Warren “Baby” Dodds

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Midnight Blues

Posted in Jazz with tags Bunk Johnson, George Lewis, Warren "Baby" Dodds on November 15, 2016 by telescoper

It’s amazing what you can find on Youtube…

This extraordinary recording of a slow blues was made in 1944. It’s extraordinary for two reasons.

One is that it is far longer than most discs of the time, and was recorded at 33 1/3 rpm rather than the 78 rpm that was usual for the time. The reason why that is extraordinary is that the long-playing record wasn’t introduced until 1948 so this track had to wait about five years until it was released commercially. The sound quality is unusually good for the period and it’s great to hear the musicians stretch out in a way that wasn’t possible on a 78rpm record. Notice also that it’s not just a string of solos, there are duets and ensemble passages , all very characteristic of authentic New Orleans music.

The other extraordinary thing is the band: Bunk Johnson (tpt) Jim Robinson (tmb); George Lewis (clt); Alcide “Slow Drag” Pavegaeu (bss); Lawrence Marrero (bjo); and Warren “Baby” Dodds (dms). Most of these musicians who had grown up in New Orleans but had not joined the mass exodus of great musicians (including Louis Armstrong) who left for Chicago when Storyville was closed down in 1917. Most of the jazzmen who stayed behind fell into obscurity compared to those who left. Bandleader on this occasion, Bunk Johnson was a case in point. He was born way back in 1879 and played with some of the legends of early New Orleans Jazz, a connection with history which was enough to make him a sort of “patron saint” of the revivalist movement when he was rediscovered in the 1940s.

One musician who had moved to Chicago (with his brother, clarinettist Johnny Dodds) was Baby Dodds, the first really great Jazz drummer, who had played alongside his brother and Louis Armstrong in King Oliver’s Band as well as on the glorious Hot Fives and Hot Sevens. His playing is barely audible on most of those old records, but he is heard to good effect on this track.

Anyway, I think it’s a superb performance, dripping with nostalgia for an era of music that would have been lost had it not been for these priceless recordings…

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My Sweet Lovin’ Man

Posted in Jazz with tags Honore Dutrey, Johnny Dodds, King Oliver, Lil Hardin, Louis Armstrong, Warren "Baby" Dodds on March 21, 2011 by telescoper

A high temperature and raging sore throat have confined me to the house today. I got up as usual at 7.30 but quickly realised I wasn’t going to be of much to anyone; trying to give a lecture when barely able to produce a whisper didn’t seem worth the effort. So off I went back to bed, after feeding the cat, and got up again about an hour ago.

I’ve been trying to cheer myself up by listening to – and transferring to digital using my USB turntable – some lovely old jazz records that I haven’t heard for ages. Not all of them came out well, but fortunately one of my all-time favourite records is actually on youtube anyway so I thought I’d put it up.

This is My Sweet Lovin’ Man recorded by King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band on June 22nd 1923, in Chicago. It is a purely mechanical recording, meaning that the musicians stood shoulder-to-shoulder blowing into a horn causing a needle to cut the record directly onto a disk; copies would be pressed using this master which could be played back for the listener by a gramophone, usually amplified by another horn. Obviously the technology was very limited, but it’s good enough to reveal the superb musicianship involved in creating this wonderful piece of music.

I love jazz from all eras of its history, but there can’t have been many finer collections of musicians than this. It’s led by King Oliver, who plays cornet, with the young Louis Armstrong also playing cornet alongside him. Honoré Dutrey is the trombonist and the unmistakeable clarinet sound is supplied by the great Johnny Dodds. By the way, why is Johnny Dodds’ wikipedia article so brief? He was a colossal figure in the history of jazz! I must do something about that if nobody else does…

The piece was co-written by Lil Hardin, whose lovely piano playing is unusually well recorded on this track; pianos generally proved very difficult to record with the technology available in 1923. Lil Hardin, incidentally, became Lil Armstrong when she married Louis Armstrong in February 1924. The rhythm men are Bud Scott on banjo and Warren “Baby” Dodds (Johnny’s brother) on drums, who provide an insistent yet fluid pulse underneath the rest of the band.

King Oliver’s band never used written arrangements; the musicians worked out the ensemble segments together and then played them from memory. When Louis Armstrong joined the band, King Oliver at first led on cornet, with Armstrong providing decorative embellishments, but later on the two cornettists developed such an understanding that they were able to swap leads almost telepathically. Their playing together on this track is sublime. The improvised counterpoint provided by Johnny Dodds and Honoré Dutrey is also breathtakingly beautiful. Although it was recorded in Chicago, this is the classic form of New Orleans polyphony sustained throughout at the very highest level.

I think this is one of the greatest jazz records of all time, but it also reminds me that there was a move some time ago to refer to jazz as black classical music. It never caught on, but in this case the term seems to me to be perfectly apt. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.