Saturday, December 8, 2007

Dixieland Jamboree - Santo Pecora and His Dixieland Band - Verve Records

Dixieland Jamboree
Santo Pecora and His Dixieland Band
featuring Pete Fountain
Lu Watters and His Yerba Buena Jass Band




1955 Verve Records MG V-1008


Side One:
Santo Pecora and His Dixieland Band
1. Rose Of The Rio Grande
2. Basin Street Blues
3. Twelfth St. Rag
4. Canal Street Romp
5. March Of The Mardi Gras
6. Mahogany Hall Stomp
7. Listen
8. My Lou'siana
9. Maple Leaf Rag

Side Two:
Lu Watters and His Yerba Buena Jass Band
1. Ostrich Walk
2. Chanticleer
3. Down Home Rag
4. Doing The Hambone
5. Aunt Hagar's Blues
6. High Society
7. Muskrat Ramble
8. Bees Knees


Liner Notes:

Santo Pecora and His Dixieland Band

Personnel on:
Listen
March Of The Mardi Gras
My Lou'siana
Mahogany Hall Stomp
Recorded In New Orleans, LA, June, 1950.

George Girard (trumpet)
Santo Pecora (trombone)
Pete Fountain (clarinet)
Armand Hug (piano)
John Sense (bass and tuba)
Santo Pecoraro (drums)

Personnel on:
Canal Street Romp
Basin Street Blues
12th Street Rag
Rose Of The Rio Grande
Recorded In New Orleans, LA, 1950.

George Girard (trumpet)
Santo Pecora (trombone)
Pete Fountain (clarinet)
Fred Laudeman (piano)
Lou Massenter (bass)
Eddie Grady (drums)

Lu Watters and His Yerba Buena Jass Band

Personnel:
Lu Watters (trumpet)
Don Noakes (trombone)
Bob Helm (clarinet)
Wally Rose (piano)
Pat Patton (banjo)
Clancy Hayes (banjo and vocals)
Dick Lammi (bass and tuba)
Bill Dart (drums)

Recorded at "Hambone Kelly's", El Cerrito, CA, December 7, 1949

Cover design by David Stone Martin

Dixieland Jamboree

Here is an interesting contrast of Dixieland jazz styles - the one, Santo Pecora's, coming direct from the spawning place of jazz, New Orleans; the other, Lu Watters', stemming from the site of the latter-day Dixieland revival, San Francisco (a city which, incidentally, has always looked with particular fondness on the treasures of the past. The sociologists can make of it what they will, but it is a fact that New Orleans and San Francisco are beyond a doubt the most colorful cities in the United States and it is these two cities that have contributed so much to Dixieland jazz, past and present).

Santo Pecora and His Dixieland Band

The first half is devoted to SANTO PECORA (nee Pecoraro) the trombone master who stirred so much excitement and awe along the clubs of New Orleans' Bourbon St. Originally Pecora, who was born March 31, 1902, in New Orleans, was a student of the French horn but turned later to the trombone, this being clearly an instrument of more value in Dixieland jazz. Pecora first came to prominence when he was featured with the New Orleans Rhythm Kings in the mid-1920s and still later he toured with a number of dance bands and appeared in motion pictures from time to time. By 1942 Pecora was ready to return home to New Orleans and he has remained there, off and on, ever since. He is known best from his big-toned, driving trombone in the old "tail-gate" tradition. He is heard here in three Pecora originals, standard pop tunes and some Dixieland traditionals.

Lu Watters and His Yerba Buena Jass Band

LU WATTERS, nine years younger than Santo Pecora, has since retired at least temporarily from the music field but it was he who almost single-handedly spurred the Dixieland rebirth in San Francisco in 1940. Before this, Watters, who was born Dec. 19, 1911, at Santa Cruz, Calif., and first turned to the bugle at St. Joseph's Military Academy. He attended the University of San Francisco on a music scholarship and toured around the Far West and also, as a shipboard musician, on a slow boat to China and back. The Yerba Buena Jass Band - Yerba Buena being an island in the Bay and a symbol of the past since it was, San Francisco's first name - came next. Curiously since it was, after all, a jazz form recreated far from the place and time and circumstances of the original, there was nothing at all "dated" or stale in the Lu Watters music; a traditional form had been extended and done so with enormous vigor and a contagious spirit that is evident in this album.

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