Cliff Jackson strides

If you wish to know more about the stride piano style that Cliff represented, may I suggest that you visit pianist Mike Lipskin's site. This link will take you directly to his page on Harlem Stride Piano.

Humph and Neva '53

The first time I heard of Neva Raphaello was March 16, 1953, when I recorded a night at the Lyttelton Club on my new B&O tape machine. I only had about five years of experience listening to jazz, but I knew instantly that this was not a singer whose career I would follow. I still haven't figured out why the Dutch Swing College Band recorded with her or, for that matter, what she was doing with Humph at 100 Oxford Street—she simply was not in their league. That said, here is Neva with the intermission group, Mike McKenzie's trio (he was a decent pianist) in a performance made listenable by Humph's participation. 

Another moment of Humph at 100 Oxford St.

Here is another selection from March 16, 1953, the night I brought my tape recorder to 100 Oxford Street. As usual, Mack's Restaurant had put its tables aside, morphed into The Lyttelton Club, and opened its doors to an enthusiastic crowd of young people who moved not so rhythmically to the music. Farewell Blues, the evening's last performance, became a little jam session when Archie Sempel—from Freddy Randall's band—mounted the bandstand, clarinet in hand. Unfortunately, I was late starting the tape and it ran out before the number was brought to an end, but it's a wonder that any part of this tape is playable almost 60 years later. The balance is not good—Johnny Parker's piano is distant and Bruce Turner is obviously standing closest to my single, stationary microphone.

The tape does capture the atmosphere of this popular club at a time when trad was all the rage in some of Europe's capitals. There is more tape from Lyttelton's hiding in my closet, possibly on unmarked reels. I have Neva Raphaello singing—though not so well—with Mike McKenzie's trio and Humph sitting in, but there should be more with the band and I will share anything when and if I find it. In the meantime, you can ease into Farewell Blues: 

 

Here are links to other recordings from that evening: Shake It and Break It, Chicago Buzz.

Lil Armstrong 1968

I previously posted  two parts of an interview I did with Lil Armstrong when she visited New York with Franz Jackson's Chicagoans in December of 1968. They played at the Village Gate and were on a tour that had taken them to the Caribbean, including Guantanamo Bay. The interview was done in my apartment, in the very room from which I am making this entry, and I knew there had to be a third reel lying around, somewhere in my tape closet. 

Click on image to enlarge it.

I was right, so here is the third and last part of this interview. I have not done anything to clean it up (i.e. remove rough spots), because I think it is what it is, and there is a better feel to it this way. I did, however add a piece of music at the end, Clip Joint, because Lil mentions it as being among her favorite recent recordings. It stems from one of the February 1961 Chicago sessions that I produced for the Riverside "Living Legends" project. As I have mentioned in an earlier post, that recording trip was an many ways a disaster, because my recording engineers were more familiar with capturing auto races, dripping faucets, and Shakespearian drama. They did, in fact, not care mush for traditional jazz. You will notice that the balance leaves much to be desired, although this was one of their better efforts.

To be fair, I had scheduled Lil to record with two different groups, but technical problems and inexperience delayed the first session to a point where I had to combine the two. Thus, this is a bigger band than we were expecting to record, so that may account for some of the imbalance. Hearing Lil's effervescent voice on these tapes reminds me of how much I miss her—she was one of the warmest and most wonderful people I had the good fortune to meet and become friends with as I moved about on the music scene.

A caveat: There is a book titled "Just For a Thrill" that purports to be a biography of Lil, but it is not worth the paper it is printed on. The author, James Dickerson, did an appalling job of research—shallow and rife with misinformation that is compounded by his peripheral knowledge of jazz and its history. To make up for that lack, he included pages of filler material about gangsters and other unrelated subjects. When he approached me in his search for material, I quickly concluded that his prime objective was not to document Lil, but to throw together yet another book. Assembly line authors have always bothered me, so I decided not to become his accomplice. The late Leslie Gourse ran a book factory, and I bet you can name a few more. This sort of exploitation puts a dent in jazz literature and invariably does more had than good. from never really works. 

This photo was taken by Steve Shapiro during the session:

The circle of horns (l to r): Franz Jackson, Al Wynn, Leroi Nabors, Bill Martin, Preston Jackson, Eddie Smith, and Darnell Howard. Pops Foster is on bass and Booker Washington on drums. That's me seated to the left of the drums. The date was September 7, 1961 and the place was a popular Chicago jazz club, The Birdhouse.

If you wish to hear parts 1 and 2 of this interview, here are the links: Part One, Part Two.

Humph @ Oxford St.: Shake It and Break It

Following an interview with Lyttelton (my first and possibly worst), I took his suggestion and dropped my equipment off at Mack's Restaurant, spent the rest of the day checking out record stores, including the big HMV on Oxford Street. I returned to the club at seven o’clock, an hour before the band was to start, and did a quick, ad-lib setup. Placing my microphone on its stand in front of the raised platform, I found a spot for my tape recorder behind George Hopkinson's drums, and winged it. The tapes are unbalanced and a bit on the crude side, but they could have come out far worse considering that this was my first attempt at recording live music, that I was unable to make a balance test, and that my vu meter was just a so-called "magic eye" (you have to be up in age to remember those things; they were commonly used as tuning indicators on radios) .


This was my first time seeing the Lyttelton Club in action, I had only been there once, earlier in the day when it was Mack's Restaurant and I had lunch with Humph and his manager, Lyn Dutton. I guess I was expecting something akin to the Storyville Club, my new Danish hangout, so I was surprised when the doors opened and an odd assortment of people began to fill the large room. Young men wearing derbys and tight pin-striped suits with vests, young cigar-smoking girls with hair down to their waists, wearing one-piece black corduroy outfits. George Melly would conduct two of them in a bizarre dance a couple of days later, as I describe here. This crowd was very different from the one I knew in Copenhagen. pale, sickly looking people with enormous noses, sweaters that reached down to their knees and naked, dirty feet. This is not how I am remembering it sixty years later, it's how I wrote it down some sixty years ago.

The "Magic Eye"

I surprised me to see that no alcoholic beverages were served, not even near beer—this would be unthinkable in Denmark. There was a counter at each end of the room was one could purchase a rather brutal cup of English coffee, soft drinks, and hideous little, overly sweet cup cakes in various pastel colors.

I struck up a chat with Molly, who worked the counter nearest the entrance. She wasted no time telling me that she was in her eighties, which I found to be curiously refreshing, considering the environment. Molly knew the name of every musician who wandered in, which instrument he played and whose style he assimilated. She was equally well versed when it came to the British royal family and pointed with great pride to an ugly little greenish lump of pastry that, she said, with obvious pride, had recently been dubbed the “Elizabeth” cake. I had to tell her all about myself and how I had come from Denmark to record the Lyttelton band. I finally managed to get away, and as I was about to disappear into the crowd, Molly shouted, “You can be proud of your Queen Wilhelmina”. 
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Before I knew it, Lyttelton stomped off, the band began to play, that little green eye winked at me, and the odd people began moving to the music, a weird, detached sort of dance in which partners never touched each other and people remained in their place, as if treading water. I remember that evening and, indeed, the days that followed, more clearly than I do this time last year. I have described elsewhere much of what took place during the next few days, when I missed my boat train at Liverpool Street Station, so here's a link to that.


And here is another number from that evening, "Shake It and Break It"