The Information Super-Frog

I'm enjoying the music of early New Orleans jazz trombonist Emile Christian on his birthday.


Wikipedia: Emile Christian

Music samples (via YouTube except where otherwise noted):

Original Dixieland Jazz Band, 1919: Satanic Blues (Christian is listed as co-composer)
Ditto Lassus Candy
Ditto, 1920 Soudan One of the pseudo-Near Eastern numbers popular at the time. Pardon the presenter's spoken introduction.

Christian spent most of the 1920s with various bands in Europe.

Eric Borchard's Jazzband 1924: Aggravatin' Papa

Lud Gluskin band 1929: Milenburg Joys
Ditto Doin' The New Low Down Christian vocalizes and has a little nice solo

Back home in New Orleans in his later years:

Johnny Wiggs band 1954: If Ever I Cease to Love (on Picosong) Playing an old New Orleans Mardi Gras standard, the band falls into an old mostly ensemble New Orleans style.

Johnny Wiggs band 1956: Gallatin Street Grind

Sidney Bechet was one of the great geniuses and giants of jazz, one of the first to take what was a New Orleans musical folk tradition and turn it into a virtuoso art form loved around the world.



5 years ago, one of his saxophones sold for Euro 120,000 (US$140,000).

"Bechet to me was the very epitome of jazz... everything he played in his whole life was completely original. I honestly think he was the most unique man to ever be in this music." —Duke Ellington

The Bechet childhood home still stands on Marais Street, 7th Ward, New Orleans. Sidney Bechet grew up here with his brother trombonist Leonard Bechet. His first band, the Silver Bell Orchestra, rehearsed here.



There's no plaque.

There's also no door, and only part of a roof.

A view of the interior:



Can you imagine, say, Mozart's house in Salzburg being left to decay like this?

Two years ago today was my last day of evacucation in Austin, Texas, before I started heading back to New Orleans.

On 3 October 2005 Ms.Hollie and I had BBQ for lunch at Ruby's-- sorry, anyone who thinks that's quality BBQ needs to come eat at "The Joint" in Bywater, New Orleans. The Tex-Mex place our kind hosts tooks us to for dinner that night was much better -- Austin is the Tex-Mex capital as far as I'm concerned. The next day we hit the road, drove the newly reopened but still Rita devastated I-10, crashed in Baton Rouge. Next morning the usually 40 minute drive from BR to NOLA took 4 hours.

A hell of a lot has happened in the last two years, but that doesn't seem so long ago. July of 2005, on the other hand, seems like it was back in the 1980s or something.

H & I are planning to mark the anniversary of our return on Friday by going back to Specialty in Terrytown, where we had our first meal back at one of the few restaurants open (limited hours and menu) in Greater New Orleans at the time.

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Last week Pentomino was visiting town. He thought the nail gun from reconstruction work down the street was gunfire.

Pentomino, H, & I went to the WWII museum, which has interesting stuff and ties in with the Ken Burns series running on PBS.





German "ENIGMA Machine".
In the early '40s taking a photo of one of these babies probably would have gotten you shot.

A "Higgins Boat", via which New Orleans saved the world from Fascism. You're welcome.

I was glad the last episode of the Ken Burns series at least touched briefly on how war often screws up for life even those who escaped without physical injury.

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Monday there were memorials for late musician/bandleader Jacques Gauthe. Things started off in the afternoon in front of Preservation Hall.




A "jazz band", via which New Orleans saved the world from Squareness. You're welcome.


There was then a memorial second line parade-- sort of a tumble, stopping at various bars-- winding to the Palm Court for a memorial concert with buffet. Good music for a good musician.


Tuesday H & I saw the film "In the Shadow of the Moon", about the Apollo moon astronauts. Reccomended!

Richard B. Allen, jazz historian, mentor, friend, 1927 - 2007

"Allen is not only the curator of the Archive of New Orleans Jazz, but he is, in a sense, the curator of present-day New Orleans jazz itself." -- Whitney Balliett, The New Yorker, 1967

"You left out bon vivant!" -- Dick Allen

As promised, some more pix of Monday's Monaghan's French Quarter Halloween parade & associated partying.

( 7 pix )

Saturday was the "barn dance" benifit in south Austin, on some nice land towards the end of Slaughter Creek Road. It started at noon; H & I got there about 1pm. The beautiful setting is called "Freedom Oaks". It includes someone's private house (or perhaps their "country house"), with various outer buildings and sheds, two stages, a goat pen, and more land running down to a creek and boat-launch. The crowd was sparce when we arrived. There were various barbeque trailors going.

Most of the music was Texas folky/Country rock, some of it quite good. A gal named Leann, I think, led a fine group singing some Janis Joplin style vocals. Some clever original "folk song" lyrics from a couple of performers. One fellow was rocking out on some middle eastern string instrument.

The schedual was quite loose, some folks who were supposed to show up didn't, and others not schedualed played.

The other New Orleans group was a trio of keyboard, clarinet, and drums. Marcel the keyboardist was excellent, with much Professor Longhair influence. They met as evacuees here in Austin. Afterwards one of the organizers was saying they couldn't belive they'd never played together before-- with all due respect to those fine musical gentlemen, I could, but the music was still enjoyable.

We never decided on a name for our group in advance. I refered to us as "The New Orleans Evacuees and Friends", Doc as "The Mystic Orphans and Misfits of Austin", and I heard Ben refering to us as the "Bayou (something...)". Doc alternated on percussion, tuba, and valve trombone. Mark Rubin (Reuben? I dunno he never gave me his card dispite my asking), the leader of the Ridgetop Syncopators (with which he plays tenor steel guitar) was on helicon (a relative of the tuba with 4 rotary valves), Ben Schenck on clarinet, and me on trombone. Another tuba player sat in with us for part of the time, so we had some bits of 3 brass basses, and others of 2 trombones. It had the feel of the type of backyard jam at a pool party or BBQ in New Orleans. We played shortly after it got dark, the crowd was filling out, and audience was quite enthusiastic about us, I think in part because it was something fun different from the obligitory guitar groups of Austin. Doc insisted we close out with KMFA (aka "Do What Ory Say" etc) which he'd heard on my cd.

Sunday morning my amazingly gracious host Bonner was even more wonderful, and dubbed me a set of dvds of early Betty Boop, from a limited edition laser disc set in his collection taken from best availible original negatives. (Anyone with only passing familiarity with Betty Boop who has never been impressed needs to know that the best stuff is the 1931-1933 cartoons, which is not what is most commonly seen in bargin bin videos).

In the afternoon over to Kim's for a jam & soak. The party was a bit slow in starting, with neither jamming nor soaking for the first couple hours, but good food and nice people. When it started going some of the folkie music was too depressing for more people than Hollie & I (I heard Robbie also requesting "how about something more upbeat") until Kim's housemate Effron, a very good straight-ahead jazz tumpeter, started playing good stuff with a string bass and guitar accompanyment.

I had to leave for a while-- gig at the Flamingo Cantina on 6th street, pretty much the same people as the previous night. We were one of several groups, billed as a "New Orleans Austin Gumbo Ya Ya". We planned on various trad numbers to play, but we wound up doing none of it. A Mardi Gras Indian (who I'd met at Nubian Queen Lola's) was there, and Ben suggested we do Professor Longhair's "Big Cheif" together, which we did. Marcel joined us on keyboards, Oscar Rouzan on clarinet. Good, though went on too long; the brass front line tried to stop it a few times but the Indians are wont to do very extended versions of stuff. A couple more Indian tunes-- "Shoe Fly" again going on way too long, it's basically one chord, but a sax player named Hilton and an Austin trumpeter came up and did some modernistic stuff against it which worked nicely; Ben went to the back and played congas.

Back to Kim's for a bit before crashing.

Today errands, errands, and packing up; head out tomorrow morning.

Eating, playing jazz, meeting people, and more eating.

Ms. Hollie & I were taken out to brunch by Bonner's cousin Elizabeth "ET". We, Bonner, Robbie, Little Brian, a couple other cousins, and another New Orleans refugee who E.T. is putting up went to the Bake House. I had the "Carlos' Favorite" omlette in a tortilla; Hollie the chocolate chip pancakes. Then to "Donn's Depot", an old train station that is a bar & music venue, The event was put on the Austin Traditional Jazz Society, featuring Tommy Griffith's New Orleans Jazz Band of Austin, who are quite good. There was a good crowd, mostly older; perhaps the younger music fans were mostly at the Austin City Limits Festival (Bonner offered to scrounge up ACL tickets for us when we got to town, but I said we probably wouldn't be here that long...) The second set they brought up guests. I was one of three trombones (between the band's regular one and a valve trombonist). My lip is rather down from hardly playing in a month and the other two trombonists had more technique than I, but I got a number of compliments. I played more of the old tailgate style than the others, and a couple folks remarked on the Kid Ory influence and one lady in the audinece said I was the best trombonist she'd ever heard at one of these events. There was one other displaced New Orleanian -- clarinetist Ben Schenck! The exclamation point is because he's an old friend and I hadn't known he was in town. He's staying with a guitarist/bass horn player who lives here who played heilicon in his brass band for Carnival. Ben and his wife had been in Baton Rouge, then came here to Austin. His place in New Orleans didn't flood. Until 1997 I lived 5 blocks from his place, and flood maps showed that my old place flooded, so it was good to hear that his didn't.

After chatting with folks after the jam, I drove by Nubian Queen Lola's (someoene said they thought there might be something else going on there this week, but there wasn't), then killed a little time at Highland Mall before it was time for our dinner invitation over at askesis's place. I'd only known Askesis on Usenet and LJ, and took up his offer of food. His directions included describing the destination as "the cool house", which it certainly is, much artistically designed and built by his house mate. Hollie & I enjoyed the hospitality and company of Askesis and his cool housemates and friends over bread dipped in decadent cheese sause, BBQ'ed meat, red wine, and other excellent commestables.

Today, back to "work" taking care of refugee related stuff (plus errands like getting Hollie's glasses fixed), ...then tonight I plan to meet up with Askesis and other internet aquaintances at the Spider House coffee house for an alt.religion.kibology usenet newsgroup get together.

Packing up; may be evacuating by the wee hours of the morning; Hurricane Katrina threatens.

Last night played with "Some Like It Hot" at Turtle Bay in the Quarter; fun time; half the band subs or sit ins, but sounded good. Two gals came up from the audience to sing a number and both were AMAZING!

Today played for the Miss Crescent City New Orleans pagent-- small audience, and some sort of delays evident; it turns out that people from north of Lake Pontchartrain were not being allowed to cross the causeways into New Orleans; one of those turned back was the gal who was to MC the pagent. Things went well anyway; mshollie was getting what needed doing done, and kudos to the members of Froggy's Milneburg Joymakers for doing a great job dispite having no drummer (Curator Sue was called in to batton down the hatches at the State Museum).

Tonight is Krewe of OAK parade... no doubt a lot of folks will be partying like there may not be a tomorrow....

I have stepped boldly forward into the 1990s. Yesterday I purchased a moblie telephone ( or a "radiotelegraphic device of Satan" as ragtimematt calls them).

I was motivated by the suggestion of various friends, including a musician who said there was discussion that I was hard to get in touch with, and various circumstances.

Just over a week ago I rushed down to Rampart Street after getting word of demolition going on at the old Oddfellows Hall/Eagle Saloon Building (major jazz history site; probably the most historically important building in the state without a plaque on it). Fortunately it turned out that they just removed a later addition to the back of the building that was collapsing; so not as bad as feared. (As the city has done way too many things like bulldoze Louis Armstrong's birth house in the wee hours of the morning, local preservationists and historians have to be wary of sudden unexpected and sometimes illegal demolitions.) I realized that I could have a band on the corner playing dirges within 15-20 minutes if that had been needed, but would have had to borrow my friend Sue's phone to do so-- and if she hadn't also come down to Rampart Street to witness at the same time, I would have had to hunt for one of the increasingly scarce pay phones in the CBD.

Note that I will NOT use the mobile telephone to chat while driving. Note to those who do: HANG UP AND WATCH THE ROAD, DAMNIT!

When I take it out with me, I expect the ringer will be off more often than on. I rather like there being some times when I do not need to be at the beck & call of the telephone. As has been the practice with my "land line" phone, talking and socializing with people in my presence will continue to take priority over answering the 'phone unless I am expecting a Particularly Important Call. I'm not sure what to think of the alligation that I've been hard to get in touch with; I not only have a "land line" telephone with an answering machine and voicemail, I have an email address, and a nice brass mailbox by my front-door.

Still, yes, those mobile things are no doubt useful to have in emergency situations, so I've been persuaded.

For anyone who may be interested, I went with Verizon, as my friends who use that brand have much less of the "sounding like you're calling from a small town in Bolivia on a tin can, when I can hear you at all" than other providers.

Note to RagtimeMatt: to apease the spirit of retronianism, yesterday I also got the 100 to 110 year old clock on my livining room mantle happily ticking and chiming the hours away again after 2 years of silence. It turned out to need only a new winding key stem, $16, so I'm happy.

Any interested out-of-town friends and aquaintances will have a chance to hear me Monday morning playing with my latest group, "The Riverbend Radio Ramblers", similcast live on the web via the WWOZ 90.7 FM website, 10am -10:30 US Central Time this Monday the 21st.

We're playing for the radio beg-a-thon fund drive. It's a trad jazz band, consisting of a group of friends who happen to be able to make it to the station on a weekday morning. Some of us have played together in different contexts, but this specific group has met and rehearsed twice. With a couple of pros, some good amateurs and some good-time irregulars, to my pleasant suprise we have a full band: Two trumpets, trombone, tenor sax, alto sax, soprano sax, clarinet, guitar, banjo, piano, sousaphone, and drums.

With luck we'll be able to sound as good for our first public performance Monday morning as on our last runthroughs last night, and I won't regret mentioning this. Triumph, train-wreck, or in between, I'll be playing trombone and doing some singing and probably a whistling solo.