A 50th Celebration of Arhoolie Records

 


Arhoolie records, one of the great American labels, is celebrating its 50th anniversary this weekend. The record company  is the brainchild of Chris Strachwitz, a German immigrant who has left an indelible mark on the nation's sound-scape. The catalog of Arhoolie reads like a who's who in Cajun, Zydeco, Tex-Mex/Tejano, Bluegrass, Gospel, Blues, Country and Jazz music, making it one of the premier roots record labels in the world. Some of the many musicians who have recorded for Arhoolie are Clifton Chenier, Big Mama Thornton, Mance Lipscomb, Earl Hooker, Flaco Jimenez, Lightning Hopkins, Treme Brass Band, Beausoliel, and the New Orleans Ragtime Orchestra.

The story of Arhoolie's longevity and broad tastes really reflect Chris Strachwitz's love affair with all types of American music. Over the years of personally knowing Chris and having been introduced to so much music through his recordings, it is easy to see how he fits into any musical setting. Chris has an aura with an incredible musical halo. The music seems to become magical or at least magical musical moments occur when Chris is present. There was a time in the nineties at Zydeco accordionist Geno Delafose's farm in Eunice when I first met Chris; soon after a multicultural jam took place in Geno's barn which could only have been topped by the wonderful spicy food served up his mama. Even last year, when Chris showed up in my courtyard as a guest of the band fat my annual Jazz fest party, there came a magical musical moment. I had just received a vintage 1930s book of Haitian sheet music as a winning EBay bid which I, of course, had to show to Chris. He promptly said, "let’s see if the band (Seva Venet's Storyville String Band) could play one of these Haitian numbers." They did, and little magic occurred, again orchestrated by Mr. Chris.

As part of the 50th celebration of Arhoolie Records "Hear Me Howling: Blues, Ballads and Beyond," a 4 CD set, has been released along with text by Adam Machado. The book has 136 full color pages and 150 photographs and features recordings made by Chris Strachwitz in the San Fransisco Bay area in the 1960s. These 72 tracks, many of which are previously unissued, concentrate on Strachwitz's home recordings from this time period. Strachwitz was very interested in the blues men who had found their way from Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi to find work in the ship yards of San Fransisco Bay. All of the recordings come together to show the broad expanse of his musical taste as well as the magical musical things that happen around this tall, slender soft spoken man.

Some of the musical highlights on the four CD set include the Skid (jug) Band doing a version of "Junko Partner," Bluesman Jesse Fuller covering an old vaudeville number of Bert Williams and some delightful comic wordplay in Bob Neuwirth’s "Come See." You'll be transported back into the sixties with the original recording of Country Joe and the Fish doing “Fixing To Die Rag," made famous at Woodstock some years later. Louisiana is represented by wonderful sides by the Hackberry Ramblers, Clifton Chenier and John Semien and The Opelousas Playboys. Two unreleased songs by New Orleans bluesman Lonnie Johnson are included and other bluesman represented are Rev. Gary Davis, Fred McDowell and Mance Lipscomb.

So celebrate Arhoolie this weekend by digging out your favorite Arhoolie LP or CD and consider picking up "Hear Me Howling; Blues, Ballads and Beyond" a 4 CD set of gems that will give you a view in to the world and music of Chris Strachwitz.

Who Played With Louis Armstrong On That Session?

For many years a jazz historian was only as good as his music and reference library. This meant that historians with access to large music libraries definitely had an advantage. I began to grow my jazz reference library from the time I started to listen to jazz. One reason was that books about the musicians always had partial discographies in the back of them and I could always plan on discovering new recordings that I previously didn't know about. My library grew with the addition of biographies, but at that point I didn't realize that what I really needed to add to my collection was a jazz discography. When I first discovered them in the University of Virginia's music library, I knew that was what I needed. They were chock full of sessions (and of many musicians of whom I had never heard) put together by devoted music fans who'd been listening to the music much longer than I.

The discographies grew out of biographies, any documentation left by the recording companies, interviews with jazz musicians and sometimes just the "good" ears of the discographer himself. Somehow many of the best discographers were British; therefore the books are published by British press. This did not make them easier to acquire.

 Overtime, with the growth of the world wide web, it became much easier to get my hands on these volumes.  I found a source but soon realized that these 2 volumes would be the most expensive books I would buy for my library. I bought my first set, a pair of twenty year old copies of Brian Rust's "Jazz Discography," for about $125 a piece and was in heaven. Now, they only covered recorded music from 1897 to 1942, but it was a start. A few years later I bought a new updated version that also included Ragtime music and covered the same years. It was nice to have a new version; I realized that the research was still going on as new musicians were identified in old sessions and old recordings were still being found. The problems were: you were restricted to the books appendix and couldn't do any search within the text; there were never any pictures of albums in these book as they just covered the musicians, their instruments, songs, places, recording matrices and dates; and, the stopping point for most printed jazz discographies is 1942, now close to 70 years ago.

 As the Internet has grown, the world of discographies has begun to come into its own. There's not one central free source that's offering a complete jazz discography which covers the entire history of jazz. One is available by subscription run by noted author Tom Lord and I only wish I made enough money writing about music to be able to get a yearly subscription and go to town searching and learning even more. My first search would be for a list of recordings made in New Orleans between 1930 and 1940. Why those years? That's another blog to come.

 What I have discovered is that over the past ten years common jazz enthusiasts have begun to fill the void with pages paying homage to their favorite jazz musicians. They are branching out to collect all of the information about every recording and put it out there for all to enjoy. Discographies blossom on Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald and Miles Davis. You can find them listed by labels. You can even find them not only for jazz but all types of music (Allmusic Guide). The wonderful thing is that they're growing and covering those previous untouched years after World War II. So go explore and learn who recorded together, what songs were recorded, then buy a copy and enjoy.

Musical Baseball

As we enter the peak time when the nation's attention turns to baseball, I thought it might be fun to bring music and baseball together. Popular music and baseball grew up together;  almost every year when the winner was declared a new song about the team was soon to follow. The first piece of baseball music was "The Baseball Polka" written in 1858. The most popular was "Take me Out to the Ball Game," which has been a standard since the first decade of the Twentieth Century.

Musicians, too, have been infatuated with the game. When John Phillip Sousa's band performed long summer engagements, they formed their own baseball team. Games would be played against local teams. The Sousa team normally fared pretty well. Their were also games with rival bands including Arthur Pryor's Band. Sousa participated in most of these games while he was physically able. After a while, though, games with other teams were discontinued and the band broke up into separate groups. The woodwinds played the brasses.


In the picture of the 1904-05 Sousa Band Baseball team, Sousa is the bearded man seated in the middle of the front row. His son, who was not a member of this team, is in the back row with the Nassau uniform. On July 4, 1900 the Sousa band initiated the first game of baseball ever played in Paris.

Turn of the Twentieth century African American comic, Broadway star and recording artist Bert Williams played first base every Sunday on the company team. It was widely known among the opposition that Williams was protective of his feet. If the play was going to be a close one, the opposition ran straight at Williams's toes. His reaction was to leap clear of the runner whether he had a chance to make the play or not. His always dapper partner George Walker, on the other hand, never attended or participated in these games because he felt the uniforms were poorly tailored.

In the early thirties Louis Armstrong sponsored a local semi-pro baseball team in New Orleans called the Secret 9. The picture here is of the team showing off the new "Armstrong" uniforms, caps, bats, gloves and gear that Louis purchased for them.

Among other musicians who were baseball players is Thirties bandleader Andy Kirk, avid ballplayer on a semi-pro team called the Maple Leafs. So as you sit down to watch the play-offs and then the World Series remember the marriage baseball and popular music have had since its inception.

The Word Jazz

I have always had a fascination with jazz. I've spent over thirty years researching it and an equal amount of time hosting jazz radio shows and writing about it. Jazz music has gone from the streets of New Orleans to everywhere in the world. In the thirties jazz was king, it was the most popular music in America. Jazz has come a long way into the 21st century but what do we really know about the word jazz? Where did it come from? There are many theories and stories, here's what I have found out about the word jazz.

Early jazz men said "to jazz" meant to fornicate, or, as they put it, "jazzing meant effing" (fucking). A "jazzbow" or "jazzbo" was a lover of the ladies. A "jazz baby" was an easy woman. According to some sources, the word Jazz was also underworld jargon found in Chaucer and Shakespeare. Jazz had many names: jabo, jaba, jazpation, jazynco, jazorient, jazanola. Also jazanata, jazarella, jazanjaz, jazology, jazette, jazzola, jazitis and jazioso.

Songwriter and musician Clarence Williams says that he was the first to use the word "jazz" in a song. Williams said, "On both Brown Skin, Who You For? and Mama's Baby Boy, I used the words, jazz song, on the sheet music. I don't exactly remember where the words came from, but I remember I heard a woman say it to me when we were playin' some music. `Oh, jazz me, baby,' she said."

According to Arnold Loyacano, the word jazz had different origins. Loyacano was in Tom Brown's band, which in 1915 was the first white band to ever go to Chicago and play jazz. They were playing in a hotel which previously had a string quartet for entertainment. Brown's band had been used to playing on the back of a wagon, which meant that they had to play loud and were really incapable of playing soft. The crowd's reaction was to hold their ears and yell, "Too loud!" Loyacano says that was when people started calling his music "jazz." The way Northern people figured it out, our music was loud, clangy, boisterous, like you'd say, "Where did you get that jazzy suit?" meaning loud or fancy. Some people called it "jass." Later when the name struck, it was spelled with a "z,"jazz."

The latest research on the word "jazz" points to early use of the term in baseball. According to University of Missouri-Rolla Professor Gerald Cohen' author of a three-volume "Dictionary of 1913 Baseball and Other Lingo," jazz was used in baseball meaning "vim," "vigor" and "fighting spirit" before it acquired its musical meaning. It was introduced by San Francisco Bulletin sports writer 'Scoop' Gleeson as a term to describe players on the San Francisco Seals team.

So whether it is jass, jazz or whatever, we know and love it as great music whether here in New Orleans or around the world.