[78-L] Vitaphones (Sissle, Bailey, Usera et all), into Usera's arrangments

[yves francois]

 Earl
RE: the Vitaphone short with Nobel Sissle 
   ... yes, Buster Bailey is on clarinet (it seems that Sissle went between Bailey and Bechet a bit),for my money however, on "Tiger rag" the really good solos are by two other musicians I would like to note (Bailey's solo was also recorded to similar effect as "Young Man On A Horn Goes Berserk" in late 1938, I believe it is a routine to show off his rather prodigious technique), the curiously underrated trumpeter Clarence Brereton has IMHO the best solo (worked for Sissle a lot, he recorded with Dave Nelson and I believe John Kirby as well), but also note Ramon Moncho Usera (on tenor sax), who later arranged some terrific clarinet ensembles in back of the brilliant singer Daniel Santos (one of my favorite vocalists in the Latin world of vocalists) and other vocalists of that genre, I wonder if you are aware of them.
   The Santos records of the early 40's are terrific music (I am mostly a jazz collector, but I also collect Latin dance music, French variety hall, Biguines, and West Afrcian populist musics until it gets too "modern"* for my taste), as are the other vocalists who had Usera's arrangements, very tasteful groupings of a trumpet , 2 to 3 clarinets, and a rhythm section of (sometimes) piano, guitar, bass and about 2 percussionists (about my favorite instrumentation for these sort of rhythms, the clarinet do occasionally double on saxophones). By the way an excellent CD was compiled by Harlequin in the 90's of Usera's talents (he arranged much of the Sissle book as well, though not the Bechet features, though they did compose "Under The Creole Moon").
Yves Francois

PS I think your personal friend Adelaide Hall recorded 2 titles with a band that included Usera in 1928 for Brunswick (they also recorded 2 instrumentals).

PPS the Vitaphone's catch a lot of good bands, the best one musically is the Snowden, the intro "Bugle call Rag" is excellent, thought the "Tiger rag" is a bit fast for my taste (as is the Sissle), but, again like the Sissle , it is great fun. One of the dancers on that one is Rubberlegs Williams who later recorded with Charlie Parker ... he is better as a dancer IMHO

* i don't care for rock or disco effects in most "world" music of the last couple of decades

--- On Sun, 1/25/09, Spats <spats47 at ntlworld.com> wrote:

> From: Spats <spats47 at ntlworld.com>
> Subject: [78-L] Racialism, Vitaphones and Obama!
> To: 78-l at klickitat.78online.com
> Date: Sunday, January 25, 2009, 7:00 AM
> Hi!
> 
> 
> ...On the other hand, there were black features with fantastic
> 
> performers from my old friend Adelaide Hall in her youth,
> The 
> Nicholas Bros., when still VERY young, Eubie Blake, Noble
> Sissle (was 
> that Buster Bailey on clarinet?), and so on.  They were
> all, 
> of-course, magnificent... 
> Earl.
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