traditional New Orleans Jazz

[vicious_sid]

My Mother (god bless her) has asked me to buy a traditional New Orleans Band jazz cd for a friends birthday - however she has no idea of any artists to look at or even what era - "just something that has a double bass in it" she says

So AB'ers HELP ME

[con-amca]

Some good British bands that played New
Orleans style jazz are those of Alex Welsh
and Ken Colyer from around 1950 - 1970.
A good source of this kind of music is the CDs
issued by Lake Records of Workington, Cumbria.
Their address is Lake Records, PO Box 40,
Workington, Cumbria, CA14 3GJ.
Website: www.fellside.com
Ask them your question, they are very helpful, and
you can buy by post.

For the real stuff you have to go for the music
of King Oliver, or the Louis Armstrong Hot Fives and
Hot Sevens of the 1920s. But you won't find a double
bass in these. If I were you, I'd stick with Welsh or
Colyer.

[melharding]

i would say try duke ellington, louis armstrong, john coltrane. the bands that these guys were in must have a double bass at some stage.theyre fab!

[vicious_sid]

Thanks to Baldhair and melharding - I visited amazon and bought this B00005RDLA, use the search engine to find if curious, seems to cover a large proportion of jazz history

[con-amca]

That CD set seems a very good present for
anyone interested in jazz as a whole. Covers
a very wide area. Good choice. If your mother
(God bless her) wants to buy me a present....

[reinganum]

Ellington and Coltrane were great jazzmen, but neither could by any stretch of the imagination be said to play in the New Orleans style.

Even the very earliest recorded jazz is easily available on CD nowadays.

Sidney Bechet, King Oliver and Jelly-Roll Morton made the finest New Orleans jazz in the early days, and Bechet and Morton continued recording in the same style well into the 1940s.

I note that your mother wants something with a double bass in it; in which case I would go for Jelly-Roll Morton's Red Hot Peppers sides in the 1920s.

One of the problems (in this regard) with early jazz is that the bands often used a brass bass (e.g. a sousaphone) because the recording equipment then in use was not able to pick up the sound of the plucked double bass.

By the way, none of the Armstrong Hot Five recordings features a double bass, though some of the Hot Seven did; and his slightly later recordings (late 1928 to 1932) certainly did because his accompanying musicians were essentially the Luis Russell band which included the legendary Pops Foster, one of the finest double bass players EVER.

Hope all this helps!