Thursday, July 12, 2012

how to modify a preconceived pre-show play list

Resubmitting as a post rather than a comment [just learning how to do this]

This list came together during the week as I heard different musical passages in my heart & head. I reworked the second half of the program at 7:20 this morning after realizing that my decision to end with Dodo Marmarosa's "Bopmatism" had originally grown out of a desire to air the Count Basie Orchestra's 1940 recording of Lester Young's "Tickle Toe". To my sensibilities the two pieces seem more than slightly related. Consulting Frank Buchmann-Moller's Lester Young 'solography' "You Got To Be Original, Man!" I encountered this passage describing the origins of 'Tickle Toe': "The theme has its own story, pointed out by Richard Sudhalter. Tickle Toe was a tap dancer and maybe also a drug pusher, but the most interesting thing here is the material used for the composition." Elements include "arpeggios taken from an exercise book for saxophone players which was widely used in the 1920s. Lester may have used that particular book and remembered some of the exercises." There is also a section that is "identical with a solo played by Bix Beiderbecke on a recording of 'When' by the Paul Whiteman band on March 12 1938". Confronted with this delightful evidence, and after listening to the Beiderbecke solo in question, I eliminated a Jay McShann recording from the list in order to make room for Bix & Prez, as it were. This also necessitated a restructuring of the second half of the playlist, so that it "sounded right" to my heart & head. An example of how a show can be cobbled together and tweaked around beforehand. 



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