(Dixieland) [CD] Kid Thomas - 1993 - The First Recordings (American Music AMCD-10), FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

By the summer in 1951, when this recording was made, “Kid Thomas” Valentine had, at age fifty-five, reached the midpoint of his active playing career, yet his reputation was — and for another decade would remain — local, playing primarily across the Mississippi River from New Orleans proper on the so-called “West Bank.” He had been born some thirty miles upriver in Reserve, where at age fourteen he joined his father in the Pickwick Brass Band, which travelled to New Orleans each year to play for Mardi Gras. At eighteen Thomas, having learned by ear, formed a band with the clarinettist Edmond Hall and his brothers, playing at the local Moran Club. He moved to New Orleans about the time that Louis Armstrong left the city to join King Oliver in Chicago in 1922; unlike so many other trumpet players, Thomas, with his highly individual style, was to remain uniquely unaffected by the pervasive Armstrong influence. In New Orleans Thomas improved his musicianship, studying with the musical pedagogue Manuel Manetta. He played with Willie Cornish, Jack Carey, and with Emile Barnes, travelling in Barnes’s old car which broke down frequently. On Sunday nights they regularly played a dance in the West Bank community of Marrero, next door to an establishment owned by the West Bank entrepreneur and club owner (and sometime violinist) Specks Rodriguez, with whom around 1936 Thomas forged an association which was to last for over two decades. Living in Algiers, Thomas played all around the area, west to Westwego and south to Raceland, but particularly at the Tip Top and, opening in Marrero during World War il, at Specks’ Moulin Rouge.
Earlier, Specks and his partner who was “coloured” (to use the then ubiquitous term) had alternated in their establishment between weeks for white audiences and weeks for coloured. But ultimately, for financial reasons, Specks ended up catering exclusively to the better-paying white clientele. And with the emerging popularity of rhythm and blues, only the older white neighbourhood crowds remained the primary audiences for Thomas’s steadfastly old-style music. It was in this very local context — not that of an emergent “revival” of New Orleans jazz spurred by northern record companies — that Thomas Valentine was personally and professionally immersed at mid-century. His popularity was regional and he had never recorded.
The seed of a Kid Thomas recording session had been sown nine months earlier when David Wyckoff and I, an route to New Orleans, stopped in Chicago to visit Bill Russell whose American Music label 78 r.p.m. records we had found so exciting. Although he played us wonderful unissued material, he had no plans to release any more titles, let alone hold more recording sessions. He did, however, respond to one question we had: were there great New Orleans musicians still unrecorded? Among those he mentioned was Kid Thomas, so we made a point to hear him after taking up residence in New Orleans. When we first approached Specks’s Moulin Rouge we could hear the powerful trumpet many blocks away. We had a splendid evening in the cavernous emporium, and came away immensely impressed by Thomas’s playing.
Returning to Chicago in the spring to visit Bill Russell and purchase a state-of-the-art tape recorder (the Magnecord PT-6), it seemed Bill had become tentatively interested in our plans to hold recording sessions, even cautiously enthusiastic. Although he was wary of the LP medium, he held out hopes that if our sessions turned out to his liking, and if he issued records again, he might release some of our material. Eventually, his interest became such that, to our delight, he joined us in New Orleans, bringing with him a borrowed microphone of new design (the Stephens condenser). It had an exceptionally wide frequency response, and thus we were able to accomplish the first truly high-fidelity jazz recordings made in New Orleans.
The problems that remained with recording Kid Thomas were where and with whom to record. We had ruled out a “documentary” sort of recording of Thomas’s band at the Moulin Rouge, one reason being that Bill Russell was prejudiced against saxophones and never had released a recording that included one. We’d already had success earlier in recording the clarinettist Emile Barnes with whom Thomas, four years his junior, had played in the twenties and sporadically in the early forties. Barnes had an intensely personal tone and vibrato, and an inexhaustibly fecund imagination. He didn’t repeat himself but composed new melodies and countermelodies each time he played a number. He also had a matchless ability to respond to call, to answer lead trumpet statements, and Thomas’s laconic, almost pointillistic style was given to startlingly compressed outbursts that cried out for the interleaving of a creatively responsive reed collaborator. No better description of Thomas’s style has been framed than this by Charlie DeVore, characterizing him as essentially a “rhythmic agitator”: ’’The typical opening chorus of any tune he tackles is characterized by a strong, straight lead, with little melodic variation, played abruptly without the notes being sustained. It is very difficult to anticipate his phrases, as they occur in little rhythmic clusters generated by a wide vibrato and a hot, searing tone. These phrases literally exploded, driving the band along like a freight train...to achieve a rolling momentum to any song, blues or stomp, climaxing in ‘out’ choruses that create tremendous tension just prior to the final release of the last few bars.”(Mississippi Rag: i/4,1974)
Thomas was delighted with the idea of playing again with “Meely" (a definitive spelling for Emile Barnes’s nickname has eluded consensus among jazz writers, but it rhymes with “freely”) who he thought was “a darn good clarinet player”. Thomas was always loyal to his regular band members, and it would have been awkward to remove his sax player and replace him with Meely, so it was agreed that a band just for the session would be assembled around a Thomas-Barnes nucleus. For a recording venue, Thomas was adamant about using Hope Hall near his home where he’d played dances in the past. He was also insistent on having the trombonist Bob Thomas, which somewhat surprised us. The slippery, portamento-infected style he used in playing Bourbon Street jobs for the tourists could be almost excessively mellifluous; but on the other hand, we’d heard him playing quite forcefully in pickup parade bands.
On string bass he wanted us to track down a favorite from years ago, giving us the name and address of a “Babe Philip”, who had no phone. Joe Phillips (to use the spelling given by both the City Directory and his spiritual-singer wife Bernice) had also been reared upriver, living in the same areas as Thomas until 1918. He had known Thomas well, having played on and off in the Pickwick band; later they played for a long time together at the Moulin Rouge. Visiting Phillips at his uptown house, we found him a spry seventy-two-year-old who hadn’t played in years and wasn’t planning to. After much coaxing he dragged out a venerable three-string nineteenth century bass and lightly picked a little. He was pleased that Kid Thomas wanted him and finally agreed to participate.
Hope Hall had no piano and the recording budget couldn’t afford the rental of one. But Thomas was happy to have a banjo; he'd “come up” with the ascendancy of the banjo as it replaced the softer guitar, and early on had worked in a band led by banjo player Elton Theodore. He was quite willing to take a chance on George Guesnon with whom Barnes had been playing a lot of pick-up jobs.
Guesnon, born in 1907 in a downtown Creole section, had ventured at age twenty into the Hummingbird Cabaret where Kid Clayton was playing. He liked what he heard, and having played the ukulele as a kid, started hanging out there with the banjo player Earl Stockmeyer, who let him try his instrument and later sit in with the band. When Stockmeyer fell ill and died Guesnon replaced him. Later he studied with the celebrated John Marrero, and replaced him in Papa Celestin’s band. When the chance came to join the Sam Morgan band he jumped at it, eventually leaving to tour with the Rabbit Foot Minstrels and winding up in New York where he lived with Jelly Roll Morton and his wife. Settling again in New Orleans, after serving a six-year hitch in the merchant marine during World War II, he’d been playing the amplified guitar, which he’d taken up in New York, almost exclusively. But earlier in the summer he’d been persuaded, to Meely Barnes’s great relief, to return to the banjo for a trial-run session (Folkways FJ 2857-8). There had been some problems: although a superb musician, Guesnon had been headstrong, trying to direct the band and allotting himself solo after solo. In this new project, however, we felt there was little to fear — Guesnon would meet his match. With Kid Thomas there was never any question about leadership.
With Thomas also agreeing to another Barnes suggestion, drummer George Henderson, the final line-up wound up being chosen equally. Henderson, born in 1900, was in the twenties with Elmer Talbert in the Young Camellia band, with Punch Miller, Chris Kelly, and had gone on the road with the Morgan band. A tasteful drummer. Henderson had a habit of speeding up during the course of a number; we hoped that Thomas’s taut rhythmic leadership would mitigate this tendency.
When we finally gathered at Hope Hall Monday September 3rd we were a bit puzzled that Bob Thomas arrived dressed formally, wearing a tie. It took us a good deal of time to set up, as the hall was acoustically difficult. We started with the musicians in the large hall, but without the bodies of many dancers to soak up the sound it was too reverberant, so we left the recorder there but moved the players to a smaller adjoining room. We then successfully recorded four takes: a smashing Panama — perhaps the best music of the evening, including Guesnon soloing at his best; two versions of Bucket’s Got A Hole In It, the longer one allotting Guesnon solo opportunity; and a leisurely Sister Kate with particularly winning breaks, and Bob Thomas revealing a personal variant of the traditional arpeggiated trombone obbligato.
It was quickly obvious that Kid Thomas’s choice of Bob Thomas was fully justified: his slithery style fitted perfectly, the seamless legato phrases laying down a continuous linear bed over which the trumpet could coast, circle, dive and strike at will— a perfect foil.
Then Bob Thomas shocked us by saying that he had to leave: he had accepted another engagement that night. Being unfamiliar with the new long-playing medium, he had assumed that we’d be recording only a couple of three-minute numbers for a 78 r.p.m. disc.
We frantically began phoning other trombone players with no luck, then Meely Barnes recalled an old friend and an excellent musician, Harrison Barnes (no relation). He answered the phone, but said he had retired from performance and hadn’t played in years. In desperation Meely and Guesnon left to visit him in person and try their powers of persuasion. In about half an hour or so they returned with a very reluctant trombonist.
Harrison Barnes was born in 1889, early enough to as a kid have heard Bolden in Congo Square. At the Magnolia Plantation he had started on the baritone horn and also Eb cornet, but during the trombonist shortage of World War I (the army took so many of them) acquired a used trombone and some lessons from Sunny Henry. A list of the bands he subsequently played with reads like a Who’s Who of New Orleans jazz: Sam Morgan, Buddy Petit, Kid Rena, Chris Kelly. He had last played during the Depression years in the WPA band where Frank Duson, on the spot because of being unable to read music, turned over the lead trombone chair to him.
That he could play so well and last the evening was astonishing in itself, but he also brought another dimension to the band, the sparer tenor melodies of the earlier style, hewing closer to a fundamental bass line, with a clipped articulation, resulting in a leaner ensemble texture. In addition, Babe Phillips on the bass was interleaving his heavy percussive stringsnapping with extended passages of zippy bowing (’’sawing”) and most interestingly, shifting the beat freely between four-beat (4/4) and “split’ (or {cut’, 2/2) time, for example behind the clarinet solo in Sweet Georgia Brown. At some points the bass even plays extensively with eight-to-the-bar. With a third of the band now from an early jazz generation the overall sound of the band was subtly shifted, harking back further into the past.
The session got going again with the blues, to allow Harrison Barnes to ease into action, and George Guesnon wanted to do a vocal. He’d recorded several sides as a vocalist for Decca in New York where, for the obscure Lissen label, he’d also done the infamous Top and Bottom Blues which had been sold only under-the-counter. While his words this time were not quite so outrageously suggestive as those of that “X-rated” number, they were nonetheless redolent with sexual imagery. The first verse corresponds quite closely to the lyrics using by Guy Kelly on Jimmie Noone’s The Blues Jumped a Rabbit (Decca 18439,1936); the second verse containing words later chosen for a title, Come On Down to New Orleans, are original with Guesnon. Meely Barnes, peerless in the blues: from the very start his vibrant tone quivers with motion, infusing the mood of the piece. Kid Thomas’s range of blues playing was usually fairly narrow, sticking to two keys and two opening declamations, but in compensation Barnes could play the blues with endless inventiveness. A perfect example of his creativity is the second Bucket Got a Hole In It of the disc, where he plays quite differently than earlier. His thrilling low register solo show how emotional intense soft playing can be, as he provides his own fills between phrases. The subsequent Sister Kate is also different than its earlier manifestation, with the slower tempo allowing Babe Phillips to do some double-timing.
Kid Thomas had one kind of blues up his sleeve that was quite off the beaten path, and surprised us when he called for a “boogie”, a fast blues in C major, to be used as a perfect opportunity for a string of solos (not the norm for this session). This allowed Barnes to display a different facet of his playing, emphatically rhythmic, packed with jerky figures in eighth notes, bubbling with jollity. The number included bass solos, both picked and sawed. Guesnon had taken an immediate liking to Babe Phillips. They were getting along famously and Guesnon had worked out a stop-time pattern with him complete with verbal encouragement spoken metrically in-time with the music. This novel device was employed to great effect in this number, and at the conclusion he shouted to Bill Russell for an immediate playback.
The take of Careless Love is done in the manner of Chris Kelly, who “owned” the number in the twenties, with a couple of choruses of twelve-bar blues preceding the main sixteen-bar tune. Barnes, with Kid Thomas playing second behind him, out-does himself in his two solo choruses, one high, one low, quintessential examples of his melodic creativity. Behind that clarinet’s low-register chorus Babe Phillips is impelled to saw his way right up to the stratosphere on into the next chorus, providing a fine example of a “hot” bowed bass. Thomas closes by using the alternating paired notes of Chris Kelly’s celebrated obbligato, but rhythmically and melodically transforms it into something purely personal, ending with a final ensemble enlivened by Meely’s rifting.
Irving Berlin’s 1928 waltz Marie, composed for Samuel Goidwyn’s film “The Awakening”, underwent transformation into 4/4 meter in Claude Hopkins’s 1934 Bluebird recording, and achieved immense nationwide popularity via Tommy Dorsey’s 1937 Victor recording, using an arrangement acquired from the Sunset Royal Serenades. Harrison Barnes easily traverses the unusually wide melodic compass as he takes the lead for a chorus, as does Babe Phillips in a nimble bowed excursion. (Technical note: a momentary partial drop-out at a one point, the result of a decades-old splice, was not fully reparable even by current digital technology.)
It is instructive to compare the ensuing Panama with the version recorded at the outset of the evening. Kid Thomas sets the identical tempo, the character is different principally because of the difference between older and newer trombone styles.
The second and more up-tempo version of Guesnon’s blues has the two vocal choruses in reverse order, with both Thomas and Meely Barnes providing harmony and counterpoint to the singing. Babe Phillips gives another example of sawing hot behind the banjo, then picks his way to the end with Guesnon egging him on.
George Guesnon had been hoping for an opportunity to do some playing on the amplified guitar, and when it was determined that there was a sufficient supply of tape and time it was decided to humour him, although there wasn’t any thought of including numbers with changed instrumentation on an LP release. Both the numbers turned out well. Guesnon was happy to be in charge; before Some of These Days he can be heard instructing the band in detail about the formal organization he wants. Meely, despite his reservations about the noisy guitar, was most cooperative, and came up with a sassy solo featuring repeated notes. For On the Sunny Side of the Street the guitar balance was improved. Everyone responded to the relaxed tempo, Kid Thomas called for breaks, and Meely after making up a superlative melody took a startling break that twirled around in mid air and then took off straight up.
Bill Russell was pleased with the session, took the plunge, and released seven of the takes with Harrison Barnes on a ten-inch LP. Because of inadvertent damage to the metal parts, no more than the three hundred of the initial run were pressed. Although a later Storyville release included Marie, Panama, and the alternate Come On Down, a complete release including all the tunes and all three incarnations of the band has never been available until this present release. The tapes have been digitally transferred with no enhancement or tampering other than the adjustment of levels; playing this compact disc is the virtual equivalent of playing the master tape.