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This is probably too long-winded. So I tossed it behind a cut. I wonder if folks are interested in a bunch of music pontification.

So I was tagged for the "choose your favorite 6 songs" meme.

Music is one of the things I enjoy so I'm guessing the person who tagged me is curious to what I would like:

1. Enjoy yourself! (Guy Lombardo)

   I'm afraid that most of the folks I know only know who Guy Lombardo is by a passing reference made by one of the blues "Yellow Submarine."

   Guy Lombardo is an old singer. He and his brothers got started back when radio was new. They continued to tour up through the 70s. His Orchestra was known as the Royal Canadians. Think along the lines of Lawrence Welk without the polka overtones.

   Anyway, why is this tune best? Not necessarily because Guy is recording it. He certainly has the coy and knowing gentle sound that fits it. This tune is worth being #1 for what it says.

   Listen to the lyrics. It's the best advice I have ever heard on how to live your life.

   Enjoy Yourself (3.1M)

2. Tiger Rag (Jelly Roll Morton / Unknown)

   Tiger Rag is an old tune. And you've heard it. It is a staple from the dixieland book and one of the more complex pieces to play. It is often used as a show piece.

   Now, for reference, dixieland (AKA "Traditional jazz") was born down in New Orleans towards the end of the Victoria Era. Among some of the first tunes Jazz tunes committed to wax cylinder was Tiger Rag played by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band. It was one of the tunes they recorded for the Bluebird label when they came up to show this "novelty" of Jazz to the New Yorkers of the nineteen-teens.

   This was the birth of Jazz. To put it in perspective, like with the birth of the web and folks arguing how to pronounce GIF and how to properly abbreviate JPEG, at this time folks were still figuring out if it was Jass or Jazz.

   As much as we can only imagine the raunchy sound and glarrish clatter that Jazz must have sounded to victorian ears, it's not enough. Tiger Rag is older than even dixieland. The tune itself was "transformed" into a Jazz Tune by Jelly Roll Morton at about the turn of the century. In some wonderful recordings made at the Smithsonian in the 40's Jelly Roll recalled how he remembered Jazz starting. As a part of those recordings he describes taking a set of "old" French Quadrille Dances and turning them into the tune we know today.

   Quadrilles have been around a long time. They are merely a set of four matching dances. The syncopation that became so popular and created a Jazz standard is relatively simple. Goodness knows how old the original tunes are.

   It's a show dixieland tune. And it's about tigers. What could be better? In college I ran across an LP in the music college library called "Everybody loves the tiger rag." It was a tracing of the history of the tune from it's inception to modern times.

   Anyway, to the examples. There's a good chance you've heard the middle of this tune:

   Tiger Rag - Dukes of Dixieland (4.5 M) - A wonderful recording of the standard dixieland style.
   Tiger Rag - Art Tatum (2.2 M) - A very scarily good recording of an improvised piano solo on the tune.

3. Black Bottom Stomp (Fred Sturm / Jelly Roll Morton)

   Talk about more old stuff that people have never heard of, eh? This is music your grandmother knew. The Black Bottom (aka "The Flick," "The Side Shuffle," or "The Walk") was a dance originally started around the end of WWI. It is credited to Alberta Hunter, being a possible derivation of the "Echo." It first gained public note in 1919 when Perry Bradford wrote "The Black Bottom Dance" which had dance moves printed in the sheet music. After being featured in the 1924 Stage Play "Dinah" the Black Bottom almost overnight replaced the "Charleston." A fairly famous rendition of it appreared in the Geroge White Scandals of 1926 at the Apollo theater.

   "Jelly Roll" Morton was a ragtime pianist that claimed to have invented Jazz. He's probably one of the few folks in the world who could have claimed to do so. As you may have noticed, he's the same guy that turned an old french dance into one of the ragtime tune standards above. He later wrote a few other things you probably have heard but don't realize you know, such as "King Porter Stomp," "Grandpa's Spells," "Wolverine Blues," "Milenburg Joys," "The Chant," "Winin' Boy Blues," "I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say," and others.

   In 1926, Jelly Roll recorded "Black Bottom Stomp" with his band "The Red Hot Peppers." The 1926 recording sessions of the Peppers is considered by some to be the dividing line between traditional style jazz (inlucindg dixieland) and modern jazz. It's a very tough call to make, but there is a point. While most of the world had been mesmerized by a dance (The Charleston) that featured two simple syncopations as it's leading break, Black Bottom Stomp is mich more complex, with multiple sections, abrupt breaks or stop-time passages, frequent shifts in instrumentation, and a break-neck tempo. The ragtime influence is noticeable, but the complex melodic development points toward later stages in the evolution of jazz.

   So why do I like it? The first recording I heard of this was by a brass quintet of all things. (The one recorded by the empire brass below) It is absolutely joyus and unpretentious. There's such wonderful emotion in it. The other thing that snags my attention is the mid-range clarinet solo in the middle of it. I've never heard anything like it before or since and I want the sheet music.

   The recordings:

   Black Bottom Stomp - Empire Brass (3.1 M)

   The original instrumentation was trumpet, clarinet, trombone, piano, banjo, bass, and drums. The first recording below is the Empire Brass Quintet's version. I'm putting it first because most folks find it hard to hear a recording of the 20's for all of its value. The fidelity isn't there for our CD-spoiled ears. The empire brass recording is amazing in its own right (yes Jessie, the second open solo is a French Horn). The only down side is the poor lead trumpet just as trouble keeping up with the clarinet passages. He fluffs the clarinet solo I like a little bit, just going for the accents. Still, it's a good into to the tune.

   Black Bottom Stomp - The Red Hot Peppers (3.0 M)

   The original 1926 recording is next, with Jelly Roll at the keys of the piano. That clarinet solo is there and almost mechanically ragtime against the upbeat swing. I love it.

   Black Bottom Stomp - Spike Jones (2.4 M)

   And finally, the last recording is by Spike Jones. He used it as one of his fun instrumental tunes. It's interesting that even though he's doing his usual job of "Spiking" the tune, it comes across just as joyful as ever.

4. Gee, Officer Krupke (Leonard Bernstein)

   When I was a young kid, I had my parents record player and LP collection in my room. Ostensibly this was so I could listed to the few disney story LPs that I owned, but I also ended up lsitening to my folks' LPs a lot.

   I think two records really influenced me a lot. I listened to them a great deal. They were the soundtrack to the move "The Sting" and the soundtrack to the movie "West Side Story." The Sting's soundtrack introdduced me to a ragtime-ish jazz that I still love to this day. (Hint: Look above) And West Side Story introduced me to strong orchestral works and movie scores.

   Probably the one tune that grabbed my attention as a kid, was the humorous tune "Gee, Officer Krupke" where the gang members are relating their position in life as a "Juvenile Delinquent" and how their local version of the man (Officer Krupke) figures into it. They each take turns playing the various roles they've dealt with in the system, be it a Judge, or a Social Worker, or a Psychologist.

   It is a fun, fun tune. And it is clever. A lot of Bernstein's scores are very clever and amazingly well written. He could write out something like Candide, which sounds like a delightfully pleseant tune but it's an amazing tour-de-force of composition, with the musical meter going through the equivalent of a taffy pull.

   It's another fun tune that lead to so much more. The first recording is the original Movie Cast recording, the second is a fun instrumental recording performed on stage by "Blast."

   Gee, Officer Krupke - Movie Cast (3.9 M)
   Gee, Officer Krupke - Blast (3.1 M)
   

5. Sing, Sing, Sing (Louis Prima / Benny Goodman)

   This is probably one of my favorite big band tunes. It is one of the classics. It was also Benny Goodman's theme. Maybe one day I can play this.

   Sing Sing Sing - Benny Goodman Arrangement (4.7 M)

6. The Logical Song (Supertramp)

   Wow! A tune that's less than 50 years old. Maybe I can make up for it by referring to a band that came from Holland?

   Supertramp's "Breakfast In America" album was introduced to me on 8-track tape when I was rather young. It's a very lyrical album and in several places very soulful and filled with a twinge of loss and pain. It's a tune I grew up with and it still speaks to me. It reminds me a lot to try to keep my youth.

   The Logical Song - Supertramp (3.8 M)