Lytell,Jimmy Complete Pathe Recordings CD

Between 1926 and 1928 Jimmy Lytell recorded some eighteen solo titles for Pathe, usually accompanied by piano and banjo or guitar. They show steady development, keeping pace with the increasingly sophisticated harmonic and melodic vocabulary of the time, while remaining curiously inert rhythmically. His phrasing is quite foursquare, tidy patterns that always conform to the two - and four-bar phrases of the songs and invariably land on the downbeat of a bar. It's effect is comparable, perhaps, to that of a prose passage constructed entirely of declarative sentences in subject-predicate-object order. There are moments when the ear longs for a subordinate clause, alternation of phrase lengths, anything asymmetrical. No one at Pathe could have expected that these records would have scholars like Richard Sudhalter waxing eloquent nearly 75 years later. Nor were they created as limited editions for collectors. Like almost everything else from the Twenties that we now enshrine in discographies and on our shelves as genuine "Jazz," Jimmy Lytell's clarinet solos were musical inventory, produced because Pathe calculated that the records might sell.

1. Down Town Fling 2. Buggy Blues 3. Old Folk's Shuffle 4. Red House Blues 5. Messin' Around 6. Messin' Around 7. Coney Island Washboard 8. Alexander's Ragtime Band 9. Pardon the Glove 10. Pardon the Glove 11. Zulu Wail 12. Zulu Wail [Alternate] [Alternate Take] 13. Fakir's Rhythm 14. Headin' for Harlem 15. Sugar 16. Why Be Blue 17. Stockholm Stomp 18. Missouri Squabble 19. Missouri Squabble [Alternate] [Alternate Take] 20. Missouri Squabble [Alternate #2] [Alternate Take] 21. Davenport Blues 22. Davenport Blues [Alternate] [Alternate Take] 23. Sweet Emmalina 24. Sweet Emmalina [Alternate] [Alternate Take] 25. Yellow Dog Blues