Jazz New Oleans Joys

winin boy

Winin' Boy
2010. Oil on Canvas. 100 x 70 cm
£500.00

Jelly Roll Morton claimed he was called the "Wining Boy" by the women of the sporting houses of Storyville where he played piano as a young teenager, because of his habit of drinking the leftovers from wine bottles . It's also the name given to pimps and hustlers in the District. The words on this record are quite mild, when you compare them to the words he sang to Alan Lomax.

Jelly Roll Morton meets Toulouse-Lautrec. What's the link?
"Winin' Boy" - "Pretty Baby" - E. J. Bellocq - Toulouse-Lautrec! Isn't art wonderful?

htl bellocq

buddy Bolden

"I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Shout"
Oil on Canvas. 18" x 24"
£300.00

"That Buddy Bolden-everyone in New Orleans knew about him. He was a real walk-around man. He could play, that was true; but, well, he was more a showman: he was a hell of a good showman. You take someone, if he's thumping and stamping on the stand with his foot and making faces and doing something with his hand, waving and what not-you look at him, you notice him more, it's more than hearing his music. You take another man: he may be playing as good- he can be playing better-but you hear the other one more because you're so busy watching him. Buddy, he was a hell of a good showman. If he forgot something, he'd make something else. It didn't matter to him whether it was especially fitting or not what he made up, he'd just go ahead and do it, and he'd make you forget all about whatever it was he had forgotten. ....

Buddy, you know, before he died he was in an insane asylum. Buddy used to drink awful heavy, and it got him in the end. He lived it fast, Buddy did. And that's another reason why he was so popular, why you hear his name so much: it was the way he lived his life. The things he'd do, they got him a lot of attention. You was always hearing, for example, how he had three or four women living with him in the same house. He'd walk down the street and one woman, she'd have his trumpet, and another, she'd carry his watch, and another, she'd have his handkerchief, and maybe there'd be another one who wouldn't have nothing to carry, but she'd be there all the same hoping to carry something home. That's the kind of man he was. He could drink, and he had stories he knew- he was a real storyteller-and he just couldn't go anywhere without making a big splash, and he didn't give a damn about anything. And he could play too. He took ragtime up some; but he couldn't follow through on it, he wasn't able. There was a lot of reasons for that, mostly personal I guess, but when it came right down to the music he just wasn't able. "

"Treat it Gentle - Growing Up" Sidney Bechet

funkybut
At the Funky Butt
2008 - 9. Acrylic on Canvas. 26" x 40 ".
£500.00

The Funky Butt Dance Hall was a "place as wild as pig's knuckles, the wildest, roughest place in Storyville".

Home Work News About

tailgate
Tail Gatin'
Oil on Canvas. 20" x 16"
£250.00

Edward "Kid" Ory was the acknowledged king of the "Tailgate". He employed Joe Oliver and gave Louis Armstrong his first job as a soloist. But he has his place in jazz's history for making the first New Orleans' style record (Ory's Creole Trombone - Ory's Sunshine Orchestra, June 1921) and making the first radio broadcast by an authentic New Orleans group. My link? I saw him playing with Henry "Red" Allen at the Liverpool Empire in 1959.

2nd line

The Second Line - Oh, Didn't he Ramble
Oil on Canvas. 100 x 80 cm
£500.00

"....... Even when I was just a little kid I was always running out to where the music was going on, chasing after the parades. Sometimes I’d get into the second line of the parade and just go along. The second line of the parade, that was a thing you don’t see any more. There used to be big parades all over New Orleans-a band playing, people dancing and strutting and shouting, waving their hands, kids following along waving flags. One of those parades would start down the street, and all kinds of people when they saw it pass would forget all about what they was doing and just take off after it, just joining in the fun. You know how it is-a parade, it just makes you stop anything you’re doing; you stop working, eating, any damn’ thing, and you run on out, and if you can’t get in it you just get as close as you can...........

..........Then there were the funerals. There used to be a lot of clubs in New Orleans, social clubs. They used to meet regular. They had nights for ladies; they played cards, they had concerts-a piano player or two or three musicians; it all depended what night in the week it was. Sometimes they used to have very serious meetings, and talk about how to do something good for members and the club and different things. When a member died, naturally all the members would meet at the club. They would have a brass band, the Onward Brass Band or Allen’s Brass Band, and they would go from the club to the house of the member which was dead, and would play not dance music but mortuary music until they got to be about a block from the residence of the dead person. Then the big drum would just give tempo as they approached. The members would all go in to see the corpse, and then they would take him out to the cemetery with funeral marches. And they’d bury him, and as soon as he was buried they would leave the cemetery with that piece "Didn’t He Ramble". That was a lovely piece and it’s really the story about a bull. This bull, all through his life he rambled and rambled until the butcher cut him down. Well, that really meant that this member he rambled till the Lord cut him down; and that was the end of that."

Treat It Gentle - The Second Line . Sidney Bechet

Music - " Flee as a Bird: Oh, didn't he Ramble" - Louis Armstrong.

One of the major art inspirations for this work is the wonderful, evocative illustrations done by Morton Roberts, which I discovered in "Life" magazine in December 1958, and which I've carried around the world with me.
You can see the art at this link:

Life Magazine December 1958