Path: news.nzbot.com!not-for-mail
From: usenet@goon.org (DB)
Sender: usenet@goon.org
Newsgroups: alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.easy-listening
Subject: Stomp Off 1213, New Orleans Ragtime Orchestra - "SOS 1213 Notes.txt" [16/23] yEnc (1/1)
Organization: Camelsystem
X-Newsposter: Camelsystem Powerpost (Modified POWER-POST http://powerpost.camelsystem.nl)
Message-ID: <part1of1.fqpuIMrQDKcaDV6yVxjV@Goon-Show.local>
Lines: 87
X-Complaints-To: http://abuse.usenetxs.com
NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 11 Aug 2018 16:22:52 UTC
Date: Sat, 11 Aug 2018 16:22:52 GMT
X-Received-Bytes: 11477
X-Received-Body-CRC: 866198935
Xref: news.nzbot.com alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.easy-listening:867
SOS 1213 Notes.txt
NEW ORLEANS RAGTIME ORCHESTRA
"Pickles and Peppers"
Stomp Off SOS 1213, 1991
LP rip (320 kbps) by Dick Baker, August 2008
PROGRAM:
Side A
1. PICKLES AND PEPPERS (Adaline Shepherd, 1908,
arr. Lars Edegran) (a)
2. TROUBLE IN MIND (Richard M. Jones, 1926, arr.
Lars Edegran) (b)
3. WALL STREET RAG (Scott Joplin, 1909, arr. Lars
Edegran) (a)
4. LOVE WILL FIND A WAY (Noble Sissie and Eubie Blake,
1921, arr. Lars Edegran) (b)
5. RUBBER PLANT RAG (George L. Cobb, 1909, ar. unknown)
(a)
6. ETHIOPIA (Joseph Lamb, 1915, arr. E. J. Stark) (a)
7. YOU CAN HAVE IT, I DON'T WANT IT (May Hill, Clarence
Williams and Armand J. Piron, 1917, arr. Lars
Edegran) (b)
Side B
1. TICKLED TO DEATH (Charles Hunter, 1899, arr.
Lars Edegran) (b)
2. THE JUNK MAN RAG (C. Luckeyeth Roberts, 1913, arr.
W. H. Tyers) (b)
3. WININ' BOY BLUES (Jelly Roll Morton, 1902, arr.
Lars Edegran) (b)
4. ST. LOUIS TICKLE (Barney and Seymore, 1904, arr.
F. E. Day) (a)
5. RED PEPPER (Henry Lodge, 1910, arr. Lars Edegran)
(a)
6. PLEASANT MOMENTS (Scott Joplin, 1909, arr. Lars
Edegran) (a)
7. HINDUSTAN (Oliver G. Wallace and Harold Weeks, 1918,
arr. Lars Edegran) (a)
(c) 1991 Stomp Off Records
MUSICIANS:
William Russell - violin
Lionel Ferbos - trumpet and vocals (A-4, A-7, B-7)
Orange Kellin - clarinet
Paul Crawford - trombone
Lars Edegran - piano, banjo and guitar
Richard Payne - string bass, tuba (A-1)
John Robichaux - drums and vocals (A-2, A-7, B-3)
NOTES by William J. Schafer
In 1967, pianist Lars Edegran decided to assemble a ragtime band to explore the world of the Red-Back Book of Rags (publisher John Stark's folio of classic rags in theater-orchestra arrangement) and other similar vintage scores from the vast John Robichaux Collection at the Tulane University Archive of New Orleans Jazz. He talked his friend Orange Kellin into playing clarinet, located supreme violinist/historian William Russell and assembled a rehearsal band. The personnel of that first band, christened the New Orleans Ragtime Orchestra, has changed little in these two-plus decades.
Through the 1970s, the N.O.R.O. recorded extensively and toured the U.S. and Europe, appearing at jazz festivals, playing with legendary ragtimers like Eubie Blake, appearing in a Louis Malle film, Pretty Baby, and generally receiving plaudits wherever it played. In the late 1970s, Edegran and Kellin became involved with the black-vaudeville musical reminiscence One Mo' Time, and the N.O.R.O. went on a lighter schedule. In the past years, however, Edegran has turned his atttention back to the orchestra, and it is once again commmitted to tours, concerts and recordings.
When discussing his aims for the N.O.R.O. as it was formed and as it has evolved, Edegran says, "We didn't want the military sound or the strictly classical sound. . . . I also don't care for the all-jazzed-up way." He describes their goal as "Ragtime in a New Orleans flavor" and cites some components of this flavor: "A swinging beat in the rhythm section is a must, and the horns and the violin shouldn't be too legit." His experience with the old arrangements has convinced him that the contribution of each performer, the total blending of styles and approaches, is as important as the scores themselves. He has tried to coax from his band of veterans the best of their individual geniuses as they collectively read the old arrangements.
The New Orleans Ragtime Orchestra performs the basic repertory of "ragtime bands" from the turn of our century--music now almost a century old. Their lively performances remind us that ragtime is by no means dead--and that it was never a genteel, antiquarian interest. In 1899, it was the brand-new music of youth, passion and rebellion. America's first great pop-music revolution, in fact.
Adaline Shepherd's "Pickles and Peppers" is a rousing opener. Written by a gifted woman (and women were major producers and consumers of ragtime), this rag-march is bold, driving and imaginative. It was a best-selling campaign tune for William Jennings Bryan in one of his quixotic bids for the White House. With music as compelling and vivacious as this, he deserved to win!
"Trouble in Mind" carries us to 1926, the middle of the "jazz age," with another best seller, by New Orleans and Chicago pianist, composer and talent scout Richard M. Jones. It was recorded in two classic versions by the stupendous Chippie Hill--first with Louis Armstrong, then twenty years later with Lee Collins's obbligato. It is one of the most poignant and poetic blues from the golden age of "classic" blues singing.
"Wall Street Rag" was composed when Scott Joplin struggled to recapture the great success of "Maple Leaf Rag" a decade earlier. This rag has a "program" describing the operation of the stock market, uniform glee in money-making, a financial panic, the hysteria of the brokers. Nothing seems to change in the world of megabucks investment.
Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle in 1921 created Shuffle Along, the first great African-American musical to hit Broadway. "Love Will Find a Way" is a brilliant, enduring ballad from the show. It reflects the cleverly melded energy and tenderness Sissle and Blake injected into songs through their half-century of collaboration as a writing-performing team.
Joseph Lamb's "Ethiopia" is a dignified, stately, rag from John Stark's library of "high-class" rags later orchestrated and sold in the Red-Back Book of Rags--staples for every ragtime orchestra. It is intricate, sophisticated music, with a subtle insistence typical of Lamb, who idolized Scott Joplin, James Scott and the other great black composers in Stark's employ.
"You Can Have It, I Don't Want It" is a jaunty pop tune claimed by Jelly Roll Morton as a 1905 composition but copyrighted by Clarence Williams and Armand J. Piron in 1917. Whoever wrote it, the song exemplifies the infectious vaudeville-style pop music of New Orleans in its glory days.
Charles Hunter's "Tickled to Death" comes from another ragtime wellspring--the "folk" ragtime of the midwest. Hunter was a blind Tennessee piano tuner whose early ragtime points back to sources antecedent to the genteelized Missouri-Kansas ragtime of Thomas Turpin, Scott Joplin and James Scott. Frontier string bands and backwoods hoedowns echo in Hunter's lively, staccato style.
Another contrast, highly sophisticated music from C. Luckeyeth "Luckey" Roberts, whose "Junk Man Rag" prefigures "novelty" ragtime of the 1920s and "stride piano" jazz from Harlem. Roberts was a virtuosic player-composer of the same ilk as James P. Johnson, Fats Waller and Willie the Lion Smith, and his rags are both highly imaginative and musically challenging.
"Winin' Boy Blues" is a lyrical Jelly Roll Morton number from ca. 1902, when Morton was very busy (by his own account) "inventing" jazz in New Orleans's Storyville district. Lars Edegran has based his arrangement on an orchestration by Morton in William Russell's collection, including an interlude not used in other versions of the piece.
The mysterious (probably fictitious) composing team of Barney and Seymore are known only for "St. Louis Tickle" (from 1904, the World's Fair year), the archetypal "folk" rag of the Mississippi Valley. It was widely known through two superb banjo recordings by Vess L. Osman. One strain is now easier recognized as a vulgar ditty the ubiquitous Jelly Roll Morton sang as "I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say."
"Red Pepper" is another perfectly constructed and wildly energetic rag by a journeyman tunesmith Henry Lodge. A shadowy figure, Lodge wrote many excellent, idiosyncratic rags between 1900 and 1920. Lars Edegran switches to banjo to introduce this one, recalling the rag's early popularity through a virtuoso recording by incomparable banjo wizard Fred Van Eps.
Scott Joplin's "Pleasant Moments" is subtitled "A Ragtime Waltz," recalling that "ragtime bands" also played the total repertory of the era, performing for dancing, sing-alongs, for all goodtime occasions. Joplin wrote several waltzes and tried other light, popular "parlor music" forms in his bid for abiding success.
"Hindustan" by Wallace and Weeks points to another pop fad of the first three decades of our century--the slightly loony and surreal "oriental foxtrot." The ersatz exoticism of the tune and its lyrics compares with dozens of other pop tunes evoking a vaudevillian version of the mysterious, tantalizing East.
William J. Schafer is a knowledgeable authority on ragtime and early jazz. His features and record reviews appear regularly in the Mississippi Rag. He is the coauthor, with Johannes Riedel, of the book The Art of Ragtime, published by the Louisiana State University Press.
CREDITS:
Recording Dates - (a) February 7, 1988; (b) November 24, 1989
Recording Location - Southlake Recording Studios, New Orleans, La.
Recording Engineers - David Farrell and Steve Himelfarb
Mastering - George Horn, Fantasy Studios, Berkeley, Ca.
Production Supervisor - Mike Cogan, Bay Records, Berkeley, Ca.
Photographs - Parker Dinkins and Gavin Goins
Front Cover Design and Art - Joe Busam, Cincinnati, Oh.
Producer - Bob Erdos
Stomp Off Records - P.O. Box 342, York, Pa. 17405
OTHER RECORDINGS:
Grace and Beauty - Delmark DS-214 (originally Pearl #7)
The New Orleans Ragtime Orchestra, Volume II - Pearl PSP-8
New Orleans Ragtime Orchestra - Arhoolie 1058
The New Orleans Ragtime Orchestra - Vanguard VSD 69/70
A Recital at Old Fireman's Hall, Westwego, Louisiana - Sonet SNTF-709
New Orleans Ragtime Orchestra - GHB 210
|
|