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Listen
to sound samples from the CD below
Grandpa's Spells
Mandy Make Up
Your Mind
Dill Pickles Rag
Honeysuckle Rose
Viper's Drag
Pineapple Rag
Bethena Waltz
A Porter's Love Song
to a Chambermaid
The Smiler
Mr. Jelly Lord
Elite Syncopations
Snowy Morning Blues
Red Pepper Rag
Rose of
Washington Square
Can't Get Indiana
Off My Mind
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Lew and Mary Green's
Ragtime Evolution Quartet - Volume 1
A Tribute to John Chaffe
The
Ragtime Evolution Quartet may be a new concept, though followers of
traditional jazz and ragtime should need no introduction to Lew and Mary
Green. We know Lew through his 45 years with the Original Salty Dogs, and
ragtime enthusiasts probably heard Mary on piano during her 20 years at
the St. Louis Ragtime Festival.
When Lew and Mary moved to New York in 1971, they began working
gigs together. Later, Lew joined the Louisiana Repertory Jazz Ensemble, a
group led by clarinetist S. Frederick Starr, a noted academician with a
strong interest in performing authentic recreations of 1920s New Orleans
jazz standards. The Ragtime Evolution Quartet recording is an outgrowth of
both of these developments.
While working with the LRJE, Lew met banjoist John Chaffe and
bass/tuba player Tom Saunders, both fixtures on the New Orleans jazz
scene, and thought they’d work well on the ragtime material he’d been
doing with Mary. Chaffe died shortly after the first session, so the CD
was completed with a second session using two New York musicians, Mike
Peters on guitar and banjo, and Barry Bockus on bass.
This recording summarizes the music of the early 20th century just
as ragtime was evolving into jazz. The repertoire is neatly divided into
half ragtime and half later music, highlighting music associated with
greats of the era like Scott Joplin, Jelly Roll Morton, James P. Johnson
and Thomas "Fats" Waller, among others. The ragtime quartet is a
seldom-seen entity these days; Max Morath led one of the best remembered
such groups in the 1960s. The Green’s quartet, adding a cornet in place of
a second guitar or a violin, moves the music closer to the jazz side of
the ledger.
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