I wasn't aware pf this band until I heard them on the radio on the way to a Saints match. The music was recorded in London in 1916 ( weird to think that this was the same year as the battle of the Somme ) but the drumming is incredible as recording equipment was thought to be too primitive and sensitive to accurately record the sounds. I suppose you can call the music "proto-jazz" or even novelty music even if the composer Wilbur Sweatman was involved in jazz during the early 1920s and at one point employed Duke Ellington as his pianist. I know nothing about the musicians in this band and assume that they ultimately faded in to obscurity. This record is fascinating as it is unlikely that any drummer was captured with such clarity until the late 1920's and the rhythm is nowhere as stilted as is often the case prior to the innovations of Louis Armstrong. In some respects, you can trace the origins of all Black music to groups like this especially as you don't expect to hear anything as rhythmically robust as this at that time.
Ha, I posted them in Beefy's Corner. https://www.not606.com/threads/less-lounge-of-loquaciousness.271457/page-1619 I'm not saying junk the thread. I'm saying close it and start a new one.
Look, if you don't mind the repetition then fine. Personally, I have tried not to link tracks that I know have already been linked before. In the past I've even back scanned through the thread to make sure. Not always successfully, I might add. I think I've done about 2 tracks twice myself.
Well i'm posting almost exclusively birthdays, so I won't be repeating my posts until June 13th 2018... I'll stop doing birthdays then...
Harry I love Sister Rosetta Tharpe and particularly enjoy her stuff recorded with the bandleader Lucky Millinder. I don't think people realise just how controversial mixing blues and gospel was at that time even though the likes of Georgia Tom Dorsey had followed a similar path albeit with far more controversial and unsavoury results. This track with Millinder's band is fantastic and it is a shame that Millinder's bands records are so uneven. It was a great band that paved the way for R n' B in the late forties and early 50's yet the band is alleged never to have hit the heights it achieved at venues like the Apollo Theatre when in the studio.
This is probably my favourite Millinder track. I am a fan of the under-rated alto player Tab Smith who plays a nice solo on this but the music goes up a gear with the Dizzy Gillespie trumpet solo. Musical electricity.
I'm sure this has probably been posted but I couldn't find a link on google for it, apologies if it has.
