Jimmy Yancey EP - Vogue EPV 1203

Back Cover Notes

In various fields of music there tends to be a period when simplicity is shunned in favour of a complexity which sometimes covers up a lack of basic content. We are in such a period at the present time as far as jazz is concerned and for this reason the piano work of Jimmy Yancey is known only to a few collectors. Yet, Yancey has influenced the field of blues piano playing to a considerable extent and better known pianists like Meade Lux Lewis have frequently paid tribute to him.

Yancey was born in Chicago in 1894 and in his twenties he toured Europe as a dancer and singer. For thirty years he was employed as a groundskeeper at a Chicago baseball park and only played the piano at rent parties and private functions. His wife, Estelle Yancey, is a blues singer of great talent and she recorded with him on a number of occasions. Yancey died in Chicago on September 17, 1951, leaving behind him only a few records.

From all accounts, Yancey was a quiet, gentle man and this is shown in his playing. His style was one of stark simplicity and he used a number of themes often retitling them, and created innumerable variations within this framework. In one sense Yancey was a technically limited performer, but such is the impact of his work that this is never obtrusive. The four sides on this record were originally recorded for the American Session label in December of 1943 and are amongst Yancey's most moving work. At The Window is a particularly reflective solo and has a characteristic haunting beauty. The Rocks is a very familiar Yancey theme and is superbly played here. In fact, all the four numbers on this record are outstanding. There are very few records issued at the present which really qualify as great, critical assertions to the contrary, but this is, in my opinion, one of them. The very simplicity of Yancey's playing is deceptive, for it is not the simplicity of an inadequate performer. Within his self-imposed framework, Yancey created music that, by its moving quality and absolute authenticity, deserves to rate as a classic of its kind. Those who fail to perceive the validity of this music reveal only a formidable lack of sensitivity.

Albert J. McCarthy

Vinyl Details:

Label: Vogue EPV 1203
Country: UK
Released: 1957
Genre: Boogie-woogie

Side 1:

01 At The Window
02 Boodlin'

Side 2:

01 Sweet Patootie
02 The Rocks

Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia - RFH - 21st November 1999

Programme Notes

Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Rome

A short history

The Orchestra and Chorus of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia are based at one of the world's oldest musical institutions. Founded in Rome in 1566 it was formally recognised by Pope Gregory XIII in 1585 when he gave it the title "Congregation of Musicians under the invocation of the Blessed Virgin and of Saints Gregory and Cecilia." Since then such eminent composers and musicians as Palestrina, Paganini, Rossini, Donizetti, Verdi, Respighi, Nono and Berio have been associated with the Academy.

On 2 February 1895 the Academic Hall of the Via dei Greci was officially inaugurated and thirteen years later, in 1908, the Orchestra of the Academy gave its first concert. The Chorus, 90-strong, and the Orchestra have given an estimated 13,000 concerts in their history and, at home - with concerts in the Augusteo (built in the ruins of Augustus' Mausoleum) and the Auditorio Pio di Roma (situated near St.Peter's Basilica) - they have a regular audience of between 20,000 and 25,000 people, including 7,000 subscribers.

The list of distinguished conductors is headed by the Orchestra's Principal Conductors: Bernardino Molinari, Franco Ferrara, Fernando Previtali, Igor Markevitch, Thomas Schippers, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Daniele Gatti and, currently, Myung Whun Chung. In addition, between 1983 and 1990, Leonard Bernstein was the Orchestra's Honorary President. Other conductors have included a number of the most famous composers of the 20th Century - Gustav Mahler, Claude Debussy, Richard Strauss, Igor Stravinsky and Paul Hindemith - as well as such legendary conducting names as Arturo Toscanini, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Victor De Sabata and Herbert von Karajan.

The Orchestra was the first Italian orchestra ever to appear at the BBC Henry Wood Proms in 1995, just one of its many concerts in a busy touring schedule which has recently included visits to Australia (with Sinopoli), South America (Maazel and Gatti), Russia (Gatti) and - with Maestro Chung - Spain, Portugal, China, Korea and Japan, where they were the resident orchestra at the Pacific Music Festival in 1998.

The Chorus also leads an independent life, and has appeared in many festivals, most often at Spoleto's Festival dei Due Mondi. Others have ranged from Paris's Festival of XX Century in 1952 to the 1987 celebrations of the 750th anniversary of the founding of Berlin. In 1995 the Chorus toured Canada and the United States as well as revisiting Berlin for concert performances of Verdi's Otello with the Berlin Philharmonic under Claudio Abbado.

Together the Orchestra and Chorus have made a number of recordings with such conductors as De Sabata, Solti, Maazel, Schippers, Giulini, Sinopoli, Bernstein (including Puccini's La bohème), Gatti and, most recently, with Chung. Their recordings of Fauré's Requiem for Deutsche Grammophon with Cecilia Bartoli and Bryn Terfel won a prestigious "Diapason d'Or" and other recent projects with Chung have included a Beethoven disc and a programme of sacred music in honour of the 2,000th anniversary of the birth of Christ.

Henry Red Allen - Jazz Monthly - February 1970

During the late Henry Allen's last but one trip to this country I spent many days with him while he taped his autobiography. It was originally intended that it should be published in book form by Cassell & Company Ltd., but for a variety of reasons the plan has had to be dropped. On his final British trip I proposed to get Henry to fill in and enlarge certain parts of the autobiography, but an initial meeting convinced me that his health was such as to make this impossible. In fact he died within a couple of months of concluding this tour which, I am certain, was undertaken only because medical expenses had taken most if not all of his savings. The autobiography was to be called, at Henry Allen's request Make Them Happy, and Henry was particularly keen to correct what he felt were false impressions of early New Orleans days. This extract, and others that will follow, deal in the main with New Orleans and the musicians with whom Henry Allen played there. I have, as far as is possible, kept the story exactly as Henry told it, only making minor corrections in a few instances, though the order of telling has been slightly readjusted to follow a chronological sequence. I first met Henry Allen in 1958 and in the ensuing years my respect for him as a man and as a musician grew at each meeting, so that when I heard of his death I was conscious of the loss of someone whom I had come to regard as a personal friend - a feeling shared by many who knew him in this country. I am happy that extracts from his story can appear in Jazz Monthly and am grateful to Dr. Desmond Flower and Mr. David Polley of Cassell & Company Ltd., for their co-operation in making this possible.

Albert McCarthy

The Early Years - Henry 'Red' Allen

As far back as I can remember I was playing music, starting in my father's band when I was about eight years old. The band consisted of eleven pieces as a rule - three trumpets, two trombones, alto horn, baritone horn, two clarinets, and bass and snare drums - and I played either trumpet or alto horn. My other job with the band at this time was to carry the music, as frequently my father cut off the titles of the more popular pieces to avoid other bands copying them, and they were just called out as number one, number two, and so on. My mother stopped me playing the trumpet for a while, on account of the fact that she had seen some of the great musicians of the day with their cheeks puffed out and their necks protruding and reckoned the instrument was too strenuous for me! She told me to play an easier instrument and got me a violin, but though I took a few lessons from Peter Bocage I was never keen on it and the practice came to an end one day when a friend visited our house and found me playing it like a bass fiddle. Just as I was about to make some excuse my father yelled at me and asked what I was doing playing the violin that way. I couldn't figure out how he knew but discovered that he had a mirror in his room and by looking into it could see what I was doing. After this I got back to practising on the trumpet again, though my father tried hiding it or turning the valves to keep me from blowing, not because he was really against my playing it but because he was trying to please my mother.

By day my father worked as a longshoreman and at this time most musicians had day jobs away from music. His band had probably more great musicians in it than any other I have heard of, such guys as Buddy Bolden, King Oliver, Big Eye Louis Nelson and many others I could name, and this was great for me though at the time and for many years afterwards I had no idea that they would be recognised as pioneers or makers of jazz history. By now I was playing trumpet pretty well, my father having convinced my mother that it could be done without my having my cheeks puffed out or my neck protruding! I kept getting compliments from neighbours about my playing too and I think that my mother rather went for this.

Those parade jobs with my father meant a lot of walking. At first he would arrange for me to meet the band at some corner and then I could come in and play a number, generally getting a lot of applause, though whether for being good or just because I was a youngster is something I don't know. After a while I went all the way in the parades, walking miles and miles, and I just grew up in this setting. At one time Louis Armstrong and I happened to be in my father's band, on a parade - I just realise now what a brass section that could have been with Louis, my father, and myself - and already Louis was great and because he squeezed me I played as well as I could. My father wasn't a great jazzman but he had lots of power and was a fine musician as far as reading and organising was concerned, in addition to being an outstanding conductor. He brought a lot of guys into New Orleans from such places as Tipita and Morgan City, and at one time had two brothers of his in the band, Sam and George Allen. I've seen several early New Orleans photographs of parade bands where the drummer is listed as unknown, but it was my uncle, George Allen. We also had an uncle in Burbeck City, which is across the river from Morgan City, same as Algiers and New Orleans, by the name of Ezekiel Mack, and though I never did hear him personally I was told he could play well. Then, on my mother's side, an aunt of mine was a very fine organist and pianist who used to play in the church a lot. That gave me the chance to play in the church as well, on such numbers as What a friend we have in Jesus. That was my crip at that time - when I say crip, I mean my outstanding number.

Nowadays lots of people ask me about Louis, and as I remember they had a lot of great trumpeters around New Orleans but Louis was already coming up to top them all when I was a boy, though at the time I didn't pay too much attention - like, if I was to live this over, I'd have the same life again but would pay more attention to what was going on. Still, Louis was really great then, along with Buddy Petit and Henry Rene, and I admired, Louis, Rene and Chris Kelly, though I never did go for playing with the plunger myself like Chris, learning how to growl without one.

Most of the bands at this time played spirituals, because they believe in sadness at birth and rejoicing at death. That's why they went in for big parties when someone was dead, and everybody would have a band for a funeral, it didn't matter whether they were poor or had a lot of money or belonged to a lot of clubs and societies. If you belonged to four or five societies or clubs, you had four or five bands. If you didn't belong to any, they would put a saucer on your chest - the deceased's chest that is - and others would walk into view the body and contribute five, ten, fifteen or twenty cents, or a quarter, whatever could be spared. Now whatever was raised, you got a band to coincide with this, musicians getting three dollars for a parade and the leader four dollars, the extra dollar being for phone calls, or if the band already had a gig on the same day then the dollar was clear. Talking of phone calls, it wasn't like it was today then, for the number of people with phones in New Orleans was not all that great and the lines seemed to be always open so you could talk as long as you wanted for a nickel. My father always gave the number of our local grocery store where the owner, a very kind guy, would call anyone to the phone that was wanted. If a call came through for my father he would go to the front of the shop and holler his name, then neighbours would shout from house to house until it reached us. Maybe then my father would have to get dressed properly to go and take the call, but nobody ever seemed to mind waiting and it was still all done for a nickel! Usually calls were about jobs and I would go along with my father to get the men for a funeral or parade or whatever it was, and if it was during the carnival days or Mardi Gras there would be a shortage of available men and my father would be foraging about in the places out in the country, picking up musicians like Punch Miller or Papa Celestin to fill in...

Sometimes during a funeral we would go into the church - the band that is - and play these different hymns. That's where I would come in as the watchman, for the band would then go over to a bar while I would lie on the ground or sit outside until the people are coming out of the service. Now, when I got that cue, I would dash over the bar and call the guys. The snare-drum player would be the first one I'd call, he'd then make a roll and he's rolling until everyone comes out of the bar. When everybody's there the bass drummer would hit three notes, I mean three beats - no cymbal, very slow. As a matter of fact, they're organising what number they will play, and they go into that number. Then the snare drummer takes off the snares - they give a kind of tim-tom effect - and that's where the sadness came out, with people probably crying or screaming. Now it's a slow walk to the cemetery and when you get there - from a kid up, I done this - the sermon going on and, when they say "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust" or whatever goes on, well the drum gives a roll again from outside the cemetery, and they're ready to come back again, and the band plays that first number "Didn't he ramble, he rambled till the butchers cut him down". After that, everybody's having a ball, parading back in tempo, the band playing different numbers. That's when my dad used to say "Take it, son", that's where I would come on and play the jazz numbers.

We didn't go straight into the hall as soon as we got back - people would be jumping in the streets and everything - and if they have two or three bands they're going into a buck, by 'buck' I mean a session when the bands play against each other. When the bands got back home they might at first make for their hall but they'd never go straight in, you'd first go across the street, to the corner, come back around and then go into the hall. But you then came back and played for ten or fifteen minutes out there on the porch, which we called the gallery. Now, if you're a member of a club, you'd get a dollar for carrying the banner, fifty cents for carrying the flag, and it's up to you to give the two guys something that's holding the tassels on each side of the banner. Sometimes a musician had to double from playing at this funeral or parade to go and work at a dance the same night - I'm sure that's one reason why the guys had such strong embouchures around New Orleans. Now the job that night, wherever you're playing, that calls for a meal - all contracts call for a meal during the time of the dance, and also state that you must be paid for the job right after the dinner or the supper you're having. And you'd probably have gumbo or ham and potato salad, you could get either one, one to each musician. But I liked playing with Chris Kelly because he was a little superstitious, he didn't eat anybody's food but what he brought with him you know. So that would give me two chances, and I would make sure I got Chris's share, having gumbo and a ham and salad. When I say Chris was superstitious, I mean that he always had the feeling that somebody would poison him or do him wrong, so always brought his own meals.

I read a statement in a book, I think it was Nick La Rocca's book, that he was one of the originators of jazz. Well, who can say who was the originator of this? Anyway, he mentioned that when he went to Chicago, the recording people went on trips to New Orleans to find somebody who could play jazz and couldn't find them. I resent this remark very much. Although I have nothing against what he played, or what anybody plays, as far as that, we certainly had a lot of people around New Orleans at that time who could play good jazz and I guess that they could not have looked very hard, or maybe they were looking just one way racewise, whether they went uptown, downtown, back o'town or what. Whether white or coloured people started all this I really don't know - it was started before my time - but the coloured people must have had something to do with it.

I remember hearing a little boogie-woogie, but we didn't have too many pianists in New Orleans who were well known at this time. Instead of using piano we generally used a guitar, and I think the reason for this was that everybody had a piano in their home, whether they played it or not, my guess being that as many as 90% of the houses had one. Guys like Clarence Williams used to plug numbers from door to door; he'd come into your home and play your piano, and sell his numbers - the price would be around ten cents whatever the number was - then he'd go next door and play again, and so on. In addition every saloon or tavern had a piano in it and you were free to go in there and bang on the piano, whether you could play it or not. So a guy taught himself, but they didn't learn within the boogie idiom or anything like that, because they thought they would have to play along with a band. We did have a few boogie woogie players but they weren't all that many in number. Another big reason why few of the bands used a piano was that most of the halls, the dance halls rather, didn't have one, so you'd need to borrow a piano from someone's home in order to use it. Now it was easy to get thirty or forty guys to help you take this piano out of these people's home up to the hall, but where people stopped loaning the piano out, it was getting it back. After the dance they had trouble in getting anyone to haul it back. To get back to the parades again: The uniform for parades was white pants, blue shirts. Naturally the hats were reversible, you could take the top off and leave the white on, but when we played a funeral we wore dark suits to mark the sadness of the occasion. My father used to give dances to collect enough money to get the uniforms, and you can see in some of the old photographs the musicians with the uniforms on, including my father with the great hat that had all the trimmings on. When they had these great dances I would be there all night, now and then nodding off for a few minutes, but going straight on to school next morning. My father was very strict about that and made sure that I went to school always, and I did pretty well there at Macdonnel 32 which is in Algiers, that's on the west New Orleans side, so not being a drop-out I made it through to High School before the trumpet finally took over completely.

They had a lot of great parade bands in New Orleans when I was a kid, some of them still going today incidentally, such as the Onward, the Tuxedo, and the Excelsior. As a matter of fact I played so regularly with the Excelsior Band that some people must have thought I was a full time member, starting out by playing the drums - either bass drum or snare drum - and managing to get a few good gigs as a result. When I was a kid I was also a very fine - though I say it myself - ukulele player, having good wrists and the ability to pick up chords very quickly. After a while there were so many good ukulele players around that I gave up and concentrated solely on the trumpet.

The first time I played one of the dancing schools - where the band never stops and goes right on through - I was on parade and a very fine bass man by the name of Doug Ernest offered me a job that night. So I got in touch with my father and went right on and played that job after he gave me permission to take it. There was a guy in the band, a very fine trombonist by the name of Freddie Bubu, who admired me and he told me that he thought I played like Louis. Anyway, we played all that night; only thing was these guys, every one of them, was getting a drink of water now and then, and I didn't know what was happening. I was trying to play right on through, but that was supposed to be the rest period, something that I didn't understand.

Looking back on the jobs I played in New Orleans away from my father's band I remember working at a couple of halls, one was called the Young Friends Of Honour - we called it the Turtleback - and another was the Sacred Heart. I also played at the Eagle's Hall which was at the end of Algiers at a place called McDonoughville, then at a few places around Gretna, all of them being within about a three-mile radius of home. One time I remember getting caught up in a jam session with Kid Thomas and our group were supposed to have won the contest, anyway they gave us the prize which was a sachet bag. The people at the hall didn't seem to like this too much and on the ground that we were kids they had some policeman come and take the bag back and it was then given to the Kid Thomas group. We couldn't do anything about it because we had no business in the place in any case, on account of our age. Soon after this I ran into George Lewis and my father gave George permission to use me on a job. The very first night I played with George someone fired off a pistol in the place we were working and the police raided it, as a result of which the whole band were taken down to the station. Fortunately they didn't keep us in prison long and released the whole band. Another time I played with Willie Cornish, a great trombone player at that time, and he used the kids band for a job in a cabaret where they used to keep the whiskey in the basin - what we called a face basin in which you washed - in case the police came in. If they did arrive all they had to do was to tilt the basin and waste the whiskey, and no evidence! If someone offered us a drink we would have a coca-cola and whoever offered it to us had to pay the price of a whiskey to the cabaret owners, though this was alright by me as I wasn't drinking anyway.

One of the greatest of the trumpeters in New Orleans around this time was Emmanuel Perez, and I had the great fortune of working with him. As a matter of fact I worked with most of the guys around there on various jobs but the two men who took the most interest in me were both trombonists, Yank Johnson and Harrison Barnes. It was Yank who got me a job with the famous Sam Morgan band, though I was just used as an extra with each guy giving me a dollar apiece or maybe fifty cents, just what they felt like giving. The Morgan band usually worked at a place called the Astoria Ballroom and I remember that Sam Morgan had been taken ill and so Yank Johnson had brought me along to fill in for him. Meanwhile the other members of the band had sent for Henry Rena to take Morgan's place and that's how I became the extra, though I must admit that this job was one of the greatest kicks of my life, for I could enjoy listening to Rena without having to be on a parade. The band had just got hold of a number called Weary blues, so they passed around the sheet music for this and quite naturally everybody wanted to show their musicianship and didn't want to be seen peeping at the music too closely; they wanted to show off to the public and prove themselves to be fast sight readers. In fact, though, the Morgan band had already run it down a few times in private rehearsals, but Rena had trouble getting into it until Yank nudged him on the leg and told him that it was the same thing as Shake it and break it. Once Rena realised what it was he really went into it.

My first trip away from New Orleans was a job with the Sidney Desvigne band on the "Island Queen" which went as far as Cairo and then back again. We had such guys in the band as Bill Matthews, trombone, "Pops" Foster and Walter Pichon who was one of my ace boys, we had done a lot together since our school days. On the boat Pichon became a very good player of the calliope. It was when I got back from this trip that I heard from King Oliver.

Quite a few people I knew had left New Orleans to play with Oliver - Barney Bigard, Albert Nicholas, Paul Barbarin and Luis Russell amongst them - but then some of the men dropped out of his band and he sent home for Willie Foster, Paul Barnes and myself. We left together and joined the band in St.Louis in April 1927. I have read in some articles that I joined the Oliver band in Chicago but I didn't get there until some time after this. I could never understand why they use terms like "Chicago Jazz", "New Orleans Jazz" or "New York Jazz", because I made records with the Chicago Rhythm Kings before I had ever been there. Anyway I met the Oliver band in St.Louis and it was a great experience for me, but nothing to what I felt when we arrived in New York and saw the banners there running from one side of the street to the other, with a sign saying "The East Meets The West". We played against, or rather alongside, Fletcher Henderson's band and the Fess Williams band, and in the latter group I had the pleasure of hearing Jimmy Harrison for the first time.

After a while the guys in the band got a little nervous at facing the top bands in New York and went to talk to King Oliver, Oliver reassured everyone by pointing out "We're playing what we know" and as a result we began to gain in confidence. We had some great musicians in the band and they included Omer Simeon, Barney Bigard and Paul Barnes in the reed section. Tick Gray - a very good trumpet man who is not too well known - along with King and myself made up the trumpet section, and there was Kid Ory on trombone, Paul Barbarin and Willie Foster - "Pop" Foster's brother - in the rhythm section. I stayed a little while with Oliver and we worked at the Savoy Ballroom, though as a matter of fact I was not too keen on being away from home because I was used to my mother doing everything like seeing to my clothes and getting all my meals, and didn't like the idea of having to do everything myself. I found it hard to get used to the idea of being away, particularly for any length of time, in these far parts. Fortunately King Oliver took a liking to me and insisted that I lived with him at his sister's place, so one way and another I began to get some confidence. We did pretty well against some of the great bands in New York, but I felt that I wasn't too well established there, particularly in my knee pants! You see at this time it didn't matter what size you were, until you reached a certain age in New Orleans you wore knee pants. I was saved by a guy called Buchanan who rented a suit for me from a rental firm under the Savoy, so I felt pretty great then and began to take more interest in what was going on. When we took the stand we played and everybody gathered around the bandstand to hear what we had to offer, and then the next band would play and after that we were back again, so it was real interesting. Then our gig at the Savoy ended and we were to have gone into the Cotton Club, but something happened there, though to this day I never found out what it was - maybe finance - and Ellington got the job. We were very disappointed at this, for we had been certain of getting the job and had been promised it for sure. Instead we set off to play a dance at Baltimore but we had very poor luck there. Our first dance was completely rained off, so we thought we had better do something to cover ourselves in the future, particularly as our room rent and meal bills were beginning to run up and our landlady was starting to cut down on our meals - King Oliver used to have this bowl of sugar and water along with about half a loaf of bread before he got into his meal - and the boys got a little desperate and tried to get started on their meal before King knew about it. Then King made a deal with the lady to bring him in fifteen or twenty minutes before the meal and serve us all at the same time. But the lady was still a little worried because the loot wasn't coming on, so to make sure we got our loot at the next dance we insured it - if it rained or anything, we'd get paid. So it rained on that day, and the curfew must have been eight o'clock, because it rained right up to eight o'clock and then stopped! That threw us out, made our contract with the insurance no good, and to make matters worse the rain had messed up the light fixtures at the place we were supposed to work. Everyone got discouraged and the first one to leave was Clarence Black, he was a violinist who was fronting the band, and when he got home he formed his own group and sent for Omer Simeon. Most of us went back to New York, still trying to stick around in case any jobs came up and with King Oliver still trying to hold us, but nothing happened and I went on home to New Orleans.

I had not been home long before I got a job with Walter "Fats" Pichon, working at a club called The Pelican about four nights a week, and this worked out very good. There were two bands sharing the job, the one led by "Fats" Pichon and another led by Oscar "Papa" Celestin, and we used to play against each other. Guy Kelly was in Celestin's band and he and I became the drawing cards, with a lot of people coming along to hear us blowing against each other, though Guy and I became very good friends anyway. The funny thing was that my friends and Guy's friends didn't get along too well for some reason, and they felt that there ought to be more saltiness between us just because we were playing against each other, but after a while Guy and I got fed up with this and we decided to go to Chicago together. Guy did go but I had another offer and made up my mind to stick around the home area a little longer, working with Fate Marable on the riverboats.

I'd been listening to Fate Marable since I was small, when I used to go on the levee over in Algiers and the music from his band on the boats would carry across the river. I've already mentioned that I had worked on the "Island Queen" with Sidney Desvigne - this was one of the fleet owned by the Streckfus brothers - and I think that Fate had heard about me as a result of this, for he came into The Pelican one time and after hearing me offered this job. When I started on the boat I got several raises as the Streckfus brothers wanted me to stay on. There were five of them, all brothers, and they were really interested in the music and employed most of the famous early musicians. The other musicians in the band were from St.Louis and included Albert Snaer on trumpet, bassist Al Morgan, and a guitarist called Al Sears - not the tenor player who made his name with Duke Ellington. For a short while Willie Humphreys came in on clarinet, but there were a few changes now and then. We started by playing in and around New Orleans, then we'd leave for a scheduled trip of maybe two months, but usually we'd be gone for three. We didn't dash madly on to St.Louis, but the boat worked its way up, playing night after night in different places. A lot of people think, when you mention riverboats, you had to check your pistols when you came on, and that the boats were full of women good-timing, but I didn't find it like this. I do know that everyone had a good time but it wasn't as wild as some writers say, and I can't remember personally ever seeing any gambling on board when I was playing. We played stops such as Memphis, in fact when we got there we would play two nights, and it was here that a guy called Loren Watson first heard me, or maybe heard of me, because I have the feeling that King Oliver may have mentioned my name to him. We finally would get to St.Louis and play there, and when you reached there it was every tub - that means you have to get off and get you a room outside the city, because the boat would be stationed there a while. We had lots of fun on the boat though, because they had a cook on board who was from New Orleans and I'd suggest that he cook red beans and rice. I found out that he was a great cigar smoker and kept him happy with supplies so he would fix these New Orleans dishes, though the guys in the band who came from St.Louis weren't so keen on rice and always gave us the chance to have our fill!

There were some great musicians out of St.Louis, guys like Charlie Creath, Dewey Jackson and Fate Marable, and as they all played the boats I had heard most of them quite early in New Orleans. One time Creath, Jackson and Marable were all in the same band together, but as they were all leaders in their own right there was some tension going on. I remember once hearing them in a cabaret and when Dewey - a great blues player - ran over his horn to warm it up the people would start screaming. Then Charlie Creath would hit just one note and draw attention - his tone was so big and wide that he would pull everything together - and I thought that both were great trumpeters. When we were berthed in St.Louis I would get around and hear different people, and I remember listening to Johnny "Buggs" Hamilton who later became well known when he played with Fats Waller, and Blue, Reputed Blue as he called himself, who later on was on a couple of my recordings for Victor. His real name was Thornton Blue.

At the time there seemed to me to be so many great players around St.Louis that it's hard to name them all. Others I remember are Nat Storey - a really fine trombonist - drummer Floyd Campbell, and a pianist called Burroughs Lovingood, who as a matter of fact, I still correspond with and is now working in Washington, D.C. Lovingood was a great pianist and we worked together with Fate Marable on the boat, using two pianos. I remember that Fate would get these hard numbers, and play them with just the bass backing him, probably trying to show Lovingood up or something. But Lovingood was a little fast musicianwise, so Fate would study first, hold the music on his lap and run it over a few times, and when pass it out to Lovingood while everybody's looking. And if there was a really hard passage coming up Fate would decide to go and have a drink of water, just when the piano passage was due, and leave Lovingood out there. But he pulled through alright, it always turned out o.k. Fate gave me a message when I left the boat, for Jelly Roll Morton, but I had trouble leaving in any case. You had to put up fifty dollars when you joined the band on the boat - a sort of guarantee of good behaviour - but though you were supposed to get it back when you left I never did have it, still haven't to this day. I went home to New Orleans on account of the fact that my grandfather had passed and I thought, and my family thought, that I should be there for the burial. When I got back after this to the boat they wanted me to stay on, but I had already given in my notice and told them I was going on to New York. They didn't really believe that my story about my grandfather passing was true, claiming I had made it up to get away. First Streckfus ordered me to stay, then he offered me a little more money to remain - I had had raises a couple of times before - and also Fate tried hard to keep me. But I had to go this time, because I had wires from both Luis Russell and Duke Ellington offering me jobs with their band, and was determined to make New York City.

Publication: Jazz Monthly
Issue: 180
Date: February 1970
Country: UK

Herbie Hancock - Barbican - 9th July 2002

Programme Notes

Miles Davis famously refused to show the 'Kind Of Blue' compositions to his band until they were in the studio - he wanted to hear his musicians respond spontaneously to the music they saw on the page. Later in his career, Miles was in the studio while his bassist Marcus Miller tried to correct a minor glitch over several takes. 'Don't **** with it, man' said Miles. 'USE those mistakes. Play in the moment.' It is this spirit of spontaneity and exploration that tonight's quintet tap into as they commemorate the two musicians' anniversary. In the 75 years since both Miles Davis and John Coltrane were born, thousands of young jazz musicians have attempted to tap into the Miles/Trane post bop vision by copying the superficial gestures - Miles' closely-miked, tightly-muted trumpet; Trane's sheets of sound over rumbling drums and chunky piano chords - but this is a project that digs beneath the surface veneer, capturing Miles's spirit of spontaneity. Coltrane's melodic intellectual diligence, and the oft-neglected romantic lyricism of both. Touring North America last autumn with this project, the date at Toronto's Massey Hall in October has been captured by an extraordinary Verve album called Directions In Music.

'People would have been happy to hear us improvise on the familiar arrangements,' says Herbie Hancock, 'But Miles and John would not be very happy with this safe kind of approach because that's not what they were about... Miles used to tell us that he paid us to try new things on the bandstand, not to prepare it in our rooms beforehand. Jazz is about capturing the moment.'

Modal piano icon Hancock stands closest to this Holy Grail of post-bop, being chosen by Miles to lead his fabled mid-'60s quintet with Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter and Tony Williams ('Mmmm, nice touch,' Miles gruffly announced after Hancock's audition). Hancock has since paid homage to Miles on many occasions, most notably the VSOP Quintet which recreated that popular '60s line-up with Freddie Hubbard deputising for Miles. concert promoter George Wein initially convened the group in 1976 to play from Hancock's Blue Note canon, later using it to perform work from Miles's modal period. Hancock has said how odd it was that music that was cutting edge only a decade earlier was replicated as 'classic jazz' by the mid-'70s, something that the likes of Wynton Marsalis soon transformed into the neo-bop revival (Marsalis, fittingly, later replaced Hubbard in the VSOP Quintet).

This Directions In Music project takes a very different route to that initial wave of revivalism. 'We decided to create our own new way of looking at compositions, to allow new freedoms within the structures in order to stimulate and provoke spontaneity within the group,' say Hancock. 'We're not just playing the original chords of these pieces, but moving beyond that, using our powers of concentration and our hearts and our trust in the ability of the others to respond to whatever happens and work outside the box.' Hancock , in particular, is in masterful form through the set - deft, mercurial, as exploratory as he's been for years, dancing around the keyboard, delicately drumming out unusual intervals, teasing out multiple harmonic possibilities from simple haiku-like phrases.

And the choices of music are inspired. One original composition, 'Misstery', sees them dismantling 'Stella By Starlight' and then reassembling it as some crazy jigsaw puzzle. Although it's a piece associated with Miles, it's Coltrane's explosive harmonic logic, which underlies this performance. Davis's 'So What' and Coltrane's 'Impressions' (from 'A Love Supreme') have been linked together by many jazz bands, but this quintet's epic hybrid strips each theme to its most basic modal elements, creating a slow, loping, ostinato bassline which becomes the basis for a delicate one-chord freak-out.

Texas-born trumpeter Hargrove - one of the young lions of neo-bop to emerge in the last decade - makes no effort to ape Miles's superficial, Harmon-muted sound in this line-up. Instead, he develops a unique take on some of Miles's extemporary techniques. The reading of Kurt Weill's 'My Ship' is a particularly gorgeous example, where Hargrove's flugelhorn solo employs economical phrases, decorated with off-notes, which gave the effect of him casually twisting the melody as if he were turning soft metal. Later, on a reading of Coltrane's 'Transition', you'll find him imitating Trane's fervent, speaking-in-tongues holler, playing as 'out' as we've ever heard him.

Heavyweight fusion tenorist Brecker - one of the most popular and celebrated saxophonists of the post-Coltrane era - has been exploring the 'feminine' side to his playing in recent years, with less pyrotechnics and more delicacy. Here he's on top form, particularly when he transforms Coltrane's heart-tugging 'Naima' into a solo tenor sax cadenza, an elaborate grandstanding soliloquy filled with rippling arpeggios, smudgy harmonic colourations and beautiful chord substitutions.

Tonight's live show replaces bassist John Petrucci and drummer Brian Blade (from the album) with George Mraz and Willie Jones. Bassist Mraz, who left Prague for the States in 1968, around the same time as his Czech compatriot Miroslav Vitous, studied at Berklee and has since played with a host of heavyweights, including Dizzy Gillespie, Oscar Peterson, Ella Fitzgerald, Charles Mingus and the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Big Band - he's been particularly impressive in duos with the likes of Jimmy Rowles, Tommy Flanagan, Barry Harris and John Abercrombie. Drummer Willie Jones, meanwhile, has worked with Roy Hargrove and Eric Reed for many years, and guested with the likes of Horace Silver and Phil Woods. All five of them put in performances that are often exquisite enough to share a stage with the originals. 'Even though each night we played the same repertoire, something different would happen. By the time we got into it, the music was just soaring.'

2002 John Lewis

Vicente Amigo - Barbican - 22nd July 2001

Programme Notes

EVA LA YERBABUENA

Flamenco artists' search for a coherent personal style has always set the pace in a musical form that has been evolving constantly since it emerged at the end of the 18th century. Today's younger artists have broadened that search as a response to hearing new forms of music and learning virtuoso technique unknown to earlier generations. But few of them have succeeded in using these new influences to add resonance to flamenco's emotional depths. It is in this sense that dancer Eva la Yerbabuena and guitarist Vicente Amigo are outstanding figures of their generation.

La Yerbabuena, who grew up and began her flamenco training in Granada, is considered the most important representative of women's flamenco today. Her passionate commitment to flamenco's traditional values informs her technically stunning and powerfully emotional dance language, but at the same time she looks to other art forms to find inspiration. She has worked with film maker Mike Figgis, theatre director Hansel Cereza and Fura del Baus, and contemporary dancers Pina Bausch and Carolyn Carlson. Her artistic partnership with her husband Paco Jarana, guitarist and composer of all the music in her shows, is also fundamental to her work.

'Eva' was premiered at the Seville Biennal of 1998 and is considered one of the most significant flamenco shows in performance today. Perfectly integrating song, music and dance, it takes the audience on an abstract journey through some of flamenco's most important song-styles, respecting each artist's individual style and leaving space for improvisation. At the same time La Yerbabuena uses the different song-styles' emotional moods to present her vision of women's changing identity within flamenco.

Conceived as the waking dream of a bailaora, or flamenco dancer, the dream opens with haunting early acapella song-forms from rural Andalusia and the Gypsy forges. They are followed by Jerez de la Frontera's traditional bulerías, fiesta songs and dances in which guitar and palmas (clapping) set the complex fast rhythms. Eva's first solo is a granaina, created by her for this lyrical song-style to express the trapped emotions of a woman bound by traditional feminity. Here she also plays with the graceful language of early women's flamenco, dancing with a train and an emphasis on movement from the waist up. Her next long solo explores one of flamenco's most essential forms, the soleá: the tension gathers through moments of suffering, withdrawal, loneliness, dignity and volcanic anger in a woman's search for independence at any cost. Musically, this is also a masterly anthology of the soleá's many different stylistic variants from around Andalucia. The charged atmosphere is broken by pure rhythm - a percussion solo - before the entire company performs tangos, one of flamenco's oldest styles, given a modern gloss of free movement and zapateo footwork to parallel a sense of emotional release and satisfaction. Here, in the contemporary world, the dream ends, and the dancer returns to her sleep and the mysteries of the future.

Eva brings with her outstanding singers and musicians: Enrique Soto and David Lago, both from Jerez, and Segundo Falcón from Seville, known in their own right as superb cantaores (flamenco singers); guitarists Paco Jarana and Salvador Guitérrez, from Don Hermanas, near Seville; and percussionist Antonio Coronel and flautist Ignacio Vidaechea. In January the musicians and Andalucian dancers in the company were awarded the Premio de la Critica (Critics' Prize) for the best company of 2000.

VICENTE AMIGO

Vicente Amigo's first solo album 'De Mi Corazón al Aire' [From My Heart to the Air], released in 1991, established him as the leading flamenco guitarist of the generation whose work took up Paco de Lucía's and Manolo Sanlúcar's revolutionary introduction of harmony and melody. Amigo's highly expressive playing is marked out by its rhythmic and melodic subtlety, a measured sense of composition, lightningly fast fingerwork and ,above all, gentle emotional depths. His experience as a producer, lyricist and accompanist - working live with El Pelé and Enrique Morente among others, and in the recording studio with Camarón de la Isla and José Mercé - has fed back into his solo compositions, which weave in different voices and musical influences, but always drawn into an inimitably flamenco sound. His admiration for the great jazz musicians can be heard on his second album 'Vivencias Imaginadas' [Imagined Experiences], 1995, on which Paco de Lucía joined him in a duet dedicated to Pat Metheny. On his new album 'Ciudad de las Ideas' [City of Ideas] his love for Latin music can be heard in the lyrical bolero dedicated to his baby son. He has explored the possibilities of strings, of wind instruments and, most recently, as in this show, of percussion. At the same time his performances are still punctuated by his solo compositions, such as the new album's masterly soleá inspired by Cordoba, his adopted native city. In these solos he reveals his deep understanding of flamenco's traditional musical structures and his rare ability to express its darker emotions.

Vicente's line-up includes long-time collaborator José Manuel Hierro, the Cordoban guitarist who has composed and performed alongside Amigo for many years; Barcelona-based singer Blás Córdoba, whose broken, silvery flamenco voice shifts easily between traditional and contemporary sounds; and bassist Antonio Ramos, also known a Maca, who has worked with jazz, rock and flamenco artists such as Ketama and Tomatito. He also brings with him Tino di Geraldo, one of flamenco's most creative percussionists, best known internationally for his work with Paco de Lucía; box player Cesar Moreno and percussionist Patricio Camara.

Vicky Hayward

Ray Brown Trio - Barbican - 24th March 2001

Programme Notes

For its barrel-chested bulk, its dislike of being hurried even in the sometimes manic idiom of jazz, its inaudibility in earlier eras of approximate electronics, and the anonymity of most of its practitioners to the average listener, the double-bass has often been a butt for muso's gags. But from years of World War Two onward, things significantly changed in the hitherto modest world of jazz bass.

Bebop, with its mobile melodic lines and its more conversational role for the rhythm section, generated a new breed of virtuoso bassists - like Duke Ellington's shortlived Jimmy Blanton, and like Oscar Pettiford and the enduringly majestic Ray Brown, still going sonorously strong at 75. And with the rise of the propulsive and liquid-toned Brown in the 1950s, the jazz band with a bassist as the boss became, if not commonplace, certainly no longer an oddity.

Ray Brown, the pioneering bass-bandleader, is the elder statesman and headliner of this performance alongside a gifted young musician whose career - and that of many other contemporary bassists • has been founded on breakthroughs Brown made long before he was born. For Ray Brown and Christian McBride to be appearing on the same bill is, of course, an exhilarating luxury for anyone who loves the rich potential of the acoustic bass, from its earth-shaking, cathedral-organ undertow to its cello-like delicacy in the hands of such practitioners as these. But it's also a privelege for music-lovers of all kinds. Brown and McBride are not just bass virtuosi, though that would be achievement enough. Both men have taken an original angle on the development of jazz, have led bands of distinctive sound and character, and featured some of the most original players of their respective generations. Christian McBride brings a group including Ron Black, Camille Gainer and Geoffrey Keezer. Ray Brown is partnered by a long-time associate, the great Jamaican pianist Monty Alexander, and by Diana Krall's imaginative and subtly-swinging guitarist Russell Malone.

Brown was born in Pittsburgh in October 1926, and after performing with local bands, joined Dizzy Gillespie in 1945, when he was just 19. After two years with the trumpeter, he formed his own trio as an accompanying ensemble to Ella Fitzgerald - and then from 1951 for the next 15 years, the bassist worked in his most celebrated and technically taxing context, with the whirlwind virtuoso pianist Oscar Peterson. In 1974, Brown became a founder member of the successful LA4, and began his association with Monty Alexander in that decade. Illustrious subsequent piano partners have also included the late Gene Harris and the postbop virtuoso Benny Green. Brown has also provided jazz with some striking themes, including a bop classic, Two Bass Hit, and been a sympathetic and insightful adviser and manager to others. Russell Malone's presence and the Diana Krall connection reveals this aspect of Ray Brown's alertness and musicality, because in 1983, when the young Krall and the great bassist were introduced, Brown heard in Krall something of the combination of veiled star-quality and reflexive improvisational musicianship he had once heard in his former wife and musical partner Ella Fitzgerald. Brown sketched out a path for the young singer's education that profoundly influenced her career. But it was just the latest in a series of creative interventions that had previously affected the careers of Ouincy Jones, Milt Jackson, and the early Modern Jazz Quartet.

Ray Brown entered a jazz scene in the 1940s that Duke Ellington's Jimmy Blanton was soon to leave tragically early, but Blanton's speed of articulation, melodic imagination and forceful swing had already transformed jazz bass-playing and - alongside his contemporary Oscar Pettiford - Brown was to become the most exceptional inheritor of the method. With his luxurious sound, crystal-clarity of intonation and irresistably insistent swing, Ray Brown was the new standard by which bassists would judge their achievements. That he remains so today, in a jazz world seething with technically exceptional practitioners on the instrument to which he helped impart such dignity and exciting new potential, is a measure of his immense impact.

Ray Brown's opposite number on this concert, Christian McBride, the 28 year-old Philadelphian, is one of the most popular bassist-leaders on the contemporary jazz scene. McBride is a brilliant virtuoso, but also an unashamed populist who likes the feel both of the bluesy bop bands of the early 1960s (a reflection of his easy pragmatism and the r & b and soul roots of his hometown) and the rhythmic and textural developments of contemporary funk and hip-hop. McBride's father and great-uncle were both bassists, the former an r & b session player, and the young Christian attended the Juilliard School of Music as a classical player originally whilst simultaneously playing the jazz clubs with fellow-student Ray Hargrove and altoist Bobby Watson. In 1991 McBride met Ray Brown, who demonstrated his admiration for the newcomer by inviting him as a duet partner on Pittsburgh's 'Ray Brown Day'. In both his status with new jazz audiences and a sense of showbiz theatricality, McBride has much in common with his contemporary and sometime playing-partner Joshua Redman (Chick Corea, Kenny Barron and Jack DeJohnette also feature in that list) and his repertoire is as likely to include an adaptation of Sly Stone's Family Affair or a burst of sermonising, holy roller dialogue with the crowd as it is an evergreen of the bop idiom that is still his enduring love.

Christian McBride's popularity springs from his youth, an ease with the materials and an enthusiasm for hauling classic pop and classic jazz together, but his more reflective bass virtuosity is the underpinning of it, and still astonishes jazz audiences of all ages wherever he plays. His is a music performed with the affection and eagerness of players discovering a respected tradition for themselves, but adding glosses of their own that refresh its present and its future.

2001 John Fordham

Goree Carter and his Hepcats - Rock Awhile

Liner Notes

T-BONE DISCIPLE

Goree was one of T-Bone's most devoted disciples, and one of the first to be prolifically recorded, mostly in 1949-50. Unlike many of his contemporaries who made their records totally or chiefly in California, he did his recording in Houston, most notably for the local Freedom label. He's been off the fast lane for thirty years even though he's only 52 years old. It's ironic that when he was tracked down in July 1982 by Juke Jumpers Sumter Bruton, Jim Colegrove and Johnny Reno, with help from veteran Houston musicians Leonard Anderson and Pete Mays, Goree was living in a house on Bayou Street where he was born, as he has been for almost all his life. It would be hard to find a more classic example of neglect, though some of it has been voluntary. But he deserves a lot better.

A brief letter that Goree wrote to Blues Boy Records in January, 1983, is unpretentious and matter-of-fact: "I didn't stay in the business too long because I went into the army and when I got out things were pretty slow so I went back to my old job at a rice mill." It hints at a typical blues story. A talented young musician was thrown unprepared into a world of competitive hustlers, he has lingering memories of suspect dealings with managers and record companies; his career was thwarted when he got drafted and came home to find his main patrons and partners out of business or dead; and changing tastes also helped end his success - his own desire to get away from a successful formula and the public's move onto rock & roll. That's another irony. Goree was left behind although his first and biggest hit ROCK AWHILE could have been an anthem for the change.

The tone of Goree's letter contrasts with the spirit of his records. His guitar and voice were firmly in the T-Bone mould, but with plenty of ideas ranging from jazz to Spanish overtones. Just a quick listen to ROCK AWHILE shows many of the elements that made Goree's too-brief career as a recording artist worth remembering and celebrating. The lyrics were original and often witty. The adventurous arrangements by Goree or Conrad Johnson stretched the formula with unique commercial results. The booting boogie woogie piano of Lonnie Lyons, the wailing sax(es) from Conrad Johnson and the other horn players that he recruited from the college where he was teaching, and good quality sound and pressing, all added to the impact of Goree's blues.

Goree was born in his present home in Houston on the last day of 1930. He was named after Goree Ashman who ran a prison farm near Huntsville. (There is also a town of Goree, Texas). HIs father Robert who was on a government pension after being shot in France during military service played mostly solo blues piano and trumpet in roadhouses. Goree had two older sisters who lured him onto the T-Bone Walker path, and a brother Edward who recorded with him on one of the more unusual blues records of that or any other time. Goree recalls, "We didn't live too bad. Just makin' it, put it that way." The family backyard would host jams by his sister's schoolmates Arnett Cobb and Russell Jacquet, and their friend Cleanhead Vinson. "My mother used to cook pots of beans for 'em, and they'd play out in the yard all day long, practisin'. I was so small I didn't know too much. But I always did love music."

He started playing guitar around age 13; a man across the street tried to give him early lessons. He liked Johnny Moore and Barney Kessel, and Charles and Roy Brown. To the occasional discomfort of Freedom Records, his tastes for jazz and ballads stayed with him. But T-Bone Walker was easily the main inspiration and "the one I copied from." One of Goree's sisters came home from seeing Bone at Don Robey's Peacock Club: "I had a old, beat-up guitar my cousin had gave me, and she saw him play behind his head and stuff. They were sellin' some of his records out there, so she brought a couple of his records back. We had a old wind-up Victrola, and she wanted me to hear his music. And she started playin' it for me, and she was tryin' to demonstrate how he played to me. This record 'Gonna Find My Baby', that's the one she brought back, and 'Bobby Sox Baby'. And I listened. And so the next morning, I got up early 'cause it stayed on my mind 'cause I liked the sound, and I got on one string tryin' to find out how to play like him, 'cause she wanted me to play like him so bad. So I started out on one string and from then on just moved on along till I could get his chords, and that's how I picked up his style. So when I got old enough to go in a club, they took me to see him. After I started playin' like him doin' floor show work, then he heard about me. He came to Houston and he was at the Eldoado, he saw me. I got to know him real well." T-Bone never sat down and showed Goree much guitar: "He figured I already knew." Goree learned plenty from watching , though, including most of Bone's stage show. But "I wasn't too good on the splits. I tried it, but couldn't get up. But I could play behind my head and all that stuff. He had a unique style. It was so different. And the way he phrased his chords and things. And the way his blues were, it wasn't just the lowdown blues...When I was cuttin', I was playin' T-Bone style. I tried to get away from it, because I didn't want to sound like him on records. But when I was out in public, I would always play his style...I couldn't understand why he never did get too much recognition. He came a long way, Bone did. He was the boss here." As for other local influences, "It wasn't too many guitarists around here that I cared anything about, because they was mostly playin' down home blues, semi like Lightnin' Hopkins...so it wasn't too much to inspire me."

BATTLE OF THE BLUES

His first musical job was the result of a lucky coincidence. A lady who ran the Whispering Pines in Trinity Gardens pased his house when he was "sittin' on my porch playin'. She was gettin' her hair fixed next door, a beautician lived next door. So she asked the beautician who I was, and she came over and asked would I come out to her club and play? I didn't have a electric guitar then, but they got one for me and I done a floor show work out there. That was my first engagement." He also did floor show work at the Eldorado in the 3rd Ward where I.H. Smalley played sax and had his own band. There he was heard by Anne Cullum (Cullen). She was the talent scout who'd sent Lightnin' and Amos Milburn to Los Angeles to record for Aladdin. When not scouting talent, she ran a booking agency and, briefly, ARC Records. She stepped in to guide Goree's career. While his memories of her aren't warm, she did send him to what he regards as his first break. "She and another Anne, I can't 'call her name but she had a hat shop downtown, they discovered me, heard me play at the Eldorado one night, and they got me booked in Nashville, Tennessee, with Lightnin' Hopkins, and we had a battle of the blues up there...She was so grouchy after money, she grypped me a whole lot. Like she done in Nashville, she took me there and dropped me like a hot potato and come on back, just left me on my own, and I was young and didn't know my way around or nothin'." But that stay at the Club Arrow turned out to be worth the aggravation. "I won the engagement . Me and Lightnin' used to sit down and practise together in Nashville. And I was tryin' to play like him, he wanted to play like me! It was a style you could just sit down and play, you didn't need a band. But I don't know - the dances I'd play, I didn't take with this. They wanted something jump, they wanted to dance. So it wouldn't work." Lightnin' returned to Houston while Goree got his six week contract extended for another six weeks. "That's where I got my break, really. A bunch of recording companies was after me, and Hollywood called me. I was so young then, my mother wouldn't let me go. She wouldn't sign the contract. They called for me to come to Hollywood, it was after midnight one night. My mother hung up. It hurt me, it really did. I cried about it because it was an opportunity for me, you know." He also did radio shows in Nashville. But he came home without making any deals because he had been warned that his youth and ignorance of the business would get him into bad contracts. So he returned to the Eldorado where he had another lucky break - his meeting with Samuel Kahl.

IT WAS SUPPOSED TO HAVE BEEN A TEST RECORD

By that time, Goree had actually made his first record - but not on purpose, something that Goree says happened more than once. "It was supposed to have been a test record. they wanted to see how I played and how I sound. They'd say 'that sounds good, we're gonna get a record session up soon', and all this stuff, but I didn't know they was cuttin' me all the time." He sang and played an uncanny , well-written T-Bone imitation called "Sweet Ole Woman's Blues," assisted by Little Willie Littlefield's basic timekeeping on piano. It does indeed sound like a demo, with no real band and with Littlefield's simplistic approach. But it appeared on Eddie's, backed by a Littlefield song. "That's a little embarrassing to me because I didn't want that that sound. But they held back on me and stuck that stuff out on me. And when I heard it on the jukebox, you know I like to had a chill. Man, I'm talkin' about feelin' like a stepchild."

The culprit, Eddie Henry, helped a recent arrival from New York, Samuel Kahl (sometimes known as Saul), get into the race recording business. Goree recalls their meeting: "Somebody told him about me. I was playin' at the Eldorado doin' floor shows, and he came up to me and asked would I be interested in cuttin' records? He came from New York here. He didn't even have a business then. He got himself set up here after he talked to me. His wife, she's the one that put him in business. It took about a month or so." Kahl recorded Goree regularly at Bill Holford's ACA studio, beginning in 1949, seven 78's appeared on Freedom. Goree and the label did a lot to establish each other over the next couple of years. Goree would record with Conrad Johnson (and the horn players he had rounded up), and with his sidekick, pianist Lonnie Lyons. At the first session he came up with a houserocker called ROCK AWHILE. "That was wrote in the studio. I just picked it up because we were short of a record. And they gave me time off, about a hour or so, and I got it together and gave the boys intermission, they could go out and get sandwiches, and I stayed in the studio and wrote that." It was a big enough hit be remembered by young distributor and future owner of Ace Records, Johnny Vincent. Atlas Radio and Records in Houston also pushed Kahl's records heavily. Kahl's recording concepts were pretty simple. He liked the good equipment at Holford's studio and he wanted Goree to play T-Bone style blues. "He just wanted me to mostly sound like T-Bone. Because during that period of time, T-Bone was hot and he was tryin' to make me sound like him much as he could. But I was tryin' to dodge it because I wanted my own style. So it was kinda hard for me. I could play his style out in public but I didn't wanna do it on records. Every time I wanted to get away from it they wanted to push me right back...I said 'why don;t you just change up a little?' 'No, no, you'll kill yourself.' I said okay, just went along. 'Cause they was carryin' me. We'd cut them records. I'd do what they say."

Goree was allowed some creativity in the studio. It showed up on arrangements; T-Bone would have been proud of the introductions to ROCK AWHILE and COME ON LET'S BOOGIE, and the lyrics were fresh. "I wrote all my hits. I'd wake up through the night. I couldn't sleep. Words would come to me, some of 'em be funny. I'd jump up, start writin' 'em down. I used to sit up all night long. Make me a pot of coffee and go sit on the front porch. And meditate. Different songs would come to me and I'd write 'em, throw 'em aside. Then after I'd get several I'd go back inside and check 'em out." Young Johnny Copeland, who would watch Goree rehearse, helped write WORKING WITH MY BABY. "We wrote that together, but I gave him the credit. He had a bunch of numbers he wanted me to try to record for him. But my manager, Kahl, he picked 'em out but he didn't like 'em. So that caused me to have to do a lot of writin'." Although Goree didn't get to record the Roy Brown-styled song he wrote, other influences crept in, like the Cleanhead Vinson vocal effects on WHAT A FRIEND WILL DO: "That squeakin'...I was tryin' to get away from T-Bone. I didn't want to be an imitator." When he brought brother Edward into the picture the results were unique but still Texas. "He wanted to play trumpet , but his pitch wasn't right. He wanted to get on records. So I said 'you can whistle good. I'll play a Spanish song. I'll sit here and write some words.' I didn't know what to call it, so Kahl said 'why don't you call it SERENADE?' I said 'yeah, that's good.' So I started playin', he started whistlin'. It sounded good. they took one take of it but he made a mistake. I can always hear it. So they named it SERENADE, I never thought the thing would sell but it did. A lot of people liked it."

Only one of Goree's Freedom issued songs is missing from this compilation: the driving "She's My Best Bet." So we get thirteen examples of the best of the post-war Houston blues band sound, dominated by the stamp of T-Bone but performed by a talented songwriter and artist with plenty of his own to say and play. (Krazy Kat Records plans to include some previously unissued tracks in an anthology, including "Going Down To Nashville.")

Goree also played on Freedom songs with Lonnie Lyons who saw four 78's issued by Kahl. Generally the two would record at the same sessions. "Lonnie, he was a good pianist and just a heavy wine drinker. I think he was about a couple of years older than myself." They met at Shady's Playhouse. "I would keep him sober when he'd be ready to record." He contributed energetic barrelhouse solos to Goree's ROCK AWHILE and HOY-HOY. Goree recalls, "He liked Amos Milburn and Charles Brown's style more or less, but he had his own kind of boogie beat. He tried to sing like Charles Brown but his voice was kinda gone because he'd drink so heavy." Lyons was found dead, tragically young, in the early 1950's.

Goree's memories of his other Freedom sidemen are less strong, partly because Kahl or Conrad Johnson would round up most of them. "Nunn" Pitts usually played bass, with Allison Tucker on drums. Except for changes in horn players, things were fairly constant from session to session. Other musicians Goree remembers from the studio and bandstand include Joe Calloway on tenor and baritone, Thornton Turner on tenor, Leonard Anderson, drummer Charles King, Johnny Shepard on bass, Eric Sample on piano and a trumpeter known as Bridgewater.

Goree brought Big Joe Turner to Kahl and Freedom. "When Joe came here, he was down and he didn't have no place to really go. And the place we was rehearsin' at, somebody must have told him I was over there because he had never seen me before, and he'd heard of me. So he came in there one day, he and his wife. This is where he wrote that number at, 'Adam Bit the Apple.' He saw a picture on the wall of Adam and Eve in the forest, and he wrote that song right at the table. And he asked me about recordin'. I told him I could get him in touch with my manager, which was Kahl during that period of time. He was happy to hear Joe Turner's name. He came right on out and talked to Joe. So we started recordin' and got him on the Freedom label, and then he started gettin' his break over again." They did a couple of sessions together. In the clubs "he was always having a single. He played a few dates with my group, but he would go to different clubs and book himself and they would have their own bands, and that's how he would work."

HE WOULD PICK SOME SAD PLACES TO PLAY IN

After Kahl had put out enough records by Goree so that both had tasted a little success, Kahl signed Goree to a three year recording and personal management contract. But Kahl doesn't sound like much of a bargainer or businessman - a fact which may have contributed to the short life of Freedom in the face of hard competition from the likes of Don Robey. "He would pick some sad places to play in, I tell you. He acted like he was afraid to talk to the promoter. They would get him down to a price they wanted. We'd go out and we'd book dances, he act like he was scared to collect the money. And he'd come get me, and I had to go talk to the guys about the money and stuff...I don't know what happened to him." Goree never saw much money from his records. "I didn't see any of it. They always talkin' about the money they'd spent for advertisin'...in those days, they could get you easily. I didn't really realise about music and stuff because I never had any intention of gettin' into it. We wouldn't see anything. He cheated me out of a lot of money. I got mostly promises. He'd pay the band off and he'd give me maybe $35, 40 to put in my pocket and say he'd give me the money later. Later he'd give me $35, 40, 50 once in awhile. But I mean - I enjoyed it, you know. I enjoyed it. We had some fun in those days."

Goree almost always worked as a leader. He'd play at the Eldorado, Shady's Playhouse, or the Club Matinee when he was in town. (Johnny Copeland also reminisced about Shady's Playhouse in the June, 1983 issue of Guitar Player.) He remained popular around Nashville, and in San Antonio. He toured Texas, Louisiana, and went to California and New York. The records helped get work, especially ROCK AWHILE and COME ON LET'S BOOGIE. But in person, his love and knack for T-Bone's music did more. "Mostly me playin' out boosted me, because I played more like T-Bone out than I did on record. That was what the public wanted. Mostly when I would go out, people were so used to hearin' me play like T-Bone till they would always holler for me to play like him. We'd play a variety of songs, but when I'd come out, they wanted me to play T-Bone...they would call me Little T-Bone during this time." His theme song was his own ROCK AWHILE, but "Stormy Monday" and "Bobby Sox Baby" were popular, regularly performed numbers. Goree used to fill in for T-Bone at dances. "Robey had T-Bone booked at these places, and I was the only one close to T-Bone. If T-Bone couldn't get it, come and get me. I didn't even ask no questions, just get in my car, Austin, anywhere, I'm gone. Just tell me my price." T-Bone returned the favour, substituting occasionally for Goree. Goree also had battles of the blues with Gatemouth Brown at City Auditorium and he struck up a friendship with B.B. King. "I met B.B. in the 3rd Ward, Shady's Playhouse, when he first started good. I played behind him, I was playin' over there. He came in and played a few numbers, which he would stand in the back. He was just gettin' started here." Besides Johnny Copeland, other young Houston guitarists recall Goree. Roy Gaines says "He played great guitar and sang some great blues when I was in Houston." Roy remembers him playing at the Club Matinee with Pluma Davis. Cal Green adds, "Roy and I, we used to idolize Goree. He was a little older than us, we were just 16 or 17. He was recording then, playing a cross between T-Bone and Gatemouth." Goree preferred to play Gibson hollow-bodied guitars. During the day and between layoffs, he worked at Comet Rice Mill, where they'd let him take time off to go and play on the road.

Goree also had records on Jade (as Rocky Thompson, and singing and playing on a "Bill" (Henry) Hayes 78), Sittin' In With, Imperial, Bayou, Coral, Modern, and he did a session for Don Robey. Goree says Anne Cullum also tried to record him in a house but the sound wasn't right. His chronology is confused. Probably some of these, most likely the Jade, were done before Goree went to Freedom; he says others were cut with Kahl's permission because they weren't the straight T-Bone blues Kahl wanted. "Kahl kept me so tied up, he wouldn't let me cut with nobody. Most of the records that was cut, was cut before Kahl got me, they was cut in houses and things, they wasn't cut in no studios. They would set us up and give us a few dollars. I didn't know what it was all about, because during that time I didn't know anything about recording, until Kahl got me." The Jade was probably first and sums up the typical scenario for Goree: "I couldn't understand why they changed my name...They had talent scouts, we would go over and they would tricks us a lot on these numbers. They would come get me, like they wanna hear us, and they would be tapin' us all the time. I didn't know this. Like we wanna give a audition,' that's what they would say. Well, by bein' in the house, I wasn't payin' it no attention. And they would be cuttin' us on this stuff, they would play it back to see how it would sound, but I didn't know they were going to put this stuff on record. When the record came out, I was surprised." One side of the Jade is a good example of the forgettable ballads Goree would record, usually in a lower key than his blues. But "My Wish" is an atmospheric after hours blues instrumental.

The SIW records are a similar story: "That was cut in a house, in one night. I think Henry Hayes was mixed up in that stuff, 'cause they're the ones who came and got me. I was 'sposed to just play behind them, and they got me over there and made me cut some numbers." As for Bob Shad, "He would take you and say, 'let's come on and rehearse. I wanna see how y'all sound.' And then he'd cut me, man. And he would say 'play that number all the way through'." The Modern record, remembered as a blues ballad, was also done in a house. Anne Cullum took Goree to the Coral session. TELL ME IS THERE STILL A CHANCE was clearly influenced by T-Bone's "Alibi Blues." "They had another group of boys over there, I didn't know 'em." Co-authorship credits on Coral went to Bently Harris, a scout who apparently took them as his piece of the action. The Imperial session was a little different. "I always wanted to do those ballads, but Kahl wouldn't allow me to do it, that's why I went to other record companies and cut it. He let me do it, because he wouldn't cut it for me...They made me a little offer. We cut at Holford's studio. They had their own group." He also can't recall the Coral sidemen.

DEALING WITH THE DON

Some dealings with Don Robey were inevitable, especially since Robey's Buffalo Booking Agency handled T-Bone. Goree did his last session for Robey. Nothing was issued till one song appeared on a late 1970's Japanese anthology. "They were after me for a long time. Kahl took me over there. We disagreed because he wanted to buy me from Kahl. He tried to trick me into signing a 15 year contract. I said 'not with you, man'. I wouldn't sign for 15 minutes. I'll sign for the release of the record, but not no union contract.' I just walked away. He and I never could make it. I saw what he had done to other artists. He stuck his hand too far into your pocket. Johnny Ace, Willie Mae Thornton should've been rich. I wouldn't play for Robey. I'd done some things for T-Bone, and he'd messed me out of money so I wouldn't fool with him...I busted my fist on him. He gypped me out of $100 for T-Bone's dance...and I took my stuff off the stage and came home. Next day I saw him at a liquor store next to the Club Matinee, him and his secretary, Evelyn, and another woman...he was in there, I went in to get some Scotch for the friend who bought me my guitar. And he said I wasn't no good, and he swung at me and I ducked, and I busted my hand and knocked him right through that windowpane." Goree thinks their personal difficulties explain why Robey never issued his session.

BACK TO THE RICE MILL

The bottom fell out of Goree's career when Uncle Sam called in 1950. "I went to New York by myself to do some recordin'. That's when the Army got me then. I didn't get a chance to record. I had a deal set up. I can't call this guy's name because I wasn't there too long before I got a letter tellin' me I had 30 days to get back home to Houston..." To say the least, Goree was fustrated. "Peoples that was around was holdin' me back. Like Kahl - he wouldn't let me get too far, and my mother wouldn't let me go nowhere. But what hurt me so bad, Uncle Sam could get me. They couldn't hold me back from there. They shoulda let me went on while I had the break, but they didn't." He was only in the Army for a little more than a year because he was his mother's sole support, but it was too long. What happened to his photographs and records was just an example of what happened to his career. "I had 'em on all these walls. When I come back, I didn't have no pictures. Records either." And Kahl was out of business. "When I came back out of the service, Kahl had closed his record shop down because he couldn't find no artists to support him in his business. He started goin' back - he tried hillbilly and all that stuff, but it didn't work. He and his wife had broke up, and closed up. I came back on furlough lookin' for 'em. Next thing I found out, he was in the donut business. He had married another woman, he was in Shipley Donuts. So I came back to Houston and I just cleared out a little bit. B.B. King would come to town, I'd go up there and sit in with him, and several of the little bands around. But I wasn't gonna do lots of playing." Too much had disappeared and changed. Goree went back to the rice mill and cooked in cafes. He played his last gig around 1970, although "I would sit around the house and pluck." He faded into obscurity. Today not much is left but memories. His musical career seems surprisingly remote, considering that he's only 52. He gave away his guitar to a son in Flint, Michigan. His sister took a lot of photographs to California; she died and the pictures were burned along with her daughter's house. Today he looks at Blues clubs as " nothin' but honky tonks. I don't go to those places." Instead, he takes care of his elderly mother since his brother and sisters have died. He hustles a few dollars here and there when his car is running. When the Juke Jumpers and Peter May visited him in July, 1982, he had no guitar and no means of listening to music. But he did hit some nice licks on Sumter Bruton's guitar, giving hope that his arthritis could be overcome if any interest is shown in him. Now he has a guitar and cassette player, so he can hit a few notes and listen to tapes of his own and T-Bone's old records. He talks wistfully about Europe: "Joe Fritz, Papoose (veteran Houston tenor player and vocalist who died in the spring of 1983), was tellin' me about goin' to Europe. Tell me they go wild over there. They want the original, all original stuff." His songs have been ocassionally reissued; in England on a Solid Sender EP, while a French Riverboat album included some of Big Joe Turner's Freedom collaboration with Goree.

In Japan, a Robey compilation includes "Let's Make Love Tonight", and another compilation, "Gonna Squeeze My Guitar", includes the Bayou and Imperial issues. The Juke Jumpers recorded a rousing COME ON LET'S BOOGIE on their LP "The Joint Is Jumping". Finally, we have this album that gives us most of the best of Goree Carter. And that means plenty of hot Texas blues, showing off both T-Bone's legacy and the individuality and excellence of Goree Carter.

Dick Shurman
July, 1983

Liner notes and images from:

Rock Awhile - Goree Carter and his Hepcats

Label: Blues Boy Record (A Division Of Mr R&B Records)
Catalog: BB-306
Format: Vinyl
Country: US
Released: 1983
Genre: Blues

Images: Goree Carter Estate
Top: Goree Carter with fans early 1950s
Middle: Goree Carter with friends early 1950s