NOTES by Mike Schwimmer

Overheard at a recent San Diego Jazz Fest: Ya know, the bands I like present the music,
the ones I dont like present themselves. The guy who said it was enjoying a set by the
Evergreen Classic Jazz Band, and he probably didnt know that he was making the exact proper
response to the philosophy of Tom Jacobus and his crew.
There is a tremendous mother lode of traditional jazz material to be mined, and the
Evergreen Classic have hoisted picks and lit headlamps, so to speak, and have brought back the
riches. Seventeen of these nuggets are presented heresome for the first time since the
original vintage recordings. There are familiar names: Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton,
King Oliver, Clarence Williamsbut not their usual tunes that contemporary trad bands
sometimes play. And there are a lot of unfamiliar names: Oliver Naylor, James H. Jackson,
Charlie Johnson, the Missourianswho composed and played exciting jazz long overdue for
performance and presentation today. So lets start easythe names we knowand then venture
into the vast little- (if not un-) known.
Was there a composer in traditional jazz more prolificand as consistently superbthan
Jelly Roll Morton? Jelly copyrighted 99 tunes in his lifetime with another 28 placed into
copyright in 1948 and 1949. Yet we hear only about twenty of them at most played today.
Evergreen Classic has resuscitated a couple of Morton gems. The first is his 1918 composition,
Froggie Moore, or the Frog-I-More Rag. The title comes from the name of a minstrel show
contortionist who wore a frog costume and was billed as Frog-i-More. The tune has a wonderful
melody and kind of a stop-and-go character which is typically Morton. The Evergreen bases its
arrangement on the April 1923 recording of King Olivers Creole Jazz Band, which supposedly
contains young Louis Armstrongs first recorded solo.
Evergreen Classics second Morton tune is the virtually unheard Cannon Ball Blues,
recorded in the second classic Red Hot Peppers session for Victor in December 1926. A lovely
melody with simple effects, it is surprising that modern-day trad bands have neglected this tune
until now.
Louis Armstrong is represented here with Droppin Shucks, a number written by Hot
Five clarinetist Johnny Dodds and recorded by that group in June 1926. This euphemistic
variation of a familiar cabaret song of retaliation, as jazz historian John Steiner once called the
tune, was one of Louiss better early vocals.
Duke Ellington? What's he doing here?! Because the Duke spent 50 years in jazz and
gained his fame through marvelous tunes and arrangements for jazz groups of ten pieces and
more, we tend to forget his earlier compositions. Evergreen Classic has chosen East St. Louis
Toodle-Oo, written in 1926 with Dukes fine growler of a trumpet man, Bubber Miley.
Toodle-Oo is pronounced Toada-low and was one of the many odd dances that were created
in the early part of this century. Eubie Blake wrote The Baltimore Todalo, explaining that it
was named for a dance step he used to do while growing up in that city. East St. Louis became
an early signature of Ellingtons, often used to sign off his radio remote broadcasts. He recorded
the tune dozens of times and continued to play it throughout the life of the band.
About twenty years ago, various European trad jazz bands began to discover and play the
tunes and arrangements of Clarence Williams. Evergreen Classic is one of the few bands in this
country to pick up on this giant of jazz. While many of his more familiar tunesRoyal Garden
Blues, Baby Wont You Please Come Home? I Aint Gonna Give Nobody None o This
Jelly Roll and othersare played, his unique style of playing them is not. Two Williams
arrangements are performed here by the Evergreen Classic: Log Cabin Blues by Tom Delaney
was a typical early blues of the type often written for the classic blues singers. Trixie Smith
recorded this one in 1923, but Evergreen Classics arrangement is based on the Clarence
Williams Washboard Band recording five years later. Black Snake Blues, a Williams compo-
sition, was recorded by the Blue Five in 1927 and featured the sonorous tuba of the great Cyrus
St. Clair, a particular favorite of tubaist-leader Tom Jacobus.
Back to Oliver for a minutefrom an obscure recording session for Victor in February
1929 comes a wonderful tune, My Good Man Sam. Issued as King Olivers Orchestra, no
composer credit is given, and examination of the actual session ledger shows Pub. & Copyr.
Southern Music, 1929. Comp. Not known. A British 45-rpm issue of the tune shows Oliver,
but since two other tunes on the session ledger list him as composer, why not this tune as well if
he wrote it? Credit Evergreen Classic for digging this one up and performing it in a highly
danceable fashion.
Our next familiar name is that of pianist Fletcher Henderson. His was among the best
known and most recorded bands in New York. The Stampede was written and recorded in
1926, and the Evergreen Classics version is patterned after the great Don Redman arrangement.
Redman, later to become head arranger of McKinneys Cotton Pickers and eventually his own
band, could be called the true architect of the big band. The Stampede, as well as
Henderson Stomp, Whiteman Stomp, and other 1926 performances, foreshadowed the
development of big-band arrangements for the next fifteen years.
Evergreen pianist Dan Grinstead contributes a ragtime performance, Artie Matthewss
Pastime Rag No. 3, accompanied by the rhythm section. Matthews wrote five rags, all called
Pastime, Numbers 1 through 5. In 1913, John Stark, Scott Joplins publisher, heard Matthews
play and offered him $50 for each rag he wrote. The Pastimes are the only ones that saw
publicaton. No. 3, from 1916, has an eccentric tango rhythm (Matthews knew Jelly Roll Morton
and no doubt shared his penchant for the Spanish tinge) that Grinstead exploits here.
There were two superb jazz bands in New York as the 1920s ended that have not gotten
the ink that Henderson, Oliver, Ellington and others have received in jazz writings over the
years. One was Charlie Johnsons Paradise Orchestra, the other an extremely hot group called
The Missourians. Johnsons best known recording is one of THE classic recordings of jazz,
The Boy in the Boat. Tom Jacobuss arrangement keeps the original feeling of this wonder-
fully murky piece of music, which sounds in places much like Ellingtons early jungle tunes.
Boat was one of those themes that was knocking about New York for many years. Fats Waller
used to play it and supposedly used parts of it for his famous tune Squeeze Me. (His piano roll
recording shows as a subtitle A Boy in a Boat, the meaning of which is dirtier than the music
and does not need to be analyzed here.)
Evergreen Classic plays two Missourians tunes, Ive Got Someone and 200
Squabble. The Missourians were mainly from St. Louis with a few from the Kansas City area.
Prior to 1925 when they came to New York, they were strongly influenced by the Kansas City
style of Bennie Moten, with whom some of them played. In New York, they became a show
band and often traveled out of town on various vaudeville circuits. Their only recordings were
twelve tunes for Victor in 1929 and 1930. Of these, the first two issued, Market Street Stomp
and Ozark Mountain Blues, are the most familiar. We can be thankful that Evergreen Classic
has dug a little deeper to give us two more from this very exciting band.
Two of the earliest tunes played here by Evergreen Classic are Teddy Bear Blues and
Mobile Blues, neither of which are. Blues, that is. The term blues was in musically in the
early 1920s, and publishers felt that the word tacked on to a rag, one-step or pop tune would help
sell the sheet music. (Irwin LeClere brought his Triangle Rag to a publisher who told him rags
were out. Bring me jazz, he exhorted, bring me blues! So LeClere went home, changed
not a note of the rag, but gave it the title of Triangle Jazz Blues, by which this rag is known
today!)
Teddy Bear, as it was originally titled by composer James H. Jackson, was published by
him in California in 1921 with the subtitle, One-Step, Two-Step or Fox Trot. In 1922, Teddy
Bear Blues came out with words and music credited to Jackson but no acknowledgment of its
previous publication. Jacobus patterns his arrangement on Ross Gormans Virginians recording
of November 1922 which has Blues in the title, but is obviously based upon the original one-
step publication! Mobile Blues was a pop tune written by the undistinguished team of Short
and Rose in 1923. It was recorded by many of the jazz and pop bands of the day including a
version by Fletcher Henderson featuring a kazoo solo! Dave Loomis arranged this one after
listening to Muggsy Spaniers Bucktown Five 1924 recording for Gennett.
Evergreen Classics version of Rodgers and Harts show tune You Took Advantage of
Me is based on the Paul Whiteman recording in April of 1928. Although the famed Bill Challis
arranged other tunes of this session, Advantage was Tom Satterfields. Tom Jacobus artfully
fits Whitemans twenty-plus instrumentalists into Evergreen Classics six to produce a remark-
ably similar feeling, and Dave Holo subs for Bing Crosby on the vocal.
Two really obscure tunes finish up the Evergreen Classic menu. Aint That Hateful? is
a peppy little numbah written by three members of Oliver Naylors Seven Aces, another of those
early hotcha bands recorded by Gennett in 1924. Want Your Ashes Hauled, on which Davie
Loomis performs vocally, is one of those naughty black blues tunes that proliferated around
1930. Fats Waller and Andy Razaf wrote some, as did both Clarence and Spencer Williams.
These were published by Joe Davis Music in little song booklets called Songs My Father Taught
Me NOT to Sing and Songs They DONT Sing in School. The title, of course, is a euphemism for
a little lovin.
The Evergreen Classic Jazz Band presents us these wonderfully varied selections in the
manner they presume the composers/musicians had in mind at the time. There is no slavish
imitation of the exact arrangement, butand this is most importantthe original tempos are
preserved. Solos are performed not to showcase the talent of the musician, but to further the
successful completionand thereby the real enjoymentof the tune. Nowhere in these notes do
we discuss individual performers other than to identify vocalists and arrangers. You know who
plays whatsimply look at the list of personnel. Well, one small note: Either Loomis, Halo,
Grinstead or Jacobus whack a mean cymbal on a couple of tunes!
Evergreen Classic believes the excitement of jazz can best be conveyed by presenting the
arts of composition, arrangement and performance rather than by speed, volume and wild
improvisation. They do indeed pass that San Diego jazz fans test: Heres the music . . . and by
the way, were the Evergreen Classic Jazz Band.
Mike Schwimmer is a knowledgeable authority on early jazz. He has played washboard and
drums with many groups in the Chicago area, including the Bald Eagles and the Red Rose
Ragtime Band. He currently plays with the Elite Syncopators from Indianapolis, Indiana, and
leads the Village Tavern Jazz Band.