Can a toddler compose 1930s swing with a Johnny Jump Up? That’s the question I will answer today. To tell this story properly, I need to rewind again to that moment at the Eagles in December of 2013 when I issued a challenge to the band to come up with original music for the upcoming recording. We were toasting the year behind us with some backstage bourbon. Just to assure you, this refers to where we were when we were drinking the bourbon, not where we found the bourbon.
Right then Steve stepped up and surprised us. It was as if he was soda pop and my challenge shook him up, causing his bottle cap to pop off! If I may interrupt for a second, and you know I will, I’m pretty sure if Steve were soda pop, he would be the old style Mountain dew:
You have to admit, Steve “tickles your innards.”
Psssshh! A tune erupted from him with no more preamble than, “How about this?” It was a swinging, up-tempo, wordless number in a minor key. He kept saying, “And then there’s this part,” and another theme would pop out of his mouth without any false starts. I waited until I was sure this musical geyser had safely come to a rest before asking, “When did you write that?” It seemed so fresh in his mind I would have guessed he’d composed it during dinner before the Eagles. The story goes, however, that his son, Micah, possessed tireless hopping muscles as a toddler. He would express himself vertically in one of those Johnny Jump Up contraptions.
Micah in his chosen medium, along with Uncle Jim and Zippy. Zippy is the dog.
So there’s Steve, about a quarter century ago, watching his son bounce around, and out popped music. Though he had committed the flashes of melodies to paper, they had lain dormant for many years, never really reaching the light of day. Yet, as we heard at the Eagles, the song seems to always reside in an easy-to-reach file in Steve’s brain. After a successful archeological dig at his house, he produced the physical evidence of his composition, two old sheets of staff paper scribbled with six different melodies. Atop one of the sheets was written the title, “J For Jump.” It sounds like one of those alphabet books, with a picture of jumping next to the letter J. Actually, J is Micah’s middle name. So it’s more like one of those times when you say, “If you look up jump in the dictionary, you’ll see a picture of J.” Steve asked if I would arrange it for the band.
We only had a little over two months before the recording, so I set to work. After pounding away at my piano for a bit, I realized these six seemingly disparate melodies all had a cohesive feel. Maybe watching a toddler employing a Johnny Jump Up causes your brain to scatter handfuls of short, related tunes all about the place. Do you know how when you listen to a ‘20s/’30s swing recording—maybe Fletcher Henderson or somebody—and it amazes you with all the twists and turns the band takes in such a short time? That time was limited by the recording technology of the day, so they made the most of it. From main themes and secondary themes, to underlying riffs and interludes, you really find out how much a band can get done in three minutes! Well, this is how Steve’s melodies felt to me. Separate, but all of a species. Though I don’t quite have Micah and Steve’s handle on Johnny Jump Up composing, I had the temerity to add a couple of my scribbles to his scribbles—some chords here, and a harmony or three there.
Then I assembled the six pieces in an order I felt would make for a great single expression. Kind of like a wedding photographer herding relatives. Suddenly, there it was. From a Bouncing Micah, through the Mind of Steve, to the judicious use of Tony’s Music Arranging Hot Glue Gun, the Southside Aces had our own 1930s three-minute swing odyssey! New Old Jazz. Our good friend Dave over at Hymie’s Vintage Records likened the feel of it to Benny Goodman’s “Sing, Sing, Sing.” Listen to it now; Micah and Steve’s Johnny Jump Up masterpiece!
No comments:
Post a Comment