14 Tunes:
Let Your Lips Touch My Lips, Over The Waves, Keep On Doin' What You're Doin', Cherokee Maiden, Snake Rag, 'Round The Bend of the Road, The Chant, Original Jelly Roll Blues, Love Dreams, Sweet Substitute, Satanic Blues, Down Among the Sheltering Palms, Where The Blue of the Night, High Society.

Recorded Nov. 2009, Live at UNH Oct 2009, Jan 2010. Live tracks engineered by Ryan Parker, all others by Peter Kontrimas.  For more info see www.wolverinejazzband.com

Dance Hall Days
The music on this, the  ninth CD by the Wolverine Jazz Band, is a reflection of some of the variety you might have expected to hear in a dance hall in New Orleans at various times.  Bands in New Orleans were nothing if not functional - they didn't play an endless succession of "standards" or Jazz tunes.  The greatest musicians from the Crescent City saw themselves as craftsmen, not artists, and their function as being entertainers and purveyors of dance music.  While Jelly Roll Morton was making his Red Hot Peppers recordings and Louis Armstrong was rolling out his Hot Fives, each were engaged nightly playing in dance halls and cabarets in gangland Chicago where pleasing the public was not merely a good idea, it was essential for survival.

Two of the selections on this disc ("Let Your Lips Touch My Lips" and "Love Dreams") are continuations of our tribute to the Halfway House Orchestra of New Orleans.  This group contained no well known or recognized musician other than clarinetist Sidney Arodin, but it created a body of recordings of dance-oriented numbers highlighted by clever and intricate arrangements.  We would like to dedicate this CD to the memory of the wonderful pianist and musician Ed Metz, Sr., who transcribed all the Halfway House repertoire and who was unfailingly complimentary of our efforts to perpetuate it.

Jelly Roll was a great synthesizer of New Orleans music - we pay tribute to him here with "Original Jelly Roll Blues" (one of his first published numbers,) "The Chant" (actually composed by white Chicago pianist Mel Stitzel but immortalized by a classic Jelly Roll arrangement,) and "Sweet Substitute" (one of Morton's last pieces.)  We also nod to his contemporaries, the Original Dixieland Jazz Band with "Satanic Blues" and King Oliver with "Snake Rag."

Tin Pan Alley fare was also fair game for New Orleans bands throughout the 20th Century.  The 1914 chestnut "Down Among The Sheltering Palms" is given a straight reading with a classic Jimmy Mazzy vocal along the way.  More great Mazzy moments come on Big Crosby's theme "Where The Blue of the Night" and "Keep On Doin' What You're Doin" (recorded in the mid-30's by Paul Robeson and Jack Teagarden) but my favorite is Jimmy's solo rendition of "Round The Bend Of The Road."  This pseudo-spiritual was recorded by Robeson and apparently no one else until Jimmy found it and he here restores it to circulation with a truly moving performance.

New Orleans bands have always been noted for finding odd tunes and making them their own.  We hope our version of the Western Swing anthem "Cherokee Maiden" (see Bob Wills, Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard for other takes) with Tom Boates singing lead will be accepted in that spirit.  "Over The Waves" began its life as a Mexican march but was adopted by groups in New Orleans in the same way as were so many other similar pieces.  Speaking of our other march, bassist Wellman Braud said in an interview "It wasn't a dance in New Orleans until we played 'High Society.'"

We hope you enjoy this disc - if you especially like the two live tracks on here you will definitely love our tenth CD, which will be the remainder of the tracks from that same concert!