First use of Teagarden/Miller verse in Basin Street Blues

[medjuck]

Does anyone know who first recorded Basin Street Blues with the "Come along with me..) verse written by Jack Teagarden and Glen Miller? I presumed that it was the Ben Pollack Band when the two of them were with him but I can't find such a recording.  

[lipi]

Teagarden claims that it was Red Nichols who asked Miller and him to write an arrangement on the (then lyric-less) tune. It's in the spoken bit at the end of the track preceding "Basin Street Blues" on "A Hundred Years from Today: Live at the Monterey Jazz Festival, 1963". The only date he gives as reference is 1927 ("joined the Benny Pollack band, it was about 1927"), but it's not clear how much time later the BSB arrangement came to be. He does mumble something about "our next recording session, which happened to be *mumble*mumble*I'm*so*Texas*cool*". It sounds like "Charleston taster record", but I don't know what to make of it.

The earliest recording *I* have is Armstrong's 1928, which has a scat/hum lyric. The next one I have is the Louisiana Rhythm Kings (a Red Nichols group) one from 1929 with Teagarden singing a clearly improvised lyric, and not the lyric we know. Calloway scats his way through it in 1931, and Armstrong does the same again in 1933.

The first recordings I have with the standard lyrics are from 1934: Joe Venuti with Louis Prima singing, and the Dorsey Brothers with Bob Crosby singing.

So my, fairly half-assed, guess is that the lyric was written and first recorded in 1933 or 1934, by a group under the leadership of Red Nichols. Some casual leafing through a discography or two didn't bring me any closer, but I'm curious now, so maybe I'll dive in deeper this weekend. Edit: I just listened to the Louisiana Rhythm Kings one again, and that lyric is so dreadful it should have immediately prompted a request from Nichols for a new one...

AHA, found it. "Charleston Chasers"--I'd forgotten about that particular name used by the Five Pennies on Columbia. If Teagarden's story is accurate, then this is the first recorded instance of the lyrics.

New York, 1931-Feb-09, "The Charleston Chasers": 

 

Edited March 10, 2017 by lipi

[medjuck]

9 hours ago, lipi said:

Teagarden claims that it was Red Nichols who asked Miller and him to write an arrangement on the (then lyric-less) tune. It's in the spoken bit at the end of the track preceding "Basin Street Blues" on "A Hundred Years from Today: Live at the Monterey Jazz Festival, 1963". The only date he gives as reference is 1927 ("joined the Benny Pollack band, it was about 1927"), but it's not clear how much time later the BSB arrangement came to be. He does mumble something about "our next recording session, which happened to be *mumble*mumble*I'm*so*Texas*cool*". It sounds like "Charleston taster record", but I don't know what to make of it.

The earliest recording *I* have is Armstrong's 1928, which has a scat/hum lyric. The next one I have is the Louisiana Rhythm Kings (a Red Nichols group) one from 1929 with Teagarden singing a clearly improvised lyric, and not the lyric we know. Calloway scats his way through it in 1931, and Armstrong does the same again in 1933.

The first recordings I have with the standard lyrics are from 1934: Joe Venuti with Louis Prima singing, and the Dorsey Brothers with Bob Crosby singing.

So my, fairly half-assed, guess is that the lyric was written and first recorded in 1933 or 1934, by a group under the leadership of Red Nichols. Some casual leafing through a discography or two didn't bring me any closer, but I'm curious now, so maybe I'll dive in deeper this weekend. Edit: I just listened to the Louisiana Rhythm Kings one again, and that lyric is so dreadful it should have immediately prompted a request from Nichols for a new one...

AHA, found it. "Charleston Chasers"--I'd forgotten about that particular name used by the Five Pennies on Columbia. If Teagarden's story is accurate, then this is the first recorded instance of the lyrics.

New York, 1931-Feb-09, "The Charleston Chasers": 

 

Wow! Thanks for all the work.  I started wondering about this after listening to that same Teagarden record.  Ted Goioia's  book  about jazz standardsdidn't mention that the verse was written later    so I thought I'd made a discovery. But then I read the Wikipedia entry for the song and it credits Teagarden-Miller with the verse  and it's also mentioned in Teagarden's entry.   So much for my discovery. Is the 1928 Armstrong recording the first one?   And the new verse has a new melody as well as new lyrics doesn't it? 

[lipi]

Well, I should have looked at the Wikipedia article for "Basin Street Blues", because it has an image of the 1931 Charleston Chasers record! It also heavily implies that the 1928 Armstrong recording is the first one, but I'm at a loss as to how to confirm that. :/  Maybe someone with a subscription to Lord's discography can do an exhaustive search on "basin"?

Yes, the melody on the verse is new, as far as I can tell. It does not appear on the 1928 or 1929 recordings, nor on the 1931 Cab Calloway one.

[medjuck]

The Five Pennies "under the direction of Bennie (sic)  Goodman"! I never knew that either.  

[gmonahan]

On 3/10/2017 at 4:09 PM, medjuck said:

The Five Pennies "under the direction of Bennie (sic)  Goodman"! I never knew that either.  

Probably contractual reasons. If my poor memory serves, Nichols recorded under his own name for Brunswick, didn't he? So if Goodman had a contract with Columbia at this moment, they might have thought it a good idea to release it under his name? It's a thought, anyway. Cool detective work, Lipi!

 

 

gregmo