These are names we don’t hear much of these days: Red McKenzie (kazoo); Yank Lawson (t); Eddie Miller (cl-ts); Nappy Lamare (g); Bob Haggart (b); Ray Bauduc (d). Bunny Berigan (t) and Eddie Condon (g) drifted in and out of the band known for years as the Mound City Blue Blowers.
I’ve never fully understood how anyone can make a living playing a comb and paper anywhere other than in an underpass adjacent to Charing Cross tube station. And yet Red McKenzie was a successful band leader from about 1924 until at least 1937, and in fact continued playing at his own New York club until his death in February 1948.
The recordings I listened to while cooking a pair of lamb chops were from 1935 and 1936. They are mostly well-known standards such as High Society and Muskrat Ramble. Vocal numbers include She’s a Latin from Manhattan, On Treasure Island and Mama Don’t Allow It. Red was first and foremost a vocalist, although his singers on this album also include Spooky Dickenson and Billy Wilson. They all have that natural resonance in their voices as if they’re singing through a megaphone. The Temperance Seven took them off perfectly.
In the days when radio was called wireless, the Mound City Blue Blowers could be heard quite often in Britain. Today, I can’t remember the last time I heard one of their tracks on the airwaves. But then I play my albums rather than listen to the radio (except R3 JRR when I can) so I’m not a reliable source. The rasping notes of the kazoo swept through my kitchen as a great waft of fresh air on a sultry day.
What these tracks do is swing. That’s swing with a lower-case s, not to be confused with Swing which is an entire genre of jazz. And it reminded me of the essence of jazz, something which many musicologists and commentators apparently ignore – jazz was first and foremost dance music. It was for roughly the first 50 years of its existence a means of getting people dancing. A cynic might say the next 50 years was all downhill as arty jazz musicians started prodding around introspectively in their navels rather than trying to arouse the audience. But that would be to make an unjust sweeping statement, true though it is in part.
Yep. The Mound City Blue Blowers had me stomping my feet and banging saucepan lids in Krupa exuberance. The noise from the kitchen was cacophonous but the music was sublime, just sublime, as Para Handy would have said. And please don’t confuse Para with John, Captain or otherwise.
Let’s start a campaign – bring the kazoo back to jazz.
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