The Penguin Jazz Guide Read Online Free PDF

says comes through clearly enough, and the best of the piano solos sound as invigorating as they have to be. Yet another edition of these priceless recordings has been issued by Rounder, amounting to eight CDs and what is surely the most comprehensive coverage of the speech and music to date. The overall sound quality has become something of a cause célèbre among jazz scholars – at times it does seem inferior to the previous four-disc edition on the same label – but for the generallistener this should be accorded a warm welcome, expensive though it is. It is a wonderfully illustrated lecture on Morton’s music by the man who created it. Indispensable records for anyone interested in jazz history.
    & See also The Piano Rolls (1920, 1997; p. 9), Jelly Roll Morton 1926–1928 (1926–1928; p. 25)
    BABY DODDS
    Born Warren Dodds, 24 December 1898, New Orleans, Louisiana; died 14 February 1959, Chicago, Illinois
    Drums
    Baby Dodds
    American Music AMCD-17
    Dodds; Bunk Johnson, Louis ‘Kid Shots’ Madison, Wooden Joe Nicholas (t); Jim Robinson, Joe Petit (tb); George Lewis, Albert Burbank (cl); Adolphe Alexander Jr (bhn); Isidore Barbarin (ahn); Lawrence Marrero (bj); Red Clark, Sidney Brown (tba); Alcide ‘Slow Drag’ Pavageau (b). 1944–1945.
    Drummer Max Roach said (1981): ‘Baby Dodds played behind the soloist. He could conjure up a whole range of tonal colours from his kit, and he varied the spectrum depending on who he was with, and how he was feeling about the music.’
    Clarinettist Johnny Dodds’s brother was playing drums at 16 and developing great showmanship. He was with King Oliver in 1922, then in Chicago for 20 years, before playing in New York with Bunk Johnson during the revival. Exemplifying the New Orleans style while remaining at a tangent from it, he was the first drummer to be documented who embellished his playing rather than simply ticking out the time, and his inventiveness comes across even on primitive early recordings. A slice of living history, Baby Dodds features the leading drummer of New Orleans jazz talking at some length about his traps, his cymbals, his style and how it all comes together – for jazz bands, marching bands, funeral parades and whatever else a drummer had to play for. Most of the music is actually lifted from other records, notably Bunk Johnson’s American Music CDs. Some of it is horse sense that still holds good – ‘Tiger Rag is played too fast’, he grumbles, and then we hear the tempo he liked to play for it – and when he talks us through a lesson in technique, the good-natured generosity of the man comes alive again, five decades after his death. Remastering of all the speech/drum tracks is excellent, and though the music comes in mainly for illustration the compilers have chosen well. Dodds finally slowed down in the ’50s when he suffered a series of strokes, but he lived long enough to stand as a role model and example to the younger generation, and the first beboppers.
    GEORGE ‘POPS’ FOSTER
    Born 18 May 1892, McCall Plantation, Louisiana; died 30 October 1969, San Francisco, California
    Double bass
    George ‘Pops’ Foster
    American Music ASMCD-105
    Foster; Art Hodes (p). 1968.
    Art Hodes said (1981): ‘He knew Louis Armstrong before Louis Armstrong was Louis Armstrong, so who are you to doubt a word he says? George Foster was jazz, and don’t forget it.’
    ‘Pops’ worked on riverboats, including the Belle of the Bend with Fate Marable and with all the major New Orleans bandleaders, before moving to St Louis and eventually New York. A celebrated figure in the ’40s revival, he carried on till the end, always rock-solid, his snapping tones a familiar aspect of many, many early recordings, including key Sidney Bechet sides. On this valuable recording, a little under 40 minutes in length, Pops and Art chat about the bassman’s long career, and intersperse the dialogue with whichever tunes come up in this eavesdropped conversation, privately