The Penguin Jazz Guide by Brian Morton, Richard Cook Read Free Book Online Page A

Blues” is about as close as you can get, I think, to what those early minstrel shows and the vaudeville circuit must have been like. It’s where it all started.’
    Raised in Atlanta, Bradford had made his way to Chicago before the First World War, and was already a veteran on the circuit – as half of a song-and-dance act known as Bradford & Jeanette – before his own songwriting started to become known. He is not much more than a footnote in most jazz histories, but his association with some of the great names and his ability to create vivid blues settings and novelty songs of real musical worth – ‘I Ain’t Gonna Play No Second Fiddle’ (with Louis Armstrong), ‘Liza Johnson Got Better Bread Than Sally Lee’ – make him a musician of real interest and charm. His vocals are workmanlike and it’s really as a blues composer (he and Mamie Smith effectively kicked off the blues craze) that he is worth remembering. This Document set doesn’t entirely exhaust the legacy and the chronological organization can be tiring, but it’s probably the best resource and there are few better ways to drive away the black dog than to put on ‘Fade Away Blues’ and then sit back for the rest.
    ARMAND PIRON
    Born 16 August 1888, New Orleans, Louisiana; died 17 February 1943, New Orleans, Louisiana
    Violin, voice, bandleader
    Piron’s New Orleans Orchestra
    Retrieval RTR 79041
    Piron; Peter Bocage (t); John Lindsay (tb); Lorenzo Tio Jr (cl, ts); Louis Warnecke (as); Steve Lewis (p); Charles Bocage (bj, v); Bob Ysaguirre (tba); Louis Cottrell (d); Esther Bigeou, Ida G. Brown, Lela Bolden, Willie Lewis (v). December 1923–March 1925.
    Bruce Raeburn, author of New Orleans Style and the Writing of American Jazz History , says: ‘Piron’s orchestra is often described as a society band, but there is strong evidence that he was also playing blues to black audiences. So what you’re dealing with is a group who kept their low-down music for when they were playing in Tremé [New Orleans neighbourhood] and played something sweeter and more genteel on record.’
    For the most part they were recorded in New York, but Piron’s band was a New Orleans outfit and as such was one of the few to be documented in the ’20s. This splendid reissue is a model of its kind: the sleeve-notes sum up years of research into the performers’ activities, and this latest remastering of a set of terrifically rare originals is excellent. The music, however, comes with a gentle warning for anyone expecting raw, ‘authentic’ New Orleans jazz. Piron’s group was a more genteel, proper orchestra than some New Orleans bands of the time, pitching itself somewhere between ragtime, society music and the glimmers of early jazz: though 1923 is early in jazz recording history, they still sound a much less modern band next to Oliver or Fletcher Henderson from the same year (one should compare their treatment of ‘Doo Doodle Oom’ with Henderson’s 1923 Vocalion version). A few tracks, including the very first, ‘Bouncing Around’, brew up a potent mix of syncopation, with Tio’s wriggling clarinet breaks and Bocage’s urbane lead making their mark over an ensemble rhythm that is almost swinging. No one will claim these as classic jazz performances, but they mark a very important reference point in the evolution of the music, in New Orleans and beyond.
    ORIGINAL INDIANA FIVE
    Formed 1922; disbanded 1929
    Group
    The Original Indiana Five: Volume 1
    Jazz Oracle BDW 8019
    Johnny Sylvester (t); Vincent Grande, Charlie Panelli (tb); Nick Vitalo (cl, as); Johnny Costello (cl); Newman Fier, Harry Ford (p); Tony Colucci (bj); Tom Morton (d, v). May 1923–May 1925.
    Trombonist Turk Murphy said (1981): ‘The key is to listen to the trombone and where it sits in the harmony. Not so high up that it’s fighting with the clarinet, and not clashing with the piano, or where later the bass would be.’
    The group hadn’t much to do with Indiana, actually formed in