So I've been working on the flowsheet for the Wayback Machine show on Sunday. I worked on it Wednesday night, it came together really well, and I was congratulating myself on a job well done.
My own collection only goes back to about 1924-25, so I got a lot of music for the teens and early twenties from the Internet Archive. They have a great collection of audio files which collectors have recorded from their old 78s and Edison cylinders. Anything that old is public domain, so I don't even have to be cagey on the air about where it came from. I found great stuff too: one of the earliest recorded versions of "Alexander's Ragtime Band" sung by Billy Murray, some of the earliest recordings by Al Jolson and Eddie Cantor, and best of all, the first ever recordings of jazz, by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band in 1917.
The only task left was to listen to all the music I had downloaded and make sure there weren't any audio problems. Well, it turned out one of the files was bad, really distorted. A shame too, it was a song by Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake that I really wanted to play. Oh well, I found another good song for 1922 by Josephine Baker. Here's where things get complicated:
While looking for a song for 1922, I happened across a clean recording of Bessie Smith singing "St. Louis Blues" with Louis Armstrong. Wow, it would be great to play that in the show. I had been planning to play Bessie Smith's "Downhearted Blues," but I like "St. Louis Blues" better. The problem is that if I add "St. Louis Blues" in 1925, well first of all I lose "Yes Sir, That's My Baby!" which is what I was planning to play for 1925. Which is sad but not heartbreaking. But then I have to pull out "Downhearted Blues," and now I don't have a song for 1923. And I was planning to play "Heebie Jeebies" by Louis Armstrong's Hot Five, but that's 1926, and that would be two Louis Armstrong tracks in a row which wouldn't be so good. (That's a loss I can live with actually; "Heebie Jeebies" is a great song but I play it a lot.) So now I have nothing for 1926, and nothing with Louis Armstrong vocals.
I wasn't crazy about the song I had picked out for 1930, so I can swap in Armstrong's "If I Could Be With You," another classic. That's actually better because now I have Armstrong really early, on cornet, and then again on a slightly later piece with more singing and a bigger band. Where before I only had the one track from the Hot Five.
And for 1926 I can use either "Doctor Jazz" by Jelly Roll Morton or "Red Hot Henry Brown" by Margaret Young. The show is starting to run long, "If I Could Be With You" and "Doctor Jazz" are both longish tracks. And I couldn't stand to cut a whole song from later in the show; I've already made cuts that were painful. So I'd better go with "Red Hot Henry Brown" which is over a minute shorter. Except now I have a problem in 1924, because I had already chosen "Red Hot Mama" by the Brox Sisters, and that's way too similar to "Red Hot Henry Brown." One of them has to go. And has to be replaced by a short song, which is strangely hard to come by in the early twenties.
So to sum up, I either have a show that's done, but will disappoint me a little in the mid-twenties. Or a show that would be better, except with a couple of holes yet to be filled. And I'm wondering does this have to be so hard, or am I making it too complicated? The entire flowsheet wasn't like this, but parts of it definitely were. With only one song per year for most years, I feel like I have to make every song count: either really popular in its day, really important to music history, or really beloved by me.
I know I sound like a big old whiner, and I guess I am. In truth putting this show together has been a lot of fun. I hope it sounds good on Sunday.
Leave a comment