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Barrelhouse Jazzband Vienna

Barrelhouse Jazzband (Vienna)

... some old tapes! They show the Barrelhouse Jazzband of the 60ies in Vienna. Not suffice to say, they are great. This is the kind of music I like to hear. I like the interpretation and improvisation of Jazz songs composed, for instance, by Count Basie. I still start to cry, when I hear Lonesome World and my daddy´s horn. The interview preceding Lonesome World and I Got Rythm show Guenther Schifter asking first Horstl Bichler, then Otti Kitzler, Franz Bilik and Peter Hoffmann. Schifter tries to get out the most of them, well, musicians are people, who prefer to communicate in sounds. Courtesy of ORF Austria I added, but left everthing else unedited. However, the music is the message. The tapes I found must have been our mum´s, I copied them to DVD. These tapes are of Jazz historical value, I think.
It feels like home, this Jazz.

© Sybille Amber: Intellectual Property 2005/2006/2007

Jazz: BHBJ

I edited and cut this video, then published it on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOdMfU3S0Zc . Thanks to the Austrian ORF I could copy an old VHS to DVD in best quality, possible - on my machine. This is the Barrelhouse Jazzband located in Vienna in the 1960s of the 20th century: Heinz Feix (b), Peter Hoffmann (p), Otti Kitzler (t), Horsti Bichler (dr), Alfons Wuerzl (cl) and Norbert Vas (tb) are the musicians. They perform three pieces of Jazz, which were very popular in the 1920s: 1 is called Where Am I?, the second is the Flat Foot Floogie, the third on the Shimmy Sha Wabble.

Vienna - Barrelhouse Jazzband
This kind of Jazz focuses on entertainment, it was played in the cafés and bars, but also on the streets in the Deep South. The Barrelhouse Jazzband Vienna was honored for best classical Jazzband in the sixties, as were some of the musicians: Horsti Bichler, the drummer, and my daddy, Otti Kitzler playing trumpet and English horn. The BHBJ refers to the Chicago Style and Dixieland. They published several CDs, recently, and earlier a single and the famous Pferdeplatte.

Here I found something about the Flat Foot Floogie at Ethnopoetics including the lyrics. Jerome Rothenberg writes about lyrics:

"While the initial focus of ethnopoetics was on orality and performance, the discourse turned as well to the visible aspects of language — writing & inscription — both as a persistent contemporary concern & as an often unacknowledged kingpin of a revitalized & expanded ethnopoetics. In an age of cybernetic breakthroughs, the experimental tradition of modernist poetry & art has expanded our sense of language in all its forms, the written along with the oral. In doing this, it should also have sensitized us to the existence of a range of visual/verbal traditions and practices, not only in literate cultures but in those also that we have named "non"- or "pre"-literate — extending the meaning of literacy beyond a system of (phonetic) letters to the fact of writing itself." (Rothenberg: http://www.ubu.com/ethno/visuals.html).

Popularizing the Shimmy in America tells its story. The shimmy was a new kind of dancing dating back to 1910, and "One of the most talked-about dances of the time was `the shimmy`."(Bryant, Rebecca 2002 at JStor: American Music). This site explains a little bit more, where this kind of dance comes from: http://www.streetswing.com/histmain/z3shimy.htm: The shimmy goes back to "Haitan Voodoo" with shales of hips and shoulders. In this text one might stumble over the expression of sheet music, which is self-explaining: It denotes music, which was, for the first time, written on paper. Blues and Jazz were before delivered orally, or should I say early? There is another piece of music relating to the ability of dance, it is called I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate, here are the lyrics and sound, Satchmo played it, too.

The best way to learn about Jazz is to listen to the music: Listen to the sounds and try to get the lyrics. There are lots of internet sites about Jazz. Here are related links:

All About Jazz: http://www.allaboutjazz.com/

Big Band Database: http://nfo.net/

Jazzology: http://www.jazzology.com/jazzology_records.php

Chicago Jazz Archive: http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/su/cja/

Ein witziger Auszug aus Papa´s Tagebuch

So vergnuegte sich die Jugend ...

© Sybille Amber: Intellectual Property 2005/2006/2007

die streichholzschachtel

Im 18. Bezirk ...

© Sybille Amber: Intellectual Property 2005/2006/2007

Studio 15

Jazz im Studio 15.

© Sybille Amber: Intellectual Property 200572006/2007

Mausefalle

Papa´s Text spricht fuer sich selbst.

© Sybille Amber: Intellectual Property 200572006/2007

Gschnas

Ein Gschnas mit der Barrelhouse.

© Sybille Amber: Intellectual Property 2005/2006/2007

Das Riverboat

Das Riverboat in der Schwarzspanierstrasse war ein beliebter Treffpunkt, auch Literarisches wurde rezipiert.

© Sybille Amber: Intellectual Property 2005/2006/2007

Ueber die Anfaenge der Barrelhouse Jazzband

Papa notierte ueber die ersten Anfaenge unter dem Reklameflugzettel:
"Die ersten Anfaenge, noch unter dem Namen "rabble mop stompers", mit teils sehr variablen Besetzungen, z. B. Walter Voves dm, Werner Tritta bjo, Helmut Naderer dm, Otmar Kitzler tp, Franz Bilik, im Goiser Gmoa Keller, Zeit ungefaehr 1958 und 1959. Dann langsam beginnende Aufloesung, die mit Schliessung des Clubs endete."

© Sybille Amber: Intellectual Property 2005/2006/2007

Barrelhouse Video

This is a rip copy of an old VHS video I recorded with my digicam. It shows the Barrelhouse Jazzband, Vienna, including my daddy:

Barrelhouse Jazzband Single / Back

 
 

Barrelhouse Jazzband Single

Papa´s List

This is a list of Pap´s engagements, he wrote it himself.

© Sybille Amber: Intellectual Property 2005

Otti & Erich

Of course, we keep a lot of photos...from my daddy, Otti:



And his brother, Erich:



And the bill for their early trumpet / horn:

© Sybille Amber: Intellectual Property 2005