Here at last is a song about some guy.
I was listening to a collection of Soviet jazz on Youtube, and found this unexpectedly Hot Jazz, with very little info.
I was listening to a collection of Soviet jazz on Youtube, and found this unexpectedly Hot Jazz, with very little info.
The subject of the song, a "man from the South", who's identified by "a big cigar in his mouth", was totally irrelevant to the combo, who combined the styles of Raymond Scott, Fletcher Henderson and wild Betty Boop music. This was Stalin-era Soviet jazz?
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| Alexander Tsfasman |
The notes on the video were in Russian. I got the composer and title from that.
Alexander Tsfasman was a Ukrainian composer, one of the giants of Soviet jazz, and creator of the country's first jazz orchestra.
The track is available at Apple Music- who stole a couple of my pieces from an anthology and refused to give me a penny AND I HOPE YOU'RE NOT BUYING MUSIC FROM THOSE CAPITALISTS (kidding of course. If they had to pay people, maybe they wouldn't play anything. I know I wouldn't.)
The thing about their version, and maybe all the others except this one, is that it's screwed up-- there's like a half-beat missing from the intro. See for yourself:
My guess is, somewhere along the way, a misguided music producer who didn't understand the time nature of music (fixed beats per measure and all that) heard a glitch on this recording and simply chopped it out. So now there's a jump in the intro. Because who notices that kind of thing, huh? There's so many beats in an average song, you can probably throw out a few of them with no one noticing...
Why people with no rhythm sense end up producing music is a mystery to me. The same thing happened with "Dr. Jazz" on the Bonzo's "Cornology" collection (EMI Records). There's a drop-out during the bass clarinet solo, and they just made it 7/8 for a bar. If you want it complete, it's on vinyl. But the official CD version has an obvious glitch, and it's out there now, too. (And this is from the people who make themselves the "owners" of the music.)
I hope you enjoy what is perhaps the only restored version of this song. (Sorry about the low volume levels. When I made them louder, it got really distorted. I'm only a simple country sound nut, with my little wind-up deal, here.)
Why people with no rhythm sense end up producing music is a mystery to me. The same thing happened with "Dr. Jazz" on the Bonzo's "Cornology" collection (EMI Records). There's a drop-out during the bass clarinet solo, and they just made it 7/8 for a bar. If you want it complete, it's on vinyl. But the official CD version has an obvious glitch, and it's out there now, too. (And this is from the people who make themselves the "owners" of the music.)
I hope you enjoy what is perhaps the only restored version of this song. (Sorry about the low volume levels. When I made them louder, it got really distorted. I'm only a simple country sound nut, with my little wind-up deal, here.)
