![]() A one-minute search online found this: The St. The CD also reminds me in the best way that ragtime was once the despised low-class music, sneered at by those sure its syncopation would lead to debauchery at the very least. I will also point out that I saw this band in performance at the October Redwood Coast Music Festival, and they were delightful (videos to come in a future posting), so this CD is not the result of some recording-studio fakery. This band is having fun, balancing assurance, accuracy, and delicacy. Some explorations of ancient music, with the best intentions, sound like someone in too-tight clothing, afraid to breathe deeply for fear of exploding a shirt-front. This is New Orleans dance hall music, with a fellow named Morton sitting in at the piano in the modern guise of Mr. Even though the cover has the words “ragtime classics” on the cover and no song is newer than 1914, this is not an overly-restrained exercise in archeology. This band has immense love for the music and you can hear their happiness in playing it (and singing it - check out T.J.’s THE OCEANA ROLL and see if you can play it only once: I dare you) but they are not afraid to swing. And no doubt the faithful will be knocking on my door this evening with torches, rope, and all the accoutrements needed to burn me at the stake, a pile of flaming sheet music at my feet, for those words. ![]() I found myself, in between pushing the button to make the CD player repeat the last track, muttering under my breath, “This is wonderful. So I know something about the recorded classics of the New Orleans Revival and onwards. ![]() I also heard Jelly Roll Morton’s transformations of ragtime on the Library of Congress recordings, Dick Wellstood’s improvisations and embellishments of the Joplin songbook, THE RED BACK BOOK, and Joshua Rifkin’s very well-behaved piano solos. I grew up listening reverently to Bunk Johnson’s Columbia LAST TESTAMENT, to the Savoy reissues of Papa Mutt Carey’s band - both from 1947. There is a good deal of youthful energy - this music was once the soundtrack of its period - but no one incorporates “contemporary” harmonies into these performances, which, by the way, are arranged by champion musician-scholar John Gill. Second, the band swings mightily without ever losing its awareness of the material and the context. Louis Ragtimers) who is 94 and plays gorgeous hot horn alongside T. First, this CD would be a delightful addition if only for its evidence of the 2023 work of St. You can see the details above: songs (some real rarities and some that never get old) and the personnel (the best enthusiastic scholars of this music) but a few words from me might be in order. When you scroll down that page, you can also hear samples of nine of the seventeen songs, for those of you who want to taste the curry before ordering it for dinner. I don’t write those words easily, but it’s one of those discs that on the first playing I would get stuck on a particular track and be unwilling to move forward until I’d saturated the room (in this case, the kitchen) with musical ardor.Īnd if you want to skip my words and move right to the cozy nest where the CD sleeps at night so that you can order a disc or download the music, be my guest here. This brand-new CD, recorded in August of this year, is a walloping delight.
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