Time To Say Goodbye

Hans Koert 

Before Hans Koert (June 1st, 1951 - September 04, 2014) passed away on this date four years ago, I had promised him to keep some of his web domain updated, more precisely the keepitswinging blogspot, the oscar-aleman blogspot, the choromusic blogspot - all three blogs I have had access to as a co-editor and regular contributor of entries from the start of this part of Hans Koert's web activity. I made an agreement with Hans' widow to publish regular updates for four years and now the time has come to say goodbye. However, Hans' work will still be accessible in the version you find at the various sites assosiated with the keepitswinging domain which also applies for the online Oscar Alemán discography.

The Dutch Royal Library has saved a copy of everything accessible at Hans Koert's website and blogs, I'll quote from the message I had earlier this year:

"As part of the initiative of the Royal Library (KB) to save a selection of Dutch websites for future research, we also want to archive your site and keep them for the long term. It is the website and any subdomains that are accessible via the following URL (s): 

http://keepitswinging.blogspot.nl/ http://keepswinging.blogspot.nl/ 

As a national library, the KB is legally responsible for collecting, describing and storing in the Netherlands publications, electronic or not. The KB sees it as its task to keep websites durable and kept consulted for future generations and to preserve them for loss including technological obsolescence. (-) Therefore archive the KB websites which collections are representative of the Dutch culture, history and society on the Internet. (-) Your website will be archived and stored for this purpose durable. (-) The archive versions are to consult within our own building. They will also be made available to the general public via the KB website as soon as legally possible." 

For further information regarding the KB web archiving, please contact: 

Peter Bode, Web archiving KB 
PO Box 90407, 2509 LK Den Haag 
webarchivering@kb.nl 

I thank readers and visitors of Hans Koert's webdomain for your support and I also thank Hans Koert's widow, Corrie Koert, and his brother Peter Koert for the opportunity to continue part of Hans' webactivity publishing new entries to keep the above mentioned blogs updated. Also a great thank you to friends and followers who have contributed with material and information published at the blogs I have had access to.

Update April 2019

The exclusion of the name of 'Hans Koert' as editor of the blog in the sidemenu is not a deliberate choice by the present editor (Jo), but is a result of the change of policy by Blogger and Google. From April 2019 the Google+ accounts and profiles have been disabled, Hans Koert's editorial account was associated a Google+ account and this means that his name no longer is visible in the sidemenu as editor of the blog. I have tried to fix the problem, but Blogger unfortunately denies to change 'unknown' into the name of 'Hans Koert'

Update February 2020

Unexpectedly the Google account used by Hans Koert as his administrator access to the uploaded weblogs containing material from his private collection of photos and illustrations a.o. has been deleted by accident. This means that photos, illustrations and videos uploaded by Hans are no longer accessible at this and other blogs. Moreover, some blogs which only Hans have had administrator rights to handle are also no longer accessible. However, readers and visitors of the sites and blogs uploaded by Hans have an opportunity to use the Wayback Machine (WM) facility to get access to material not visible/accessible using the normal procedure. Below I'll insert links to the latest saved version of material at WM.

The original Keep Swinging blog is accessible from Wayback Machine by using this link
The Keep(it)Swinging weblog at Wayback Machine is accessible here
The Oscar Alemán blogspot at Wayback Machine is accessible here 
The Choro Music blogspot at Wayback Machine is accessible here 
The Hit of the Week blogspot at Wayback Machine is accessible here
The Flexible Records blogspot at Wayback Machine is accessible here
The Keepitswinging Jazzlinks blogspot at Wayback Machine is accessible here
The Slik op de Weg blogspot in Dutch only is accessible at Wayback Machine here

I cannot guarantee that all internal as well as external links will work in the pages listed at WM, but this is the only available option that I can present as the current editor-in-charge. I hope this helps some of the problem of missing photos and blogs on Hans' uploaded pages.

Update October 2024

It is with a heavy heart and heartfelt annoyance I have to inform readers and followers of Hans Koert's extensive online work that another external web host has stopped with online service and thus has cut off readers and followers from yet another part of HK's online work. This time it is HK's online Oscar Alemán discography that is no longer available. I haven't received messages from anyone about this, but discovered it this week end, ironically a couple of days before the 44th anniversary of Oscar Aleman's death, October 14 1980.

Unfortunately, I must note that the result of a comprehensive project, involving years of research and common interest as well as a good deal of passion is no longer available in HK's carefully prepared online OA discography. However, a copy of HKs last updated OA discography is luckily saved at the Wayback facility here

Serious users of HK's discography are pointed to Andrés 'Tito' Liber's updated Spanish version of an Oscar Alemán discography that has common data with most of HK's online version. It is available by following this link

Another useful solution for research of Oscar Alemán's discography and musical output is Jan Evensmo's extensive Solography dedicated to Alemán's recordings. A pdf of the latest and last update can be downloaded here

This update is the last post from me as acting editor of Hans Koert's online activity since September 2014.

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If you have comments or questions, please contact me at jrgnlarsen5@gmail.com
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Jo

Dexter Payne Quintet - Jazz For All (Jazz Forró)

Dexter Payne (YouTube still)

Some time ago I wrote a small review of clarinettist Dexter Payne's  first CD release by his quintet entitled Pra Vocé (Dexofon Records, 2014) devoted to Brazilian music rooted in choro and samba here updated in the quintet's magnificent interpretations of classics from the gafieira (ballroom) tradition a.o. (- the review is still accessible, here).  Now a new CD by Dexter Payne Quintet has been released earlier this year entitled Jazz For All (Dexofon, 2018)

Dexter Payne Quintet- Jazz For All (Jazz Forró) (Dexofon, 2018)

Dexter Payne's Quintet include Dave Willey (accordion), Bill Kopper (6 and 7 string guitar), Victor Mestas Perez (piano, Rhodes), Raoul Rossiter (drums, percussion) besides Dexter Payne (clarinet), and the new CD has guest performance by vocalist Elena Camerin Young in a single track. The title of the CD contains a wordplay outlined in the sub-title Jazz Forró which points to the influence of both American jazz and Brazilian forró in the featured music at the disc.

A traditional forró trio feat. accordion, triangel and zabumba (drum)

Forró is a traditional music genre originated in Northeastern Brazil that encompasses various dance styles as well as a number of different musical beats. This music genre has gained widespread popularity in all regions of Brazil thanks to musicians like accordionist Luiz Gonzaga and percussionist Jackson do Pandeiro, who are considered pioneers, and modern followers like accordionists Dominguinhos and Sivuca and i.e. multi instrumentalist Hermeto Pascoal  a.o.  - The word 'forró' is probably a derivative of forrobodó, meaning "great party" or "commotion", another explanation often heard is that the word forró is a derivative of the English expression "for all" and that it originated in the early 1900s. English engineers on the Great Western Railway of Brazil near Recife would throw balls on weekends and classify them as either only for railroad personnel or for the general populace ("for all"). (info excerpted from Wikipedia)

(l-r): Dave Willey (acc), Elena Camerin Young (voc), Roul Rossiter (dm, perc.), Dexter Payne (cl), Bill Kopper (g), Victor Mestas Perez (piano, keys)

The CD has 10 tracks, nine of them are compositions by Brazilians and one by the quintet's guitarist Bill Kopper, who penned Forrozinho - a great and humorous contribution with hints to traditional Forró including an intro of triangel and accordion searching for the right key and groove before the clarinet and ensemble continue in a danceable theme and several repeated turn-around end tags. The Brazilian repertoire includes various styles, even an updated version of (part of) Villa Lobos' Bachianas Brasileiras no. 2 with lyrics by the poet Ferreira Gullar entitled Trenzinho do Caipira sung by Elena Camerin Young. This was performed live by the quintet and vocalist in a concert earlier this year, inserted here to give you an impression of this modern interpretation of Villa Lobos' music

Two tracks have compositions by Brazilian multi instrumentalist Arismar do Espirito Santo, Vestido Longo and Dia Santo - the first mentioned was performed by Dexter Payne Quintet in a live concert June 2017, inserted below

Two tracks have modern choro compositions by Brazilian guiar virtuoso Alessandro Penezzi, Ao Mestre and Sempre Que Posso - the first mentioned was performed live by Dexter Payne Quintet in the same concert that featured vocalist Elena Camerin Young

The remaining four tracks have compositions by Moacir Santos, Coisa No. 10, Coração Latino by Antonio Mello, Dominguinhos' De Leve and Xote de Saudade by Dom Salvador - together with the above mentioned this repertoire draws a multicolored picture of the featured music at the Jazz For All CD. The mixture of various Brazilian sources mainly rooted in different Northeastern styles with the collective term Forró and modern American jazz improvisation creates a synergy effect, where the whole constitutes more than the parts that are included. The performance of the tunes is flawless and excellent throughout, the musicians know each other in and out from years of coorperation, all involved contribute to a successfull album of great music, highly recommended. The CD is available for purchase at Bandcamp, here or here. 

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Jo

keepitswinging.domain@gmail.com

Licks To Riffs At The Guitar Course - Jazz Edition

Ton Van Bergeijk

Some months ago I pointed you to a DVD based Guidebook entitled Licks to Riffs by the Dutch guitarist Ton Van Bergeijk . This course was the first part of a scheduled two-part guitar instruction guide with focus on the blues style and how to adapt any lick to any chord changes at the guitar aiming to generate versatile riffs. Now the second part of this guide for guitarists has just been released with focus on how to continue the excersises in jazz and jazz-blues. Ton explains it further in the promotional video uploaded at You Tube

Ton stated in the video, quote: ”Once you’ve gone through the additional concepts in the first part of this course, you’ll be able to adapt your licks to any song you may encounter. We'll then study 9 essential licks and turn them into riffs; each on a jazz-blues and rhythm changes. We'll put them to work over two jazz Standards, using the progressions of Sunny Side of The Street and Indiana.” - The used licks in this course range from a New Orleans style pianistic background a la James Booker, to licks used by horn sections in the great Riff Orchestras, to licks composed by the great Jazz guitarist George Van Eps. - Further info about the course and how to get a copy is available here.

DVD guidebook (TrueFire, 2018)

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Jo

keepitswinging.domain@gmail.com

Paris Gadjo Club - Swinging The Choro

CD front, Café du Brésil, Frémeaux & Associés (FA 8549)

Choro is a genuine Brazilian music genre which emerged in Rio de Janeiro during the late decades of the 19th century. Like jazz, that emerged in New Orleans from various sources and as a mixture of African, Creole and popular music of the time (i.e. ragtime) on the threshold of the 20th century, choro music originated as a local music style in Rio de Janeiro but soon spread all over Brazil with the emergence of radio networks early 1920s. One of the first choro musicians to be featured in radio live broadcast was Pixinguinha, who together with his band Os Oito Batutas was featured in the first nation wide broadcast in 1922. The same year Pixinguinha and his band was offered an engagement in Paris, France for some months, which became a great success with the Parisian audience. Pixinguinha and his band were the first native musicians to introduce choro, maxixe and related Brazilian music outside Brazil, and Paris, France was the first location abroad where the public had a chance to experience live performance of this music. The Parisian audience has always been open minded to influence from music outside France, another notable example is the embrace of jazz as performed by Django Reinhardt, the Belgian gypsy, who founded the European branch of hot jazz and swing. Django lived and performed in Paris most of his life and he was a success with the Parisian audience throughout his career, his legacy has since spread world wide and today Django and his gypsy style of jazz (Manouche) is more often than not associated with Paris in the 1930s and 1940s, its café culture and impromptu live music performances. This tradition is kept well alive by musicians, gypsies as well as non-gypsies (gadjos), even today. A new CD by a quartet named Paris Gadjo Club reflects this tradition, but instead of performing jazz standards the quartet plays music originally composed or performed by Brazilian choro musicians adding the unmistakable gypsy conception and interpretation of the music associated with Django Reinhardt and his followers. The result is most enjoyable and well worth lending your ears, I think.

Paris Gadjo Club (l-r): Pierre-Louis Cas (cl,as), Laurent Vanhée (b), Stan Laferrière (rh g), Christophe Davot (lead g,bj) (photo by Michel Bonnet)

The CD has 13 tracks and the repertoire is chosen among popular compositions by famous Brazilian choro musicians and composers like Jacob do Bandolim, Ernesto Nazareth and Pixinguinha a.o.. The rhythm section of the quartet is in the hands of Stan Laferriìere (rh g) and Laurent Vanhée (b) while Pierre-Louis Cas (cl,as) and Christophe Davot (lead g, bj) share solo spots playing melody and improvisation. Below I'll insert a couple of examples of the featured music from live performances uploaded at YouTube, and to give you an impression of similarities and differences between choro and gypsy/gadjo swing jazz I'll also insert a couple of examples of the Brazilian original recordings which may have inspired the Paris Gadjo Club. - Here is first Jacob do Bandolim's interpretation of Ernesto Nazareth's famous tune Odeon



From a live performance recorded 2016, here is the same tune as played by Paris Gadjo Club



This year choro communities celebrate the centennial of Jacob do Bandolim, the famous Brazilian master of choro mandolin, who is just as popular in Rio as Django Reinhardt still is in Paris, and from Jacob's most popular LP album here is his interpretation of Juventino Maciel's choro Cadéncia



And here is the same tune as performed by Paris Gadjo Club in a TV live program earlier this year



If these appetizers have caught your interest, more info (-in French) is available here, and the CD is for purchase here
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Jo
keepitswinging.domain@gmail.com

Hyena Stomp

Hyena Stomp_Victor 20772-A

On June 4th 1927, Jelly Roll Morton's Red Hot Peppers recorded the 6th session for Victor in Chicago. Hyena Stomp, Billy Goat Stomp, Wild Man Blues and Jungle Blues were recorded in this memorable session featuring the extraordinary vocal cotributions by Lew La Mar imitating a laughing hyena or a stubborn goat! According to available info (here), Louis August La Mar (Lew La Mar) was a French Canadian, born in Quebec on 11th December 1873. He migrated to the U.S. with his parents prior to 1894. He was white — not African-American. He registered for the WWI draft on 12th September 1918. The draft card records his occupation as a Theatrical Actor for the Western Vaudeville Association, Majestic Theatre Building, Chicago, the same vaudeville group that employed Bill Johnson. On 4th June 1927 Lew La Mar joined Jelly-Roll Morton’s Red Hot Peppers in Chicago to participate in the mentioned Victor recording session.  He is featured on Hyena Stomp and Billy Goat Stomp. Other members of the band include George Mitchell (c); Gerald Reeves (tb); Johnny Dodds (cl); Paul “Stump” Evans (as); Jelly Roll Morton (p-dialogue); Bud Scott (g); Quinn Wilson (bb); Warren “Baby” Dodds (d)

The reason for setting focus on Hyena Stomp here is to point you to another great performance of the tune just released today on You Tube as part of The Complete Morton Project  initiated by pianist Andrew Oliver and reed player David Horniblow (- learn more at Andrew Oliver's website, here). The project has now reached halfway through the 104 compositions by Morton, thus Hyena Stomp and the other tune released today, Dixie Knows, are milestones of this terrific and very uplifting project. The jubilee is further marked by the fact that the duo of Oliver and Horniblow is extended to a quartet with two guest performers in the performance of Hyena Stomp,  Michael McQuaid (clarinet/alto) and Nick Ball (laughing & drums), both members of Oliver's Vitality Five ensemble (- more info here )

The second tune of the Complete Morton Project released today is as mentioned above Dixie Knows, a tune Morton published and co-wrote with Mel Stitzel in 1930 but never recorded according to Oliver's notes (here). I remember a version of this tune for finger style guitar played by Swedish guitarist Lasse Johansson (- you can listen to it at Spotify, here ), however, the version by Oliver and Horniblow is different and performed as a stomp in the usual duo setting of piano and clarinet. Enjoy it below and be sure to follow the Complete Morton Project on You Tube every Tuesday through the remain of 2018!

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Jo

keepitswinging.domain@gmail.com

June Night

Original sheet music (1924)

June Night (Just Give Me a June Night) is a popular song written by Abel Baer (music) and Cliff Friend (lyrics) and published in 1924. The song was a successful hit for Ted Lewis (Columbia 157-D); and Fred Waring and His Pennsylvanians (Victor 19380) came with their version of the song at # 7 on the US charts.

Original sheet music with photo of Ted Lewis

Waring's Pennsylvanians_June Night_ Victor 19380-A

Cliff Edwards (Ukulele Ike)

Cliff Edwards (Ukulele Ike) also had a hit with June Night in 1924

Svend Asmussen

Jazz fiddler supreme, Svend Asmussen made June Night his signature tune, the initial version of the song was recorded in 1940 by Svend Asmussen's Skandia Trio for Odeon

Odeon D-396

June Night is a great vehicle for jazz improvisation, here's a live recorded example from Swedish television 1995 featuring Svend Asmussen's Quartet

Another live jazz interpretation of June Night was performed by Ralf Norton & His Varsity Ramblers in March 2017, inserted below to end this small presentation of a great tune

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Jo

keepitswinging.domain@gmail.com

Retrospect Keep Swinging (old) Oscar Aleman Choro Music Flexible Records Hit of the Week-Durium Friends of the Keep Swinging blog Keep Swinging Contributions

One Morning in May

Victor 24505-A (1933)

Hoagy Carmichael composed One Morning in May and Mitchell Parish wrote the lyrics. However, Carmichael's initial version of the song had its debut at the shown Victor disc recorded October 10, 1933 as an instrumental performed by the composer at the piano featuring a swinging combo

Vocalist Marion Harris

Other artists and orchestras of the time seem to have favoured the song performed with the lyrics by Mitchell Parish changing the music into a ballad, an example is the version recorded by Marion Harris in April 1934

One Morning in May was adopted by jazz musicians and later versions comprise both vocal and instrumenal versions of the song. Here I'll concentrate on some instrumental examples uploaded at You Tube. Firstly, Benny Carter and his orchestra recorded a swinging version in 1958, inserted below

Dusko Goykovich (photo by OhWeh, 2010 - Wikimedia)

Jazz trumpeter Dusko Goykovich recorded a great instrumental version of One Morning in May at his 2001 CD entitled In My Dreams

Another contemporary instrumental issue of One Morning in May was recorded by pianist Bill Charlap in a trio setting at his 2001 album entitled Stardust

Vibraphonist Lars Erstrand (You Tube)

The last example here of a contemporary instrumental version of One Morning in May was recorded by Swedish vibraphonist Lars Erstrand with Finish clarinetist Antti Sarpila in 2004 at the album entitled We've Got a Heartful of Music

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Jo

keepitswinging.domain@gmail.com

Retrospect Keep Swinging (old) Oscar Aleman Choro Music Flexible Records Hit of the Week-Durium Friends of the Keep Swinging blog Keep Swinging Contributions