11 January 2013

Rex Stewart and his Dixielanders-(Live in Boston 1953)Featuring Herbie Nichols !!!


Now for Some serious Fun!!!....
heres a nicely recorded document of some stomping Dixieland revival, those who like Aki Takase's Wonderful Enja discs of pre war Jazz ,will love this....I certainly do!

the real Surprise is Herbie Nichols , who despite various stories about how depressed he was at having to make his Living playing in Dixieland revival groups (where incidentally he made the acquaintance of both Steve Lacy and Roswell Rudd)
his playing here is fresh, and he sounds, (as does the entire band)like he's having a wail of a time!!

The great trumpeter Rex Stewart is best known for his stint of a decade or so with Duke Ellington's Orchestra , (1934-45), later in life he toured and recorded with Norman Granz's JATP, and there after recorded prolifically under his own name ,with the Ellingtonians
and a great many dixieland revival outfits such as this, under the names..the feet warmers, the Dixielanders. etc..also becoming a Jazz historian,critic and Lecturer.

Clarinetist Albert Nicholas of Creole descent was a veritable New Orleans legend having started his career in 1910,with King Oliver ,Buddy Petit,and Manuel Perez.

Perhaps its some form of retroactive wishful thinking/Selective Memory ,but i have vague recollections of reading an anecdotal report years ago in some book or other, about A.Nicholas and Don Byas ,at the club Montmartre Copenhagen night after night in the early sixties admiringly watching Albert Ayler
not only Recognizing his mastery, but saying they had always wanted to play as freely as that!

Its not hard to see why ,indeed listening to Ayler's recordings of Spirituals and all the stunning Hallucinatory marching band hybrid tunes , one imagines he would have fit right in...

Many of the tunes on this document are taken at an exhilarating break neck tempo, at times threatening to fall apart as they lope over some imaginary precipice, Herbie Nichols is extraordinary playing Ragtime style syncopated Melodies with the right hand and walking bass lines with the left,
occasionally spicing it up by accenting with odd mildly dissonant stabs.. though of course not to the extent one finds on his own blue note sessions 2 years later.

this is obviously originally an edited radio broadcast , probably unauthorized as many live sessions of this vintage, released on Musidisc seem to have been, America records which put out so many great free jazz lp's was itself a subsidiary of Musidisc.

at a cursory glance (a few pages of google) there doesn't appear to be much by way of a mention let alone detailed info regarding this record...

ps
Although i now see t(having checked the booklet to the H.Nichols Mosaic lp box) that this was actually released on the Jazztone label, probably as a series of  10 inch singles.


SESSION DETAILS
Rex Stewart and his Dixielanders, live in Boston(June, according to the H.Nichols Mosaic boxset) 1953, venue unknown
Rex Stewart-Tpt
Albert Nicholas-Cl
Fernando Arbello-trb
Herbie Nichols-piano
John Dengler-Bari Sax
John Feild-db
Tommy Benford-Dr

A-
thats a plenty
Basin Street Blues
High Society
Tin Roof Blues
Dixie land One Step

B-
South Rampart street Parade
Weary Blues
Apex Blues
Wolverine Blues
When the saints go marchin' in
ENJOY!!!!!!

PPS, cant find any evidence that this has been reissued , i could well be wrong!

23 comments:

SOTISE said...

Flac & pics
1- http://www66.zippyshare.com/v/89562078/file.html
2- http://www12.zippyshare.com/v/51652824/file.html

(Split Archive) with 3% recovery

zero said...

All those exclamation marks are spot on. This is really a knock-out post, sotise! I've heard about Herbie Nichols playing trad. Thanks for the chance to actually hear the music.

To these ears the trad > Ayler connection is clear. Going all the way back to early Pops it's there.

Off to zippyshare . . .

Wallofsound said...

Thanks Sotise. Yes, I don't think you put in enough exclamation marks!!!!!!!!!!!

teledyn said...

as I kept reading down your description, I think I added about a dozen exclamation marks of my own! :)

wow. is there anything more than that to say? just ... wow!

Nick said...

Thanks - I enjoyed this a lot

Marcus said...

Wild! Thanks very much!

zero said...

Has anyone been able to get the whole thing? I managed to download the first file without a problem but have been unable to connect with zippyshare since then. I've tried many times each day and the connection always times out. When I run a traceroute on the connection, it always fails at a hop in Europe. I just can't get through.

Jack Purvis said...

Many thanks for Rex. No trouble in downloading or unpacking. Next job is to split the tracks using Audacity (free plug!)

SOTISE said...

500, people have downloaded this ..can someone please create a mirror for zero?? please

zero said...

Sotise, thank you for your concern. I'm happy to report that I was able to download the file within the past hour. It took 9 days to connect again with zippy, but it did eventually work.

Brush&Stick said...

Thanks so much for this unique recording!

mgconlan said...

A couple of facts about this album: first, it was originally recorded for the Jazztone Society, a short-lived jazz record club in the mid-1950's. Most of the Jazztone releases were reissues of 78's, but a few were original recordings, including this one and the Mary Lou Williams album "A Keyboard History," which remains one of my favorites.

The Jazztone club promoted itself with a 10-inch LP sampler that included recordings from Commodore and Dial as well as two tracks Jazztone recorded itself, "Basin Street Blues" from this album and a lovely performance of "Honeysuckle Rose" by Coleman Hawkins. On the sampler, the pianist on "Basin Street Blues" was identified as "Herbert H. Nichols" and I must have had that album for years before I made the connection to Herbie Nichols.

Also, this is NOT a live recording! It was made in a studio, probably in New York City, with applause and audience noises rather crudely dubbed in to pass it off as a live date from the Savoy in Boston. It's a pity the original tapes are lost so we'll never get to hear it without the dubbed-in noises.

mgconlan said...

Just a couple more comments about this very interesting album: the original title of the Jazztone release was "Dixieland Free-for-All" and Jazztone gave the trombonist's name as Fernando Arbelo (just one "l"). Also they gave the bassist's name as John L. Field.

Unknown said...

Thanks very much!

I was looking for this album since over 30 years !

My father had a french version of this album with only 6 tracks("Rex Stewart & his band" edited by "La guilde nationale du Jazz" in 1957) , but the vinyl is quite inaudible cause I played it so often when I was a teenager..

"Thats a plenty" is my absolute favorite, every time you feel bluesy, you just have to listen this tune and things are going better ...

I apologize for my poor english and Thanks again !

Jacques

Anonymous said...

Could someone please reupload this? Zippy says the file does not exist - I'd love to hear this! After really digging the complete Blue Note of Herbie Nichols this seems like a treasure.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, a re-up would be amazing. I'm just getting into Albert Nicholas big time after picking up an early Riverside LP called Creole Reeds and he's totally killin' it with James P. Johnson and Baby Dodds. I'm also a big Herbie Nichols fan so this is win-win!

Someone help!

definitivegaze said...

re-upload please

Sahfen said...

Hello, is it possible to re-up this wonderful disc? Thanks!

Ernst Grgo Nebhuth said...

1fichier

Sahfen said...

Thanks a lot!!

francisco santos said...

BIG THX!...

rev.b said...

I do have a soft spot for these grey market labels. Looks like a good time too. thanks!

Farmer Allan said...

Hey, thanks so very much for the re-post!