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"I want this old-timey because I'm old-timey"
I have two early and not altogether irrelevant associations with traditional jazz. First, it provided background for the primitive black and white cartoons of my childhood, where jugs with X's on them indicated hard cider and easy disaster. Second, I first heard the spirituals on this recording in gentrified versions while drifting through my fundamentalist youth. All totally subjective, I admit, but then again what better way to mix a metaphor for the music of Narvin Kimball and his friends from the Preservation Hall Jazz Band the rash, anything goes velocity and wit of those ur-cartoons, plus the ragged ardor of those folk hymns where heartfelt soulfulness counted for much more than mere vocal finesse.
But what you'll hear on this disc is not the usual energetic, celebratory retrospective of traditional jazz we have come to expect from the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. This is also, and most importantly, the feature debut of Narvin Kimball, an 85 year-old phenomenon on banjo and voice, who graciously guides us through some highlights of the American songbook.
Converted from his high school ukulele to the banjo, Kimball began his professional career, paying his dues and refining his craft, aboard the now legendary paddle-wheel steamers "showboats," really that traveled the Mississippi from New Orleans to St. Paul for the Streckfus riverboat line. "If you had an opportunity to play on the steamers it was like having a post-graduate degree in music," Narvin recounts. Which brings us to his teacher, the formidable bandleader, disciplinarian and calliope player with the wonderful name, Fate Marable. The under appreciated and underrecorded Marable was apparently a genius at transforming talented but untutored, and sometimes ungovernable, New Orleans' musicians into disciplined players who were taught not only to read music but were also forced to learn the varied repertoire needed to please the varied audiences both white and black that were drawn to this itinerant music. (Alumni of "Marable U." included Louis Armstrong, Henry "Red" Allen, Pops Foster, Jimmy Blanton as well as Narvin Kimball.) I believe this largely accounts for the refreshing variety of music included here. This is not the standard N.O. canon of songs, despite the spirited support of Narvin's current colleagues from the Preservation Hall Jazz Band Percy Humphrey on trumpet, David Grillier on clarinet, Frank Demond on trombone, James Prevost on bass, Joe Lastie on drums, and Lars (What's-a-nice-Swede-like-you-doing-in-a-town-like-this?) Edegran on piano. The song selection is much more a reflection of what would have been heard on the river and in the river towns Tin Pan Alley songs, old standards like Lonesome Road, "singalongs," show tunes (Birth of the Blues was written in 1926 for Broadway's George White's Scandals!), spirituals, as well as the Big Easy chestnuts we assume.
This is what sets Narvin Kimball's long-overdue feature recording apart from so many reprises of New Orleans music. This is much more the music of the river than of the city. It's a sampler of musical Americana, jazz-inflected and make no mistake New Orleans style. Asked about the rationale for his selections, Kimball replied with disarming directness: "I chose these numbers because they have been played many times and are well-liked by the people who have listened to them over the years." Of course.
What you'll also notice is that this is the banjo-playing and singing of a seasoned and generous musician, long past the debilitating self-consciousness of ego. It is the fruition of a long life dedicated to jazz music, New Orleans variety. Son of a much admired musician-father (Henry Kimball was once the roommate of Louis Armstrong on the Streckfus riverboats), Narvin showed promise in an impromptu ukulele recital before a visiting banjoist and friend of his father. Satisfied, the visitor grandly announced, "Buy that boy an instrument and turn him over to me." After two years of rigorous study, Narvin was "accepted as a good banjoist." He adds, "Both my teacher and my father were very finicky and sticklers
for correctness in every way. Everything I learned from him he had written down in little study books." Ultimately, this disciplined and professional apprenticeship applied to local gigs led to the invitation to join Fate Marable on the steamers, a flattering indication in those days that you had "made it" as a musician.
This was the late '20s and early '30s and of course the beginning of hard times for everyone, but musicians already on a precarious financial ledge especially needed the bedrock of a steady income, so Kimball turned to the postal service. He worked there with the same pride he brought to his music: "37 years and I didn't miss a single day without pay." He balanced his day job with club dates at night, forging associations that would last well into the Preservation Hall years. The job meant he was anchored to the local, but such circumstances guaranteed that Kimball would be steeped in the tradition of New Orleans music. In William Carter's invaluable history, Preservation Hall (which includes a wonderful two-page profile of Narvin Kimball), there is a picture of a young Kimball with the Original Tuxedo Orchestra, circa 1928. Later, Narvin played bass for bands such as Sidney Desvigne's orchestra, as jazz entered the swing era, and finally, from 1958 to 1963, Kimball led his own group, The Gentlemen of Jazz.
But he is best known for what followed: his association with the Preservation Hall Jazz Bands. He was there from the start in 1961, joined by many New Orleans friends and cohorts who through the preceding decades had patched together livings and styles with a variety of groups. Kimball's left-handed banjo technique and heartfelt vocals quickly made him a mainstay, as he played his important role in defining the sound and continuity of that now legendary repository of New Orleans music. "Tempo is the key to the style," Kimball says, referring to the "traditional" N.O. treatment of any vehicle. He's uncomfortable with the label "dixieland," a "white" term for traditional music played at too fast a tempo, and with a showy style that ignores the blues and soul feel so crucial to authentic New Orleans jazz. "It's not the songs, it's the tempo," Narvin insists, "that makes a song a New Orleans song. With traditional jazz it is the pulsating, metronomic beat that moves along and bounces and makes people want to clap and dance." This is what Narvin had in mind, no doubt, when he prefaced this recording session with the exhortation, "I want this old-timey because I'm old-timeyI want a boom-bap, boom-bap rhythm, 4/4 from the bass and some flowers from the piano." For Narvin Kimball's first release as featured artist, you could say pun intended it's about time!
One last story. In 1945, Narvin was recovering from a tonsillectomy when the phone rang. It was Louis Armstrong, looking for a bass player while in town that week. (The banjo had been put aside in those years.)
"Well, I just got out of the hospital. I had my tonsils out," Kimball hedged.
"You don't play the bass with your tonsils," Armstrong parried. "I'll give you a drink and you'll feel fine."
"What are we going to play?" Narvin asked.
""I want to play jazz," Armstrong replied.
Narvin Kimball did play jazz that week, proudly, with Fate Marable's prize graduate. And Narvin Kimball still does.
Recorded by Kim Monday April 27, 1992 at Frozen Sound, Morgantown, West Virginia.
Liner notes by Ron Overton with initial research by Sheila Weinstein.
Produced, edited and mastered by Dan Kincaid, Master Cutting Room, New York City.
Albany Records gratefully acknowledges the sponsorship of George Weinstein whose support made this recording possible.
A New Kind of Love (4:18)
Birth of the Blues (4:51)
Clarinet Marmalade (6:19)
Percy Humphrey, trumpet · David Grillier, clarinet
Frank Demond, trombone · James Prevost, bass
Joe Lastie, drums · Lars Edegran, piano
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