00 Notes.txt
JOE "FINGERS" CARR & "BIG" TINY LITTLE
"Mr. Ragtime Meets Mr. Honky Tonk"
Coral CRL 757444 [mono was 57444], 1963
LP rip (320 kbps) by Dick Baker, April 2015
1. Down Yonder (L. Wolfe Gilbert
2. Cleopatra Rag (Joseph F. Lamb)
6. Mandy (Irving Berlin)
7. Play a Simple Melody (Irving Berlin)
8. Nocturne for Honky Tonk Piano (Lou Busch)
11. Nola (Felix Arndt)
12. Little Rock Getaway (Joe Sullivan)
A strutting ragtime piano mixes it up with a swaggering barrel-house box. On the left: "Big" Tiny Little, heavyweight honky-tonker. On the right: Joe "Fingers" Carr, bantamweight Ragtime Maestro for moderns.
A honky-tonk ragtime cutting contest such as this actually is by no means new. Battles between top keyboard contenders have been prime social events since the turn of the century in myriad saloons from New Orleans to Memphis, from Chicago to New York. One of the most renowned ragtime exponents, Tony Jackson, was the victor in many such encounters. Jelly Roll Morton, by his own reckoning, was master of all such lists he entered. Thus, Fingers and Tiny, backed by their respective rhythm sections, are merely carrying forward a hallowed tradition. And thanks to modern recording
techniques, their respective contributions are set forth on this highly syncopated album.
"There's inherent humor in this music," Fingers noted at the record date. A one-man task force in the renaissance of ragtime during the past decade, he added, "I don't mean it's funny music in and of itself; but the humor is in it all the same."
Still in his early 30s, Minnesota-born "Big" Tiny Little concurs in his own quiet way. The evidence is there for all ears as Tiny counters Fingers rag-dashes all the way with his own brand of forthright barre1-house stomping.
A glance at these song titles should support Fingers' contention on the fun to be found in the music. There is, for one, "Cleopatra Rag," which could suggest that Liz Taylor and Richard Burton should revamp their capers on the Todd-AO screen to conform with the lusty Cleo of a more unsophisticated cinematic era. By the lights of Tiny and Fingers, she must have been a far more uninhibited lass. And the nautch-like
guitars and raucous trombone smears in Lou Busch's arrangement (he wrote all the charts in the album, incidentally) would seem to telegraph a message to The Lovers of the Nile--circa 1963.
The charmingly melodic "Arriba Aruba" also appears to convey a sense of the light-and-laughing to the listener.
So go the chuckles in this rendezvous of ragtime. "Sonny Boy," with its contrasting piano stylings of Fingers and Tiny and the schmaltzy trombone of Kent Larsen, fairly cries out, "Bring back the saloon of my grandfather." It's all there . . . the sawdust floor and the omnipresent spittoon for convenience of the barfly. Lou Busch's "Nocturne for Honky Tonk Piano" (or "Rhapsody in Ragtime," depending upon where your barstool's at) seems fiendishly calculated to set Ludwig Van Beethoven spinning in his crypt. But then, Ludwig was pretty groovy, too.
The avoirdupois may be uneven, folks, but that just makes the contest more interesting. The reason is simple, it's not the poundage that counts--it's the digital dexterity. Bantam or heavyweight, what emerges from your Hi-Fi speakers in this rocking contest is not weight or reach, but music--great music!
--Anthony Corbett
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