Listening Back

Tag: jazz

  • “You’re in the right church, but in the wrong pew”

    “You’re in the right church, but in the wrong pew”

    This is a woman with attitude. This is a band with attitude. Mamie Smith and her Jazz Hounds were launched into the world of recorded music as the real sound of African American jazz in the early 20s after several years of an often fairly tidied up version in more respectable arrangements by mostly white…

  • Modernism in miniature?

    Modernism in miniature?

    Here we are at post no. 12 in this series on recordings of 1922 and there’s been little mention of the m-word. 1922 is often seen as a crucial year in the history of Modernism – the year that saw the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses and T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland. And both writers were…

  • “At night when you’re asleep, into your tent I’ll creep,” sang The Beatles

    “At night when you’re asleep, into your tent I’ll creep,” sang The Beatles

    A Jewish Russian-Hungarian band leader (Dajos Béla) and his Berlin-based salon orchestra (Künstler-Kapelle) playing an Arabian shimmy (“Arabischer Shimmy”) by an American composer (Ted Snyder) written in response to a book by an English author (Edith Maud Hull), and made popular by a hit silent film (The Sheik), starring an Italian actor (Rudolph Valentino). What…