anyway:

Stephen Foster was, and is, the most influential and important American songwriter in American history.

And this actually more an official consensus, rather than any personal hyperbole - everyone on the planet knows his songs. If you don't, then you're probably living in a crater in the middle of the Atlantic with your ears fused shut. Stephen Foster's melodies are familiar across the world, even if he himself is not known as the author.

Take this version of "Camptown Races", by the 2nd South Carolina String Band (a band who make some terrific covers of his songs) and tell me that you don't know this:

Stephen Foster was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1826, of Irish descent, had only a brief education, was influenced by minstrels songs, parlor songs, German classical, negro songs and in the 19th century he set out to do something utterly batshit crazy - write songs for a living.

It's hard to imagine in these days of commercial music, but in the early half of the 19th century it was not considered a viable profession to be an official songwriter. If you wrote songs, it was because you were a performer and you charge money for your performances, not the songs. And of course, the songs were not worth anything - they were merely ditties, not at all worthy of esteem or social value like classical compositions. And, unfortunately for Steve, that's pretty much how it was for him, as a man out of his time - his songs were plagiarised, since there was no concept of copyright for songs in those days and since he wasn't a performer, he died penniless and impoverished at the age of 37.

What he left behind was, to that point, the most sophisticated, unique, memorable and oft-imitated body of songs in America. His work ranged from blackface minstrel songs, to parlour songs, to love ballads, to anti-slavery laments and whatever else he felt like. The most significant innovation was probably his ability to take the previously low form of music, the minstrel or "ethiopian" song and elevate it to a new status - he attempted to, in his own words, "build up taste...among refined people by making words suitable to their taste, instead of the trashy and really offensive words which belong to some songs of that order."

One of his first big hits, published on February 25th, 1848 was "Oh! Susanna". One of the most perfect songs in the history of the world, like, ever, it was ostensibly a minstrel song, sung from the point of view of a black man, using the, *sigh*, dialect that was so popular at the time. The lyrics are partly nonsense:

I came from Alabama wid my banjo on my knee,
I'm g'wan to Louisiana, my true love for to see
It raind all night the day I left, the weather it was dry
The sun so hot I froze to death; Susanna, don't you cry.

But they have a genuine anthemic, emotional backbone to them. The song did contain a verse that is more than a tad inflammatory in today's eyes:

I jump'd aboard the telegraph and trabbled down de ribber,
De lectrick fluid magnified, and kill'd five hundred Nigga.
De bulgine bust and de hoss ran off, I really thought I'd die;
I shut my eyes to hold my bref -- Susanna don't you cry

Accusing Stephen Foster of racism is pretty much pointless - in 1848, even "Uncle Tom's Cabin" hadn't been published yet; considering black people even human was a radical notion to some people, so to empathise and try to emulate them like Stephen Foster did probably made him quite liberal for the day. So to try and condemn him for using dated terms like "nigger" or "darkie" over 150 years ago is ridiculous. On the other hand, I do think it does undermine the emotional impact of the song for it to performed nowadays using those lyrics.

This version by the 2nd South Carolina String band is clever - it basically changes a single letter to make the word "chigger" instead, which is basically a bed-bug. It doesn't matter since its essentially nonsense, but it fits seamlessly. This version is beyond perfect in every measure:

He wrote many other minstrel songs like "Ring De Banjo", "Nelly Bly" and "Uncle Ned", but never topped "Oh! Susanna" in this area. He did also write parlor songs for the more middle-class market, like "I Dream of Jeannie With The Light Brown Hair" and "Hard Times Come Again No More" which weren't radically different from his minstrel songs beyond the fact that they weren't written in a "dialect". Here's a recording of the latter song (written in 1854) by a certain Bob Dylan fellow from 1993. Although Bob's voice was at an all time low at this point, he does actually sing the song properly, presumably because it wasn't one of his own songs:

Steve's songs were incdrebily popular with minstrel performers like Dan Emmett and E.P. Christy, but they weren't so keen on giving him the credit for the. Likewise, publishers would often publish his songs without credit. Since there was no legal defence for songwriters in those times, he basically got royally screwed over throughout his whole career.

Another interesting thing to note about Stephen Foster is that, although he wrote a lot of songs about the Southern states and was most associated with them, he only visited the South once, on a steamboat trip on his honeymoon.

Perhaps Foster's magnum opus was written in 1863, "Old Black Joe". The song combined all his previous work in the fields of minstrel songs, parlor songs and spiritual ballads. The song is a tale that was popular in the late half of the 19th century, that of the aged slave (or ex-slave) living his last days, lamenting for his long gone friends and family and his desire to join them in the after life. It's a theme that would explored again in songs like "Little Old Log Cabin In The Lane", but Steve's song is the most poignant, with the haunting chorus refrain of:

I'm coming, I'm coming, for my head is bending low
I hear their gentle voices calling Old Black Joe.

Although sung from the point of view of a black man, it's not written in a dialect, which was pretty rare for the time and paint a sympathetic but also dignified portrayal, with little of the patronisation that existed in other minstrel songs. Here's a recording from the 1930's by Cowboy group, The Sons of the Pioneers:

Still, like I said, Steve wasn't making a lot of money and on January 13th 1864 he died in a Hotel in New York, with only 35 cents in his pocket. However, his songs lasted and became renowned throughout the world. They were routinely taught in American schools, although this abated somewhat in the 1960's after the Civil Rights movement claimed that many of Stephen Fosters songs were racially insensitive. Kind of ironic, since Stephen Foster came to fame in the first place through his attempts to be sensitive to African-American culture.

Today, another re-evalutation has been going on which argues against the claim of racially insensitivity, but it's unlikely to be a debate which'll close any time soon. Partly it's probably due to the sheer influence of his songs - no-one would give a rat's ass about Will Hayes, or Henry Clay Work's racially themed material from the same era, but Steve's song are so well known that they have come to represent America's musical culture more than any other and thus attract far more debate and controversy than any other songwriter of the time.

The main point about Stephen Foster is the songs themselves and they are truly beautiful - he was the first songwriter who actually saw the value in an original melody, rather than one merely stolen from a traditional song and he saw that the simple medium of the "song" could be just as relevant as any classical composition. He was a humble, shy figure from all accounts (just look at that photo at the top) and would probably never have believed his songs would cause the kerfuffle they have done over the century.

So, until I hear those gentle voices calling...

Monument to Stephen Foster, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

American Song # 3: Turkey in the Straw/Old Zip Coon

2010-02-04T00:44:00.010Z

There is no song in American history which represents America more than "Turkey in the Straw" and there is no song which America is more ashamed of.

Everyone knows the tune "Turkey in the Straw", but in case you need reminding, here's some random YouTube fella playing it on the fiddle:

It's pretty much the perfect melody and those few notes say more about America than the entire wanking country music scene for the last 40 years. The legendary tune has existed since at least the 18th century and has its roots in irish music, but when it came over to America it became a hit on the newly arisen blackface ciruit. To cash in on the success of the ur-blackface number, "Jump Jim Crow", around 1830 the melody was first named and published as "Old Zip Coon".

I do have to say that, compared to later negro parodies, Zip Coon is actually a pretty suave-looking guy.

There is a tendency with such a well known song for people to try and "reinterpret" it when they play, but the best straightforward version of the song I've heard is by the 2nd South Carolina String Band from, oh yes, 1997. The 2nd South Carolina String Band specialise in accurate recreations of Civil War era music and their version of "Zip Coon" is pretty much as good as it gets:

The song was originally written with the chorus: "O Zip a duden duden duden zip a duden day!" Bob Dylan, eat yer heart out!

It was one of the most popular minstrel songs of its day along with the likes of "Dixie" and "Oh Susanna". In 1861, the song was published again, with new lyrics by Dan Bryant and was first called "Turkey in the Straw". This is the title most associated with it today.

Both "Old Zip Coon" and "Turkey in the Straw" are nonsense songs - there is no working class message, no racial or social message, no romance - just complete meaningless nonsense. The lyrics have been altered throughout the ages, but here's a few examples:

Did you ever go fishin'
On a warm summer day
When all the fish
Were swimmin' in the bay
With their hands in their pockets
And their pockets in their pants
Did you ever see a fishie
Do the Hootchy-Kootchy Dance?

OR

Well, if frogs had wings and snakes had hair,
And automobiles went flyin' thro' the air,
Well, if watermelons grew on a huckleberry vine,
We'd still have winter in the summer time.

OR

O it's old Suky blue skin, she is in lub wid me,
I went the udder arter noon to take a dish ob tea;
What do you tink now, Suky hab for supper,
Why chicken foot an possum heel, widout any butter.

OR

Sings posom up a gum tree an cooney in a holler,
posom up a gum tree, cooney on a stump,
posum up a gum tree, cooney on a stump,
posum up a gum tree, cooney on a stump,
Den over dubble trubble, Zip Coon will jump.

Some of the strangest lyrics ever written were written in the 19th century - Bob Dylan's "surreal" lyrics on the likes of "Blonde on Blonde" ain't got shit on them. A fact which Bob himself has acknowledged.

The song has entered into the public consciousness in many ways. One of the most well known of course is the classic Disney cartoon Steamboat Willie from 1928, the first Disney cartoon to use synchronised sound, in which Mickey plays the song using the organs of various animals:

Legendary stuff. The song was first recorded in the 1890's (possibly 1891!) by Billy Golden. Here's a link to public domain upload from the Internet Archive:

http://www.archive.org/details/TurkeyInTheStrawByBillyGolden1890s

Shockingly, the sound quality isn't great, although it's surprisingly good for the 19th century. Here its played in vaudeville style on the piano with Billy going mental, shrieking and laughing like a nutter. Billy Golden was one of the first great stars of the vaudeville circuit and recorded numerous popular songs.

"Turkey in the Straw" was most associated with blackface until the hillbilly scene took off; it then became most associated with that other most ridiculed American minority, the southerner and the song became a by-word for rural life and hickishness. Take a look at this music video fron 1942, by the Schnickelfritz Band:

I'm going to make a bold statement here, because I'm drunk: "Turkey in the Straw" is the GREATEST MELODY IN HUMAN HISTORY. You may think I'm crazy, but just keep listening to it. It's simple and yet its complex and its SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO catchy and memorable. Yet unlike many other folk songs, you won't find this played to an American flag, by a brass band, or sung at a political rally. The most you'll ever hear is an Ice Cream truck

Its the song that America likes to push into a corner - its a point of guilt and embarrassment, representing everything that they like to forget, like blackface minstrelry and hillbillies. It is not considered an artistic song, or an important song. It's considered lightweight and childish. But it's this shameless pretentiousness that highlights its genius. They may play "Glory, Glory Hallelujah", "Star Spangled Banner", "God Bless America", but it's "Turkey in the Straw" and "Old Zip Coon" and THAT melody that really embodies America and says everything you need to know and feel.

It is perfection. It should be treasured.

So, everyone together:

De de, de-de de, de de deh deh, deh deh deh, de, deh...

American Artist No. 2: Blind Blake

2010-02-03T15:56:00.005Z

You know, there's a very typical image of the bluesman in most people's heads. That of the haggered old guy, dressed in dusty dungerees, sitting on a porch swing, banging out some amelodic 3 chord drone and wailing in an off-key voice about the devil, death and his "baby" her various weelings and dealings.

Yeah? Well, Blind Blake is NOTHING like that. Blind Blake represents the other side of the bluesman spectrum - dressed up sharp, singing often-witty lyrics over the maybe the most stunning guitar playing ever put on record. Look, he's fecking smiling in that photo!

Nothing is really known about Blind Blake. The photo above is the only one ever discovered. Some people have suggested he came from the Gullah (or Geechie) communities of South Carolina, since on one of his records he starts using the dialect, but this has never been confirmed. Even his real name was never sure - on another record he actually states his name is "Blind Arthur Blake", but some have suggested his last name was actually "Phelps" and that "Blake" was a nickname denoting a "hard-ass". He was probably born circa 1893 and is thought to have died sometime in the 1930's, although this has never been proven, either. He was, along with Blind Lemon Jefferson, the best-selling blues artist of the 1920's and, unlike Blind Lemon Jefferson, it's not hard to see why - his records are catchy, witty, cool and jaw-droppingly complex.

Blake played blues, but he equally often played ragtime, pop songs, jazz and even a British music hall number (sort of). He is often considered the Father of Ragtime Guitar - he pioneered an incredibly complex method of fingerpicking which is maybe, to this day, the most innovative and complex ever recorded outside of the most advanced flamenco or classical guitarists and while many people (including myself) have attempted to imitate it, none have ever succeeded. At the time, adverts referred to it as his "piano-sound guitar" and that's basically what it is. Take this recording, "Skeedle Loo Doo Blues" from 1926, as a quintessential example of his ragtime style - the name is probably just for marketing purposes, as the song is most certainly ragtime:

That's one guy with one guitar and yet somehow he manages to play bass, rhythm and lead all at the same time. Perhaps the thing that makes Blake so amazing is his bass lines - whereas even other blues fingers just use an alternating bass with their thumbs (bum-bum, bum-bum, one two, one two, you get the idea) Blake seems to actually create a whole seperate melody with his thumb, while engaging in stunning improvisational playing with his forefingers.

His first record release was "West Coast Blues" backed with "Early Morning Blues" in1926. "West Coast Blues" is another ragtime piece, while "Early Morning Blues" is a genuine blues song. It begins the long line of casually misogynistic songs in which he cheerfully extols the joy of shooting your woman:

The record was a hit and things just kept flowing for him. One thing I'd like to point out about Blake was that he was not really a "country blues" artist, but much more of an urban musician compared to the likes of Blind Lemon Jefferson or Blind Willie McTell.. As such, there are no folk songs in his repetoire and he has a much more heavy jazz influence. On his 1928 record, "Southbound Rag", he is joined by jazz clarinetist (and Louis Armstrong regular), Johnny Dodds:

Maybe his biggest hit, and most well known song, is "Diddie Wah Diddie" from 1928. This is his blues-pop masterpiece - it's a blues in structure, but the song itself is so catchy, bouncy, fun and yet intricate and filled with some of his most jaw-dropping instrumental passages that you could hardly imagine the likes of Robert Johnson covering it:

There's so much I could post for Blind Blake but it would be overwhelming - a really good article on him can be found here: http://www.gracyk.com/blake1.shtml

The main thing about Blind Blake - and the main reason he's not so well known today, except by guitarists - is that he never, EVER fits the patronising bluesman stereotype that was formulated during the 1960's. You can't put him up a symbol of how hard black people had it in the 1920's and how they express the suffering of the negro people through song. Blind Blake was not about suffering or misery. He was about the fun times, the jazz times, he was the spirit of the Roaring Twenties. He came, he made a lot of records, he sold a lot of records and then dissappeared leaving a legacy which those people who really appreciate good music and incredible guitar-playing have treasured and which those pretentious twats who only want their bluesmen to be simplistic, god-fearing, miserablist dumb-asses in order to appease their own elitist insecurites have ignored.

Blind Blake was the man. To finish, here's me playing one of his classic ragtime-pop hits, "That'll Never Happen No More":

Shang goose, cruds!

I am a billie and I live in the hills - Hillbilly Music

2010-02-01T14:28:00.009Z

Around the same time in 1920 that "Crazy Blues" revealed a market for "race records" another market was realised - that of "hillbilly records", or "old-timey" music made by and made for rural white southern audiences. So, string bands, fiddlers, guitarists, banjoists and more were recorded by the bucketfull in the Southern states, playing music which they had been playing for a hundred years, but which they suddenly were able to make money from. The songs were usually traditional songs and ranged from well known standards like "Turkey in the Straw", to more obscure songs like "Mole in the Ground" and even branching out into pop songs and blues songs. Still, this was first and foremost, "folk music".

The first hillbilly record is a bit controversial - a fiddler named Don Richardson recorded "Old Zip Coon" in 1916 and some have argued the point for this being the first hillbilly record - it could well be, but I'd discount it for a number of reasons. Firstly, the record is so badly preserved that its unlistenable. Secondly, no information is known about Don Richardson, whether he was even from the south or not. Thirdly, this was released before the actual concept of the hillbilly record had been created and there were plenty of other people in vaudeville playing old-timey songs, albeit not in a traditional style. Basically, its too complicated and I will discount it for now.

So, among most scholars, the two musicians slated to have kicked off the Hillbilly record industry are Eck Robertson and Fiddlin' John Carson. Eck Robertson was born in 1887, the son of a confederate soldier; his father and grandfather were also fiddlers. Honing his skills in medicine shows across the US, his recording of "Sallie Gooden" was released on the 1st September 1922 and was not a commercial success. It is, however, one of the most amazing pieces of fiddling ever recorded. The very poor quality of the record somewhat hinders this, but you can still get the sheer virtuosity shining through:

I must note, there are better sounding copies than the YouTube version presented here. Next up was Fiddlin' John Carson. Born in 1868, he was one of the oldest hillbilly musicians to record. He was already proclaimed champion fiddler of Georgia by the time he recorded "Little Old Log Cabin In The Lane" for Okeh records in 1923. Head of Okeh, Ralph Peer, hated the record describing it as "pluperfect awful", but the 500 copies pressed sold out immediately and they suddenly realised there was a market for this kind of music available. "Little Old Cabin In The Lane" is a much recorded standard in string band and bluegrass circles as a jaunty, bouncy rave up but the original version is a slow, mystic-sounding waltz, sounding as though he were singing from a foggy mountain top:

After this, the Hillbilly scene just took off and fiddlers and old-time conventions across the south became more popular than ever. Here's a video of one such convention in which a couple of hillbillies dance like freaks to an army of banjos, fiddles and guitars:

The greatest hillbilly of them all - the man who became known as "King of the Hillbillies" was Uncle Dave Macon. Born in 1970, he was ancient old lunatic by the time his recording career kicked off in 1924 with the first hillbilly anthem: "Hill Billie Blues". Unfortunately, YouTube seems a bit sparse on Uncle Dave Macon (I will upload some when I get to making his page) so for now here's his stompin', chompin', whoopin' and a-hollerin' banjo freakout, "Way Down the Old Plank Road":

He's backed up by legendary guitar picker Sam McGee on that song - both Sam and Dave will require their own pages, so I won't go into great detail on them here.

The next big thing to get recorded on the Hillbilly scene were the string bands. These were bands of fiddlers, banjoists and guitarists who rocked out fast, loud and noisy old-timey songs with a reckless abandon. Many of the original solo artists like Uncle Dave and Fiddlin' John formed string bands soon after their careers took off. They were often done with family members and usually were secondary to their main jobs. There were a shiteload of string bands in the 1920's - with Uncle Dave's Fruit Jar Drinkers being my personal favourite - but the quintessential string band was almost certainly the Skillet Lickers.

They were formed by the musically inept mental case Gid Tanner, who couldn't read a note of music, but memorised around 5000 songs and could barely play his fiddle, but was expert at making high-pitched screeching noises and could allegedly turn his head 180 degrees and bend it so far back that he looked headless. All useful skills. More ssubstantial was virtuoso blind guitarist, Riley Puckett - Puckett, like most hillbilly guitarists, played the guitar with a flatpick and used it mostly for bass lines and strumming. He also provided vocals. The other most important member was Clayton McMichen who was a virtuoso fiddle player. Other band members came and went but these were the most important. The majority of the Skillet Lickers song tended towards the more well-known side, at least by the standards of old-time music. They even played bloody "Old MacDonald" for christ's sake. One of their best recordings is that of the oft-covered Civil War song "Soldier's Joy". Their 1929 recording of this is maybe the definitive version:

Maybe the greatest moment is the chorus when the duelling fiddles just take off into the slightly-dissonant stratosphere. The Skillet Lickers had internal conflicts - Gid Tanner wanted to keep a traditionalist stance, while Clayton McMichen wanted to play more ragtime and jazz. McMichen did get his wish occasionally resulting in odd covers like the jazz standard "Darktown Strutters Ball", but generally they were traditionalists. Another classic recording is their version of "Bully of the Town" from 1926. Compare this to Mary Irwin's more racially slurring version from 1907 as I posted it in the ragtime post:

One of the biggest hillbilly stars of the time was Charlie Poole. Charlie Poole, who seemed unable to take a photo without looking like a psychopath...

...fronted one of the most popular string bands, the North Carolina Ramblers and created a unique hillbilly sound based on bluesy fiddle playing and Charlie's unusual method of banjo fingerpicking. They did less mainstream traditional songs than the Skillet Lickers although one of the more well known is their cover of "Didn't He Ramble" from 1929:

He could also do more sentimental songs like "Goodbye Mary Dear" from 1929:

Charlie Poole died in 1931 after a...wait for it...13 week bender! Iggy Pop, eat yer heart out! He had just been informed that he had been hired to do some music for Hollywood films and presumably got a bit carried a way...

The term "Hillbilly Music" was used to refer to country music up until the 1950s - even Hank Williams was once referred to as hillbilly music. In retrospect though, hillbilly music can been seen to have burnt away around the mid 30s, with the onset of more polished country music genres like Western Swing, Bluegrass and Cowboy music. Both Uncle Dave Macon and the Skillet Lickers continued for decades after, but otherwise there was no real revitalisation of the music and there hasn't really been to this day.

Perhaps it's because, more than any other kind of music, hillbilly music comes from true authenticity - unless you spent your time drinking moonshine, swinging on porch swings and hollerin' in the 1920's, it's hard to imitate without coming across as patronising and insincere.

To finish, here's me playing a classic hillbilly number, "Cripple Creek" with clawhammer banjo. It starts off slow, but picks up speed:

Gang ploose, muds!

American Song # 2: Sail Away Ladies

2010-01-31T15:10:00.004Z

Seeing as how we've been going through a lot of jazz and ragtime, I think it's time to delve into the really old music. This post deals with "Sail Away Ladies", also known as "Sally Anne" and, of course, "Great Big Taters".

The song originated sometime in the 19th century although possibly has origins as far back as the 18th century. It is one of the quintessential American fiddle tunes - like many, it clearly has its origins in Irish or Scottish folk music and was probably brought across by immigrants in the early 19th century; it is most associated with the Appalachian mountains and the string band traditions. Here is a modern home recording of it on dual fiddles I found on YouTube:

The earliest known recording of the song was by Uncle Bunt Stephens in 1926 and he recorded it as a solo fiddle piece. This became famous after being included on Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music. The tune is somewhat peculiar - there's no real definable melody during the verses, more a heavily rhythmic feel; some scholars have suggested it maybe has some negro influence as well in this sense. The chorus starts a whole octave higher than the verse and gives it an epic sweeping feel. The best recording of the song ever (and one of the best recordings ever) is Uncle Dave Macon and the Fruit Jar Drinkers' 1927 recording. With duals fiddles, banjo and guitar cranked up to maximun volume, with whooping, shrieking, hell-bent-for-leather, this recording is definitive and is one of the wildest recordings out of the 1920's. Uncle Dave Macon was maybe the great American folk singer, but he needs a whole article of his own. For now:

The lyrics to the song are essentially nonsense and few versions of the song have the same lyrics, outside of the bizarre "Don't you rock me, dy-dee-oh!" chorus. Some people interpreted this as "Don't you rock me daddio!", particularly in the folk revival of the 1950's and 60's.

The song was later covered in 1956 by the great Lonnie Donegan as "Don't You Rock Me Daddy-O". This version is more skiffly and contains electric guitar and drums and whatnot. The opening verse actually comes from "Old Dan Tucker":

The song is still popular among bluegrass, folk and old-time musicians today. Here's a video of the Dusky Buskers playing across America:

Finally, here's me doing a (mostly) instrumental version of the song on the banjo, clawhammer style. I apologise for the lame sound quality:

There's not a lot of information on "Sail Away Ladies" - there really is no information regarding it origins; it was seemingly plucked out of the ether. Maybe that's what gives the song its mystique - free from the shackles of human association it takes on a more spiritual feel.

Kang moose, CHUDS!

American Artist No. 1: Jelly Roll Morton

2010-01-31T13:10:00.007Z

A lot of people have laid claim to the title King of Jazz: Buddy Bolden, its supposed father, Freddie Keppard, his successor, Nick LaRocca, the first man to record it and Paul Whiteman, the first man to introduce to a large white audience. Still, as far I'm concerned, in the 1920's there were only two men who could really lay claim to the title: Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton.

Jelly Roll Morton was a New Orleans pianist, whose real name was Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe. Born in 1884 (or 1889 as some sources state) into a Creole community, he was surrounded by the sounds of gospel, early blues, ragtime and folk songs that made up the rich culture of New Orleans at the time. By the age of 14, influenced by the likes of Scott Joplin, Buddy Bolden and Tony Jackson, he was playing in brothels to earn his keep and became regarded as one of the best pianists in Storyville (the New Orleans red light district). In 1904 he joined a travelling minstrel show and set out across America.

Jelly Roll Morton was the first true Jazz composer. In 1915, he published the sheet music for what is arguably the first Jazz song ever written, "The Original Jelly Roll Blues" - it is a pretty incredible composition, with elements of ragtime, blues with, as Jelly Roll called it, the "Spanish tinge" but not really sounding like any of them; the very essence of Jazz. Although Jazz musicians had existed before this, the publication of "The Original Jelly Roll Blues" marked the first time that Jazz was introduced into any kind of mainstream culture.

Here was something really new - Jelly Roll Morton was an educated musician who was steeped in traditional music and amalgamated all his influences into a truly modern music which go onto become America's greatest musical artform. Everything that happened after, from Dixieland to Swing, to Big Band, to Boogie, to Bebop, to Jump Blues, to Rock 'n Roll, to Free Jazz and so on, could not have happened with out "The Original Jelly Roll Blues". Here's a recording by pianist Jim Hession:

Ironically, for all this, Jelly Roll Morton didn't make any recordings until 1923 and these were a mixture of piano solos and band recordings. The piano recordings are interesting for historical purposes, but this was before the advent of electrical recording, which occured around 1926, and so the recordings are very tinny and not particularly enjoyable. The same goes for the band recordings, which are even worse - he didn't have a real band at the time and they sound bland and uninspired.

Jelly Roll must realised this himself, because in 1926 he put together his Red Hot Peppers, one of the best Jazz bands of the era. Less jammy then earlier Jazz bands like King Olivers and less improvisational than Louis Armstrong's Hot Fives, the Red Hot Peppers were tight-as-a-pussy-cat, virtuoistic, but wild and uninhibited. Featuring the great Kid Ory on trombone and Johnny St. Cyr on banjo among others, there recordings are also some of the best sounding too - he must have shelled out for better recording equipment. One of their best recordings is "Black Bottom Stomp" from 1926 - a wild dance number which features every band member going at it like a muthah, but through which the compositional genius of Jelly Roll Morton (who is on piano) shines through:

They all so recorded a full band arrangement of the "The Original Jelly Roll Blues" which is not only a brilliant recording, but which is a great example of how Jelly Roll Morton was able to transpose his piano playing into an ensemble arrangement:

The Red Hot Peppers made a lot of great recordings until he disbanded them in 1930. Jelly Roll Morton lay low for most of the 1930's - his Hot style of Jazz was being replaced by the smoother sound of the Big Bands and Swing. Although he did record intermittently in the 1930's, his most important recordings were with legendary folklorist Alan Lomax in 1938, for the library of congress. Not released for decades, Alan Lomax made hours and hours of recordings of Jelly Roll discussing Jazz, Ragtime, New Orleans, folk music, classical music and anything else that came to mind.

During these sessions, he got a bit tipsy and recorded a few "dirty" songs, which he had played in brothels in New Orleans back in the 19th century, but which until then he had no hope of recording. They're interesting simply because they prove that this kind of language was not invented in the 70's. Take this recording of "Dirty Dozen" which includes massive amounts of expletives as well as homosexuality, bestiality and whatever other fun things he could think of:

Lovely stuff. Less abrasive perhaps, was his recording of the traditional blues song, "Hesitation Blues":

Around 1939, he put together another band, his New Orleans Jazzmen and recorded a number of more bluesy, more vocals-based songs. They were not commercially successful, but they are very good. He recorded two of his most covered songs during this session, the "Funky Butt" update, "Buddy Bolden's Blues" and "Winin' Boy Blues":

Jelly Roll Morton died in 1941 from complications involving asthma. In later years he gained reputation as a bit of an arrogant bastard - claiming to have invented Jazz in 1902 and slagging of W.C. Handy in a magazine, he gained an image of a man bitter at what he saw as not getting his dues. Well, Jelly Roll Morton may not have invented Jazz outright, but he was probably it most influential proponent and the man who turned it into a genuine artform. He was to Jazz what Scott Joplin was to Ragtime and W.C. Handy was to the Blues. Not to mention that, unlike either of these two, he was also one of its great performers and his Red Hot Pepper recordings are essentially flawless.

Chang goose, muds...

The Blues Ain't Nothing But...

2010-01-29T12:19:00.006Z

Now we come to a controversial subject: the blues. There is no genre in American music more degraded, misinterpreted, over-mystified and abused than that of the BLUES. Nowadays, the term "blues" has been used to describe everything from George Gershwin to the White Stripes. And is there any sight more vomit-inducing that seeing a bunch of middle-class art student sitting around in a coffee bar talking about how much they bloody love Robert Johnson and Son House and the sheer "darkness" and "suffering of the negro people" and whatnot...

Look, the main thing to understand about "blues" is that there are really two types of blues. One type of blues refers to folk songs being sung since the 19th century dealing with tragedy, world-weariness and sexual conquest and lots of other fun things - the other type of "blues" refers an actual musical structure involving an 8, 12 or 16 bar system of "blue notes" and flattened sevenths and so on, which was solidified around the beginning of the 20th century by musicians like W.C. Handy and Hart Wand. More often than not these two definitions overlap, of course.

W.C. Handy is most often referred to as the Father of the Blues. Now this is of course a fairly bollocks term - W.C. Handy neither invented the blues, which had been sung among negro communities for years, nor was even the first man to publish a blues song (That was Hart Wand's "Dallas Blues" in 1912). He was, however, the man who did the most create the idea of the blues as a musical form and a respectable art form - he played a role in relation to the blues, that was similar to that played by Robert Burns in relation to Scottish folk music; he was a collecter and adapter of songs. His first published song was the "Memphis Blues" in 1914 - this song is not a blues song throughout; more like half-blues, half-ragtime. Here's a recording by pianist Jim Hession:

The blues first found its popularity in the vaudeville circuits - many of the songs sung in the 1910's with the label "blues" were not actually blues in the musical sense, even if they did often emulate some of the style. Perhaps the first blues hit recording was Marion Harris' 1920 version of W.C. Handy's 1916 "St. Louis Blues". The "St. Louis Blues" is W.C. Handy's masterpiece and one the truly great American songs. It was, for a long time, the most recorded song in the world and if W.C. Handy is remembered for nothing else, it will be this he is remembered for. The song IS a blues, but it opens with a habanera rhythm which repeated halfway through the song. And the lyrics are as iconic as it gets. I could play Marrion Harris' version of the song, but I don't think it really gets the power of the song across, even if it is quite a good version. The best version of the song is probably Louis Armstrong's 1954 recording - 8 minutes long and loud as feck, it is severely awesome:

The first recording of the blues by an African-American vocalist was Mamie Smith's 1920 recording of "Crazy Blues" and it was perhaps the most influential recording in American history - after it became a hit, record companies realised they could make money from "race records" and so the floodgate was opened for every African-American muscian who has recorded up to this day. The song itself is very much vaudeville-styled blues and Mamie Smith was no genius, but still, it's interesting:

After Mamie Smith, came Ma Rainey, who had actually been singing blues since 1902 and was known as the Mother of the Blues and Bessie Smith, by far the most popular female blues singer of the era, known as the Empress of the Blues. Here's her 1927 recording of "After You've Gone":

Another market soon opened up: country blues. Rural blues musicians, usually either pianists or guitarists, started getting recorded by the bucketload. The first country blues recording was "Guitar Blues" by Sylvester Weaver in 1923, but to be honest, it's shit - the B-side, "Guitar Rag" is much better, but its not blues, although it is the first recording of slide guitar on record. I can't seem to find it on YouTube (only the 1927 re-recording), though. He was followed by one Blind Lemon Jefferson in 1925 - the most popular country blues musician of his era. Listening today, it's hard to tell why Blind Lemon Jefferson was so popular. His music is atonal, amelodic, almost rhythm free and dark and depressing. Yet somehow he was the most popular. Another factor is that his records have been preserved terribly - they are worst-sounding quality of any music from the era. As such, his enjoyment is a bit tricky, but here's one of his more listenable recordings from 1927:

Yeah. Perhaps a less challenging, still awesome example of country blues can be found in Blind Willie McTell. Blues was just one of the many genres that Blind Willie McTell was proficient in - he could do ragtime, folk, gospel - but he could plays the blues like a bitch, too. His most famous song is "Statesboro Blues" because it was covered by the Allman Brothers *makes wanking motion with hand*, but here's another classic song - a 16 bar blues called "Searching the Desert for the Blues:

Now, the main problem that arose with country blues musicians - and one that still exists today - is that there was a lot of genre segregation. Basically, if they're black they're labelled as blues, if they're white they're labelled as country. The fact is, the repetoires of both black and white musicians was not radically different at all - blacks played country songs and whites played blues song. It's just that the recording companies found it easier to market artists through these simple labels. Take Mississippi John Hurt - he only recorded one genuine blues song in the 1920's and he's labelled as a "bluesman" when he's really a country singer. Listen to this:

He was also MUCH better recorded and preserved than Blind Lemon, too. I suppose this goes back to my first paragraph about the two kinds of blues - this is the kind of blues that existed before a musical structure was applied to it by various composers. Still, there are some cases where the labelling is simply idiotic - case in point, Jimmie Rogders. Jimmie Rodgers is known as the "Father of Country Music" which is utter bollocks, because, firstly, country music existed long before him and, secondly, 80% of his music is blues. His most famous song is "Blue Yodel No. 1" from 1927 and it's a genuine blues in both style and form:

Don't get wrong, I love Jimmie Rodgers, but the only reason he's labelled as country is because he's white. And the only reason Mississippi John Hurt is labelled blues is because he's black. That's still how it works today.

There's a LOT more to the blues than just what I've said here, but I'll need to go into various sub-categories and regional styles to describe it, which I'll do in future.

Rang juice, floods!

American Song # 1: Funky Butt

2010-01-28T13:24:00.004Z

Hey, it's me! The younger, hairier, more foul-mouthed, slightly less famous answer Pete Seeger!

Today we deal with the song, "Funky Butt". This is one of those casually obscene songs popular in New Orleans around the turn of the century, originating in the many whorehouses and illicit clubs around Storyville. In this sense, the word "funky" means "smelly" basically and the song is presumably about either farting or sweating. I suppose it could probably be the first piece of music where the term funky was a applied though - Ray Charles eat yer heart out...

Anyway, although no-one knows for sure who wrote the song, it was most associated with Buddy Bolden, the supposed Father of Jazz.

Buddy Bolden's band were allegedly playing jazz as early as the 1890's and his cornet playing was said to audible for miles around when he played. Some people, notable Jelly Roll Morton, have argued that he was merely a very loud ragtime musician and since there are no existing recording of Buddy, we'll never really know. Jelly Roll Morton adapted "Funky Butt" into the slightly sanitised "Buddy Bolden's Blues" or "I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say". Here's a recording of him playing it from around 1938:

Here's a bunch of guys whom I have never heard of playing a slightly more modernised very of "Funky Butt", albeit with the original title:

And here's ME playing and singing it on the guitar! Loosely based on the version by Mississippi John Hurt:

Buddy Bolden, like everyone apparently, went mad and was sent to a mental institute in 1907, dying there in 1931. He missed out on the Jazz age, but his influence spread directly to the next generation of musicians like Freddie Keppard, Jelly Roll Morton and King Oliver. There is a film being made about him starring Anthony Mackie set for release in 2010:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0858419/

Anyway, until next time, shag loose, hangers...

So, let's talk about Ragtime!

2010-01-27T17:20:00.009Z

Let's talk about RAGTIME!!!

Ragtime is maybe the most misunderstood genre in American music. Arising in the 19th century in black urban communities, ragtime was one of the first truly indiginous music forms to arise in America - involving syncopation, seventh chords, back-beat and lots of other goodies that I'm not technically gifted enough to explain, it was essentially a form of very catchy dance music. Although popular for many years in vaudeville and medicine show circles, the first published form of ragtime was the, heh, Coon song.

Coon songs were basically songs written by both black and white ragtime composers which stereotyped, ridiculed and charicatured the lifestyles and society of black people. I suppose at the time a lot of people thought they were accurate representations of black society, but today they can only be percieved as bizarre and offensive. Still, you've got to allow for historical perspective - it's not as though they're white power songs, they're just hopelessly dated in their ideas.

One of the catchiest was Mary Irwin's (most famous as the first woman to kiss on film) "The Bully Song" from 1895. This song was later sanitised as the folk song "Bully of the Town, but here it is in it's original glory, recorded in 1907; you may shit yourself when you hear the lyrics...

At the turn of the century, however, a new form of ragtime arose now known as classic ragtime. The leading proponents of this were Joseph Lamb, James Scott, Tom Turpin and, most famously, Scott Joplin, who is maybe America's greatest composer. The main thing Scott Joplin and his ilk brought to the table was a classical influence - their rags are considerably more complex and harmonically interesting then coon songs or country rags. The first published rag by an African-American was Tom Turpin's Harlem Rag in 1897, but inarguably the quintessential ragtime composition, perhaps ever, is Maple Leaf Rag by Scott Joplin from 1899. Joplin never lived long enough to record anything properly, but he did make piano rolls - programmed sheets of paper which record the pianist's playing for it then to played back on a player piano, motorised pianos like the ones you see in old Tom and Jerry cartoons. Anyway, here's him playing America's answer to Ode to Joy:

Scott Joplin is most famous to today's music lovers through the film, The Sting, where various compositions of his provided the soundtrack. Like most people in his position, Joplin caught syphilis, went mad and died in a mental hospital in 1917. The ragtime era produced few recording dues to both an inability to record it properly and the unwillingness for companies to record African-Americans but there are a few gems that made it through. Perhaps the greatest ragtime musician of the era was Vess L. Ossman, a virtuoso banjo player who, with his ragtime band, produced some surprisingly well recorded, extremely catchy and very intricate recordings. Here's a recording from 1909 of the classic St. Louis Tickle:

What happened to ragtime? One word: Jazz. Ragtime fell out of popularity and was almost completely replaced in public mind by jazz. Even old ragtime musicians dropped their original style in favour of jazzing it up. Jazz introduced improvisation, blues, energy and dispersed with the plantation associations that still plagued ragtime. By the mid 1920's, ragtime was all but gone in the public mind. However, ragtime compositions still popped up in the repetoire of jazz bands. Take Louis Armstrong's 1927 recording of the 1914 "12th Street Rag":

And ragtime also found its way into a new medium: the guitar. Blind Blake, arguably the greatest guitarist of all time, was known as the Kind of Ragtime Guitar and songs like "Southern Rag" from 1927 adapted the piano style to the 6-string:

So, that's ragtime for you!

Various recordings are available from this site:

http://www.archive.org/

Anyway, hang loose bloods!

The first post is always the hardest...

2010-01-26T21:41:00.000Z

...I have absolutely nothing to say.

This blog centres around the old, weird America. It brings hot jazz, negro spirituals, civil war music, old-time folk, country, bluegrass, blues, boogie, film noir, screwball comedies, surrealism, gangsters, universal horrors and all things bright and beautiful...

It may just be God's own blog, but you won't here me saying that...

For now, here's Grandpa Jones!