From: "Doug Bright" <75366.2463@compuserve.com> To: Subject: Articles: July, 2005 Date: Sunday, July 31, 2005 4:50 PM JULY, 2005 HERITAGE MUSIC REVIEW ELECTRONIC EDITION: Now free to e-mail subscribers and supported by tasteful, music-oriented advertising with a unique news-format approach. A monthly guide to early rock, blues, country, folk, and traditional jazz in the Seattle area and beyond. Editor and Publisher: Doug Bright 75366.2463@compuserve.com CONTENTS--JULY, 2005 NEW CD SET HONORS SWING REVIVALIST JOHN HOLTE SEATTLE LABEL REMEMBERS SUNNYLAND SLIM WITH NEW CD WHAT'S IN STORE: NEWS FROM THE MUSICAL MARKETPLACE CHECKIN, OUT THE SOUNDS: JULY PERFORMANCE CALENDAR (next message) ---------------------------------------- NEW CD SET HONORS SWING REVIVALIST JOHN HOLTE By Doug Bright In the summer of 1972 a young clarinetist and saxophonist named John Holte assembled an unlikely crew of youthful musicians to play vintage swing in the basement of the Seattle Jazz Society's headquarters just south of the University Bridge. Trombonist Kurt Armbruster, who went on to play bass in Holte's bands five years later, recalls those early sessions in the notes to a new C^ celebrating the late bandleader's life and work. "I unpacked my trombone and sat down with half a dozen other sliphorn players," he remembers. "John snapped his fingers, and we pitched into "We're In The Money" and "Moten Swing": shaggy apostles of Led Zeppelin and Blue Oyster Cult meet Count Basie and Jimmy Lunceford! It was a gas, but I was at least one Bone too many." A year later, Holte's gang of rock-era baby boomers had become a smooth Thirties-style ensemble appropriately named the New Deal Rhythm Band. With its youthful dynamism and impeccable authenticity, the band gave the Seattle swing scene its biggest shot in the arm since the Forties, kicking off a revival whose effects are still with us. With his subsequent band, Radio Rhythm Orchestra, as well as smaller combos for jazz-club dates, Holte kept the torch burning brightly until his untimely death a couple of years ago. Today his Radio Rhythm Orchestra is continuing his mission and preserving his many original compositions under the direction of string bassist Pete Leinonen who, along with Kurt Armbruster, compiled and produced the new CD package. Leinonen had been playing professionally for fifteen years and putting his energy into modern jazz when he first discovered Holte's New Deal Rhythm Band in 1973. "I suppose we were rivals in those days," he confesses in the CD notes, "and the few times I saw the New Deal in action, I was quick to dismiss them as campy satire." Nevertheless, he and Holte encountered each other often at photocopy centers while copying sheet music for their bands. "We hardly acknowledged each other's presence," Leinonen recalls, "save an occasional glance at the other's projects, which may as well have come from different planets, and an encouraging nod." To Leinonen's surprise, Holte called him one day in 1982 to play bass on a recording session at Seattle's Holden, Hamilton and Roberts Studio. The experience completely changed Leinonen's viewpoint. "It was the first time we played together, and a revelation," he recalls. "John was authentic as can be. Without a hint of self-conscious nostalgia, this was a contemporary artist. He managed to simultaneously live in the moment and in a completely different era." "John's effect on me was immediate," Leinonen elaborates. "We continued to work together, and we worked a lot, with steady weekly appearances and hundreds of casuals over the next two decades. As a composer, John's discipline continues to amaze. He literally composed or arranged a new library for every extended job he landed, no matter how marginal. Near the end of a life that was cut far too short, John gradually transferred the reins to me, leaving me with custody of the library, a magnificent body of work that filled two truckloads. The Radio Rhythm Orchestra continues on the path that John laid; I'm just the curator." The two-disc set, simply entitled RADIO RHYTHM, showcases the current ensemble and also features John Holte as clarinetist, saxophonist, and leader in big band and small combo settings, recorded between 1979 and 2002 in the studio or on location at a gig. As the first disc eloquently demonstrates, Holte composed in the big-band style with astounding authenticity, arranging his irresistibly bouncy jump tunes with all the tricks of dynamics and instrumental contrast that characterized the original swing bands. His pieces often reflect a breathtaking degree of chordal and melodic sophistication without sacrificing accessability. If the big bands of the late Thirties and early Forties could have recorded in stereo, this is how they would sound. Holte, for his part, takes a particularly heartfelt saxophone solo as well as one of his most joyously Goodmanesque solos on the appropriately named "Celebration In Swing". "Honky Tonk Stomp", Holte's adaptation of the Rolling Stones' "Hnnky Tonk Women", is probably the most ingenious rock-to-swing transformation ever recorded. Only someone deeply rooted in vintage swing could have pulled it off. With the exception of the on-location quartet tracks and a home-taped duet with pianist Buck Evans, Holte's arrangements for a smaller combo on Disc 2 sound delightfully reminiscent of John Kirby, whose outfit was properly dubbed "the biggest little band in the land". It is also on this disc that some of Radio Rhythm Orchestra's most delightful original songs can be found. "It's Around About Midnight, Boys" is an authentically written number with a fine vocal by a lady named Shaw Fitzgerald. "On Rue Madeleine" is another inspired period piece which Holte composed with another fine vocalist, Tammy Williams. At a March CD release concert at Seattle's New Orleans Creole Restaurant, Williams explained how she discovered Radio Rhythm at one of its gigs and, in a state of drunken exuberance, offered the band her vocal services. When Holte asked if she could read music, she replied, "No, but I know a lot of songs." Holte had written the melody for "Rue Madeleine" and, in the hope that she would come up with some lyrics, taught it to her on his clarinet. Williams indeed came up with some words despite the fact that she had never composed before. Somehow, John Holte knew all along that she could do it. The two-disc RADIO RHYTHM set can be found at Bud's Jazz Records in Pioneer Square, Tower Records at Fifth and Roy and in the University District, and online at Pete Leinonen's website, www.originalcast.com. ---------------------------------------- SEATTLE LABEL REMEMBERS SUNNYLAND SLIM WITH NEW CD By Doug Bright "I remember coming home from work one afternoon," Bob West recalls in the notes to a new CD issued by his Arcola label in memory of blues legend Sunnyland Slim. "He was playing the piano and I just wanted to eavesdrop without disturbing him. I quietly stood outside the front door and listened to him play a Bessie Smith tune." West, who was running a weekly blues show at the time on Seattle's groundbreaking FM station KRAB, had interviewed Sunnyland Slim and developed a friendship with him while the great singer/songwriter/pianist was on tour from Chicago. It was during a 1976 session aboard West's houseboat that this unforgettable bluesman recorded a relaxed set of piano-based tracks and good-humored reminiscences. The result, released early this year, is a priceless document called LONG TALL DADDY. Sunnyland Slim was born Albert Luandrew on September 5th, 1907 on his grandfather's farm near Vance, Mississippi. "Where I grew up, we farmed," he told West in a 1978 interview quoted in the CD liner notes. "Plenty of acres of fruit, plenty of pumpkins, nothin' to buy really, but wasn't much money either. It snowed a little in the wintertime, and we didn't have no boots. We had to put sacks around our feet to go out to work." Times were hard, and they got even harder for young Albert Luandrew when, at age six, he lost his mother to illness during a particularly cold winter. His father's next marriage brought him a stepmother abusive enough to make the brothers Grimm sit up and take notice. "She treat me so bad 'til I was ten or eleven years old, she hurt my head whippin' me with a cane and I ran off," he remembered. "I was big for my age, and I went down to Crenshaw and made a good day pickin' cotton. They came and got me the next mornin', carried me back home with 'em, but when I was thirteen or fourteen, I left out there for good." Bad as things were, there was always music to be heard, and Luandrew absorbed it hungrily. His earliest musical memories involved the pump organ at the Baptist church his father pastored, and he got his first exposure to the sound of the guitar when the minstrel shows came to town. "My stepmother's Uncle Jimmy had a piano, and every time I could get her to let me, I'd go there," he recalled. "He'd show me a little bit. When I got to around twelve or thirteen, I'd go over to see this old lady that went to my daddy's church. I'd cut her kindling, and she'd let me play her organ. I wrote out on a shoebox where I put my fingers at so I could take that home and practice with it." With five dollars in his pocket from his grandfather, Albert Luandrew struck out on his own at about the age of fourteen to roam the countryside, eventually finding a job playing piano background for silent movies. His next significant musical experience came on a hot Saturday afternoon in 1923 when he met the versatile young singer/pianist Eurreal "Little Brother" Montgomery just outside Canton, Mississippi. "Slim and a friend had just spent the night in jail and were on their way home when their car broke down," Bill Berry explains in the liner notes. "As fate would have it, there was a sawmill nearby and a big two-story juke joint where a party was going on. While the friend made for the card game, Slim went upstairs to find out where the fine piano blues were coming from. There he found Little Brother Montgomery, himself also a teenager, drunk on corn liquor and needing a vocal rest. Slim sat in to sing and the two played to the delight of the partygoers. Hours later, an inebriated and exhausted Montgomery stumbled away from the piano and collapsed in a heap." Taking over the piano himself, Slim kept the party going a while longer. Finally, the still-exhausted Montgomery found the energy to approach the bench, so to speak. "He got up and staggered over an' asked me, "Why the hell didn't you tell me you could play?" 'cause they had him playing for hours," Slim remembered. "We both laughed and been buddies ever since." In 1924 Luandrew settled in Memphis, honing his skills over the next few years with a variety of artists including Rice Miller, known later as Sonny Boy Williamson II, and the legendary Gertrude "Ma" Rainey. It was during the early 1930's, while touring on a circuit that ran through Missouri and Arkansas, that he wrote and performed an original blues called "Sunnyland Train" and thereby acquired the name that made him famous. "The Sunnyland Train was a fast train, run right out of Memphis to St. Louis on the Frisco," Luandrew explained in the Bob West interview. "I started singing about it because, man, it killed peoples. They would be coming to town along those gravel roads, farmers in their wagons getting supplies for their families, and people would just get caught comin' across the tracks. The Sunnyland Train killed my aunt's husband down there, comin' fast through that brush." Always a resourceful character, Sunnyland Slim worked a wide range of jobs, often supplementing his income playing piano on weekends at the levee camps along the Mississippi. By 1942 Slim, like many Southern bluesmen, had migrated to Chicago, and the following year found him playing behind the respected singer/guitarist Tampa Red. After recording with Jump Jackson's band in 1946-47 for Specialty, the label that would later launch Little Richard, he made his first solo records in 1947 for RCA Victor, backed by Blind John Davis on piano. Trading on his friendship with recently deceased blues singer Peter "Doctor" Clayton, the company released his two singles under the name of "Doctor Clayton's Buddy". Later that year Slim arranged and participated in a blues session for Aristocrat, soon to become the legendary Chess label that launched a host of bluesmen as well as early rockers like Chuck Berry. As a result of that session, Aristocrat proprietors Leonard and Phil Chess discovered a young Mississippian known as Muddy Waters, and the rest is history. Sunnyland Slim recorded for a few small Chicago labels during the late Forties and Fifties, but he didn't get the recognition he deserved until the following decade when the folk revival and the British Invasion finally converged to bring blues music to the attention of the nation that created it. By 1964 Slim had cut several well-received albums and played the first of many European tours. In 1970 he formed his own Airway label, discovering and recording several young Chicago blues artists. He continued to perform and record through the 1980's, and in 1988 his contribution to the blues was recognized with a National Heritage Fellowship award from the National Endowment for the Arts. He died March 17th, 1995, as the result of complications from a severe fall on the ice on the way home from a gig. Since Sunnyland Slim always recorded in the context of a full band, the material presented in this intimate 1976 houseboat session offers rare insight into how he might have sounded during his solo piano days at the Mississippi labor camps he played during the 1930's. His voice shows a few signs of age compared to his legendary records from the Fifties, but it's still strong, expressive, and capable of an effortless tenor wail, especially on stand-outs like "Roll and Tumble Blues" and his own derivative piece "Going Back To Memphis". His piano style incorporates rolling midrange chords into a boogie-woogie format that often includes uncommonly intricate bass lines. On the slow blues, he makes effective use of left-hand tenth chords of the kind more commonly associated with stride pianists like Fats Waller than with bluesmen. On the energetic shuffle "Got To See My Baby" and the album's slow-grooving title song, "Long Tall Daddy" Slim accompanies his 23-year-old proteg`ee, vocalist Big Time Sarah Streeter, years before she hit the bigtime. "Yes, I was his girlfriend!" she recently and proudly told Bob West. "We were together until 1980. He was a great man. He taught so many people so much about music and life. He should've been bigger than he was." Arcola Records' new Sunnyland Slim release, LONG TALL DADDY, is available at Silver Platters and directly from the company through the Arcola website, www.arcolarecords.com. ---------------------------------------- WHAT'S IN STORE: NEWS FROM THE MUSICAL MARKETPLACE Historic Bluegrass Reissue Now At Dusty Strings By the time they played their first Newport Folk Festival in 1965, the Lilly Brothers and banjoist Don Stover were well known to New England's bluegrass fans. Having migrated north from West Virginia in the mid-Fifties with fiddler Tex Logan, they settled in Boston and made a name for themselves in the burgeoning folk revival scene. It was their 1961 Folkways album BLUEGRASS AT THE ROOTS that launched their career, and it's now available on CD for the first time and in stock at Dusty Strings in Seattle's Fremont district. Dusty Strings 3406 Fremont Avenue North Phone: 206/634-1662. Web: www.dustystrings.com. ---------------------------------------- Get The Classic Blues On Bop Street Bop Street Records has long been the place to go for vintage vinyl and collectable CD'S in Seattle's Ballard district. The news this month, according to proprietor Dave Voorhies, is a recently acquired series of classic blues CD's on the respected French reissue label Classics. Artists include Muddy Waters, Crown Prince Waterford, Joe Liggins, Ivory Joe Hunter, and Lightnin' Hopkins. Bop Street Records 5219 Ballard Avenue Northwest. Phone: (206) 297-2232. E-mail: dave_vorhees@yahoo.com. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ON THE NEWSSTAND: HERITAGE MUSIC REVIEW The print edition of HERITAGE MUSIC REVIEW is available by mail for $15 per year and on sale at the following Seattle newsstands and music venues: DOWNTOWN: M. Coy Books and Espresso: 117 Pine Street. Read-all-about-it: First and Pike, Pike Place Market. FREMONT: American Music 4450 Fremont Avenue North. Dusty Strings: 3406 Fremont Avenue North. Fremont News: 3416 Fremont Avenue North. PIONEER SQUARE: New Orleans Creole Restaurant: 114 First Avenue South. Elliott Bay Book Company: 101 South Main Street. Bud's Jazz Records: 102 South Jackson Street. Emerald City Guitars: 83 South Washington Street. University District: The Folk Store 5210-A Roosevelt Way Northeast ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Forwarding of this Electronic Edition is strongly encouraged. 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