So I had the good fortune of arriving in Argentina a few weeks ago, in time for the Buenos Aires Jazz Festival! That never happens! Whenever I arrive in a new country, I’m always greeted by “Oh, if only you had been here last weekend! What a shame!“  But not this time, hoorah!

Anyway, amongst a few other fun concerts (dancing on concrete in the open air), the real standout was a night of SERIOUS jazz manouche, with the Angelo Debarre & Ludovic Beier Trio, supported by Buenos Aires gypsy jazz band, Swing Tzigane. Angelo Debarre (gypsy guitar) and Ludovic Beier (accordian) are the REAL DEAL!! These are the guys keeping Django’s spirit alive. Watching them play from my second row theatre seat was both pure agony (they swung hard, sitting still was frustrating) and sheer bliss (I didn’t want to take my eyes off their fingering – the speed! the precision! the range!).

A snippet from the festival programme:

This trio constitutes one of the most exquisite and fresh expressions of the powerful manouche tradition, bound to the legacy of the great Django. From Gus Viseur to Jo Privat, from Ferré to Reinhardt, accordion and manouche guitar have made an excellent couple. It will come as no surprise, then, that the gathering of Ludovic Beier and Angelo Debarre, with the added plus of an impeccable rhythm section led by Tchavolo Hassan, should turn into a manouche extravaganza. Virtuosity, accordion fluency, accuracy, colour and the instantly identifiable personality of the guitar: the fusion of these results in sheer brilliance.

Instead of trying to describe how wonderful it was, I’m just going to let them speak for themselves. Here are a few clips I filmed on the night. Firstly, the Buenos Aires group Swing Tzigane, who are really wonderful, love that fiddle! Tzigane is another name for gypsy (also Manouche, Romanichel, Bohemian, Zingari, etc.). They are playing the tune Avalon:

Next we have the French trio, with lead guitarist Angelo Debarre, accordionist Ludovic Beier and rhythm guitarist Tchavolo Hassan:

And finally, the international Trio joined by Swing Tzigane in an impromptu rendition of Minor Swing:

Ahh, heaven!

www.myspace.com/angelodebarre
www.ludovicbeier.moonfruit.fr
www.myspace.com/ludovicbeier

I just got pointed towards a snippet of footage of the late great Frank Manning, social dancing in the Savoy Ballroom in 1937!  I have so much vintage footage in my collection (over 2,000 short clips on my laptop alone), that sometimes it seems impossible that I could ever stumble across another gem.  Actually, it happens all the time, but rarely this wonderful. I know it’s only a few seconds of Frankie, but he looks so young and happy, and I was just delighted to see footage of the bandstand in the Savoy Ballroom (I’d only seen photos). And the girls swinging out, in full-length ballgowns!!  Wow, just so wonderful!

The footage is from Time Inc’s newsreel, The March of Time, on  February 19, 1937. This was a current affairs newsreel, shown in cinemas before the main feature (remember, this is before television). HBO is restoring all that archival footage, good for them! That particular ‘episode’ happens to be about swing music as a ‘current trend’. You can see Frankie dancing in “dark Harlem’s hot and noisy Savoy” at 0:46.

If you ask ‘Who was the greatest flash act of the 1940s?’, a lot of people might suggest The Nicholas Brothers. Ok, fair enough. But I stumbled across a pretty wild clip of some high-kicking, full-splitting and fast-flipping ladies who show that it wasn’t just the lads pulling out the flash back in the day. So, I give you first the Nicholas Brothers dancing to the tune Jumpin’ Jive, with Cab Calloway in the 1943 film Stormy Weather…

And secondly, I give you the Jumpin’ Jive Girls, in the film Sensations of 1945. You’ll also see Eleanor Powell, with a live horse! Enjoy…

Maybe the fact that F. Scott Fitzgerald has been one of my favorite authors since long before I discovered jazz dancing, goes to show that it was always in me, even if I didn’t know it yet. I don’t know if many of you know it, but I actually have a bachelor’s degree in English Literature. Ahh, my bookworm days. The Great Gatsby is my sentimental favorite (and though the Robert Redford/Mia Farrow film is darling, if you haven’t read the book you’re still missing out – snappy dialogue and witticisms that would make Oscar Wilde blush!). But anyway, I just found this pic of the original dust jacket for Tales of the Jazz Age, with those wonderful dance illustrations, and had to share…

Well, the lyrics may be wildly politically incorrect these days, but Nagasaki is in my opinion a slammin’ little jazz tune. I’ve got renditions I love by Django Reinhardt, Adrian Rollini, Gene Krupa, Benny Carter, Don Redman, Fletcher Henderson, Putney Dandridge, Willie Lewis & His Entertainers,  and earlier this year some of you may have learned a jazz routine I choreographed to a hot version by Ondrej Havelka & His Melodymakers.

And I’m a big fan of this Reds & Struggs performance of the tune:

And here’s The Four Step Brothers getting their Nagasaki on, in a barber shop:

And here’s my Frenchy buddy and fellow SwingFashionista Alice Mei, with Thomas Blacharz, performing a routine to the tune at the International Lindy Hop Championships this year:

And a team routine choreographed by my very good friend and fellow Killer Diller, Kevin St Laurent, for a team of hard-swingin’ Lithuanians:

And finally (because I know you’re all dying to learn the words), here are some of the lyrics I’ve heard sung before. Some of them are pretty dirty, sorry…

Hot ginger and dynamite
There’s nothing but that at night
Back in Nagasaki
Where the fellers chew tobaccy
And the women wicky-wacky woo.

The way they can entertain
Would hurry a hurricane
Back in Nagasaki
Where the fellers chew tobaccy
And the women wicky wacky  woo.

In Fujiama
You get a mama
Then your troubles increase.
In some pagoda
She orders soda
Earth-shake milk-shakes, ten cents a piece.

They kissy and huggy nice
By Jingo! It’s worth the price.
Back in Nagasaki
Where the fellers chew tobaccy
And the women wicky-wacky woo.

They give you a carriage free
The horse is a Japanee
Back in Nagasaki
Where the fellers chew tobaccy
And the women wicky-wacky woo.

They sit you upon the floor
And splinter you galore
Back in Nagasaki
Where the fellers chew tobaccy
And the women wicky-wacky
 woo.

With Sweet Kimoner
I pulled a boner
I kept it up at high speed.
I got rhumatics
And then psyatics
Halatosisis, that’s guaranteed.

You just have to act your age
Or wind up inside a cage
Back in Nagasaki
Where the fellers chew tobaccy
And the women wicky-wacky 
woo.

Those pretty mamas
In pink pyjamas
They try to give you a kiss
Those torid teases
In B.V.D.ses
Heaven help a sailor on a night like this!

When the girls Ju Jitsu
Seems like a bus hit you
Back in Nagasaki
Where the fellers chew tobaccy
And the women wicky-wacky woo.

Not too gentle and not too rough
But you’ve got to tell them when you’ve had enough
Back in Nagasaki
Where the fellers chew tobaccy
And the women wicky-wacky woo.

From its very inception, jazz and the devil were thrown into the same basket (like this 1921 article and this 1938 news story).  Well, I’m not a religious person, and quite frankly hell for me would be a world without jazz, but anyway, the imagery linking hot jazz and that world of fire and brimstone is a fairly common one.  The film Cabin in the Sky comes to mind, and I must have seen this little cartoon a hundred times when I was a kid: The Three Little Bops, Looney Tunes 1957:

 
And along the animated theme, a little more recently, from Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride in 2005:

The photo at the top of the post is Lee Presson & The Nails, because Lee is the first person I could think of who would sing in a jazz club in hell. Enjoy!

A short set I played at a cozy little Buenos Aires blues dance last week…

Too Tight Blues, The New Orleans Wanderers, 1926 (106bpm)
Mobile Blues, Duke Ellington, 1938 (80bpm)
Feeling Good, Nina Simone (78bpm)
Blues in the Dark, Count Basie with Jimmy Rushing, 1938 (86bpm)
Blue Drag, Django Reinhardt & Stephane Grapelli (114bpm)
I Heard the Marchin’ of the Drum, C.W. Stoneking, 2008 (104bpm)
Love Where Did You Go, Dayna Kurtz, 2004 (54bpm)
Tain’t Nobody’s Business If I Do, Ernestine Anderson (71bpm)
Blues in C Sharp Minor, Roy Eldridge, 1936 (99bpm)
How Long Blues, Wingy Manone, 1939 (93bpm)
Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho, Big Maybelle, 1968 (116bpm)
Roll On Katy, Jay McShann with Jimmy Witherspoon, 1946 (93bpm)
My Daddy Rocks Me, Trixie Smith (104bpm)
My Man Jumped Salty On Me, Mezz Mezzerow, 1936 (112bpm)
Sister Kate, Firehouse Five Plus Two, 2000 (99bpm)

“My Man Jumped Salty On Me”, the Mezz tune, has my all-time favourite blues lyric in it:

I’m gonna get me a razor, and a gun
Cut him if he stands still and shoot him if he runs
‘Cause that man’s done jumped salty on me

Oooh, bitter…