Stranger Songs with Mike Regenstreif – CKCU – Tuesday February 1, 2022: Songs of W.C. Handy

Stranger Songs with Mike Regenstreif finds connections and develops themes in various genres. The show is broadcast on CKCU in Ottawa on Tuesday afternoons from 3:30 until 5 pm (Eastern time) and is also available 24/7 for on-demand streaming.

CKCU can be heard live at 93.1 FM in Ottawa and https://www.ckcufm.com/ on the web.

This episode of Stranger Songs was prerecorded at home and can already be streamed on-demand by clicking on “Listen Now” at … https://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/595/55068.html

Theme: Songs of W.C. Handy. These songs were written or adapted by W.C. Handy (1873-1958). Known as “The Father of the Blues,” Handy was the first composer to publish blues songs.

W.C. Handy (1949)

Ella Fitzgerald- St. Louis Blues
These are the Blues (Verve)

Nat King Cole- Chantez Les Bas
St. Louis Blues (Capitol)
Bessie Smith- The Yellow Dog Blues
Bessie Smith: The Absolutely Essential 3 CD Collection (Big3)
Louis Armstrong & Velma Middleton- Long Gone (From the Bowlin’ Green)
Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy (Columbia/Legacy)
Steven Bernstein’s Millennial Territory Orchestra featuring Catherine Russell- Loveless Love (Careless Love)
Good Time Music: Community Music, Vol. 2 (Royal Potato Family)

W.C. Handy’s Beale Street- Way Down South Where the Blues Began
Where the Blues Began (Inside Memphis)

Louis Armstrong- Atlanta Blues (Make Me One Pallet On Your Floor)
Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy (Columbia/Legacy)
Mississippi John Hurt- Joe Turner
Mr. Hurt Goes to Washington (Sunset Blvd.)
Nat King Cole- Friendless Blues
St. Louis Blues (Capitol)
W.C. Handy’s Beale Street- The Jogo Blues
Where the Blues Began (Inside Memphis)

Eartha Kitt with Shorty Rogers & His Giants- Steal Away
St. Louis Blues (RCA)
Pearl Bailey- Shine Like a Morning Star
St. Louis Blues (Roulette)
Eartha Kitt with Shorty Rogers & His Giants- Hist the Window, Noah
St. Louis Blues (RCA)

Shirley Bassey- Beale Street Blues
Born to Sing the Blues (Philips)
Loudon Wainwright III with Sloan Wainwright- Ramblin’ Blues
High Wide & Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project (2nd Story Sound)

Jim Kweskin & The Neo-Passé Jazz Band- Memphis Blues
Jump for Joy (Vanguard)
Louis Armstrong & Velma Middleton- Hesitating Blues
Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy (Columbia/Legacy)
W.C. Handy’s Beale Street- Harlem Blues
Where the Blues Began (Inside Memphis)

Louis Armstrong- Aunt Hagar’s Blues
Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy (Columbia/Legacy)
Odetta- Careless Love/St. Louis Blues
Blues Everywhere I Go (M.C.)

Billy Novick’s Blue Syncopators- Yellow Dog Blues
Music from The Great Gatsby (Billy Novick)

Next week: Boogie men and boogie women

Find me on Facebook. facebook.com/mikeregenstreif

--Mike Regenstreif

Billy Novick -- Music from The Great Gatsby; Ernie Hawkins -- Whinin' Boy

BILLY NOVICK’S BLUE SYNCOPATORS
Music from The Great Gatsby
Billy Novick
billynovick.com


Clarinet and sax player Billy Novick has been one of my favourite musicians since I first heard him playing with David Bromberg in the mid-1970s. A few years later, I got to know him and to hear him a lot when the small booking agency I operated for several years in the late-‘70s represented Billy’s duo with master finger-style guitarist Guy Van Duser. Thirty years later, as evidenced on this CD, Billy is still making exceptional music.

Billy was commissioned by the Washington Ballet to provide the score for their production, earlier this year, of The Great Gatsby, a ballet based on the classic novel of the 1920s by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Not having seen the ballet, I can say, without reservation, that the CD stands on its own as a great set of 1920s-era jazz, blues and ragtime that includes a bunch of period classics and some great in-the-tradition pieces composed by Billy.

Billy’s Boston-based band, the Blue Syncopators, are mostly playing in New Orleans Dixieland mode as they run through such numbers as James P. Johnson’s “Charleston,” W.C. Handy’s “Yellow Dog Blues,” Scott Joplin’s “Swipsey Cakewalk” and Louis Armstrong’s “Wild Man Blues.” The interplay between the various horns and the impeccable rhythm section is a constant delight.

Also delightful is the work of vocalists Louise Grasmere and Dane Vannater on several numbers. Whether it’s Grasmere’s humorous scatting on Billy’s “Dance of the Ashes” or sounding like a classic blues singer on “He May Be Your Man,” or Vannater singing poignantly on Irving Berlin’s “What’ll I Do,” or camping it up on “We Are All Going Calling on the Kaiser,” their singing is in the same league as the instrumentalists.

ERNIE HAWKINS
Whinin’ Boy
Corona Records
erniehawkins.com

Speaking of New Orleans Dixieland mode, Whinin’ Boy, the latest CD by Ernie Hawkins, who is primarily known for his Piedmont-style guitar playing, – he was a student of Reverend Gary Davis and remains one of the Rev’s greatest interpreters – blends Piedmont guitar playing with Dixieland arrangements featuring an equally fine set of musicians.

The album opens with Ernie’s guitar playing Jelly Roll Morton’s title track in an arrangement that, early on, is reminiscent of Dave Van Ronk’s great Morton interpretations. By the time he starts singing the first verse, the washboard is beefing up the rhythm, and by the time he gets to the second verse, the horns are sounding like Saturday night at Preservation Hall. (The album ends with an instrumental reprise of “Whinin’ Boy.”)

Whether doing faithful versions of New Orleans standards like “Basin Street Blues,” or adapting Davis’ “There is a Table in Heaven” to a Dixieland arrangement or vamping on Big Bill Broonzy’s “Shuffle Rag,” Ernie makes this music come alive.

Mixed in with the classic blues and jazz tunes are a couple of Ernie’s original instrumentals. On “The Southbound Sneak,” he matches his great blues fingerpicking to a great tuba-trombone-washboard accompaniment. Then, on “My Poodle Has Fleas,” a tune he’s recorded before, he switches to ukulele to trade licks with tuba player Roger Daly.

Both of these CDs are a reminder of how infectious Dixieland music can still be in the hands of creative and inventive musicians and arrangers.

--Mike Regenstreif

Maria Muldaur -- Maria Muldaur & her Garden of Joy

MARIA MULDAUR
Maria Muldaur & her Garden of Joy
Stony Plain
mariamuldaur.com

Round about 1970, when I was still in high school and getting into music in a big way, I picked up Greatest Hits, a 2-LP set drawn from the 1960s recordings of Jim Kweskin & the Jug Band. That album hooked me on the Kweskin Band and sent me off in search of other revival-era jug bands and the Depression-era jug bands from Memphis and area that started it all.

Kweskin’s was a great band. Along with Kweskin, some of the other players included jug player extraordinaire Fritz Richmond, banjo legend Bill Keith, acoustic blues great Geoff Muldaur, and the ultra-sexy singer and fiddler Maria D’Amato, who at some point back in the day became Maria Muldaur when she married Geoff. I still listen to the Kweskin albums 40 years later.

In the 40 or so years since leaving the Kweskin Band, Maria did a couple of duo albums with Geoff and then a long list of solo albums that have moved through the realms of pop, jazz and blues. Finally, with Maria Muldaur & her Garden of Joy, she’s come back to a full set of jug band music -– and it’s a terrific, infectiously fun, set.

Many of these tunes date back to the 1930s heyday of jug band music (or even earlier). It truly does feel like being in a garden of joy listening to Maria and a sublime collection of jug-loving musicians romp through old tunes like “Shout You Cats,” and “The Panic is Gone.” One of my favourites is “The Ghost of the St. Louis Blues,” a kind of spooky, Dixieland parody of the W.C. Handy tune first recorded by Emmett Miller (but which, I confess, I first heard by Leon Redbone).

Along with the vintage material, there are a couple of newish Dan Hicks compositions and Hicks himself turns up to duet with Maria in a great medley of a couple of old novelty tunes.

There are lots of great musicians playing on the CD including John Sebastian and David Grisman who, along with Maria, were in the short-lived Even Dozen Jug Band in her pre-Kweskin days. Other players include Taj Mahal, Suzy Thompson and Jim Rothermel. One track, “Sweet Lovin’ Ol’ Soul,” is repeated from Maria’s 2005 album of the same name and features the late Fritz Richmond, Maria’s old Kweskin band mate, on jug.

Great stuff. More, please!

--Mike Regenstreif