VA - Gypsy Jazz [Box Set]

For some reason, Gadaya of the three blogs always has a way of anticipating what I'm going to post, and posting something similar first at Times Ain't Like they Used to Be. This week's installment is an immersion in hot swing. Specifically, on my end, it's a crash course in "Jazz Manouche", also known as "Gypsy Jazz". Its innovators and most famous exponents were Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli in their legendary Quintette du Hot Club de Paris, but as you'll soon learn, they weren't the only ones. The genre has diversified and endured a long tradition, with many immitators and few innovators. Of course, even the immitators deserve a fair bit of credit because this is one of the hardest styles of music to play. And one of the funnest to listen to, I might add.

What makes gypsy jazz so incredible is its propulsive, insistent rhythmic foundation (its Gypsy heritage) and elegant, fluid melodies (the sophisication of jazz). It picks up jazz standards or popular tunes of the day and runs them through a mill of driving guitars and slinky violins and accordeons. The tune comes out, still recognizeable, but more daring, more quirky, yes - more alive. It's hat is tilted to one side and there's a grin creeping up the corners of its mouth. It has a skip in its step that catches you off guard and a knowing wink when it catches you looking. It can pull a fast one over you, and leave you so bedazzled that you don't realize where all your money went. Through the tightly-reined madness and renegade elegance of gypsy jazz, an innocent boy of tune becomes a man. Jazz is all about sex, remember?

Syncopation is here. Off-syncopation is here. Just when you've gotten used to that, there's odd timings and odder accents and a run that will stop your mind in its tracks. This is what I mean by 'pulling a fast one'. No matter how hard you look or listen, the magician gets you every time. Just look at that grin, that eyebrow. Just look. He knows something you don't know.


And now some histories and wikistories:
Gypsy jazz (also known as "Gypsy Swing") is an idiom often said to have been started by guitarist Jean "Django" Reinhardt in the 1930s. Because its origins are largely in France it is often called by the French name, "Jazz manouche," or alternatively, "manouche jazz," even in English language sources. Django was foremost among a group of Gypsy guitarists working in and around Paris in the 1930s through the 1950s, a group which also included the brothers Pierre "Baro" Ferret, Etienne "Sarane" Ferret, and Jean "Matelo" Ferret and Reinhardt's brother Joseph "Nin-Nin" Reinhardt.

Many of the musicians in this style worked in Paris in various popular Musette ensembles. The Musette style waltz remains an important component in the Gypsy jazz repertoire. Reinhardt was noted for combining a dark, chromatic Gypsy flavor with the swing articulation of the period. This combination is critical to this style of jazz. In addition to this his approach continues to form the basis for contemporary Gypsy jazz guitar. Reinhardt's most famous group, the Quintette du Hot Club de France, also brought fame to jazz violinist Stéphane Grappelli.

Quintette du Hot Club de France
Biography by Bradley Torreano

Stephane Grappelli and Django Reinhart were jamming buddies at the same clubs when they struck upon the idea of forming the Quintet of the Hot Club of France. They were some of the first Europeans to really affect the jazz scene, influenced heavily by the work of Eddie South and the Eddie Lang/Joe Venuti sessions of the '20s. Reinhardt, a gypsy who hailed from Belgium, was a hot-tempered guitarist who had been injured in a fire as a young man. This left him with two fingers missing, but a unique playing style due to his need to adapt. Grappelli was a French violinist who never quite liked Reinhardt, but recognized how well they played together. They took the name from a popular club in the area owned by the supportive Pierre Nourry, and influencial magazine editor Charles Delaunay assembled the original lineup. They recruited Django's brother Joseph and Roger Chaput to play acoustic rhythm guitars, and bassist Louis Vola was the last to join the group. Throughout the '30s, the group toured throughout Europe, focusing mostly on the jazz friendly United Kingdom. Their reputation grew very large in Europe, spilling over into the United States where artists like Rex Stewart, Louis Armstrong, and even their hero Eddie South clamored to jam with the group on their European trips. Duke Ellington was so impressed that he attempted to bring Reinhardt into his orchestra for a tour, but when World War II began it stopped any future plans for the band. When war was declared, Reinhardt left England to get back to France, while Grappelli stayed in England for the duration of the war. The two would not play together for seven years, leading to some unplanned solo work while they were separated. Reinhardt decided to carry on the group with substitute players throughout the war, substituting players and instruments until the violin and rhythm guitar was replaced by the clarinet and a drummer. He then tried to take Ellington up on his offer, but the tour was a bomb and he was soon staying in New York without work. He made it back to France and the original group reunited, playing festivals after the war that made their professional unhappiness evident. Older fans would have rather they stayed with their original formula, while Reinhardt desired to play bebop. The band finally dissolved, leaving them all to explore uneventful but musically interesting solo careers.

Django:
Biography by Richard S. Ginell

Django Reinhardt was the first hugely influential jazz figure to emerge from Europe -- and he remains the most influential European to this day, with possible competition from Joe Zawinul, George Shearing, John McLaughlin, his old cohort Stephane Grappelli and a bare handful of others. A free-spirited gypsy, Reinhardt wasn't the most reliable person in the world, frequently wandering off into the countryside on a whim. Yet Reinhardt came up with a unique way of propelling the humble acoustic guitar into the front line of a jazz combo in the days before amplification became widespread. He would spin joyous, arcing, marvelously inflected solos above the thrumming base of two rhythm guitars and a bass, with Grappelli's elegantly gliding violin serving as the perfect foil. His harmonic concepts were startling for their time -- making a direct impression upon Charlie Christian and Les Paul, among others -- and he was an energizing rhythm guitarist behind Grappelli, pushing their groups into a higher gear. Not only did Reinhardt put his stamp upon jazz, his string band music also had an impact upon the parallel development of Western swing, which eventually fed into the wellspring of what is now called country music. Although he could not read music, with Grappelli and on his own, Reinhardt composed several winsome, highly original tunes like "Daphne," "Nuages" and "Manoir de Mes Reves," as well as mad swingers like "Minor Swing" and the ode to his record label of the '30s, "Stomping at Decca." As the late Ralph Gleason said about Django's recordings, "They were European and they were French and they were still jazz."

A violinist first and a guitarist later, Jean Baptiste "Django" Reinhardt grew up in a gypsy camp near Paris where he absorbed the gypsy strain into his music. A disastrous caravan fire in 1928 badly burned his left hand, depriving him of the use of the fourth and fifth fingers, but the resourceful Reinhardt figured out a novel fingering system to get around the problem that probably accounts for some of the originality of his style. According to one story, during his recovery period, Reinhardt was introduced to American jazz when he found a 78 RPM disc of Louis Armstrong's "Dallas Blues" at an Orleans flea market. He then resumed his career playing in Parisian cafes until one day in 1934 when Hot Club chief Pierre Nourry proposed the idea of an all-string band to Reinhardt and Grappelli. Thus was born the Quintet of the Hot Club of France, which quickly became an international draw thanks to a long, splendid series of Ultraphone, Decca and HMV recordings.

The outbreak of war in 1939 broke up the Quintette, with Grappelli remaining in London where the group was playing and Reinhardt returning to France. During the war years, he led a big band, another quintet with clarinetist Hubert Rostaing in place of Grappelli, and after the liberation of Paris, recorded with such visiting American jazzmen as Mel Powell, Peanuts Hucko and Ray McKinley. In 1946, Reinhardt took up the electric guitar and toured America as a soloist with the Duke Ellington band but his appearances were poorly received. Some of his recordings on electric guitar late in his life are bop escapades where his playing sounds frantic and jagged, a world apart from the jubilant swing of old. However, starting in Jan. 1946, Reinhardt and Grappelli held several sporadic reunions where the bop influences are more subtly integrated into the old, still-fizzing swing format. In the 1950s, Reinhardt became more reclusive, remaining in Europe, playing and recording now and then until his death from a stroke in 1953. His Hot Club recordings from the `30s are his most irresistible legacy; their spirit and sound can be felt in current groups like Holland's Rosenberg Trio.



Stephanne Grappelli:
Biography by Scott Yanow

One of the all-time great jazz violinists (ranking with Joe Venuti and Stuff Smith as one of the big three of pre-bop), Stéphane Grappelli's longevity and consistently enthusiastic playing did a great deal to establish the violin as a jazz instrument. He was originally self-taught as both a violinist and a pianist, although during 1924-28 he studied at the Paris Conservatoire. Grappelli played in movie theaters and dance bands before meeting guitarist Django Reinhardt in 1933. They hit it off musically from the start even though their lifestyles (Grappelli was sophisticated while Django was a gypsy) were very different. Together as Quintet of the Hot Club of France (comprised of violin, three acoustic guitars and bass) during 1933-39 they produced a sensational series of recordings and performances. During a London engagement in 1939, World War II broke out. Reinhardt rashly decided to return to France but Grappelli stayed in England, effectively ending the group. The violinist soon teamed up with the young pianist George Shearing in a new band that worked steadily through the war. In 1946, Grappelli and Reinhardt had the first of several reunions although they never worked together again on a regular basis (despite many new recordings). Grappelli performed throughout the 1950s and '60s in clubs throughout Europe and, other than recordings with Duke Ellington (Violin Summit) and Joe Venuti, he remained somewhat obscure in the U.S. until he began regularly touring the world in the early '70s. Since then Grappelli has been a constant traveler and a consistent poll-winner, remaining very open-minded without altering his swing style; he has recorded with David Grisman, Earl Hines, Bill Coleman, Larry Coryell, Oscar Peterson, Jean Luc Ponty and McCoy Tyner among many others. Active up until near the end, the increasingly frail Grappelli remained at the top of his field even when he was 89. His early recordings are all available on Classics CDs and he recorded quite extensively during his final three decades.

Gus Viseur:
Biography by Zac Johnson
The French accordion master Gus Viseur began performing on the streets of Paris in fairs and markets and eventually worked his way into the cabaret and nightclubs. During his influential career he ended up backing "the Sparrow" Edith Piaf and performing with the legendary Hot Club of France Quintet. He helped create the accordion-jazz style known as manouche.


Oscar Alemán:
Biography by Scott Yanow

Oscar Alemán, one of the finest jazz guitarists of the 1930s, is a difficult player to evaluate because he sounded like a near-exact duplicate of Django Reinhardt. Since Django was a year younger, some have speculated that he developed his style from Alemán, although the opposite is just as likely. Alemán began playing guitar as a teenager in Argentina and in the late '20s, he moved to Europe, Spain at first. By 1931, he was living in Paris and during 1933-1935, he was a regular member of Freddy Taylor's Swing Men From Harlem. Alemán appeared on records with trumpeter Bill Coleman and clarinetist Danny Polo and was the leader on eight selections from 1938-1939. He moved back to Argentina in 1941 and, although he recorded as late as 1974, few outside of his native country have ever heard of him. Strangely enough, Oscar Alemán does not seem to have ever visited the United States and none of his many recordings of swing tunes in his post-Europe years (except for a few titles put out by the collectors TOM label) have ever been released domestically.

VA - Gypsy Jazz (4-CD Box Set)
Year: 2007
Label: Proper

A unique 98 track survey of this most vibrant of musical idioms whose most famous exponent was the great Django Reinhardt. This set follows Django and many of his disciples as the music spread worldwide.

There are examples here from Europe, Scandinavia and even South America. Wherever the gypsies travelled their music travelled with them. Artists included, aside from Django, are Stephane Grappelli, the Ferret Brothers, Jean Sablon, Gus Visseur and even Sacha Distel who was a mean guitarist before he started crooning.

Review by arwulf arwulf
Proper Records presents a four-CD, 97-track anthology devoted to music recorded during the golden years of Gypsy jazz, from swing to bop to a bit of the cool (1934-1956). Happily, this tradition is still very much alive, and the recordings compiled herein demonstrate why even Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Eichmann, and Heinrich Himmler couldn't stamp it out. In addition to classic sides by famous or relatively well-known artists like guitarist Django Reinhardt, violinists Stéphane Grappelli, Michel Warlop, and Svend Asmussen and crooner Jean Sablon, this fascinating collection traces the intricacies of the Gypsy jazz movement throughout mainland Europe with rare recordings by members of the Reinhardt and Ferret families as well as accordionists Gus Viseur and Tony Murena, saxophonist Albert Ferreri, reedman and violinist Frans Poptie, and a veritable swarm of guitarists including Oscar Aleman, Jean Bonal, Eddy Christiani, Jean-Pierre Sasson, and Henri Crolla. Given this set's wealth of variegated material and its remarkably affordable price tag, Proper may well have come up with the world's best all-purpose, authentic Gypsy jazz collection. It more or less picks up where the Fremeaux & Associes 2005 release Django Reinhardt Complete, Vol. 20: Pour Que Ma Vie left off.

Disc 1 - Crazy Strings
1. Le Jour Ou Je Te Vis - Jean Sablon
2. Cloud Castles - Michel Warlop Et Son Orchestre
3. Crazy Strings - Michel Warlop Et Son Orchestre
4. You Took Advantage Of Me - Stephane Grappelli & Michael Warlop
5. Bricktop - Quintette Du Hot Club De France
6. Speevy - Quintette Du Hot Club De France
7. Paramount Stomp - Quintette Du Hot Club De France
8. Bolero - Quintette Du Hot Club De France
9. Mabel - Quintette Du Hot Club De France
10. Christmas Swing - Michel Warlop
11. Sweet Georgia Brown - Django Reinhardt
12. Winds And Strings - Gus Viseur's Music
13. Automne - Gus Viseur's Music
14. Daphne - Gus Viseur's Music
15. Andalousie - Albert Ferreri Et Le Trio Ferret
16. Nobody's Sweetheart - Oscar Aleman
17. Whispering - Oscar Aleman
18. Ma Theo - Le Trio Ferret
19. Gin, Gin - Le Trio Ferret
20. La Valse Des Niglots - Le Trio Ferret
21. Ti-Pi-Tin - Le Trio Ferret
22. Russian Lullaby - Oscar Aleman Trio
23. Just A Little Swing - Oscar Aleman Trio
24. Dear Old Southland - Oscar Aleman Trio
25. Jeepers Creepers - Oscar Aleman Trio

Disc 2 - Gitan Swing
1. Hallelujah - Svenska Hotkvintetten
2. Jumping For Joy - Svenska Hotkvintetten
3. I Found A New Baby - Svenska Hotkvintetten
4. Undecided - Gus Viseur Et Son Orchestre
5. Rosetta - Gus Viseur Et Son Orchestre
6. Coucou - Josette Dayde Et Le Quintette Du Hot Club De France
7. Opus 5 - Svenska Hotkvintetten
8. Swing De Paris - Quintette Du Hot Club Du France
9. Oiseaux Des Iles - Quintette Du Hot Club Du France
10. Nostalgia Gitana - Tony Murena Et Son Ensemble Swing
11. Miami - Sarane Ferret Et Le Swing Quintette De Paris
12. Septembre - Sarane Ferret Et Le Swing Quintette De Paris
13. Blue Guitare - Sarane Ferret Et Le Swing Quintette De Paris
14. Swing Star - Sarane Ferret Et Le Swing Quintette De Paris
15. Swing 39 - Sarane Ferret Et Le Swing Quintette De Paris
16. Cocktail Swing - Sarane Ferret Et Le Swing Quintette De Paris
17. Deux Guitares - Sarane Ferret Et Le Swing Quintette De Paris
18. Tiger Rag - Sarane Ferret Et Le Swing Quintette De Paris
19. Gitan Swing - Tony Murena Et Son Ensemble Swing
20. Rose De Miel - Quintette Du Hot Club De Belgique
21. Royal Blue - Sarane Ferret Et Le Quintette De Paris With Georges Effrosse
22. Surprise Party - Sarane Ferret Et Le Quintette De Paris With Georges Effrosse
23. Daphne - Sarane Ferret Et Le Quintette De Paris With Georges Effrosse
24. Hungaria - Sarane Ferret Et Le Quintette De Paris With Georges Effrosse

Disc 3 - Blue Dreams
1. Zazou Zazou - Orchestra Swing Jo Reinhardt
2. Ballade - Orchestra Swing Jo Reinhardt
3. Blues En Mineur - Django Reinhardt
4. Swing 42 - Gus Viseur Et Son Orchestre
5. Sur La Glace - Viseur - Deloof Sextet
6. Chantons Ensemble - Viseur - Deloof Sextet
7. Harlem Swing - Viseur - Deloof Sextet
8. Gus Et Gus - Viseur - Deloof Sextet
9. Reves Bleus - Viseur - Deloof Sextet
10. Manche De Fouet - Viseur - Deloof Sextet
11. Ding, Dong Dang - Frank Ottersen Og Hans Sekstett
12. Skumring - Frank Ottersen Og Hans Sekstett
13. Promenade - Frank Ottersen Og Hans Sekstett
14. Opus 1 - Frank Ottersen Og Hans Sekstett
15. Lucky - Sarane Ferret Et Le Quintette De Paris With Georges Effosse
16. Folies Bergere - Sarane Ferret Et Le Quintette De Paris With Georges Effosse
17. Studio 28 - Sarane Ferret Et Le Quintette De Paris With Georges Effosse
18. Sex-Appeal - Sarane Ferret Et Le Quintette De Paris With Georges Effosse
19. Improvisation Pt. 1 - Django Reinhardt
20. Improvisation Pt. 1 - Django Reinhardt
21. Exactly Like You - Svend Asmussen
22. Swing Guitar - Jean Ferret Et Son Sixtette
23. La Vipere Du Trottoir - Jean Ferret Et Son Sixtette
24. Un Peu De Reve - Joseph Reinhardt Et Son Ensemble
25. Douce Georgette (Sweet Georgia Brown) - Joseph Reinhardt Et Son Ensemble

Disc 4 - Minor Swing
1. L'oeil Noir - Joseph Reinhardt Et Son Ensemble
2. Caminos Cruzados - Oscar Aleman Y Su Quinteto De Swing
3. Darktown Strutters Ball - Oscar Aleman Y Su Quinteto De Swing
4. Cielos Azules - Oscar Aleman Y Su Quinteto De Swing
5. Diga Diga Doo - Oscar Aleman Y Su Quinteto De Swing
6. Ideas In Minor - Vincentino
7. How High The Moon? - Django Reinhardt Et Stephane Grappelli
8. Minor Swing - Django Reinhardt Et Le Quintette Du Hot Club De France
9. Melodie Au Crepuscule - Jean Bonal
10. Nuages - Jean Bonal
11. Flighty Flies - Ensemble Eddy Christiani Cond. By Frans Boptie
12. Snowy Blues - Frans Poptie En Zyn Solisten
13. Artillerie Lourde - Jean-Pierre Sasson Et Son Ensemble
14. I Surrender Dear - Matelot Ferret Et Son Quartette
15. Out Of Nowhere - Matelot Ferret Et Son Quartette
16. Djoungalo - Matelot Ferret Et Son Quartette
17. Pennies From Heaven - Matelot Ferret Et Son Quartette
18. Love For Sale - Henri Crolla Sa Guitare Et Son Ensemble
19. Yardbird Suite - Henri Crolla Sa Guitare Et Son Ensemble
20. Je Cherche Apres Titine - Henri Crolla Sa Guitare Et Son Ensemble
21. Ay, Ay, Ay - Henri Crolla Sa Guitare Et Son Ensemble
22. Two Guitar Blues - Jean Pierre Sasson Et Sacha Distel
23. Joan - Jean Pierre Sasson Et Sacha Distel
24. Just Blowing - Frans Poptie En Zyn Solisten

mp3 320kbps | complete disc & booklet scans
the whole shebang
or individual links:
Disc 1 part 1 | part 2
Disc 2 part 1 | part 2
Disc 3 part 1 | part 2
Disc 4 part 1 | part 2
Artwork

note: I put up this recording for dl so that you can have an introduction to the style and be able to appreciate and support the many contemporary, living musicians playing gypsy jazz. These recordings are public domain outside of the US, and the box set is unavailable inside the US. But Proper did a good job on the set and they make many other fine and affordable sets. If you like what they've done, by all means support them too. What would Django Do?

Texas Gladden - Ballad Legacy

"I don't think that a person who sang operetta should toy with these mountain songs"

- Texas Gladden

Like most musics, I suppose, the more you listen to folk music the more you develop a taste for it. But part of the fascination that's particular to folk music is that you'll hear bits and pieces of one song that you could have sworn you heard in a completely different song. And you'd be right. Because folk music is an evolved music, and like humans & chimpanzees, there are uncanny similarities lurking just below the surface that point to some invisible, unknowable ancestral precedent. And, like all things subject to evolution by natural selection, the essential parts are maintained and the extraneous, inconsequential bits fall aside. What this means in terms of folk music, particularly these old traditional ballads, is that while a song may be quirky and seemingly obtuse, at some level (often a non-conscious, irrational level), the song is deeply meaningful and helps people to negotiate the trials and uncertainties of this muddled mortal existence.

And, of course, since folksong-evolution is an organic process in an oral tradition, sometimes bits and pieces get lost along the way and we're left with only fragments (you could say this too is a product of natural selection: the part that remains is that which is most memorable). And since it is sung by people who weren't professional musicians, it had to relate to things that everyday people could relate to, rather that abstruse musical concepts and the self-indulgent wankery that professional artists are susceptible to. The universal subjects are thus revealed: love, death, nature, heartbreak, childhood, remorse, dream/spiritual encounters, and leaving home. These themes can be found recurring in folk music and most great narrative art across time, from Homer to Shakespeare to Stan Brackage. It's as if these subjects keep coming back because they're the moments in our lives that stay with us, and we need songs & stories like these to help mark those moments and distill meaning from them.

And while this music is rather difficult to listen to by modern standards, if you do take the time to listen to it, it'll work it's way under your skin and into the back of your mind, which is where it truly belongs. There it will take seed, whispering things to your irrational dream-mind, calling you back to time immemorial and rousing odd emotions like a broom rousing dust bunnies from corners and crevices.

Biography:

Texas Gladden was born in 1895 in Saltville, a small town in the south-western corner of Virginia. She had a known repertoire of some two hundred songs, all of which she visualized during her performances. "I have a perfect mental picture of every song I sing. I have a perfect picture of every person I learned it from, very few people I don't remember. When I sing a song, a person pops up, and it's a very beautiful story. I can see Mary Hamilton, I can see where the old Queen came down to the kitchen, can see them all gathered around, and I can hear her tell Mary Hamilton to get ready. I can see the whole story, I can see them as they pass through the gate, I can see the ladies looking over their casements, I can see her when she goes up the Parliament steps, and I can see her when she goes to the gallows. I can hear her last words, and I can see all, just the most beautiful picture." This is a fascinating insight and reminds me of something that John Cohen once said about Walter Pardon, namely that Walter's life was 'encapsulated within the world of the ballads'. And the same, I think, may be said of Texas Gladden. Here was a singer whose life was infused with her songs and ballads.

In 1946 Alan Lomax invited the great ballad singer Texas Gladden, of Saltville, Virginia, and her brother, mountain Renaissance instrumentalist Hobart Smith (fiddle, guitar, banjo, and piano), to perform with Andrew Rowan Summers and Jean Ritchie at the McMillan Theater at Columbia University as part of a larger festival put on by the university. These concert recordings of the two are included here. Lomax interviewed Gladden and Smith extensively during their stay in New York and also introduced them to Moses Asch, who issued an album of four of their recordings on his Disc label (later Folkways), with powerful cover art by painter Ben Shahn. Gladden returned home to Saltville with the news that she had met Leadbelly. According to John Cohen, "Within a few years, Smith's guitar picking was heard in New York's Washington Square folk music scene, where "Railroad Bill" was especially imitated" (see Hobart Smith: Blue Ridge Legacy [Rounder 1799] and Texas Gladden: Ballad Legacy [Rounder 1800], with notes by John Cohen and Stephen Wade.)

Rounder product description:
The singing of Texas Gladden is one of the highpoints of American folk music. This Virginia artist put her own indelible stamp on everything she sang: ballads, comic material, game songs and early country music. This is the first album devoted exclusively to her singing, and includes priceless interviews and four rare performances on which she is accompanied by her brother, Hobart Smith. Remastered to 24-bit digital from the original field recordings.

Review by Matt Fink
A wonderfully comprehensive overview of the recordings of traditional ballad singer Texas Gladden, Ballad Legacy is a near-essential document for fans of the near-extinct genre. Although somewhat ethnomusicalogical in its bent, the set and its superbly assembled accompanying booklet never come off as overly academic, though the average folk music enthusiast may not be enthralled with 78 minutes of largely unaccompanied ballad singing. Still, the material presented is nothing short of first rate, presenting Gladden's nuanced Appalachian styling in all its hauntingly sweet and aching earnestness. As she originally came to the public's attention at Virginia folk music festivals in the late 1930s for her renditions of a storehouse of antique songs from the British Isles, Gladden drew the attention of Alan Lomax, who saw her as one of the greatest examples the genre offered. With her notoriety peaking with a performance at the White House at the behest of Eleanor Roosevelt, Gladden again faded into obscurity, only to be rediscovered by artists such as Joan Baez in the early 1960s. The 37 tracks here, with a few selections featuring her brother Hobart Smith on guitar and a few comprised of interviews, should provide an excellent resource for anyone wanting to learn the gorgeous old tunes, or simply experience the vibrancy of the stories and truisms lost to the collective American past.

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One of the finest releases in the extensive Alan Lomax Collection thus far, this album gathers together on a single disc 37 tracks recorded in 1941 and 1946 by the highly-rated Virginia singer Texas Gladden (born 1895). Hitherto known from just a few tracks on assorted anthologies, this full-length album of mostly previously unreleased material at last presents us with a long overdue chance to properly assess her stature. And extremely impressive she proves too; quite simply, an outstandingly fine singer and interpreter, notably of traditional ballads (on which this collection necessarily focuses). Her versions of these ballads were used as source material by many of the singers from the American revival ranging from Tom Paley to Joan Baez. But despite Texas' limited opportunities for public performance, her interpretations were always fully informed and properly considered, and the interview extracts included on this release provide a fascinating insight into her approach.

Her performances are imposing, feisty and fiery; quite stark, yet full of warmth and understanding, and these nuances shine through the often rather indifferent recording quality. Her singing style is quite plain and unadorned, though she makes extremely effective (albeit wholly subconscious, judging from her comments when interviewed) use of grace notes. Texas sings unaccompanied for the most part, but on a handful of tracks she's backed by her slightly younger brother Hobart Smith on banjo, fiddle or guitar (check out his amazing Blue Ridge Legacy release too). The performances are uniformly fascinating and deeply satisfying, and it's impossible to select highlights. In short, this is an essential release for anyone seriously interested in the ballad tradition and its place in the music of the Appalachians, and comes with great notes by John Cohen – an excellent presentation.

Texas Gladden with Hobart Smith and 'Pres'

According to John Cohen, Alan Lomax considered Texas Gladden to have been, 'one of the best American ballad singers ever recorded'. Elsewhere, Lomax wrote, 'Texas Gladden sings in such fine style. With such fire and, at the same time, with such restrained good taste'. Over the years a few tracks by this Virginian singer have appeared on a number of 78s and LP anthologies. Now we have a whole CDs worth of material so that, at last, we are able to see whether or not Lomax's praise was right and justified.

Texas Gladden was born in 1895 in Saltville, a small town in the south-western corner of Virginia. She had a known repertoire of some two hundred songs, all of which she visualized during her performances. "I have a perfect mental picture of every song I sing. I have a perfect picture of every person I learned it from, very few people I don't remember. When I sing a song, a person pops up, and it's a very beautiful story. I can see Mary Hamilton, I can see where the old Queen came down to the kitchen, can see them all gathered around, and I can hear her tell Mary Hamilton to get ready. I can see the whole story, I can see them as they pass through the gate, I can see the ladies looking over their casements, I can see her when she goes up the Parliament steps, and I can see her when she goes to the gallows. I can hear her last words, and I can see all, just the most beautiful picture." This is a fascinating insight and reminds me of something that John Cohen once said about Walter Pardon, namely that Walter's life was 'encapsulated within the world of the ballads'. And the same, I think, may be said of Texas Gladden. Here was a singer whose life was infused with her songs and ballads.

Collectors such as Alfreda Peel, Arthur Kyle Davis and Richard Chase recorded songs from her throughout the 1930s. Alan Lomax first recorded her, on behalf of the Library of Congress, in 1941. Fourteen of the fifteen songs recorded in 1941 are included on this album. In 1946 Lomax invited Texas and her brother, Hobart Smith, to New York where they performed in a concert held at Columbia University. While in New York they also recorded a number of interviews with Lomax and extracts from some of these interviews are also included. Lomax introduced Texas to Moe Asch, who recorded enough material from her to fill three 78s, which he issued on his Disc label. This material is also included here in its entirety. Texas Gladden: Ballad Legacy also includes a couple of tracks recorded by Lomax when he returned to Virginia in 1959, as part of his Southern Journey project. In all, there are thirty-seven tracks, comprising nine classic ballads (including two versions of The Devil and the Farmer's Wife - the first recorded by Lomax in 1941, the second recorded by an unknown person at the National Folk Festival in Washington, in 1938), six extracts from interviews, eleven songs from the Anglo-American tradition, fragments of a further nine songs, plus, finally, one spoken ghost story.

Texas Gladden is perhaps best known as a ballad singer. This was, after all, the way that Lomax presented her to the 'outside' world. And, yes, she was a very good ballad singer indeed. On the CDs opening track, The Devil and the Farmer's Wife, she is accompanied by Hobart Smith on guitar, who plays melody - rather than chords - behind his sister's voice, and the effect is simply stunning. Texas and Hobart clearly knew each others songs and her version of The Two Brothers is extremely close to Hobart's version, which can be heard on his Rounder CD Blue Ridge Legacy (CD 1799). Hobart can also be heard playing banjo behind Texas on the murder ballad Pretty Polly, and the fiddle on the Rose Connelly track. Anyone who plays clawhammer banjo should listen to Pretty Polly. There is a drive and intensity here that has seldom been bettered by any other player. Rose Connelly is, of course, the song that Grayson and Whitter recorded in 1927 as Rose Conley (reissued on Document DOCD-8054) and it seems clear that Hobart was aware of this recording, his fiddle sounding remarkably like G B Grayson's.

We are told that Texas Gladden learnt her version of The Devil's Nine Question from the collector Alfreda Peel, who had previously noted the songs from a Mrs Rill Martin of Mechanicsburg, VA, before passing it on to Texas. The notes, however, are unclear about where Texas learnt the ballad Mary Hamilton. Texas says that she picked it up, 'after one hearing'. As Alfreda Peel had learnt the ballad from the singing of her grandmother, Mrs Marion Chandler who was born in Bristol, England, I suspect that this is the version that Texas Gladden later came to sing. I think that Professor Child was the first to cast doubts on the Scottish origins of this ballad (which could be based on events that occurred in the Russian Court), though the version sung here clearly places the tragic story in Edinburgh, and even mentions Canongate, a street which today forms part of Edinburgh's famous Royal Mile.

Four of Texas Gladden's other ballads, The Three Babes, The House Carpenter, Barbara Allen and Gypsy Davy may be termed 'standard' versions, with little to distinguish them from countless other versions collected across America. However, her version of Lord Thomas is carried to a tune far removed from the one normally associated with this ballad and is a joy to hear. John Cohen describes the melody as, 'simpler and more regular than many of her songs. There is less of the ornamentation, flatted notes, and odd phrasings that she often uses'. Ignoring, for a moment, the curious term 'odd phrasings', that John uses, I must say that I find his assumption that this tune, 'might (once) have accompanied a dance as well' to be unproven. Speculation, yes. Hard fact, no.

Elsewhere, Debbie McClatchy has written that, 'Traditional Appalachian music is mostly based upon anglo-celtic folk ballads and instrumental dance tunes. The former were almost always sung unaccompanied, and usually by women, fulfilling roles as keepers of the families' cultural heritage and rising above dreary monotonous work through fantasies of escape and revenge. These ballads were from the British tradition of the single personal narrative, but the list was selective; most of the one hundred or so variations of the three hundred classic ballads found in American tradition are to do with sexual struggles from the female standpoint, as Barbary Allen, Lord Thomas and Fair Ellender, and Pretty Polly. One is less likely to find Scottish ballads of rape and dominance, or those with men as heroes. A large percentage, perhaps almost half, of the American variations tend to be about pregnant women murdered by their boyfriends.'

Interestingly, Texas Gladden sings all of the four ballads mentioned above on this CD. There are also three folksongs, The Scolding Wife, I'm Never to Marry and My Lovin' Old Husband which would probably fall within Ms McClatchy's definition. (Incidentally, in the song My Lovin' Old Husband, which comprises sung verses interspersed with spoken comments, Texas says "chimney corner" and not the meaningless "in the corn" following verse 4). John Cohen says that Alan Lomax 'suggested that the pioneer women actively cultivated such songs because they were "vehicles for fantasies, wishes, and norms of behaviour which corresponded to...(their) emotional needs...(These ballads) represented the deepest emotional preoccupation's of women who lived within the patriarchal family system of their close-knit society".'

Clearly, in some of these songs I would suggest that we are seeing remnants of once commonly held European beliefs in female subjugation. Dave Harker has already pointed out that such beliefs lie behind the ballad of The House Carpenter in his article 'A Warning' (Folk Music Journal, 1992. Vol.6, no.3. pp.299-338), and the situation is a far more complex one than either McClatchy or Lomax seem to have realized.

I have already mentioned the tune to Lord Thomas. In 1918, having already collected songs in North Carolina, Tennessee and Kentucky, Cecil Sharp felt that, 'the Virginian tunes are the best I have yet got' and many of Texas Gladden's songs are, indeed, sung to beautiful tunes. One Morning in May, a version of The Unfortunate Rake, has a splendid modal tune coupled with one of the most arresting first verses you're likely to hear:

When I was a young girl I used to see pleasure
When I was a young girl I used to drink ale
Out of the alehouse and into the jailhouse
Right out of a bar-room and down to my grave.

Kind Sir, I See You've Come Again, which Sharp called The Courting Case, is sung to a version of the tune which Scottish singers have used repeatedly for the ballad Lang Johnny More. The fragment Cold Mountains uses the same fine tune that Fiddlin' Arthur Smith used for the song Adieu, False Heart which he recorded in 1938 (reissued on Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music - Volume 4. Revenant CD RVN 211).

In one of the interviews Texas Gladden speaks of using 'grace notes' in her singing, adding that her mother, "had a knack of putting in little grace notes like I do sometimes". Mention is also made of the composer John Powell (the right-wing nutter who founded the White Top Festival with Annabel Morris Buchanan), who is described by Texas as 'the greatest authority on musical compositions in Virginia'. Texas knew Powell, through attending the Whitetop Festivals, and I would suggest that she picked up the term 'grace notes' from him. Both Alan Lomax and John Cohen speak of Texas's use of ornamentation (not forgetting that strange 'odd phrasings') in her singing. Actually, it seems to me that Texas Gladden did not use a great deal of ornamentation. In her ballads she does use the occasional appoggiatura grace note. But, in general, she is quite a plain singer. Don't get me wrong. She is a good singer, at times a great ballad singer, but she just does not sound like, say, Dellie Norton or some of the other Sodom Laurel singers that I met in the late '70s and early '80s. Interestingly, though, Texas did change her style in a few of her songs. Take, for example, the song Old Kimball, which began life in Ireland in the early 1800s. The song quickly travelled to America where, by the late 1860s, it was being sung by Negro singers, and Texas's version clearly shows a black influence, as did many of the songs and tunes that Hobart Smith sang and played.

Sadly there are no notes attached to the song fragments. Love's Worse Than Sickness is related to Dellie Norton's version of Black is the Colour, while I Am a Man of Honor is a fragment of the song that Sharp called The Virginian Lover and which Dellie Norton called The Silkmerchant's Daughter. Always been a Rambler is the opening verse to the song The Girl I Left Behind, in the version recorded in 1928 by Grayson and Whitter as I've Always been a Rambler. Several of the other fragments were also recorded commercially during the 1920s and '30s. Roving Cowboy was noted by a number of American collectors and was recorded by Frank Jenkins in 1927 (reissued on Document DOCD-8023). In the Shadow of the Pines was recorded by Kelly Harrell, The Wreck of the Old '97 by Vernon Dalhart (and countless others), and Wild and Reckless Hobo by Burnett and Rutherford. This latter, incidentally, is of interest to British listeners in that the song is based on a broadside published by James Catnach of London's Seven Dials in the early 1800s. Catnach's sheet, which was titled Standing on the Platform (Waiting for the Train), was reprinted extensively in the States in the 1860s and '70s, a fact which would help explain its popularity with American folksingers.

Today there seems to be as much interest in the telling of folktales as there is in the singing of folksongs. Luckily, Lomax recorded at least one of Texas Gladden's folktales - here simply titled Ghost Story. In fact, it is a short version of the story The Haunted House that I recorded in 1979 from Matt Burnette of Meadows of Dan, VA. Matt's tale was set locally and was without any specific date, whereas Texas Gladden's version is supposed to have happened sometime during the Civil War. In a way it reminds me of parts of James Lee Burke's excellent novel In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead.

No doubt Alan Lomax was thinking of Hobart Smith, a professional musician for much of his life, when he asked Texas Gladden "You never have made any professional use of your singing at all, have you, Texas?" I doubt if he was surprised by her answer. "Been too busy raising babies. When you bring up nine, you have your hands full. All I could sing was lullabies!"

Texas Gladden really was one of America's great ballad singers. Her songs came to her from her parents and family, from the radio and from gramophone records. Most of her singing was done at home. During her life she never achieved the fame that she deserved. She died in 1967, without becoming involved in the American folkmusic revival. I can think of no better memorial to her than this essential CD.
- Mike Yates - 5.11.01


The Alan Lomax Portait Series
Texas Gladden - Ballad Legacy

Recorded 1941-1946
Released 01/01/2001

Tracks:
1 - The Devil and the Farmer's Wife - 03:30
2 - One Morning in May - 03:19
3 - Mental Pictures (interview) - 01:06
4 - Mary Hamilton - 03:49
5 - Kind Sir, I See You've Come Again - 01:46
6 - The Devil's nine Questions - 02:42
7 - I'm Never to Marry (the Girl That I Hated) - 02:50
8 - My Mother (interview) - 01:07
9 - Rose Connelly - 02:49
10 - Been Too Busy Raising Babies (interview) - 00:17
11 - Hush, Baby, Don't You Cry - 00:42
12 - The Three Babies - 02:29
13 - Od-Time Love - 01:12
14 - Barbara Allen - 04:50
15 - Lord Thomas - 02:24
16 - The Two Brothers (interview) - 01:07
17 - The Two Brothers - 04:13
18 - Old Kimball - 01:55
19 - The Scolding Wfe - 02:05
20 - My Lovin' Old Husband - 01:40
21 - The House Carpenter - 03:07
22 - Gypsy Davy - 01:52
23 - Poor Ellen Smith - 02:27
24 - Songs and Singing (interview) - 02:55
25 - Ghost Story - 05:02
26 - I Am a Man of Honor - 00:24
27 - Roving Cowboy - 00:47
28 - Dark Island - 00:24
29 - The Wreck of the Old '97 - 02:05
30 - Always Been a Rambler - 00:33
31 - Wild and Reckless Hobo - 01:26
32 - Once I Knew a Pretty Fair Miss - 00:39
33 - Love's Worse than Sickness - 00:50
34 - In the Shadow of the Pines - 00:59
35 - Dark Scenes of Winter - 01:50
36 - Cold Mountains - 01:19
37 - The Devil and the Farmer's Wife - 04:19

death is sharper than a thorn.
mp3 128kbps | w/ cover | 70mb

for gadaya

Hobart Smith - Blue Ridge Legacy

Ok here's a real haunt. I mean a real old-school, dirt-road revenant. The mad stylings of MC Hob'. A one-man mountain. A freakish genius with a penchant for coaxing twisted gnarled jewels out of old musical roots. What can I say? He's as wild as a jackrabbit and as unbelievable as a jackelope. There's nobody like him. Not even Roscoe Holcomb, and he probably comes closest. I mean, Hobart can whip out 'Cindy' as a fiddle-banjo duet (i forget which he plays in this version, since he can do both... for all i know he's probably playing them simultaneously... freak...) which is pretty standard fare for your every day old-time throw-in-an-extra-bar-this-time-around mountain music, but then he completely turns the tune on its head playing it on old-time mountain PIANO. The way this guy plays, it seems like the only thing that's keeping the tune from falling apart is the instrument, which itself sounds like it's about to fall apart. But that's what makes it so compelling: he pushes every tune to the breaking point -- one step further and you'll fall over trying to dance to it. Then you apply this breaking point philosophy to a death-knell song like Last Chance. And the result is something as unforgettably haunting as Blind Willie Johnson or Dock Boggs, and a mite odder as well.

Rounder product description:
This collection of ballads, reels, and blues is the legacy of a Renaissance mountain man: Hobart Smith of Virginia. This Appalachian virtuoso was many things: a forceful singer, a brilliant guitarist, a masterful fiddler, a spellbinding banjoist, an innovative pianist, and a musical giant whose influence on old-timey music and the folk revival remains uncharted.

---

Bio:
Hobart Smith was born on Little Mouton, Saltville, VA on May 10, 1897. Smith was the oldest of four brothers in a family of eight children born to King and Louvenia Smith. Both his parents were banjo pickers; his sister, Texas Gladden, a noted ballad singer.

Hobart began playing the banjo when he was seven, later the guitar and the fiddle. His repertoire of instruments also included piano, organ, harp, mandolin and most any other stringed instrument.

Recording magnate, folk and country music authority Alan Lomas of New York was the first to record Hobart. Lomas called Smith "the best mountain instrumentalist that I've ever found, and the forty-two recordings in the Library of Congress will always stand as proof of that."

Later in his life, Smith performed in two movies to be used in a cultural exchange program with other countries. During his lifetime, Hobart Smith performed at Carnegie Hall, Radio City Music Hall, Constitution Hall, Washington, D. C., Radio City Music Hall and for Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt. He also gave performances and seminars at many colleges in the Eastern part of the United States.

Throughout his life of entertainment, he performed with such well-known people as Peter, Paul and Mary; Joan Baez; Judy Collins; Doc Watson; Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. Music critics across the country praised Smith's work as being "the best that they had ever heart" (Chicago Daily News).

"One can learn so much about the Southern Mountain instrumental style by listening to Smith's banjo and fiddle...his singing is in a hard-cider rural voice, alive with feeling" (New York Times).

Hobart once said, "I grew up with music and I'm still trying to play". His last performance was on October 11, 1963 in Chicago, IL for which he received a standing ovation. On January 11, 1965, Hobart Smith went home to rest on Little Mountain. His music lives on!


"I GREW UP INTO IT"
as told by Hobart Smith

I started playing the banjo when I was seven years old. When I was three, I commenced playin' on an old fire shovel. I was raised in an old log house that had a fireplace and my mother had a bar that went across the fireplace with hooks that came down to cook her stuff in the pots and then she had a big oven and lid and she'd bake her bread and pull out those coals with that shovel — cover it up with red-hot coals, you know — and bake her bread thataway. We didn't have any cook-stove at that time. They said I was just three years old, I'd get that fire shovel and just pick on it; and they asked me what I was pickin' and I just said "Sour Colics!"

Now, I call my style of banjer pickin' the old-timey rappin' style. I learned it from my daddy. When I was seven years old, I could play a tune on the banjer. So, my daddy, seein' I was interested in it, he ordered me a little, small, short-necked banjer from Sears-Roebuck and I commenced pickin' on the banjer when I was seven years old.

Well, after that, I got onto a gittar — I commenced playin' that. Now, the first guitar I ever owned, I worked in a corn field and bought it. I gave four dollars for it. I was fourteen years old then. So, then I liked the fiddle. I got on the fiddle after that. I got to playin' 'em all and all of 'em sounded pretty good to me.

My father and mother was both banjer pickers. I started the banjer at home. I didn't learn the gittar at home; I learned it from different men. Now, the first of the gittar playin' that I really liked was when a bunch of colored men came in there, oh, way back yonder. I was just about fourteen or fifteen years old. It was along about that time that Blind Lemon Jefferson came through and he stayed around there about a month. He stayed with the other colored fellers and they worked on the railroad there, and he'd just play and sing to entertain the men in that work camp. I think right about there I started on the gittar. I liked his type of playin'. I just watched his fingers and got the music in my head and then I'd thumb around till I found what I was wantin' on the strings.

The way it was with me, I just grew up and it seemed like I had a feelin' in me when I'd hear this old-time music. Well, I didn't hear anything else, you know, for years and years. I didn't know anything about this fingering the banjer (Scruggs-style three-finger picking). That hadn't come out yet. Everybody rapped the banjer. I'd get around old folks that played a banjer and I'd listen to that and was just as full of music as I could be. It'd just register on me up and down like a thermometer. And, you see, I'd get that in my ear and then I'd get ahold of that banjer.

You've first got to get the tune in your mind and then find it with your fingers — keep on till you find what you want on that neck. But keep that tune in your mind just like you can hear it a-playin'. I've been to the cornfield many of a time when I was a farmer and I'd hear a good fiddle tune or a good banjer pieces and I'd commence whistlin' it. And I'd whistle that till my mouth got so tired, and I'd go home keepin' it on my mind. I'd go pretty fast and I'd whistle all the way into the holler on the mountain and my banjer would be hangin' on the wall. Sometimes I'd forget where it was at, and I'd whistle right loud and that banjer would answer me on the wall and I'd go get her. I'd keep that tune right on my mind and I'd find that tune on the strings before I'd quit.

There was a feller I was raised up with by the name of John Greer. The fact about it — all of my banjer pickin' is John Greer's type. Now, my daddy picked a banjer; he picked the old-timey rap. I can play it just like him. He kept his thumb on the thumb string and that thumb string was just a-goin' all the time. Now, John Greer come along and went from thumb string to the bottom, double-notin', and he was the best man I ever heard on that banjer. And I patterned after him. "Coo-Coo Bird" and "The Banging Breakdown" I got from John Greer.

Now the first fiddle that ever I heard in my life, when I was a kid — there was an old colored man who was raised up in slave times. His name was Jim Spencer. He played "Jinny Put the Kettle On" and all those old tunes like that, you know. And he would come up to our house and he'd play one night for us, and he'd go over to my uncle's and play one night for them, and then go down to my aunt's in the other holler — we lived in three different hollers in the mountains, you know. He'd make a round. Now, that was the first fiddling I ever heard in my life, although both my grandaddies were fiddlers. But my granddaddy on my mother's side died of TB in the old Civil War and my other grandaddy, I never did hear him but saw a little bit on it, buy my daddy said he used to be a good fiddler. So, I'd hear old-timey fiddlers in different places and I"d just get it in my head and work it out with my fingers.

We'd have a square dance in the community twice a week. We'd have one on Wednesday night and Saturday night. But then, in my home, all of my kinfolk would meet and my daddy would pick the banjo and we'd dance to twelve o'clock every night of the week. We'd go to the mountain and get us some back-logs to throw on this fireplace to throw the heat out. The boys would all help us drag wood off'n the mountain and then we'd fire up that fire and your legs'd be burnin' off and your back a-chillin', but we really enjoyed it. The way they would do the square dance in them days, they'd have one in one person's house, say tonight – say"Where'll we have the next 'un?" – "In my house, tomorrow night." Just like prayer meetin'; catch it around from house to house. There was square cancan every night. They'd work pretty hard during the day, but they'd get ready for it. They'd come in and get washed and they were ready for it.

My first life was farming. My daddy'd farmed all his life and I went into farming. And I went into wagoning long before the trucks came around, you know, or any cars at all. My daddy had a team and I had a team and we'd haul coal for people and move people and go to the station and get trunks out. And then I'm a pretty good painter; I used to paint a whole lot. And I was a butcher; I worked with the Olin-Mathieson people for twelve years, a-butchering for 'em. At the time of the first World War, I had got married and was lookin' for my first kid. Well, I got fourth class and the war never lasted but sixteen months and I never was called.

Me and my sister, Texas, went on Whitetop for the festivals. I met Horton Barker and Richard Chase at Whitetop. We played for Mrs. Roosevelt there in '36. Then, after she went back, she sent a telegram to Roanoke, to my sister, wantin' to know if we'd come up to the White House and sing some of those old songs. She wanted her husband to hear 'em. And so we did go. We went up there and spent a couple of nights with them and we had a program.

I had a band. I had two boys that played with me. I played with Tom (Clarence) Ashley thirty or thirty-five years ago. I played in a minstrel show for two years. I played my own music and danced my own music — that's one curiosity that everybody thought so much about. No, I wasn't makin' a livin' out of it. We'd just go places and play and maybe they'd give us so much. I played in dance halls back along in Hoover's time, you know, when you couldn't get ahold of a dollar nowhere. I played the fiddle the most — tunes like "Golden Slippers" and "Coming Around the Mountain" — for dances.

The fact about it — I went into this pop'lar stuff and got to playin' on that and then when I got in with Alan Lomax in 1942, he wanted me to pull back into the old folk music. And he said, "Don't you ever leave it no more!" I had just about left it. I hadn't owned a banjer in twenty-five years till the Vega people sent me that banjer from Boston as a gift several years ago. Pete Seeger got 'em to send it. I hadn't owned one in twenty-five years. Maybe I'd go to somebody's house and there'd be a banjer sittin' there and maybe I'd pick it up and play just one tune and set it down. I'd been playin' the fiddle and the gittar and the piano. And, you see, all of those old pieces on the banjer was just gettin' away from me and I didn't fool with 'em. But after I got this new banjer, why it came back to me in just a little time. In thirty days I was back just as good as I ever was.

So, I've had a life in music ever since I was a kid. I grew up into it and I'm still tryin' to play it.


Alan Lomax Collection: Portraits
Hobart Smith - Blue Ridge Legacy
Released 01/01/2001
Label: Rounder

Tracks:
1 - The Devil's Dream - 02:29
2 - Drunken Hiccups - 02:50
3 - The Cuckoo Bird - 02:40
4 - Banging Breakdown - 01:00
5 - Arkansas Traveller - 01:43
6 - Railroad Bill - 02:58
7 - Clause Allen - 03:36
8 - Hangman, Swing Your Rope - 03:26
9 - Wayfaring Stranger - 02:03
10 - Sourwood Mountain (Piano) - 01:22
11 - Going Down the Road Feeling Bad - 01:19
12 - Pateroller - 01:44
13 - Chinquipin Pie - 01:50
14 - Last Chance - 02:20
15 - Jim Along - 02:28
16 - Two brothers (The Little Schoolboy) - 03:55
17 - Ellen Smith - 02:27
18 - Graveyard Blues - 03:24
19 - K.C. Blues - 03:05
20 - Unidentified electric guitar tune - 02:20
21 - Cindy (string band) - 01:23
22 - At an Old-Time Dance (interview) - 04:45
23 - Cindy (piano) - 02:02
24 - The Thrill of Dance Music (interview) - 00:22
25 - What Did the Buzzard Say to the Crow? - 01:40
26 - Buck Dance - 01:30
27 - Old Joe Clark - 01:55
28 - Dixie - 02:25
29 - Sourwood Mountain (banjo) - 01:06
30 - Hawkins County Jail - 02:41
31 - Rocky Mountain - 01:43

what'd he say?
mp3 128kbps | w/ cover | 64mb

you unrepentant Faheyites will notice Cindy is the melody that JF used for 'Tell Her to Come Back Home'

and if you like this and want more, there's another disc available from Rounder or at the Broke Down Engine archive.

Jelly Roll Morton Centennial: His Complete Victor Recordings (1926-1939)

I remember one day, probably over the dinner table, and seemingly out of nowhere, my dad said to me, "So you know, Jazz is basically all about sex." Such a thought had never occurred to me, nor did it make much sense at the time, since my notion of jazz was mostly the abstracted bebop of New York. But over the ensuing years, I became more familiar with New Orleans music and early 20th Century American music in general, I realized it was true. Well, ok, some songs were about reefer, but most of the rest really were about sex, or if not nominally about sex, it was an ever-present undercurrent. There is a strutting quality to New Orleans jazz, as well as a dark and primal power that can be found in Jelly Roll Morton's music. This raised eyebrow and lick of the lips became diluted as jazz was passed into the hands of white people in the northern cities.

Actually, as he told Lomax some years later, Morton had to write incredibly racy, saucy lines or else people would take him - a slender, long-fingered piano-player (piano was considered a lady's instrument at the time) - to be of the queer, effeet variety, and that would have been (carreer) suicide.

There's also a joyful exuberance to this work that lies just on the cusp of total anarchy and chaos but is tightly structured enough to come barreling through in one piece.


THE DOZENS: JELLY ROLL MORTON by Rob Bamberger

It’s evening in Washington, D.C., and the year is 1938. Pianist and composer Jelly Roll Morton, who had once known far better times, tuned in his radio to Robert Ripley’s popular broadcast, “Believe It Or Not.” Ripley’s guest was W.C. Handy, the man who composed or set down some of the most popular blues tunes of all—notably the “St. Louis Blues,” “Memphis,” and “Beale Street Blues.” When Handy was introduced as the originator of jazz and the blues, Morton went uncorked and fired off a 4000-word screed to the Baltimore Afro-American and Downbeat magazine. “W.C. Handy is a liar,” was the headline of the Baltimore paper.

“Dear Mr. Ripley,” wrote Morton, “you have done me a great injustice and you have almost misled many of your fans… . It is evidently known, beyond contradiction that New Orleans is the cradle of jazz and I, myself, happened to be the creator in the year 1902. . . .” Morton signed his letter and titled himself the “Originator of Jazz and Stomps, Victor Artist, World’s Greatest Hot Tune Writer.”

It is always a tricky thing in jazz to declare “firsts” and ascribe invention to anyone because so much of the music in its early years took place away from the recording horn and out of earshot. Nonetheless, it is beyond denying that Morton, in his nomadic wanderings during the early twentieth century, codified a wealth of influences into a music that broke from the stiffness of ragtime to fashion a nascent jazz that was greater than the sum of its parts.

Biography by Scott Yanow

One of the very first giants of jazz, Jelly Roll Morton did himself a lot of harm posthumously by exaggerating his worth, claiming to have invented jazz in 1902. Morton's accomplishments as an early innovator are so vast that he did not really need to stretch the truth.

Morton was jazz's first great composer, writing such songs as "King Porter Stomp," "Grandpa's Spells," "Wolverine Blues," "The Pearls," "Mr. Jelly Roll," "Shreveport Stomp," "Milenburg Joys," "Black Bottom Stomp," "The Chant," "Original Jelly Roll Blues," "Doctor Jazz," "Wild Man Blues," "Winin' Boy Blues," "I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say," "Don't You Leave Me Here," and "Sweet Substitute." He was a talented arranger (1926's "Black Bottom Stomp" is remarkable), getting the most out of the three-minute limitations of the 78 record by emphasizing changing instrumentation, concise solos and dynamics. He was a greatly underrated pianist who had his own individual style. Although he only took one vocal on records in the 1920s ("Doctor Jazz"), Morton in his late-'30s recordings proved to be an effective vocalist. And he was a true character.

Jelly Roll Morton's pre-1923 activities are shrouded in legend. He started playing piano when he was ten, worked in the bordellos of Storyville while a teenager (for which some of his relatives disowned him) and by 1904 was traveling throughout the South. He spent time in other professions (as a gambler, pool player, vaudeville comedian and even a pimp) but always returned to music. The chances are good that in 1915 Morton had few competitors among pianists and he was an important transition figure between ragtime and early jazz. He played in Los Angeles from 1917-1922 and then moved to Chicago where, for the next six years, he was at his peak. Morton's 1923-24 recordings of piano solos introduced his style, repertoire and brilliance. Although his earliest band sides were quite primitive, his 1926-27 recordings for Victor with his Red Hot Peppers are among the most exciting of his career. With such sidemen as cornetist George Mitchell, Kid Ory or Gerald Reeves on trombone, clarinetists Omer Simeon, Barney Bigard, Darnell Howard or Johnny Dodds, occasionally Stomp Evans on C-melody, Johnny St. Cyr or Bud Scott on banjo, bassist John Lindsay and either Andrew Hilaire or Baby Dodds on drums, Morton had the perfect ensembles for his ideas. He also recorded some exciting trios with Johnny and Baby Dodds.

With the center of jazz shifting to New York by 1928, Morton relocated. His bragging ways unfortunately hurt his career and he was not able to always get the sidemen he wanted. His Victor recordings continued through 1930 and, although some of the performances are sloppy or erratic, there were also a few more classics. Among the musicians Morton was able to use on his New York records were trumpeters Ward Pinkett, Red Allen and Bubber Miley, trombonists Geechie Fields, Charles Irvis and J.C. Higginbotham, clarinetists Omer Simeon, Albert Nicholas and Barney Bigard, banjoist Lee Blair, guitarist Bernard Addison, Bill Benford on tuba, bassist Pops Foster and drummers Tommy Benford, Paul Barbarin and Zutty Singleton.

But with the rise of the Depression, Jelly Roll Morton drifted into obscurity. He had made few friends in New York, his music was considered old-fashioned and he did not have the temperament to work as a sideman. During 1931-37 his only appearance on records was on a little-known Wingy Manone date. He ended up playing in a Washington D.C. dive for patrons who had little idea of his contributions. Ironically Morton's "King Porter Stomp" became one of the most popular songs of the swing era, but few knew that he wrote it. However in 1938 Alan Lomax recorded him in an extensive and fascinating series of musical interviews for the Library of Congress. Morton's storytelling was colorful and his piano playing in generally fine form as he reminisced about old New Orleans and demonstrated the other piano styles of the era. A decade later the results would finally be released on albums.

Morton arrived in New York in 1939 determined to make a comeback. He did lead a few band sessions with such sidemen as Sidney Bechet, Red Allen and Albert Nicholas and recorded some wonderful solo sides but none of those were big sellers. In late 1940, an ailing Morton decided to head out to Los Angeles but, when he died at the age of 50, he seemed like an old man. Ironically his music soon became popular again as the New Orleans jazz revivalist movement caught fire and, if he had lived just a few more years, the chances are good that he would have been restored to his former prominence (as was Kid Ory).

Jelly Roll Morton's early piano solos and classic Victor recordings (along with nearly every record he made) have been reissued on CD.

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Wikipedia:
Birth
Ferdinand Joseph Lamothe was born into a Creole community in the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood of downtown New Orleans, Louisiana 1890. A baptismal certificate issued in 1894 lists his date of birth as October 20, 1890; however Morton himself and his half-sisters claimed the September 20, 1885, date is correct. His World War I draft registration card shows September 13, 1884. He was born to F.P. Lamothe and Louise Monette (written as Lemott and Monett on his baptismal certificate). Eulaley Haco (Eulalie Hécaud) was the godparent. Eulalie helped him to be christened with the name Ferdinand. Ferdinand’s parents were in a common-law marriage and not legally married. No birth certificate has been found to date. He took the name "Morton" by Anglicizing the name of his stepfather, Mouton.

New Orleans
He was, along with Tony Jackson, one of the best regarded pianists in the Storyville District early in the 20th century. At the age of fourteen, he began working as a piano player in a brothel (or as it was referred to then, a sporting house.) While working there, he was living with his religious church-going great-grandmother and had her convinced that he worked in a barrel factory.

Morton's grandmother eventually found out that he was playing jazz in a local brothel, and subsequently kicked him out of her house. "When my grandmother found out that I was playing jazz in one of the sporting houses in the District, she told me that I had disgraced the family and forbade me to live at the house... She told me that devil music would surely bring about my downfall, but I just couldn't put it behind me." Tony Jackson was a major influence on his music; according to Morton, Jackson was the only pianist better than him; he was also a pianist at whorehouses, as well as an accomplished guitar player.

Touring
Around 1904, Morton started wandering the American South, working with minstrel shows, gambling and composing. His works "Jelly Roll Blues," "New Orleans Blues," "Frog-I-More Rag," "Animule Dance" and "King Porter Stomp" were composed during this period. He got to Chicago in 1910 and New York City in 1911, where future stride greats James P. Johnson and Willie "The Lion" Smith caught his act, years before the blues were widely played in the North. In 1912–1914 he toured with girlfriend Rosa Brown as a vaudeville act before settling in Chicago for three years. By 1914 he had started writing down his compositions, and in 1915 his "Jelly Roll Blues" was arguably the first jazz composition ever published, recording as sheet music the New Orleans traditions that had been jealously guarded by the musicians. In 1917 he followed bandleader Bill Johnson and Johnson's sister Anita Gonzalez to California, where Morton's tango "The Crave" made a sensation amongst the early Hollywood set.

Chicago
Morton moved back to Chicago in 1923 to claim authorship of his recently-published rag "The Wolverines" which had become a hit as "Wolverine Blues" in the Windy City. There he released the first of his commercial recordings, first as piano rolls, then on record, both as a piano soloist and with various jazz bands.

In 1926, Morton succeeded in getting a contract to make recordings for the US's largest and most prestigious company, Victor. This gave him a chance to bring a well-rehearsed band to play his arrangements in Victor's Chicago recording studios. These recordings by Jelly Roll Morton & His Red Hot Peppers are regarded as classics of 1920s jazz. The Red Hot Peppers featured such other New Orleans jazz luminaries as Kid Ory, Omer Simeon, George Mitchell, Johnny St. Cyr, Barney Bigard, Johnny Dodds, and Baby Dodds. Jelly Roll Morton & His Red Hot Peppers were one of the first acts booked on tours by MCA.

New York City
In November 1928 Morton married showgirl Mabel Bertrand in Gary, Indiana and moved to New York City, where he continued to record for Victor. His piano solos and trio recordings are well regarded, but his band recordings suffer in comparison with the Chicago sides where Morton could draw on many great New Orleans musicians for sidemen. Although he did record with such great musicians as clarinetists Omer Simeon, George Baquet, Albert Nicholas, Wilton Crawley, Barney Bigard, Lorenzo Tio and Artie Shaw, trumpeters Bubber Miley, Johnny Dunn and Henry "Red" Allen, saxophonists Sidney Bechet, Paul Barnes and Bud Freeman, bassist Pops Foster, and drummers Paul Barbarin, Cozy Cole and Zutty Singleton, Morton generally had trouble finding musicians who wanted to play his style of jazz, and his New York sessions failed to produce a hit. With the Great Depression and the near collapse of the phonograph record industry, Morton's recording contract was not renewed by Victor for 1931. Morton continued playing less prosperously in New York, briefly had a radio show in 1934, then was reduced to touring in the band of a traveling burlesque act while his compositions were recorded by Fletcher Henderson, Benny Goodman and others, though he received no royalties from these recordings.

Washington, D.C.: The Library of Congress interviews
In 1935, Morton moved to Washington, DC, to become manager and piano player at a dive called at various times the "Music Box", "Blue Moon Inn" and "Jungle Inn" in the African American neighborhood of Shaw. (The building that hosted the nightclub still stands, at 1211 U Street NW.) Morton was also the master of ceremonies, bouncer, and bartender of the club. He was only in Washington for a few years; the club was owned by a woman named Cordelia who allowed all her friends free admission and drinks, which prevented Morton from making the business a success. When Morton got stabbed by one of her disgruntled friends in 1938 in which he suffered wounds to the head and chest, his wife Mabel demanded that he depart Washington. There is speculation the attack may have contributed to his early demise.

However, it was during his brief residency at the Music Box that folklorist Alan Lomax first heard Morton playing piano in the bar. In May 1938, Lomax invited Morton to record music and interviews for the Library of Congress. The sessions, originally intended as a short interview with musical examples for use by music researchers in the Library of Congress, soon expanded to record more than eight hours of Morton talking and playing piano, in addition to longer interviews during which Lomax took notes but did not record. Despite the low fidelity of these non-commercial recordings, their musical and historical importance attracted jazz fans, and they have helped to assure Morton's place in jazz history.

Lomax was very interested in Morton's Storyville days and some of the off-color songs played in Storyville. Morton was reluctant to recount and record these, but eventually obliged Lomax. Morton's "Jelly Roll" nickname is a sexual reference and many of his lyrics from his Storyville days were vulgar. Some of the Library of Congress recordings were unreleased until near the end of the 20th century due to their nature.

Morton was aware that if he had been born in 1890, he would have been slightly too young to make a good case for himself as the actual inventor of jazz, and so may have presented himself as being five years older than he actually was, and his statement that Buddy Bolden played ragtime but not jazz is not accepted by consensus of Bolden's other New Orleans contemporaries. It is possible, however, that the contradictions may stem from different definitions for the terms "ragtime" and "jazz". Most of the rest of Morton's reminiscences, however, have proven to be reliable.

These interviews, released in various forms over the years, were released on an eight-CD boxed set in 2005, The Complete Library of Congress Recordings. This collection won two Grammy Awards. The same year, Morton was honored with the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

Later years
During the period when he was recording his interviews, Morton was seriously injured by knife wounds when a fight broke out at the Washington, D.C. establishment where he was playing. A nearby whites-only hospital refused to treat him, and he had to be transported to a lower-quality hospital further away. When he was in the hospital the doctors left ice on his wounds for several hours before attending to his eventually fatal injury. His recovery from his wounds was incomplete, and thereafter he was often ill and easily became short of breath. Morton made a new series of commercial recordings in New York, several recounting tunes from his early years that he had been talking about in his Library of Congress Interviews.

Death
A worsening asthma affliction sent him to a New York hospital for three months at one point and when visiting Los Angeles with a series of manuscripts of new tunes and arrangements, planning to form a new band and restart his career, the ailment took its toll. Morton died on July 10, 1941, aged 51 or 56, after an eleven-day stay in Los Angeles County General Hospital.

here are some song reviews:

Original Jelly Roll Blues:
Comparing Morton’s piano solo recording of the “Jelly Roll Blues” [on his Library of Congress Recordings] with this version by his Red Hot Peppers affords an opportunity to hear how Morton translated a piano composition into an ensemble format. Whether as a piano solo or band side, the "Jelly Roll Blues" is replete with choruses of what Morton described as the "Spanish tinge," inspired by the tangos he recalled from his New Orleans youth. This tune came to make such an impression that Shelton Brooks included a reference to it—"when they play those 'Jelly Roll Blues'"—in his lyrics to the "Darktown Strutters' Ball."

Black Bottom Stomp:
This recording was added to the Library of Congress National Sound Registry in 2006, and it sums up in three minutes the essence of New Orleans jazz—and what differentiates it from “Dixieland.” New Orleans style had, at its center, a reliance on ensemble polyphony. The instruments in the front line—trumpet, clarinet and trombone—have different but complementary functions that, in the hands of musicians skilled in the tradition, allow all three instruments to play simultaneously without creating a musical hash. Morton’s aesthetic is on display: By balancing the ensemble and the soloists, and peppering the performance with instrumental breaks, a stop-time passage and more, the “Black Bottom Stomp” takes on compositional form, but never at any sacrifice of the New Orleans spirit that lies at its heart.

Doctor Jazz:
Morton sometimes worked as an entertainer during his nomadic years, and fancied himself a great comic. But the sketch openings on a few of his records reveal that Morton’s sense of humor was devoid of subtlety for anything but a tent show audience. Morton’s inability to outgrow the conventions of early twentieth-century vaudeville account in part for the lack of common ground between Morton and the new generation of swing musicians in New York during the 1930s. However, as a singer and raconteur, Morton was nonpareil, as he is on “Dr. Jazz.” Jelly’s elongated “Well” at the start of his vocal (more like “Wal-l-l-l-llll”) sounds like a cicada with strep and draws us right to the side of ‘ole Dr. Jazz.

Wolverine Blues:
The success of this tune may have helped convince Morton to devote all his energies to music. Morton claimed to have written “Wolverines” around 1906. Years later, the publishing rights were sold to Melrose Music, and Morton was disturbed when the Melrose brothers published it as the “Wolverine Blues.” Titling a song a “blues” was good for sales; however, Morton was fussy about such things and didn’t like “Wolverines” designated a blues when it wasn’t. Here are three New Orleans masters at their craft, Morton and the Dodds each employing half the record to show just how much the published “Wolverine Blues” wasn’t!

Freakish:
It is among the profoundest ironies in jazz that by the time Morton recorded titles like “Black Bottom Stomp” and “Dr. Jazz,” the New Orleans polyphonic ensemble had become an anachronism. Morton was not entirely unmindful that orchestras were getting larger and the traditional multi-strain compositions displaced by the AABA of Tin Pan Alley popular song. “Freakish” is one sign that Morton knew changes were afoot. Jim Dapogny has noted that the final strain of the piece uses a device that was “enduringly modern in conception: [Morton’s] use of repeated two-measure phrases,” which would prove to be the basis of many a jazz tune in the years to come.

Deep Creek:
Once he was in New York, Morton’s recording ensembles grew in size. Single instruments gave way to sections. “Deep Creek” was not attributed to the Red Hot Peppers, but to “Jelly-Roll Morton and his Orchestra.” This piece might not be a consensus pick for inclusion in a list of Morton recordings pared to a dozen, but it’s a blues so unhurried and inspired in its use of space that it leaves one mesmerized and stunned by record’s end. It’s unusual for Morton to commit so much of a performance to individual solos, but Morton uses the resources of the ensemble to provide a deep and rich organ-like background that persists until his final floating chord.

The Pearls:
Morton remarked on one occasion that “The Pearls” was one of the most difficult of his numbers to perform, and said that its various strains were carefully matched like pearls and strung together to make the perfect necklace. Like the New Orleans polyphonic tradition itself, “The Pearls,” taken as a whole, is greater than the sum of its parts, estimable as they may be. At a running time of nearly five minutes, this rendition of “The Pearls” is contemplative, and laid out with a jeweler’s precision.

King Porter Stomp:
It’s difficult to imagine Jelly Roll Morton and the City of New York sitting down together over a glass of beer. Their respective musical outlooks never charted the same course. Yet, in late 1939, his optimism renewed, Morton made one last assault on the burg he once described as “that cruel city.” Morton made a fresh recording of his “King Porter Stomp” that has a free and unfettered joie de vivre. Named for Porter King, a pianist Morton met in his travels, Jelly Roll dated its origin to 1906. The composition had been a hit for Benny Goodman and served as a major anthem in the launch of the Swing Era four years earlier, but Morton’s inflexibility and grandiosity had not endeared him to the new generation of musicians, and he watched from the sidelines.
- from http://www.jazz.com/dozens/the-dozens-jelly-roll-morton

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Jelly Roll Morton Centennial: His Complete Victor Recordings (1926-1939)

Label: Bluebird/RCA
Year: 1990
5-CD Box Set
Total Time: 335:16

Review by Scott Yanow
This five-CD set contains the very best band recordings of Jelly Roll Morton's career. There are 111 performances in this reissue, including all of the alternate takes. Bypassed are the pianist's recordings with the vaudevillian clarinetist Wilton Crawley, singers Lizzie Miles and Billie Young, and two songs he performed on a radio broadcast in 1940; otherwise, all of his Victor recordings are here. The classics (most from the 1926-1928 period) include the remarkable "Black Bottom Stomp," "Grandpa's Spells," "The Pearls," "Wolverine Blues" (a trio with clarinetist Johnny Dodds and drummer Baby Dodds), "Shreveport Stomp," "Low Gravy," "Strokin' Away," and "I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say," but listeners will have their own favorites. In general, this is New Orleans jazz at its best, with Jelly Roll Morton (as with the best jazz composer/bandleaders) creating his own world of music.

A negative review by an Amazon customer:
The very best music found in this box set (particularly the Red Hot Pepper Recordings) are essential in any jazz collection, as they are as important to the evolution of jazz as the recordings made by Armstrong's Hot Fives & Sevens and Ellington's Blanton-Webster Band. These are the epitome of small combo recordings, celebrated for their composition, arrangements, and performance. Having said that, this particular box set is a disappointment.

It's bad enough that Morton's 100th birthday nearly passed without any notice (this box set was virtually the only piece of commemoration; even concert tributes were curiously absent). But this box set adds insult to injury. At first glance, it seemed like a cause for celebration, collecting all of Morton's RCA recordings and having been directed by Orrin Keepnews, who has given jazz so much invaluable support over the last few decades. However, upon closer inspection, it's painful to find how poorly this box set was put together.

For starters, the listening experience is dragged down by the lazy sequencing, which places things in order they were recorded. That means master takes are often surrounded by alternate takes. With other artists, like Charlie Parker, it wouldn't be so bad because the alternate takes are often vastly different and sometimes better than the master take. That is NOT the case with Jelly Roll Morton. These performances were carefully arranged and composed, and early takes were rarely anything more than rehearsals for the master take; basically, the alternate takes sound like imperfect versions of the master takes. While they may still be interesting to jazz enthusiasts, it would have been a lot wiser to place them on separate discs.

The main reason why this set is a disappointment lies in the sound. Up until the mid-90's, BMG/RCA had a terrible reputation for hastily mastering their CD's from inferior sources, refusing to spend the time and effort to track down originals. On this box set, a large number of tracks weren't mastered from original sources or even vintage 78's. Instead, a large number of tracks were taken from old analogue multi-generational copies. If that wasn't bad enough, all the recordings were heavily processed with a primitive version of Sonic Solutions' NoNoise system, stripping the music of any hiss and surface noise, but compressing the life out of the recordings.

BMG/RCA has yet to remaster these recordings, but luckily, there's a great, affordable alternative: famed jazz expert John T.R. Davies remastered these recordings for JSP, a small, British label. Taking more care in the mastering process and utilizing golden sounding, vintage 78's from private collections, his work puts this box set to shame. His work is available at a much more affordable price on Amazon as well; also a 5-CD set, it's called "As Artist" (even thought that's not really the set's title).

Don't be a fool; buy the JSP set, not "The Centennial."

...but beggars can't be choosers, e? [edit - perhaps we can… see below]

Tracks:
1 Black Bottom Stomp - Morton - 3:12
2 Smoke-House Blues - Luke - 3:27
3 The Chant [Take 1] - Stitzel - 3:12
4 The Chant [Take 3] - Stitzel - 3:11
5 Sidewalk Blues [Take 2] - Melrose, Morton - 3:32
6 Sidewalk Blues [Take 3] - Melrose, Morton - 3:29
7 Dead Man Blues [Take 1] - Morton - 3:13
8 Dead Man Blues [Take 2] - Morton - 3:23
9 Steamboat Stomp - Morton, Senter - 3:08
10 Someday, Sweetheart [Take 2] - Spikes, Spikes - 3:29
11 Someday, Sweetheart [Take 3] - Spikes, Spikes - 3:29
12 Grandpa's Spells [Take 2] - Morton - 2:54
13 Grandpa's Spells [Take 3] - Morton - 2:54
14 Original Jelly-Roll Blues [Take 1] - Morton - 3:01
15 Original Jelly-Roll Blues [Take 2] - Morton - 3:03
16 Doctor Jazz - King Oliver, Melrose - 3:24
17 Cannon Ball Blues [Take 1] - Bloom, Morton, Rider - 2:52
18 Cannon Ball Blues [Take 2] - Bloom, Morton, Rider - 3:33
19 Hyena Stomp [Take 2] - Morton - 3:12
20 Hyena Stomp [Take 3] - Morton - 3:12
21 Billy Goat Stomp [Take 1] - Morton - 3:32
22 Billy Goat Stomp [Take 3] - Morton - 3:27
23 Wild Man Blues [Take 1] - Armstrong, Morton - 3:08
24 Wild Man Blues [Take 3] - Armstrong, Morton - 3:13
25 Jungle Blues [Take 2] - Morton - 3:26
26 Jungle Blues [Take 3] - Morton - 3:30
27 Beale Street Blues [Take 1] - Handy - 3:14
28 Beale Street Blues [Take 2] - Handy - 3:09
29 The Pearls [Take 2] - Morton - 3:22
30 The Pearls [Take 3] - Morton - 3:25
31 Wolverine Blues [Take 1] - Morton, Spikes, Spikes - 3:18
32 Wolverine Blues [Take 2] - Morton, Spikes, Spikes - 3:23
33 Mr. Jelly Lord - Melrose, Morton - 2:51
34 Georgia Swing - Morton, Pecora - 2:28
35 Kansas City Stomp - Morton - 2:53
36 Shoe Shiner's Drag - Morton - 3:20
37 Boogaboo - Morton - 3:17
38 Shreveport Stomp [Take 1] - Morton - 3:15
39 Shreveport Stomp [Take 2] - Morton - 3:14
40 Mournful Serenade - Oliver - 3:26
41 Red Hot Pepper - Morton - 3:08
42 Deep Creek Blues - Morton - 3:31
43 Pep - Morton - 2:57
44 Seattle Hunch [Take 1] - Morton - 3:12
45 Seattle Hunch [Take 2] - Morton - 3:07
46 Frances (Fat Frances) - Morton - 3:05
47 Freakish [Take 1] - Morton - 2:52
48 Freakish [Take 2] - Morton - 2:58
49 Burnin' the Iceberg [Take 1] - Morton - 3:03
50 Burnin' the Iceberg [Take 2] - Morton - 3:01
51 Courthouse Bump [Take 1] - Morton - 3:02
52 Courthouse Bump [Take 2] - Morton - 3:00
53 Pretty Lil [Take 1] - Morton - 3:12
54 Pretty Lil [Take 2] - Morton - 3:12
55 Sweet Anita Mine [Take 1] - Morton - 2:44
56 Sweet Anita Mine [Take 2] - Morton - 2:45
57 New Orleans Bump [Take 1] - Morton - 3:30
58 New Orleans Bump [Take 2] - Morton - 3:21
59 Down My Way - Morton - 3:17
60 Try Me Out - Morton - 2:30
61 Tank Town Bump [Take 1] - Morton - 3:11
62 Tank Town Bump [Take 2] - Morton - 3:10
63 Sweet Peter [Take 1] - Morton - 2:48
64 Sweet Peter [Take 2] - Morton - 2:56
65 Jersey Joe [Take 1] - Morton - 2:24
66 Jersey Joe [Take 2] - Morton - 2:29
67 Mississippi Mildred [Take 1] - Morton - 3:22
68 Mississippi Mildred [Take 2] - Morton - 2:56
69 Mint Julep - Morton - 3:04
70 Smilin' the Blues Away - Morton, Smith - 2:55
71 Turtle Twist - Morton - 3:09
72 My Little Dixie Home - Morton - 2:58
73 That's Like It Ought to Be - Morton - 2:57
74 Each Day [Take 1] - Morton - 2:54
75 Each Day [Take 2] - Morton - 3:03
76 If Someone Would Only Love Me - Morton - 3:39
77 That'll Never Do - Morton - 2:55
78 I'm Looking for a Little Bluebird - Morton - 2:51
79 Little Lawrence - Morton - 2:56
80 Harmony Blues - Morton - 3:29
81 Fussy Mabel - Morton - 3:16
82 Ponchartrain - Morton - 2:56
83 Oil Well [Take 1] - Morton - 2:40
84 Oil Well [Take 2] - Morton - 3:04
85 Load of Coal [Take 1] - Morton - 2:58
86 Load of Coal [Take 2] - Morton - 2:58
87 Crazy Chords [Take 1] - Morton - 3:03
88 Crazy Chords [Take 2] - Morton - 2:55
89 Primrose Stomp [Take 1] - Morton - 3:02
90 Primrose Stomp [Take 2] - Morton - 3:03
91 Low Gravy - Morton - 2:44
92 Strokin' Away [Take 1] - Morton - 2:54
93 Strokin' Away [Take 2] - Morton - 2:57
94 Blue Blood Blues [Take 1] - Morton - 3:02
95 Blue Blood Blues [Take 2] - Morton - 3:02
96 Mushmouth Shuffle - Morton - 2:42
97 Gambling Jack [Take 1] - Morton - 2:51
98 Gambling Jack [Take 2] - Morton - 2:45
99 Fickle Fay Creep - Morton - 3:13
100 Oh, Didn't He Ramble? [Take 1] - Handy - 3:10
101 Oh, Didn't He Ramble? [Take 2] - Handy - 3:03
102 High Society - Piron, Williams - 2:47
103 I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say - Morton - 3:12
104 Winin' Boy Blues [Take 1] - Morton - 3:10
105 Winin' Boy Blues [Take 2] - Morton - 3:07
106 Climax Rag [Take 1] - Scott - 2:27
107 Climax Rag [Take 2] - Scott - 2:25
108 Don't You Leave Me Here [Take 1] - Morton - 2:23
109 Don't You Leave Me Here [Take 2] - Morton - 2:36
110 West End Blues - King Oliver, Williams - 2:50
111 Ballin' the Jack - Burris, Smith - 2:14

mp3 320kbps | cover w/in mp3 files
5 disks in 10 parts in a share-folder:
stomp, bump & strut.

so, uh, after all that, does anyone have the JSP set?. [edit - see below]

Astarte graciously uploaded the JSP set, so ye can all have the pleasure of setting your ears of discretion upon a comparison, and judge for yourself. Though the JSP set we have here is only at 128kbps, and contains a good deal more surface noise, I must say that it preserves more of the life of the music, and sounds less like there's a blanket laid over the speaker. Anywho, judge for yourself:


Jelly Roll Morton - 1926-1930
Label: JSP
Year: 2000

Review by arwulf arwulf: [is this name for real?]
JSP's five-CD set devoted to Jelly Roll Morton contains all of his Victor recordings cut between September 1926 and October 1930. The sound quality is excellent and complete discographical information is provided along with insightful liner notes. Alternate takes are presented on separate discs so as to avoid redundancy. This creates doppelgängers, as it were, of most of the sessions involving larger ensembles. Jelly Roll Morton is heard as a solo pianist and as leader of his trios, Red Hot Peppers, and orchestra. The only shortcoming is the absence of eight titles recorded for Victor's Bluebird imprint in 1939 by Morton's New Orleans Jazzmen. Had the producers of this otherwise excellent compilation opted for these classic latter-day Jellies instead of obsessing over every single alternate take from the earlier sessions, this would be a serious contender for the "best and most affordable Jelly Roll Morton set" award. As it stands, JSP's hefty anthology is a great way to obtain most of Morton's major work on CD at relatively little cost. The very best way to study this artist is to start at the beginning of his discography using the Classics Chronological Series and then move forward. After hearing these canonic classic jazz recordings as presented by JSP, some folks will indeed want to zoom in for close-ups and study every recorded episode in this primal jazzman's life and works.

A few amazon-customer reviews:

Jelly Roll Morton made a lot of exaggerated claims in his life, taking credit for the birth of jazz. No one really believes these claims, but it's amazing how much truth there is to them. For one thing, Jelly Roll Morton revolutionized the form, more than Charlie Parker did and maybe even Louis Armstrong. His early RCA Victor recordings laid much of the music's foundation, particularly the Chicago "Red Hot Peppers" recordings, and Morton himself has been hailed as the first great jazz composer in a long tradition of composers that include Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, and Wayne Shorter. Simply put, you can't say enough about the greatness and the importance of Morton's music.

This collection by JSP is an absolute godsend. Originally a British import that received poor circulation in the U.S., it went out of print for many years when JSP was bought by another company that went on to re-issue all of their CD's. As any jazz collector can tell you, these CD's are famous for the meticulous remastering done by jazz archivist/sound expert, John T. R. Davies, and this Jelly Roll Morton box set is one of THE gems of the JSP catalog. It covers pretty much the same recording as the RCA Victor box set, "Centennial," including every track of Morton's best and most famous work with his Red Hot Peppers. JSP's box set is much more preferable than the RCA Victor set for many reasons. First, alternate takes are place on separate discs (RCA stacks them on top of the master take), which makes for better listening. Second, the JSP box is much less expensive. Third and most important of all is sound quality. RCA's box set was released in 1990, and like all it's reissues of that era, it was heavily processed with NoNoise, leaving a squeaky clean sound, but with the high and low end frequencies lopped off. Furthermore, good sources weren't always secured by RCA, so many tracks on their set were taken from analogue tape copies of old source material. The overall result was a muffled, heavily compressed sound that squeezed the life out of the music. It was all the more depressing considering that the music was recorded extraordinarily well for their time. With this JSP box set, Davies secured superior sources, including some rare 78 rpm records from private collections. Furthermore, noise reduction was very minimal, which means there's more surface noise on these CD's, but the liveliness of the sound is simply amazing. Simply put, there's absolutely no reason to buy "The Centennial" box set when you have this beauty available.

Much of this music is essential to any jazz collection, and this box set from JSP is absolutely the best way to attain it. Great music, amazing sound quality, and a great bargain.

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If you want your CD collection to contain only the greatest recordings of the 20th century, then in the field of Jazz this is one collection you should have (along with Armstrong, Bechet, Ellington, Basie, Parker, Miles Davis, and Coltrane).
The music played by Morton in the 20's ranked 2nd to none, although there was no soloist of Armstrong's calibre in his bands (there was only ONE Armstrong !). Morton skills as an arranger, composer and pianist were above everyone else during this period.

The first CD is from 09/26 to 06/27. There are the all time classics such as Doctor Jazz, Dead Man blues, and the tracks with the great clarinettist Johnny Dodds (the last eight tracks). Dodds presence added something extra to what was already great music. The last two tracks offer a chance to hear Morton the pianist - as he is joined only by the Dodds brothers.

The 2nd CD offers anything from piano solos to a semi big band, recorded in 1929. Instead of Dodds we have the opportunity to hear Barney Bigard and Zutty Singleton, two other New Orleans giants, join Morton for a trio on the last four tracks. There are also highlights featuring a band with Henry Allen, J.C Higginbotham, Paul Barbarin and Pops Foster, among others.

The 3rd CD was recorded during 1930, and is actually the last CD of the box set, as the remaing two CD's contain alternative takes of songs that appear in the first three. It contains swinging music, and such names as Wilbur De Paris, Bubber Miley and Albert Nicholas. I love "Harmony Blues", "Ponchatrain" - to me this is just outstanding music.

CD's 4 and 5 are alternative takes of some of the best songs. They offer a chance to see how much of the music was actually improvised and how much was written down.

Overall - for its musical depths, it historic value, its great remastering, and the very reasonable price - this is HIGHLY recommended.


Track Listings

Disc 1:
1. Black Bottom Stomp
2. Smoke-House Blues - Jelly Roll Morton, Luke, Charles
3. The Chant - Jelly Roll Morton, Stitzel, Mel
4. Sidewalk Blues - Jelly Roll Morton, Melrose, Walter
5. Dead Man Blues
6. Steamboat Stomp
7. Someday, Sweetheart - Jelly Roll Morton, Spikes, Benjamin
8. Grandpa's Spells
9. Original Jelly Roll Blues
10. Doctor Jazz - Jelly Roll Morton, King Oliver
11. Cannonball Blues - Jelly Roll Morton, Bloom, Marty
12. Hyena Stomp
13. Billy Goat Stomp
14. Wild Man Blues - Jelly Roll Morton, Armstrong, Louis
15. Jungle Blues
16. Beale Street Blues - Jelly Roll Morton, Handy, W.C.
17. The Pearls
18. Wolverine Blues
19. Mr. Jelly Lord

Disc 2:
1. Red Hot Pepper
2. Deep Creek Blues
3. Pep - Jelly Roll Morton,
4. Seattle Hunch
5. Frances
6. Freakish
7. Burnin' the Iceberg
8. Courthouse Bump
9. Pretty Lil
10. Sweet Anita Mine
11. New Orleans Bump
12. Down My Way
13. Try Me Out
14. Tank Town Bump
15. Sweet Peter
16. Jersey Joe
17. Mississippi Mildred
18. Mint Julep
19. Smilin' the Blues Away
20. Turtle Twist
21. My Little Dixie Home
22. That's Like It Ought to Be

Disc 3:
1. Each Day
2. If Someone Would Only Love Me
3. That'll Never Do
4. I'm Looking for a Little Bluebird
5. Little Lawrence
6. Harmony Blues
7. Fussy Mabel
8. Ponchartrain
9. Oil Well
10. Load of Coal
11. Crazy Chords
12. Primrose Stomp
13. Low Gravy
14. Strokin' Away
15. Blue Blood Blues
16. Mushmouth Shuffle
17. Gambling Jack
18. Fickle Fay Creep

Disc 4:
1. The Chant - Jelly Roll Morton, Stitzel, Mel
2. Sidewalk Blues - Jelly Roll Morton, Melrose, Walter
3. Dead Man Blues
4. Someday, Sweetheart - Jelly Roll Morton, Spikes, Benjamin
5. Grandpa's Spells
6. Original Jelly Roll Blues
7. Cannonball Blues - Jelly Roll Morton, Bloom, Marty
8. Hyena Stomp
9. Billy Goat Stomp
10. Wild Man Blues - Jelly Roll Morton, Armstrong, Louis
11. Jungle Blues
12. Beale Street Blues - Jelly Roll Morton, Handy, W.C.
13. The Pearls
14. Wolverine Blues
15. Georgia Swing
16. Kansas City Stomp
17. Shoe Shiner's Drag
18. Boogaboo
19. Shreveport Stomp
20. Mournful Serenade - Jelly Roll Morton, Oliver, Joe "King"

Disc 5:
1. Shreveport Stomp
2. Seattle Hunch
3. Freakish
4. Burnin' the Iceberg
5. Courthouse Bump
6. Pretty Lil
7. Sweet Anita Mine
8. New Orleans Bump
9. Tank Town Bump
10. Sweet Peter
11. Jersey Joe
12. Mississippi Mildred
13. Each Day
14. Oil Well
15. Load of Coal
16. Crazy Chords
17. Primrose Stomp
18. Strokin' Away
19. Blue Blood Blues
20. Gambling Jack

astarte said:
When I got this, covers were included, but I didn't keep coverart at the time. I vaguely remember there was a lot of yellow in it. I decided to not make it a split archive. So, if this might disappoint you , you don't need to download all of it in order to hear some samples.

cd1 | cd2 | cd3 | cd4 | cd5
mp3 128kbps | w/o cover | 42-56mb each

thanks astarte!

and in case any of you have moral squabbles over this, consider the following attest by an Amazon customer:

JSP Records is short for the owner. John Steadman Productions. He is famous in the record world for surreptiously recording concerts he has produced over the years and releasing the material on his label without either paying royalties or making any attempt at getting any permission from the artists he has. The list is very long. He has been called the "British Don Robey" and is so reviled in London he has to have a bodyguard. Beware JSP records. It's a shame this man gets away with what he does.

pirate is as pirate does; all's fair on a dead man's ship, says aye.