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Andy Schumm
Oliver-Smith Incomparables: Stomp Your Stuff
by Pierre Giroux
Many bands play early jazz these days, but few make it sound as if the ink is still wet on the page. The Oliver-Smith Incomparables accomplish exactly that on Stomp Your Stuff, a recording that salutes the musical language of Jelly Roll Morton without ever treating it as a historical artifact. Pianist Andrew Oliver and drummer Hal Smith lead an exceptional ensemble featuring Colin Hancock on cornet, Andy Schumm on clarinet-cornet, T.J. Müller on trombone-cornet-vocal, Jacob Alspach on guitar-banjo, and ...
Continue Reading...Oliver-Smith Incomparables: Stomp Your Stuff
by Jack Bowers
Although he was best known as a pianist, the late Jelly Roll Morton was never shy when it came to blowing his own horn. Among Morton's claims was that he had “invented" jazz, an assertion that almost surely stretches the truth but is virtually impossible to disprove. What is known is that Morton was playing a form of jazz as early as 1904 and that he and a later band, the Red Hot Peppers, helped place “hot jazz" on the ...
Continue Reading...The New Wonders: Steppin' Out
by Jack Bowers
Although the ten songs performed by cornetist Mike Davis' Brooklyn-based septet, The New Wonders, on the group's second album, Steppin' Out, are well removed from new, most have stood the test of time and remained popular with a small yet devoted number of trad jazz enthusiasts, some for a century or more. The New Wonders carry forward a storied tradition that dates at least as far back as the Original Dixieland Jazz Band in the early 1920s and whose best-known ...
Continue Reading...The New Wonders: Steppin' Out
by Nicholas F. Mondello
There's something effervescent and addictive about the music of the late 1920s. Perhaps it is the fact that technological advancements allow for superior sound quality of the music of Louis Armstrong's Hot Five and Hot Seven, Bix Beiderbecke and Sidney Bechet. Reinforcement from period entertainment such as “Boardwalk Empire," (HBO, 2010-14) “The Great Gatsby," (Warner Brothers, 2013) et al, has opened new ears to the classic stylings. With Steppin' Out, cornetist Mike Davis and his cadre of cats offer a ...
Continue Reading...Do You Speak Bix? (Andy Schumm and His Bixologists at Whitley Bay 2010)
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Jazz Lives by Michael Steinman
The title is not as fanciful as it seems. Bix Beiderbecke lived in and created his own world, much as Lester Young did—and it had its own private musical language. Think of the special break on SOMEBODY STOLE MY GAL, the modulation into the vocal on SUNDAY, and more. So when a group of musicians get together to play the Bix-and-Tram repertoire, it's especially rewarding when they know all the curves in the road and share all the musical in-jokes. ...
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For Bix: Andy Schumm at Chautauqua (Sept. 18, 2010)
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Jazz Lives by Michael Steinman
To those who haven't yet heard him, the delight I and others take in Andy Schumm's playing might seem a bit excessive. “Who is this young whipper-snapper? If he were any good—to paraphrase Larkin's Law of Reissues—I'd have all his Orthophonic Victors in green sleeves by now. There are no entries for ANDY SCHUMM AND HIS SHOOTING STARS in any of my discographies!" Andy has us all waiting for his first—of many—compact disc as a leader. But what he have ...
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Andy Schumm Leads the Way at Chautauqua (Sept. 18, 2010)
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Jazz Lives by Michael Steinman
If you've been reading this blog even casually, the name Andy Schumm—the hot cornet / piano man from Milwaukee—will not be new to you. And he continues to offer surprises: his fine, ringing lead; his well-chosen tempos; his deep immersion in the repertoire; the ease with which he melds the heroic choruses of the recordings we've all come to treasure with his own improvisations . . . and more. Here's the first set he led at the 2010 Jazz at ...
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Andy Schumm and His Bixologists at Whitley Bay (July 10, 2010)
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Jazz Lives by Michael Steinman
Andy Schumm is a generous person and musician, and when given a block of time, congenial musical friends, and a receptive audience, he doesn't spare himself. What follows is the first set of a Bix Beiderbecke-themed morning concert at the 2010 Whitley Bay International Jazz Festival, recorded on July 10, 2010. Andy played cornet and piano; his colleagues were Paul Munnery, trombone; Norman Field, reeds and persiflage; Paul Asaro, piano; Jacob Ullberger, banjo and guitar; Frans Sjostrom, bass saxophone; Josh ...
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