Mean Tones And High Notes, by Smoking Time Jazz Club

Mean Tones And High Notes

by Smoking Time Jazz Club

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rayray2020 Great band. I gave it a listen and just let it repeat a couple times. It's lovely. Favorite track: Willie The Weeper.

thierrybrittany Un de mes groupes préférés car on peut danser le swing sur beaucoup de morceaux de Smoking Time Jazz Club.
De plus, les musiciens sont tous excellents même quand ils changent ! Et la voix et la personnalité de Sarah Peterson ...
Il y a une vraie recherche historique des compositeurs qui ont créé le swing il y a100 ans. Favorite track: The Breeze.

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Full Digital Discography

11

releases

Get all 11 Smoking Time Jazz Club releases available on Bandcamp and save 35%.

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Six Blueses, Five Joys And A Stomp, Mean Tones And High Notes, Contrapuntal Stomp, Take Your Time And Fly, Ain't We Fortunate!, Make A Tadpole Holler Whale, Everything Is Righteous, Stampede, and 3 more. , and , .

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1.	Willie The Weeper 03:46	buy track
2.	Somebody's Been Lovin' My Baby 04:05	buy track
3.	Savoy Blues 04:50	buy track
4.	Keep It To Yourself 03:45	buy track
5.	Put 'Em Down Blues 03:24	buy track
6.	Friction 03:07	buy track
7.	Farewell Blues 05:25	buy track
8.	The Breeze 03:24	buy track
9.	Playin My SaxOphone 03:04	buy track
10.	Big Chief Battle Axe 04:25	buy track
11.	Railroad Blues 04:35	buy track
12.	Blue Trombone Stomp 02:52	buy track
13.	Love Songs Of The Nile 04:22	buy track

about

Nominated by Offbeat Magazine’s “Best Of The Beat” Awards:
Best Traditional Jazz Band and Best Traditional Jazz Album Of 2022

Everything is oaks and herbs my nerbs. The city’s music is it’s rhythmical unguent, a melodic tisane born of the earth and the characters of it’s inhabitants. It transforms and transports and leads us to another place and helps us forget our troubles. Musicians are modern day healers, griots, culture bearers and repositories of oral tradition.

Smoking Time Jazz Club is celebrating their tenth year as a working traditional jazz band in New Orleans. There is a coruscating musical tradition to draw from in the city of New Orleans and their aim is to bring that music and those great musical ideas into the future and to play them with reverence and gratitude for those who created and lived them.

The sounds on their new album Mean Tones And High Notes grow hair go blind and explode. The horns growl, hiss, cough and squeak as notes bend, break, weaken, collapse and leave home. Rhythms spill over in syncopation and are compulsively juggled in handfuls then flung wildly away.

Jack Pritchett’s trumpet on Love Songs Of The Nile sounds fresh and alive but it’s not all blast and thunder, when the suit is hearts he’s a teddy bear.
Polycropped in the indigenous mode and a bad whamma-jamma, Sarah Peterson has a singing voice that shouts, hollers, calls, moans, weeps, cries and wails.
Thinking about it doesn’t cook rice, just ask Brett Gardner. On Railroad Blues his guitar simultaneously sounds as sophisticated as silk lingerie and crude as cotton overalls.
Then there’s the saxophone cyclone James Evans whose hearts delight is flutter tonguin’ a low down moan and holding high notes a long time on Playin’ My SaxOphone.
The bray of the sackbut is heard loud and clear on Blue Trombone Stomp when Russell Ramirez comes swingin’ out with a trombone shout!
Fate dealt Joe Goldberg four of a kind and when the smoke cleared he stood alone with his clarinet and his saxophones. He always plays a winning hand just listen to The Breeze as it blows through his reeds.
Be it gold it breaks be it jade it shatters, John Joyce and Mike Voelker’s bass and drum run together like two halves of a zipper in 4/4 time. Hear their handy work on Big Chief Battle Axe a jaunty little number that kicks like a backfiring chainsaw.

That’s Mean Tones And High Notes and it cert’ly sounds good to me!

credits

released November 11, 2020

Sarah Peterson - vocals
John Joyce - bass
Mike Voelker - drums
Jack Pritchett - trumpet
Russell Ramirez - trombone
Brett Gardner - guitar & banjo
Joe Goldberg - clarinet trx 1,7,8 & tenor saxaphone trx 4,6
James Evans - clarinet trx 1-3, 5-7,10-12 & c melody saxaphone trx 4,6,9,13 & vocals on track 9

Recorded and mixed February 5th, 2020 at Marigny Studios, New Orleans by Rick Nelson
Mastered by Justin Armstrong
Collage & pen album art by Sarah Peterson

Key to artists on the front cover collage left to right. Top row: Fess Williams and Bessie Smith. Middle row: Bunk Johnson’s Band (Bill Robinson, Alcide Pavageau, Bunk Johnson, Warren Baby Dodds, George Lewis, Alton Purnell, Lawrence Marrero) Joe King Oliver, DeDe & Billie Pierce, Baby Dodd’s hand, Trixie Smith. Bottom row: Sidney Bechet Quintet (Freddie Moore, George Pops Foster, Bunk Johnson, Sidney Bechet, Hank Duncan) Louis Armstrong’s Hot 5 (Louis Armstrong, Johnny St.Cyr, Johnny Dodds, Edward Kid Ory, Lil Hardin Armstrong) and Roy Palmer.

1.Willie The Weeper (Melrose 1904) * Louis Armstrong’s Hot 7 1928
2.Somebody’s Been Lovin’ My Baby (Jackson) * Monette Moore 1926
3.Savoy Blues (Ory) *Louis Armstrong’s Hot 5’s 1927
4.Keep It To Yourself (C.Williams) * Bessie Smith 1930
5.Put ‘Em Down Blues (Bennet) *Louis Armstrong’s Hot 5’s 1927
6.Friction (F. Williams) * Fess Williams’ Royal Flush Orchestra 1929
7.Farewell Blues (N.O.R.K) *King Oliver’s Dixie Syncopators 1927
8.The Breeze (Hanley, Goodwin) * Willie The Lion Smith 1930
9.Playin’ My SaxOphone (F. Williams) * Fess Williams’ Royal Flush Orchestra 1930
10. Big Chief Battle Axe (Allen) *Bunk Johnson’s Jazz Band 1942
11. Railroad Blues (T. Smith) *Trixie Smith 1925
12. Blue Trombone Stomp (Burton, Hudson) *Clifford Hayes’ Louisville Stompers 1928
13. Love Songs Of The Nile (Brown, Freed) *Billie And DeDe Pierce 1935
* the recording we adore.

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about

Smoking Time Jazz Club New Orleans, Louisiana

Played with reverence and gratitude for those who created and lived this music!

smokingtimejazzclub.com

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