The Mule's 10 random CD picks (1)

* James P. Johnson - 1942-1945: Piano Solos (Smithsonian Folkways SF CD 40812)

* Willie The Lion Smith - 1938-1940 (Classics 692)

* Marian McPartland - The Single Petal Of A Rose (Concord CCD-4895-2)

* Kenny Davern & Dick Wellstood - Never In A Million Years (Challenge CHR 70019)

* Ben Webster - At The Renaissance (Contemporary/OJC 00025218639026)

* Earl Hines - Four Jazz Giants (Solo Art SACD 111/112)

* Coleman Hawkins - Wrapped Tight (GRP/Impulse! GRD-109)

* Bobby Henderson - Handful Of Keys (Vanguard VMD-8511)

* Lionel Hampton And His Orchestra And Quintet - Jazz Flamenco (RCA 74321364002)

* Various Artists - Prestige First Sessions, Vol. 1 (Prestige PCD-24114-2)

What they said about Pee Wee Russell [3]

"(...) the miracle of Pee Wee's playing (...) the crabbed, choked, knotted tangle of squawks with which he could create such woodsy freedom, such enormously roomy private universe."

[Dick Wellstood]

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"(...) el milagro de la forma de tocar de Pee Wee (...) esa malhumorada, emocionada y enredada maraña de chillidos con la que era capaz de lograr esa libertad tan boscosa, de crear ese inmenso universo propio."

[Dick Wellstood]

Bicephalous stride monster

Dick Hyman and Dick Wellstood first recorded as a duo in 1983, when Hans Ruland produced I Wish I Were Twins for the German Swingtime label (Swingtime 8204). To my knowledge, it has not been reissued on CD yet.

A few years later, the bicephalous stride monster emerged again. Producer Ted O'Reilly watched them at the Bern International Jazz Festival in the first months of 1986, and decided to make a new disc of duets. It was called Stridemonster! and released as Unisson DDA1006 and the CD reissued came in 2005 as Sackville SKCD2-2064, with one unissued track from the original sessions ("Froggie Moore") and three additional tracks recorded by Phil Sheridan at Harbourfront, Toronto, in June 28, 1987.

Here's a small sample of the beast at its best, taken from that above mentioned Bern concert (1986).

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Dick Hyman y Dick Wellstood grabaron por primera vez como dúo en 1983. Hans Ruland produjo I Wish I Were Twins para el sello alemán Swingtime (Swingtime 8204), que no ha sido todavía reeditado en CD.

Unos pocos años más tarde el monstruo bicéfalo del stride emergió de nuevo. El productor Ted O'Reilly los vio tocar en el Festival Internacional de Jazz de Berna en los primeros meses de 1986 y decidió grabar un nuevo disco de dúos de piano. Stridemonster! fue editado inicialmente como LP (Unison DDA1006) y ha sido reeditado en CD en 2005 (Sackville SKCD2-2064), incluyendo un tema inédito de las grabaciones originales ("Froggie Moore") y tres temas adicionales grabados por Phil Sheridan en Harbourfront, Toronto, el 28 de junio de 1987.

Éste es un pequeño ejemplo de la bestia en su mejor momento, procedente del mencionado concierto de Berna (1986).

Dick Hyman & Dick Wellstood - Thou Swell

Caprice Rag by James P. Johnson

By 1914, James P. Johnson had already begun to take composition and songwriting quite seriously. During this period, he composed four rags that would remain in his repertory and be recorded later: “Carolina Shout”, “Caprice Rag”, “Steeplechase Rag” and “Daintiness Rag”. All James P. Johnson’s rags from this period had the ragtime formal structure (AABBA), followed by a trio of varying lengths, all seasoned with introductions, interludes and bridges as in ragtime.

“Caprice Rag” was first recorded as a piano roll in May 1917 (Metro-Art 203176) and again in July 1917 (Perfection 87023). According to Scott E. Brown (James P. Johnson, A Case Of Mistaken Identity, published by Scarecrow Press and the Institute Of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, 1982), the Perfection piano roll is another example, alongside “Innovation” (Universal, Oct. 1917) and “Twilight Rag” (Metro-Art, Nov. 1917) of Johnson’s early and extensive use of sixteenth-note triplet figures, which was very rare in printed ragtime and came into common use as jazz developed. According to Brown, “The sweeping, ascending melodic line of the A section differs markedly from the somewhat reserved folk melodies of classic ragtime. (Such a line was later paraphrased by Fats Waller in his stride composition “Handful Of Keys”). There is also a hint of rhythmic phrasing which formed the basis of many later stride styles. In the repeat of the B strain, at measures 11 and 12, Johnson employed off-the-beat block chords in the right hand. They are not arpeggiated or embellished by pivot notes. Instead of merely dividing the beat with tied and untied syncopations, Johnson shifts rhythmic emphasis by playing around the beat maintained by the left hand.” The tune is played in F#, instead of in G as has been played many times later and even James P. himself did on some occasions, but the trio is played in a major third lower than that of the A and B strains.

Fascinating as it is, this Perfection piano roll version is burdened with the limitations of the physical medium. Piano rolls could not reflect the dynamics, the feel of tension and release, the unrelenting swing and the shear power of the performance.

The first phonograph recording was cut on February 28, 1923 for Columbia, alongside “Papa Blues”, “Railroad Blues” and “Glory Shout”. Neither of them was ever issued.

The definitive “Caprice Rag” performance on disc by James P. Johnson was recorded for Blue Note on December 15, 1943, and originally issued on a 12” 78 rpm disc, coupled with “Improvisation On Pinetop’s Boogie Woogie” (BN 26). As Richard Cook notes, “the eleven choruses (…) are especially finished, close to a notated perfection – yet their syncopations and the personal touch which Johnson imbues belong to a later, jazz age.”

To my knowledge, the piano roll versions of “Caprice Rag” have not been issued on CD yet, unlike many other James P. rolls from these early years. Both the Metro-Art and the Perfection rolls are included in “James P. Johnson 1917, volume 2” (Biograph BLP 1009Q). The 1943 Blue Note version can be found in "The Complete Blue Note Sessions Of Edmond Hall/James P. Johnson/Sidney De Paris & Vic Dickenson" (Mosaic MD4-109).

For instant pleasure and visual enjoyment, check Dick Wellstood playing “Caprice Rag” on December 3, 1978 at Manassas, Virginia.

Stride piano, according to Dick Wellstood

"I would like to say, first, that I don't like the term "stride" any more than I like the term "jazz". When I was a kid the old-timers used to call stride piano "shout piano", an agreeably expressive description, and when once I mentioned stride to Eubie Blake, he replied, "My God, what won't they call ragtime next?" Terms, terms. Terms make music into a bundle of objects - a box of stride, a pound of Baroque -. [Donald] Lambert played music, not "stride", just as Bach wrote music, not "Baroque". Musicians make music, which critics later label, as if to fit it into so many jelly jars. Bastards.

Having demurred thus, may I say that stride is indeed a sort of ragtime, looser than Joplin's "classic rag", but sharing with it the marchlike structures and oom-pah bass. Conventional wisdom has it that striding is largely a matter of playing a heavy oom-pah in the left hand, but conventional wisdom is mistaken, as usual. Franz Liszt, Scott Joplin, Jelly Roll Morton, Earl Hines, Teddy Wilson, Erroll Garner and Pauline Alpert all monger a good many oom-pahs, and, whatever their other many virtues, none of them play stride.

To begin with, stride playing requires a certain characteristic rhythmic articulation, for the nature of which I can only refer you to recordings by such as Eubie Blake, Luckey Roberts, James P. Johnson, Fats Waller, Willie "The Lion" Smith and Donald Lambert. The feel of stride is a kind of soft-shoe 12/8 rather than the 8/8 of ragtime, and though the left hand plays oom-pahs, the total feeling is frequently an accented four-beat rather than the two-beat you might expect. For instance, the drummer Jo Jones once told me that when Basie played stride he would play a soft four on his bass drum, accenting, however, the first and third beats. This would be perfect. A straight four is too confining; a simple two makes you seasick. At any rate, the characteristic rhythms of stride are provided by the right hand, not the left. It is possible to play an otherwise impeccable stride bass and ruin it by playing inappropiate right hand patterns. By pulling and tugging at the rhythms of the left, the right hand provides the swing.

Now, if the right hand is to be able to do this, the left hand must be, not only quasi-metronomic, but also totally in charge. The propulsion, what musicians nowadays call the "time", must always be in the left hand. This is what Eubie Blake means when he says, "The left hand is very important in ragtime". To a non-performer, the lefthand dominance probably seems either unimportant or self-evident, but it is the crux of a successful stride performance. If, in the heat of the battle, the time switches to the right hand (because perhaps of a series of heavily accented figures), leaving the left hand merely to wag, then the momentum goes out of the window. The left hand must always be the boss and leave the right hand free to use whatever vocalized inflections the player desieres.

Stride bass is not just any old oom-pah, either. The bass note, the "oom", should be in the register of the string bass, a full two octaves or more below middle C - an octave or so lower than was used by Joplin or Morton. And the "pah" chord is usually voiced around middle C - one or two inversions higher than Joplin or Morton (here, as elsewhere, I'm referring strictly to [Donald] Lambert-style fast stride and am also generalizing wildly, of course). Moreover, the bass note is ideally a single note, not an octave, except in certain emphatic passages. The use of an octave would shorten the stretch between bass note and chord, and it is this wide stretch that gives stride its full sound. The wide stretch means that the player can activate the overtones of the piano by pedalling technicques unusable by Joplin or Morton, the denser texture of whose playing would have been unbearably muddied by the sophisticated pedalling of, say, Waller.

Stride bass lines move in scalar patterns, too. Ragtime stuck largely to roots and fifths, with most of the scalar motion in the tenor parts but stride pianists, having more room in the bass, can walk up and down scales in a way that is very difficult in the shorter span of the earlier pianists.

One can also use in the left hand what pianists called in my youth "back beats", where one disrupts the rhythm temporarily by playing oom-pah, oom-pah, oom-oom-pah, oom-pah, oom-oom-pah, and so on. With luck it comes out even, without sounding like one of Leonard Bernstein's early works.

To stride is to have patience, not to be in a hurry to get things over with. Lambert could play pieces in which the melody would allow a harmonic change perhaps only every four bars, requiring his left hand to pump patiently away for what seems like hours. And the late Ben Webster was an ardent stride pianist, whose pet piece was a version of "East Side, West Side" in long meter with lots of left hand, to with: (East!)-oom-pah, oom-pah, (Side!)-pah, oom-pah, oom-pah, oom-pah, (West!)-pah, oom-pah, oom-pah, oom-pah, (Side!)-pah, oom-pah, oom-pah, oom-pah, and so on, ad infinitum, ad wolgast. Fantastic patience!

If all this sounds rather difficult and complicated, you may be sure that it is. In a world full of pianists who can rattle off fast oom-pahs or Chick Corea solo transcriptions or the Elliot Carter Sonata, there are perhaps only a dozen who can play stride convincingly at any length and with the proper energy (...)"

Dick Wellstood [liner notes from "Donald Lambert - Recorded 1959-1961" on Storyville]

(bold letters are mine, intelligent and acid sense of humour is Wellstood's)