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Take Two 12th Street Rag
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There is an interesting story behind this 1914 ragtime composition by Euday Bowman. Apparently, Euday and his friend "Raggedy Ed" were walking down 12th Street in Kansas City when Ed said he planned to open a pawn shop there. Euday is rumored to have said "If you get rich on those three balls, I'll write a piece on three notes to make myself rich."
Wikipedia tells us that: 'It was more than 15 years after Bowman composed the song before he actually wrote the music down in manuscript form. He returned to Texas briefly and tried to sell the piece to a company in Dallas; but he only had an offer of ten dollars for it and was told it really was not worth publishing. Returning to Kansas City, he sold it to Jenkins Music Company in 1913. The Jenkins company felt Bowman's arrangement was far too difficult however, hiring C. E. Wheeler to simplify it. With a big advertising push "12th Street Rag" began to sell better. In 1919, James S. Sumner added lyrics. The song was popular with early Kansas City bands and became a hit after Bennie Moten recorded it for RCA Victor in 1927, the same year Louis Armstrong and His Hot Seven recorded it.
12th Street Kansas Ciry 1923
The lyrics are not usually played and in fact they are pretty long. You can read them here - we have just included a sample.
In a certain city, where the girls are cute and pretty
They have a raggy, jazzy, jazz-time tune
When you hear that syncopated jazz created melody
You could dance all morning night and noon
When the slide trombone
And moaning saxophone begin to play
It will make you sad, 'twill make you glad
Oh boy, what joy
Burn my clothes for I'm in Heaven
Wish I had a million women
The tune has been recorded numerous times and used in various settings including films (e.g.The English Patient) and this steel guitar version in the cartoon SpongeBob SquarePants where one commentator writes: "Played this while my parents were arguing. They stopped because of it."
But for our two versions we start with a video of Louis Armstrong playing the tune in 1961 at the Italian nightclub La Bussola-Focette. The band here is Louis Armstrong (trumpet); Peanuts Hucko (clarinet); Trummy Young (trombone); Billy Kyle (piano); Mort Herbert (bass) and Danny Barcelona (drums). The picture is not particularly good but the sound is fine and we can feel how much the musicians are enjoying themselves:
Jazz-time music is the rage,
this is a syncopated age
Ev'rybody loves a jazz-time tune
For the music captivating,
sets your heart a-palpitating
You just can't make your feet behave
Ancients youths of sixty-four
Do steps they never did before
Father Time is mad, no one grows old
Oh boy, what joy
Put your loving arms around me
Say babe, ain't you glad you found me
But in Take Two we try to show how tunes can be approached in different ways and for our second take we have an audio version of Twelfth Street Rag from 1939 by saxophonist Lester Young with Count Basie and his Orchestra. The tune starts out played with a fun touch by Basie's piano and then Pres comes in with his solo picking it up again in conversation with the orchestra after Buck Clayton's (?) trumpet solo:
First you slide, and then you glide, then shimmie for a while
To the left, then to the right, "Lame Duck," "Get over Sal"
Watch your step then Pirouette, Fox Trot, then squeeze your pal
Over you comes stealing such a funny feeling
'Till you feel your senses reeling
Tantalizing, hypnotizing, mesmerizing strain
I can't get enough of it, please play it o'er again
I could dance forever to this refrain
To that 12th Street, oh, you 12th Street Rag
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