I’ll be playing an Obama fundraiser at 6 on Sunday:
3860 Tracy Street @ St. George in the Franklin Hills/Los Feliz/Silverlake area, 90027. We have a big garden that is good for performance. We’ll also have bingo, barbeque, beer and hopefully babes for Obama.
The thing starts at 4 and officially stops at 8, though I’d be surprised if it doesn’t go on until late.
“Blues” broke with the publication of W. C. Handy’s seminal compositions “Memphis Blues” in 1912 and then “St. Louis Blues” in 1914. At that time the recording industry existed but was still subdominant to the sheet music industry. Between 1917 and 1923 their roles reversed, and both of these stayed popular in the new industry.
Here are five versions of St Louis Blues in chronological order, starting almost ten years after the first publication.
W.C. Handy’s Memphis Blues Band in 1922: St Louis Blues, from W.C. Handy’s Memphis Blues Band.
Handy learned his trade in minstrel bands before the turn of the century, and by 1922 his sound was pretty square. His take on the hot style here is credible but still stiff, like the Eagles doing a Nirvana cover. But still, it’s his damn song and nobody knows better than him how it should go.
W.C. Handy’s Memphis Blues Band in 1922: St. Louis Blues—Medley Fox Trot (Intro: Ole Miss Blues), from Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1891-1922.
By the time something gets used in a medley it’s a pretty huge hit.
Louis Armstrong sometime between 1925 and 1929: St Louis Blues, from Hot Fives and Sevens (Disc 4).
This is one of the best bands in the history of jazz at the peak of its form. This version shows the song turning into a broad framework for musicians to assert their own style.
Bessie Smith in the 1929 film St. Louis Blues:
The way she lays on the pathos is close to Handy’s original vision. The schmaltzy chorus and big-budget band is a whole nother thing.
Bob Willis and his Texas Playboys sometime around 1935: St. Louis Blues, from The King of Western Swing.
21 years after publication and still going strong, but getting further and further from the original sound, by now a hillbilly jazz tune.
19th century American culture had endless layers of social protocol. They used personal titles in family life: “Professor Cunningham, please pass the salt.” They used multiple initials in their full names: “W. E. B. DuBois”, or “D. E. Jannon.” They used elaborate circumlocutions, like saying “prestidigitation” instead of “magic trick.”
Manners were a big deal, so music respected protocol even when it was intended for partying. And that made it too stiff for our ears. Our ears expect music to breach protocol. We still care about hierarchy at the office, but we don’t want it on the dance floor. And there was a transitional time in music when hot sounds were rare and shocking.
The change to hot styles was related to blacks assuming cultural leadership. Throughout the 19th century blacks had been dominant among performers, even of styles we think of as white. Between 1893 and 1930, black musicians led the introduction of modern styles — ragtime in 1893, blues in 1914, and then jazz in 1917.
Here are four recordings from this transitional time. The last three are all from the killer Archeophone release Stomp and Swerve – American Music Gets Hot. Note that I’m using the versions hosted on archive.org, which are not as clean.
1902: John Phillip Sousa’s band plays Liberty Bell March. This is the point of departure.
1908: The Zon-O-Phone Concert Band plays Scott Joplin’s rag The Smiler. Notice how much more lively Joplin’s writing is than Sousa’s.
1914: Castle House Rag played by Europe’s Society Orchestra. Europe is James Reese Europe. His style was crazy hot and way before it’s time, analogous to early Stooges. Give this time to build to the climax and you’ll see what I mean.
1917: Livery Stable Blues played by the Original Dixieland Jass Band, a white act with plenty of sloppy enthusiasm but limited technique. This is the record that broke the hot style into the mainstream.
On Friday 8/29 I’ll play at Arnie’s cafe in Tujunga with my friends David Orser, Scott Boyd, and Fred the drummer. This will be a slacker jam of old time music. I imagine the highlight will be David’s ragtime piano playing, which is amazing.
I’ll do a solo show at an Obama fundraiser on Sunday August 31st. It’s a garden party in Silverlake, Los Angeles, held by a woman named Jane Cantillon with a reputation for putting on great parties. Jane and her husband Dick are a lot of fun, and it’ll be a good time for a fine cause.
I’ll also be playing with Madame Pamita at the Coffee Gallery Backstage in Altadena on Tuesday the 19th. This is a cabaret style event where I’ll be playing in Pam’s band and doing a solo song.
I made a couple improvements to the sheet music for Kristen Hersh’s song “Elizabeth June”: I fixed a typo where I named a chord G rather than F, and I added chord fingering diagrams.
For what it’s worth, the reason why I’m posting this modern music on this blog is that it’s a case of open and participatory music, parlor style.
From the sheet music for a 1919 song, shortly after the first hit jazz record and not long before the collapse of the sheet music business for the duration of the 20th century:
Searching for public domain sheet music is a drag because the results are always dominated by commercial providers. So I created this custom search engine to limit the search results to sites in the “Sheet Music Sources” list in the right side of this page.
This is my transcription of Kristen Hersh’s song Elizabeth June. This is a lead sheet with the chords, melody, and lyrics together. I don’t have a good transcription of the guitar picking patterns.
I got to know this song well by transcribing it, which is a great thing about transcription. The engine of the song is the way that she handles variation. The left and right picking patterns are closely related but clearly distinct; for example they have contrary motion within a narrow range of pitches to produce enough complexity to keep the song from sounding like a Joan Baez accompaniment. The melody is about balance between repetition and invention. Economy is a big issue. The thinking in this piece me of Morton Feldman’s piece “For Bunita Marcos.” If you listen to the MP3 of the MIDI of the vocal line by itself, as if there wasn’t supposed to be anything else, it sounds a *lot* like that.
At first my least favorite line in the lyrics was “your new moguls: trees”, which struck me as trying too hard. Now it’s my favorite line because it’s funny.
Here’s what the sheet music looks like:
I have posted a bunch of new versions of Frog in the Well over in its song page. There is a five-second MP3 to use as a ringtone. There are 20, 30, and 40 second cuts for use as a cue in a video. And over on CC Mixter there is a sample pack of of 8 clips under five seconds for use in remixes.
The sheet music collection at Mississippi State is a fine archive that I haven’t come across before. Something notable about them is that they publish the music as PDFs rather than images embedded in web pages. Although it’s a bit annoying to not be able to browse the pages, it’s really nice to not have to grab and print each page one by one.
Here’s the cover sheet for their scan of the 1899 cakewalk Smokey Mokes:
I have created a little utility to help people who don’t have Sibelius change the key of a Sibelius file using the Scorch plugin. I give you:
Blind Blake — He’s in the Jailhouse Now (MP3)
I put together a lead sheet of the 1920s classic “He’s in the Jailhouse Now” because I needed it to rehearse a biggish band, and there’s no reason to keep it to myself.
According to Roosevelt’s Blues, the song has been traced back to at least 1917, but the use of the abusive term “coon” in the lyrics may point to an earlier origin, perhaps around the turn of the century.
The song’s origins were probably in the medicine show circuit, according to Songsters and Saints. Ernest Rogers claimed to have sung it over the radio as early as 1922.
In 1924 it was recorded by the jug band leader Buford Threlkeld – “Whistler” – as “Jail House Blues”.
The veteran medicine show entertainer Jim Jackson
recorded it in 1927. Earl McDonald’s Original Louisville Jug Band recorded recorded an almost identical version in 1927. Again in 1927, Blind Blake recorded a version with a medicine show banjo player named Gus Cannon. There was another version, in 1930, by the Memphis Sheiks, aka The Memphis Jug Band. And the best known and most enduring early version was made in 1927 by the proto-country singer Jimmie Rodgers, who had a background in the medicine show circuit.
All Music Guide, by the way, usually credits the song to Jimmie Rodgers, which goes to show something or other.
As old as this song is, the copyright status is less clean than with most of the music on this site. This is based most closely on the Memphis Jug Band’s version, which was recorded in 1930 and is not yet in the public domain in the US. Most of the words in that version probably come from sources now in the public domain, but there are also probably additions that are still under copyright, I just don’t know what they are. So caveat emptor if you record this. My own copyrightable contributions, including these files, are under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike license, which means you’re free to share and modify them as long as you give credit and extend the same courtesy.
For a printout grab this PDF version of the lead sheet. If you want to edit my version, grab the Sibelius source file. If you just need to change the key and don’t have Sibelius, you can use the Scorch-O-Matic to do it in the browser. And here’s the PNG:
The following MP3s a very dirty jokes from the 1890s on a wax cylinder recording, via the incredible Archeophone release Actionable Offenses: Indecent Phonograph Recordings from the 1890s:
Obscene Recordings from 110 Years Ago
The commercial recordings on this CD are the only known copies that Comstock’s men missed. They were preserved by long-time Edison Recording Manager Walter Miller and are now in the vault of the Edison National Historic Site. Scarcity and suppression have kept them silent for a century. They were stories told readily in the bar; yet they became legally actionable offenses when fixed in wax and played on a phonograph in that same bar. Brace yourself. Just because they are from the Victorian era does not mean they are tame by today’s standards—far from it.
Pioneer Recording Artist Goes to Jail
They are so indecent that Russell Hunting was imprisoned in 1896 for making and selling them. Up to that point Hunting had been doing a brisk trade selling his bawdy cylinders to the exhibitors on Coney Island who had certain “discriminating” customers. Although he recorded under pseudonyms such as “Charley Smith” and “Willy Fathand,” his voice was so well-known through his “Casey” routines that he was identified as the creator by aural evidence alone. Hunting’s recording career never fully recovered, and he left the U.S. in 1898 to make a fresh start in England.
These would not be safe for work in any way shape or form if your coworkers could figure out what they’re saying. You might have to listen 7-8 times to understand the details. “A Hard Head” is unbelievably funny and filthy, but it could take quite a while to figure it out. “Whore’s Union price list” is not far off and the recording is a lot more clear.
Whore’s Union price list (MP3)
To an enthusiast of historical American pop culture this stuff is mind boggling for the way it brings those times to life. Topics reserved for dirty jokes are important, and the lack of them in the historical record makes those times abstract and distant. You know intellectually that the texture of life was the same then as now, pretty much, but no amount of imagination can fill the gaps like verbatim potty talk and gross-outs.