July Features
Continued: The Ragtime Machine
DR: Do you sometimes have a tendency to play the early trad jazz tunes in the style of ragtime to which they are related.
CR: We do. For example, the jazz band plays "Hilarity Rag" in Bunk's style without scores. But we use them when we play it as a ragtime group. The same with "The Thriller Rag" of May Aufderheide.
DR: What about with Jelly Roll Morton?
CR: Yes, but he's very difficult to play, to make it sound right. He is second to none. The most important of these band leaders include Morton and King Oliver, especially around 1923.
DR: Do you collect the old records?
CR: Yes, even the 78s. But the collecting business has turned down a bit in the last 10 or 15 years. There used to be lists that you would get for exchanging and so forth.
DR: Here's a chance to tell a whole bunch of people about your wants list!
CR: I can't remember them. I used to look at lists for ones I want, but I think I have most of them. At the moment I couldn't figure out who's missing.
DR: Do you collect any memorabilia from the period, besides recordings and sheets?
CR: I am a very devoted collector of jazz books. I trace them all over, and I have a good collection of them. I have Bill Russell's old umbrella!
DR: You're the one! I've been looking all over for that. Seriously, what?
CR: I visited his home in New Orleans, and at four in the morning I was on my way home to the hotel, and it was raining heavily. He gave me an umbrella and told me to keep it, because it wasn't a very good one. So I still have it.
DR: I wonder how many jazz funerals it's been in. I hope you had him sign it. How late in the chronology of the era do you play?
CR: It's hard to say. We start in the 1820s or something with "Home, Sweet Home." Then we have no cutoff date, because in the way that Bunk used to do, we play pop tunes, for example from the 1950s.
DR: You must have a large repertoire.
CR: It's about four or five hundred tunes.
DR: Do your audiences in Sweden really understand what this repertoire is about?
CR: Not today, but at the end of the 1950s, like in England, there was a big traditional movement in Sweden. School bands played this kind of jazz. That was until the Beatles came in the 1960s. Everything changed. The younger people, they don't listen to this music. It's for the older ones, retired people. We had a group there trying a rap version, but I don't think it turned out so well.
DR: Do you play for schools?
CR: Yes and we play for dances and festivals, and jazz clubs. They're very contemporary for the most part, because they haven't heard anything like us before. The music we play has too little electricity. I don't know why, because you can learn to play it easily and improve with friends. And you don't have to buy heavy equipment. You can start with a cornet or a banjo, or else a piano.
DR: Who else have you talked to about playing in the United States?
CR: I had a bit of contact with Joseph Lamb's daughter, Pat Conn. The name of our CD, I Want to Be a Birdman, is an original tune written by Joe Lamb, when he wanted to be a popular composer. This was written in 1908 or something, and a tribute to the Wright brothers.. On our previous record we played his "Ethiopian Rag." We sent it to her, and she was flabbergasted, because it was the first time she had ever heard it played by an orchestra. And after that was when she sent me some of his popular music. On the next CD maybe we'll have some more.
DR: She's a great promoter of his music. Every ragtimer should have a living relative just like her.
CR: Another rag on the Cotton Blossom Time CD that has never been recorded before is "Havana Rag" by Maurice Kirwin. He's more famous for "African Pas." Not much is known about him, and I found that piano sheet in an auction, too. We also have "The Moose - A March" by Hans Flath, a piece that is not too often played. When Bunk Johnson played it in 1942, he just remembered the third strain, the trio. But it was written in 1908, and we play the complete version.
DR: Are there pieces that just don't work for the band, though they're fine on piano?
CR: Sometime ago when we started, we hesitated for a lot of tunes, because they seemed too difficult for us. But as the years go by, and we are improving, we find we can do some of the tunes that we thought were impossible 10 years ago. We're making progress. I remember about 12 years ago, we tried "The Chant," a Morton tune, and couldn't do it. Now we can.
DR: Do you still show your players how to play things sometimes?
CR: No, because we have very good instrumentalists. Every Monday everybody comes to rehearsal unless they're sick or on a trip. So, we have lots of rehearsals. I've heard from other bands that they have difficulty gathering the guys together for rehearsals.
DR: Are there musicians in Sweden writing new tunes in the old styles?
CR: No, I think not very much. Some of them do pieces like "Blues for My Wife," things like that.
DR: Or perhaps "From My Wife" as the case may be. Do you take requests on your jobs?
CR: Some people come up with requests. I must say, I'm pretty tired of requests. I usually say we don't take them, but sometimes we do. But I'm very tired of "Royal Garden Blues" and "Basin Street Blues," etc. We have kind of an informal "anti-top 10," because there are some of these I can't stand.
DR: To me, it's not so much about playing them, it's realizing the audience's limited imagination.
CR: Yes, exactly.
DR: You play for dances?
CR: Yes. I like to play for them very much. The response on the dance floor makes it fun.
DR: Do they know the traditional American dances to these things?
CR: I doubt it.
DR: What are the various jobs that your band memnbers have?
CR: I, myself, am a doctor and so are a few of the others. Two of them are retired, so they have plenty of time. There is a psychologist and a music teacher, and an author.
DR: I suppose you play all those pieces that were composed by doctors or pharmacists, and the medical-titled rags.
CR: We haven't tried that yet, but I have some in the file.
DR: I think that would be a great idea for a CD. All the medical rags. For example, there was a fellow in southern California, Thomas Quinn, one of the founders of the Maple Leaf Club, who composed "Cardiac Rag." You could do a whole CD-full, I'm sure, and enclose interesting medical information about the various afflictions!
CR: Well, what an interesting idea. Thanks.
DR: What specifically is your field in medicine?
CR: I am into cardiac arrhythmias and related devices.
DR: Is there any correlation, doctor, that you've found between arrhythmias and the tendency to enjoy syncopation?
CR: That's something to think about! When I do, I will come back and give you the answer.
July 2008 issue | © 2008 The Mississippi Rag
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