Tomtit Threesome: Lemme See Your Jazz Hands (TMR 45)

Viking Jazz × Dixieland Jazz × Manouche Jazz

Django Reinhardt, ca. 1946. Photo by William P. Gottlieb. Public domain. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Why Viking jazz? Because Papa Bue’s Viking Jazzband leader and trombonist Arne Bue Jensen was from Denmark of course. American clarinetist George Lewis joined the band on a 1959 release from Storyville Record and together they laid down just over a dozen tracks in Dixieland jazz. Whether performing traditional numbers like “The Old Rugged Cross” and “In the Sweet Bye and Bye” or more recent compositions like “The Old Spinning Wheel” (1933) by songwriter Billy Hill, the band likes its jazz foot-tappin’ hot. Recommended track: “Maisie.”

Speaking of hoppin’ affairs, sixytsomethings and seventysomethings can throw down with the best. In 1964, jazz pianist and singer Sweet Emma and the Preservation Hall Band recorded a performance at the behest of local enthusiasts Minnesota Jazz Sponsors. The band’s namesake, a venue in the French Quarter of New Orleans, released the album on its own label, copies available for purchase at the hall. How my copy, signed by Sweet Emma herself and a couple other illegible worthies, found its way to a local secondhand shop in Japan is anyone’s guess. Recommended track: “Clarinet Marmalade.”

Like Sweet Emma, Belgian-Romani “gypsy jazz” guitarist Django Reinhardt is legend. He exhibits the kind of virtuosity that other guitarists speak of with awe. According to notes on a 1964 release from Ace of Club Records collecting recordings from 1938 to 1946, Reinhardt burnt his left hand fighting a caravan fire when he was 18, resulting in two of his fingers becoming paralyzed. You wouldn’t know it from the way his hands flutter around his instrument, keeping every track well off the ground. Recommended track: “Stomping at Decca”

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