…Because what else should I be doing at 11 o’clock other than looking through 1930s Melody Maker?! This cartoon depicts an all-too familiar attitude encountered in musical circles, which has existed well before this cartoon, and has lasted long after…
(sure, I’ve had those beer cans on stage before; but you can’t smoke indoors anymore, so my stage is usually tidier!)
1st Nov, 1930, Melody Maker
At the start of February, I was awarded the AHRC–funded overseas study visit and headed to New Orleans to find out all about the drum kit and the music that it helped shape around the turn of the century.
On flying to New Orleans from Edinburgh: the flights often change over in New York… so I decided to plan my change-over so that I had a full day and night in the city before making my connecting flight. Why, you ask?…
Leaving the airport, I head for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There are, generally, two papers written dealing with my area of study (the early drum kit). One is a thesis paper ‘A history and analysis of jazz drumming to 1942’ by Theodore Dennis Brown (1976), and another shorter paper by Jayson Dobney, ‘The Creation of the Trap Set and its Development Before 1920’ (2004). Jayson Dobney is the Associate Curator and Administrator for Department of Musical Instruments at ‘The Met’, and I was very lucky to obtain an interview to discuss his paper, and the direction that my own research might take. We spent two hours discussing various influences on the drum kit, such some interesting insights into minstrelsy in the United States during the 19th Century, and how this is responsible for various timbres on the drum kit (see Dobney’s paper for more on this, or later down the line, my own writings!).
After exploring the Met and its musical instrument collection (amazing, of course, but… WHERE ARE THE DRUM KITS!?) I leave with lots of ideas to discuss in my own thesis. As the evening approaches, it’s time to see some jazz music. If you know where to go, New York has a bustling (early) jazz scene, and throwing myself into it can only better help me understand the music the drum kit was used for in some of its earliest days as a developing instrument.
Vince Giordano & the Nighthawks are a band specialising in the early jazz music of the 1920s. Giordano himself is a leading specialist and collector of this period of music, and I was lucky enough to interview him over a year ago in the city, which proved very useful to my research. I returned to hear his band play (every Monday & Tuesday night, upstairs at the Iguana restaurant). What most fascinates me about the band is that they provide a rare opportunity to see a genuine 1920s drum kit played (by the talented Paul Wells). Vince himself plays his array of bass instruments (also from the same period); bass saxophone, tuba, and a 1920s aluminium double bass. To see these rare early instruments being used in this context is something that needs to been seen and heard.
my own video won’t upload but there are plenty on YouTube. Here’s one with transitions between songs that would make a 1990s powerpoint addict proud (great audio, though, and it features clips of all the musicians)
and for a longer uninterrupted clip (with a great washboard solo near the end of the the first minute!)…
On the night I was there, sitting only a few seats away was none other than Mel Brooks… The Nighthawks must have noticed, when they decided to dig out an arrangement of ‘Springtime for Hitler’! The Iguana is a great setting to see this amazing band play; I was lucky enough to get a table, where I enjoyed a beer, some great Mexican food, and watched the swing dancers weave between the tables and onto the dance floor.
After the show, if you follow some of the band, they will lead you to the Rum House, one of the best cocktail bars in the city. There a more informal jazz session takes place, and this is no doubt the setting that much of the city’s jazz was performed in its earliest days. No drum kit this time – a snare drum was all there was room for, packed into a tight corner next to the upright piano, and some of the best horn players around. All whilst enjoying a negroni or two.
Completely exhausted, I afford myself some sleep before heading back to the airport for my ultimate destination: New Orleans. Or, having spent some time amongst the locals: “N’awlins.” As I learned, the British pronunciation ‘New Orleans’ is reserved for rhyming purposes when singing (‘Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans’).
The start of my time in New Orleans fell over Mardi Gras (yes, I timed it well), with my birthday falling on Mardi Gras Tuesday itself. Needless to say the first four days were days of acquainting myself with the City, throwing myself into celebrations, seeing A LOT of music (more on this), and tying one or two of the local beers. As for research during the days that fell over Mardi Gras: any reading on early jazz talk extensively about New Orleans, it’s unique characteristic that allowed, and still allow, jazz to flourish. This period over Mardi Gras, while it has no doubt grown and changed since its earlier days, gave me a feeling and context to the histories I’d been reading about that made sense of it all in a way that didn’t before. Simply being in the City for those four days made sense of a lot of research I was to uncover in the weeks to follow. Even the journey into the City every day shed light on a discovery I was to make in the days that followed. An interview, given by Alex Bigard (b.1898), a drummer in New Orleans from the mid 1910s wrote about transporting his drums around the city:
The transportation situation is easier now; in the old times, drummers had to g
et a permit from [New Orleans] Public Service [Inc.] to carry their drums on the street cars; if they did not have the permit, the conductors would not allow them to get on the cars. (April 30,
1960)
Staying Uptown, I took the streetcar Downtown every day; they have hardly changed at all since Bigard would have known them. Here is a photograph I took on one of my journeys into town, and I can imagine the effort and dedication it must have taken for these drummers to take their full kit on and off the New Orleans streetcars every night – provided they had their permit!
The two main archives I took advantage of was Hogan Jazz, part of Tulane University. The staff there were very helpful and friendly, and showed me into a small room to look through the various documents the archive held. To my left was a salvaged mahogany mirror cabinet from one of the more famous (no longer standing) ‘establishments’ of the Red Light District. There is a beautiful book ‘Photographs from Storyville, the red-light district of New Orleans’ (Belloq et. al.) (held in National Library of Scotland) that shows the women of ‘Storyville’ in the brothel houses – a rare look into the interior of this setting for jazz history that has since been made into legend. This piece of furniture may be in there!
Hogan is best known for its collection of interviews collected (initially) by Bill Russell and Richard B. Allen from in the late 1950s. The recollections of early New Orleans jazz musicians they recorded is invaluable. Although much of the archive has been digitised , not all of the interviews are online, and I spent many days adding to the interviews I already have and going through new ones (especially the drummers). Bigard’s quote above revealing how the Public Service Inc. issued special permits allowing drummers to carry their equipment on the sidecars is a nice example. Drummers I now have interviews of that were previously unavailable to me include Zutty Singleton, Alex Bigard, Joe Watkins, and Joe Cie Frazier.
The other archive I became well acquainted with was the William Russell Jazz Collection, (giving me an opportunity to also spend time in downtown New Orleans, as Hogan was situated uptown). ‘The Baby Dodds Collection’ took up most of my time here; this was Williams’ own notes on Dodds’ drumming technique, a book he intended to publish similar to Larry Gara’s biography, but focusing more closely on drum technique rather than general biography. This has never been published, and I found some excellent descriptions from Dodds about his own playing. One (I’ll not share the quotation just yet!) where Dodds talks about being able to predict the weather from the tension on his drum skins that particular day is a personal favourite!
There was the occasional day spent outside the archives, of course. Chicory coffee and beignets at Café De Monde, barbeque for lunch, following brass bands around the city – through a friend of a friend I got to sit in with the Treme Brass Band for a few songs – and seeing the numerous street music on every corner throughout the French Quarter. Most evenings were spent in the Spotted Cat, my favourite of the many music clubs in the City, where I saw some incredible music and musicians every night.
While outside during the day, I paid particular attention to the street bands. Most didn’t use a full drum kit, but percussion was still welcome. I took with me my ‘travel-sized’ washboard (a ‘Dubl Handi’, a washboard brand going back to 1900, more on this later!). Whenever I went out in the French Quarter, and it was easy to jump in and join various bands for a few songs. New Orleans is home to two instruments you don’t often see anywhere else: sousaphones and washboards. I think the record for one marching band I saw was seventeen sousaphones. Seventeen in one band! How many sousaphones are there in Scotland, at any one time?! As for washboards, whenever I go out with mine (on my way to a gig), it’s not uncommon to see people looking back (“that guy’s got a washboard!”), but in New Orleans – I walked past two guys who turned around, and I heard them say “that guy’s got a dubl handi!”. A subtle difference from back home… Only in New Orleans!
Not every street band was ‘New Orleans jazz’ (what that is, then-and-today, would be a great discussion for another time). Some bands played funk, with full drum kit and car-battery-powered amplifiers that blocked off the street. My favourite non-jazzy band had to be ‘New Orleans Opera Guy’; a man on a bike, with a flowered-frame around him, cycling from corner to corner singing his opera songs, swigging a clear liquid from a glass quarter bottle of vodka (he told me it was water).
New Orleans is the most creative city!
What else is there to say? I took a trip to Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve, where I found this guy blocking my path. Could have cut my research trip short!
And to finish, here are some more photos that aren’t the inside of a research centre…
Many thanks again to the AHRC for helping make this trip possible.
Baby Dodds recalls in his autobiography, “We used to call white musicians ‘alligators’. That was the way we’d describe them when they’d come around and we were playing something that we didn’t want them to catch on to. We’d say ‘watch out, there’s an alligator!’”
paularchibalddrums 