duaneiac

Hey -- Great minds stink alike! I hope you enjoyed the whole CD. Yes, exactly. He says that in the intro to his version of that song here.

Event 11: The Black Hole Funnel A dizzying performance by Red Eye as he perhaps tries to atone for his woeful attempt in the last event. But will it be enough for the Crazy Cat's Eyes to move ahead? There is another change atop the leader board after today's event. Who will it be?

This is a CD any Jack Teagarden fan will want to have. Not for the music, necessarily -- the music is kind of a happy, disheveled jumble. But the atmosphere captured (by Wally Heider) at these two sets at the 1963 Monterey Jazz Festival is priceless. In the afternoon set, Big T leads a band that features not only brother Charlie on trumpet, but also sister Norma and even Mama Teagarden on piano. One can hear the familial pride and affection in Big T's voice. Also on hand are Pee Wee Russell and Joe Sullivan. in one of several great introductions spoken by Big T, he notes that he had known Pee Wee since 1924 -- back when he was still a teenager. The evening session finds those two veteran jazzmen joining the Teagarden brothers and special guest Gerry Mulligan. The music is an untidy yet interesting hodge podge. This disc is a wonderful tribute to Jack Teagarden. Those two sets must have been an absolute delight for him. And less than 4 months later, Big T was gone, making this CD all the more poignant.

Event 10: The 5 Meter Sprint A new league record for this event was set today and we have a new team atop the standings board after this race. Unfortunately, it's not Crazy Cat's Eyes who seem content to be stuck in third place right now. "Gimme a C, Gimme a C, Gimme an E, Crazy Cat's Eyes, We're Number Three!"

Blues, Boogie & Bop: The 1940's Mercury Sessions Disc Six of Seven, which includes sessions led by Rex Stewart, Buddy Rich and Cootie Williams. One of the Williams sessions includes "'Gator Tail" Parts One and Two, featuring a young Willis Jackson.

Excellent choice! That one made me feel better just listening to it. Thanks, Matthew!

With so many compositions to his credit and with so many of them having been actual "hits", it's kind of easy for many very good songs he wrote to get overlooked. Do you have a favorite semi-obscure Ellington work you would like to hear played more often? Share it with us here. One of my favorites is "The Lonely Ones" I love everything about that number. It swings like mad. Ellington's piano accents are so cool. Milt Grayson's voice was perfect for this song. Give it perhaps a little stronger ending and it would have been a heckuva jukebox 45, back in 1962.

I don't know that I would call it a "good" tune and it certainly has not been a popular one for decades (sadly, it once was popular), but one of the most egregious examples of racist songs must be "That's Why Darkies Were Born" which, I am saddened to learn, Paul Robeson recorded. Someone had to pick the cotton Someone had to pick the corn Someone had to slave and be able to sing That's why darkies were born

That's an interesting case. First, I could not imagine Paul Robeson, of all people, being willing to sing a song he viewed as patently racist. Second, while the colloquial nature of the lyrics might seem to portray a racist depiction, the message of the lyrics is something quite different. Who could argue that within the world of Showboat, "Colored folks work on de Mississippi / Colored folks work while de white folks play" and "Don't look up An' don't look down You don' dast make De white boss frown" That seems a pretty accurate picture of life for black Americans long ago. While Frank Sinatra is one of my favorite singers, I find his version of this song absolutely cringe-worthy.

I'm not advocating "outlawing" anything. I'm not about to throw out every copy of "China Boy" in my collection or try to demean the legacy of any jazz musician who ever recorded it. Now seemed like an appropriate time to look at the legacy of racism in our music which may have been more comfortable/convenient to overlook in the past. Regarding performing "China Boy" today, I would just wonder why bother. Granted, it's a good tune, but if performed in concert, at some point some one would have to announce the song's title. I suppose one could apologize for the title and explain it comes from a far different era. But with a million tunes to choose from, why include this one tune with a title which is almost guaranteed to offend some one? It would be rather disingenuous to claim it's a song about a "boy from Chinatown". Just as adult black men were commonly called "boy" by whites, so too were adult Asian men. In fact, here in the US in the 1950's, there was a very popular TV & radio show called Have Gun, Will Travel in which the hero's aide was a Chinese man simply called "Hey-Boy". Yikes!

As we re-examine the legacy of racism in many of our cultural institutions, in everything from movies to museums, perhaps it is worthwhile to look at the legacy of racism within our own record collections. Last week I was listening to a Jack Teagarden CD and was wowed by a really good performance. The song was "China Boy". While it's a good song and I probably have lots of versions of it by different musicians in my collection, let's face it, one cannot even utter the title without sounding racist. While I would not want to have those recordings from years long gone "erased" from jazz history, it would be very hard to justify some trad jazz band today keeping that tune in their repertoire these days. Then there is "When It's Sleepy Time Down South". Thanks to the broad popularity of Louis Armstrong who used it as a theme song for decades, this was probably one of the most recognizable jazz tunes to the general public. While he changed the lyrics somewhat over the years to remove some of the most racist language in the song, the original images of "darkies crooning" and "old mammy" on her knees is always going to be there. Even the very notion that "folks down there live a life of ease" must have been especially galling during the civil rights movement of the 1950's and 60's. Still, Louis Armstrong IS jazz and it would be almost impossible to do a tribute concert/album to him without including that tune. While not really a jazz standard, "Tubas In The Moonlight" by the Bonzo Dog Band is a song I've long enjoyed and frequently find myself humming on full moon nights. I first heard it because a DJ (who was also a tuba player) on a local college radio station used to use it as the closing theme song on his Sunday morning radio show around 30 years ago. Because it was Sunday morning, I was usually half-asleep while I listened to the last hour of his show. I don't know how many times I heard that song before I realized the word being sung was not "loon" but "coon". Just one word can mar an otherwise simple & lovely tune. While I can understand that the intent was to mirror the musical style & lyrical imagery of yesteryear, that one word is still disturbing. What other jazz/pop songs from yesteryear can you think of? Do such songs need to be retired from public performance?

Event 9: The Sand Mogul Race Sigh. A lackluster performance by my team, but the Crazy Cat's Eyes still hold steady at third place in the overall rankings. They're gonna have to start winning some medals again soon if they want to make up any ground or the dadgum O'Rangers might just roll away with it all. Next event -- The 5 Meter Sprint.

That's always the movie I think of first whenever Ms. de Havilland's name comes up. I've only seen GWTW once and I have never seen either of the two films for which she won Oscars.