The musical landscape that gave birth to jazz during the late 19th and early 20th centuries has seldom been accurately depicted, and is still only partially understood even by the few who try to interact with it on more than a superficial level. While artificially imposed genre delineations have long been used to organize and market audio recordings, they often make a mockery of the diverse culture within which the music evolved. When in 2006 the West Hill Radio Archives brought out the first of four sizable box sets of nine CDs, each containing a total of 851 examples dating from 1895-1950, the producers of the series achieved an unprecedented degree of panoramic comprehensiveness.
Vol. 1, a varied and unusually inclusive core sample of historic recordings, traces the multifaceted roots of the tradition by including much of what was in the air when the earliest glimmers of jazz began to appear. (All that is missing, it seems, is the influence of Italian opera and European art music, although these elements are certainly detectable here and there.) Practically everything else that has anything to do with the simultaneous inception of jazz throughout North America is represented here. That includes syncopated orchestral novelties, cakewalks, and ragtime; topical ditties played by military bands and wind ensembles; early vocal harmony groups; traditional folk, and Tin Pan Alley pop; tap dancing, vaudeville, and minstrelsy; Caribbean and Latin American dance music; blues, barrelhouse, jug bands, stride piano, hot jazz, big bands, and early swing.
"That Devilin' Tune," the song for which the collection was named, is heard performed by Broadway star Stella Mayhew (1875-1934), mainly remembered today for a series of Edison records she cut with vocalist Billie Taylor in 1910 and 1912. The inherent inference of the title is unmistakable -- stage performers, and especially jazz musicians, were saddled with small-minded pejoratives from the get-go, and blues in particular was singled out as "the devil's music." What makes this anthology so thrilling is the inclusion of rarities by artists both legendary and little-known. Bert Williams,
Bessie Smith,
Sophie Tucker,
Al Jolson,
Freddie Keppard,
Fats Waller, and
W.C. Handy co-exist with
John Philip Sousa, Voss' 1st Regiment Band, an Argentine tango ensemble known as the Orquesta Typica, and the Brazilian Grupo Bahianainho. Listen for
James P. Johnson's very first solo record; Trinidadian pianist Lionel Belasco's Barbados-inspired "Bajan Girl," and ragtime pioneer Ben Harney's phonograph cylinder from 1925. "Deacon Jazz" and "Oh How I Love My Darling" are drawn from near the very beginning of
Duke Ellington's discography; the nominal leaders of the zippy little band heard on these sides were drummer Sonny Greer and vocalist Joe Trent. This is a breathtaking reservoir of great old-time music. It is not overkill, nor has it been thrown together haphazardly like so many other quarry-sized compilations. Well-worth investigating not only for the presence of old friends like
Bix Beiderbecke,
Jelly Roll Morton, and
the Boswell Sisters, but especially for all of the people you haven't ever heard before. ~ arwulf arwulf