Audio : April, 1957
Charles A. Robertson

Taped during a concert at Boston’s Symphony Hall on Oct. 26, 1956, five of the nine compositions on this LP are previously unrecorded Wilbur DeParis originals, making automatic its acquisition by New Orleans style devotees. So this seemed to be a good opportunity to visit the fifty-five-year-old bandleader to have him relate how he went about selecting his audio system and ask him whether it was worth the effort. A modernistic apartment spread over the third floor of an old loft building on West 19th Street in Manhattan is the home of this pet-loving bachelor. Along with Zizi, his French poodle, it is shared by tanks of tropical fish and numerous cages of parakeets and rare birds.

In the early days of LP, DeParis purchased the usual factory packaged three-way combination and soon wanted something better as high fidelity became publicized. As he read more about the subject, he determined to get components capable of satisfying his needs for some time, but like most audio novices, was bewildered as to how to go about it. Three years ago, when the Institute of Radio Engineers was in session at the Kingsbridge Armory, he got unexpected help. As he tells the story: “A group from the convention dropped into Jimmy Ryan’s to relax and catch the band. In conversation between sets, I asked their advice and soon as sheet of paper was going around the table as each one made suggestions and changes. Finally, I had a list they all more or less agreed on.”

But some time was to elapse before he could locate two engineers who would undertake the installation. By then progress in the industry warranted their suggestion of two changes which he was able to check with the same group, back for the next year’s convention. Work began on the rack mounting, about seven feet high, topped by a Berlant Concertone tape recorder which can be used binaurally with two carefully oriented Bozak B-305 two-woofer speaker systems. Next comes a REL Precedent tuner, which may soon be off the market as that company concentrates on government work, and an Interelectronics preamp and amplifier. One of the last changes added a Weathers am and cartridge on which DeParis comments, “I have heard of people having trouble with these because they are so sensitive. I just keep it clean and it works fine. For older 78s, I weight it with a subway token.” The turntable is a Rek-O-Kut Rondine.

When asked to compare it with his old combination there was emphatic approval: “There is no comparison. They are as different as night and day. I have the building to myself at night so I can really play that thing. I can go into my darkroom and it will sound as though the band is all there in the next room. I am looking for fresh copies of all my 78s as I can hear things on them I never heard before.”

As one who has been going to recording studios for more than twenty-five years with both big bands and small groups, DeParis commented: “I have never seen such care taken with audio as in the past few years. And now that many dates are set up for stereophonic tapes, even more pains are taken. Everyone seems to be trying for better sound and my system has been a big help in keeping me up-to-date. I can make occasional tape checks of the band, especially when working out an original.”

On the subject of on-the-spot recording, he was noncommittal, stating: “It is true that the success of a session often depends upon how the musicians feel, but I wouldn’t want to say how much an audience contributes to that feeling. There are a couple of numbers on this one that I might have liked to remake in a studio, but then the record would be uneven. There is atmosphere and the open sound is pleasant for a change.”

When this appears in print Wilbur and the band, including Lee Blair who was missing for a time, will be in West Africa on a tour of a month an d possibly more, under the auspices of the International Exchange Program of the American National Theatre and Academy, beginning March 6th in Accra, Nigeria. Sierra Leone, Liberia, and French West Africa are on the itinerary. It will be his first visit and he is looking forward to it with the anticipation of one who has kept close watch on the progress made there since the war. “I didn’t expect them to come along so fast,” he said. “All the men in the band want to see what is being done there. My camera will go along and I am going to find out if weight restrictions will allow a small tape recorder.”

The Symphony Hall album is marked by its freshness of material. The originals include an addition to the DeParis “M” series in the Spanish rhythms of Majorca. Banjoker is designed for the banjo of Lee Blair, and Sonny White has his say in Piano Blues. Toll Gate Blues and Wrought Iron Rag impress with well-executed ensembles and the searing cornet and trumpet passages of Sidney DeParis.

Omer Simeon arranged Juba Dance to feature his clarinet, and if anyone was feeling right on this day, it was this veteran with his superb choruses. Wilbert Kirk, the new drummer and graduate of the Fate Marable riverboat band, brightens up Sister Kate with two harmonica interludes. Cielito Lindo and Farewell Blues complete a recording that is good for a concert performance, aside from the enthusiastic and heavy-handed applause in the middle of some numbers.

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Billboard : 02/02/1957
Score of 77

Set was cut at a Boston jazz concert and has a good, live sound, plus announcements by the maestro. DeParis and his accomplished musicians recreated the finest qualities of traditional New Orleans jazz, mindful of its origins in French, Spanish and African music, and in the blues and ragtime. The program draws on all of those. Traditional jazz buyers and many with more sophisticated jazz tastes will go for this fine specimen.

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San Francisco Chronicle
Ralph J. Gleason : 02/24/1957

Recorded at Symphony Hall in Boston, this is the best traditional band residing in the East these days, a fine group of mellow-sounding and easy-swinging veteran jazzmen. This is not as exciting as their previous work, but it is a good traditional jazz album and is very well recorded.

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Saturday Review
Wilder Hobson : 02/23/1957

Admirers of the marble Abraham Lincoln seated in his Washington Memorial will be interested in the cover of a recent album. This shows Wilbur DeParis similarly posed among the stony grandeurs of Boston’s Symphony Hall, together with his trombone case and his French poodle, Zizi. DeParis is that warm wizard who for more than a decade has represented the New Orleans tradition at Ryan’s barrelhouse on West 52nd Street in New York City. He gets away, from time to time, to such august haunts as Boston, and on this occasion he delivered himself of another irresistible program of music inspired by his New Orleans background, widened by his variegated middleground (including no little of Europe), and encouraged, night after night, by his enthusiastic foreground. This, in every hallowed sense of the word, is a jazz band. The personnel, as usual, features his brother Sidney on the trumpet and the veteran Omer Simeon on the clarinet; elsewhere there are Sonny White, piano; Lee Blair, southpaw banjo; Benny Moten, bass, and Wilbert Kirk, drums and harmonica supreme. The numbers include another of Wilbur’s originals in the neo-tropic style, Majorca, plus specialties which, by means of an anthropological run-down, I am able to identify as composed Creole; urban blues; metallic razzamatazz; Chicago nostalgic, etc. The great things about Wilbur DeParis, as the longevity of his band might suggest, is honest syncopated worth, and the left-handed banjo playing and newly acclimated mouth organ greatly assist in the general effect.

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Down Beat : 03/04/1957
Dom Cerulli : 4 stars

A happy and sometimes thoughtful collection of DeParis New New Orleans jazz, recorded in concert at Symphony Hall, Boston, last Oct. 26. The opening offering, Majorca, is a handsomely fashioned, Spanish-flavored piece featuring Kirk’s harmonica, Simeon‘s clarinet, and brother Sidney‘s muted growling. Dance is pretty much all Simeon, and he makes it a memorable piece with his constantly-building solo.

Toll Gate features an easy, rolling piano solo by White and a somber blues feeling throughout. Wrought Iron is a rollicking piece, with interpolations of the Anvil Chorus, and a good example of exuberance without the sacrifice of taste.

Lindo and Kate are less impressive, although the latter features Kirk’s interesting harmonica work again. White’s moody piano is again heard on Piano Blues. Farewell has fine solos all around with Blair‘s banjo carrying the usual rhythm pattern with Kirk’s drums.

This is a thoroughly enjoyable album of extrapolation in the traditional New Orleans’ style It’s traditional music that hasn’t stood still and just tapped its foot. Sound is excellent, except for some moments on the final track when the drums dominate. And the cover shot of DeParis, as well as his notes, are fine, too.

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Liner Notes by Wilbur DeParis

This album represents to me an approximation of what I like to make on records: something old, something new, something gay, something blue. This concert at Boston’s Symphony Hall, which we shared with one of the finest of the college jazz bands, the Dartmouth Indian Chiefs, was indeed as Rev. Alvin Kershaw said in his introductory remarks “…a meeting of the older generation with a younger generation on a common ground, jazz.” And this is very good. I think basic New Orleans Jazz has a potential of which very few people are aware, and least of all those of us who play it. I do not include certain bands of so-called “dixieland” that are very popular, but actually have very little to offer in this idiom.

Majorca represents my newest effort in what I call the “M” series, Martinque and Madagascar having preceded it.

Since our last record was released, I have acquired a new man on drums, who doubles on the harmonica. Wilbert Kirk was born in New Orleans and raised in St. Louis, MO. He is an alumnus of the old “Riverboat Jazz Band”, having played for many years with the legendary Fate Marable aboard the Strekfus Steamboat Lines, plying the Mississippi. To my knowledge, this is the first time a harmonica has been record with a New Orleans band, and I am so well pleased with the results that I am planning to use and record it more and more in the future.

In Majorca, we employ a Spanish rhythm introduction and first chorus against he harmonica playing the melody in chords, and the clarinet doing some sub-tone doodling before taking over the second chorus and swinging as only Omer Simeon can do. The interludes by the piano left hand and the bass fiddle have a suspenseful function in that they are intended to arouse your curiosity as to what follows. Some of our fans believe I am getting too far afield, or that this is not “dixieland”, and I agree, it is not and isn’t intended to be, but it is new New Orleans jazz. Tempus Fugit.

However, when Sidney comes on to the scene in the last chorus bowling everybody over with one of his characteristic and really gutbucket growls, all is well.

Juba Dance is a part of the dance suite by Nathaniel Dett, Negro composer and violinist, and has been adapted here by Omer Simeon as a showcase for his clarinet. It combines good taste and musicianship with that “swinging” quality, and shows off to very good advantage the remarkable flexibility of a very fine artist on this instrument.

A series of events prompted the writing of Toll Gate Blues: having traveled the New York state thru-way to Canada, and read about the signing of the multi-billion dollar high bill, and then noticing the following on the side of a newspaper truck, “from coast to coast without a stoplight”, I thought about those toll gates that would be springing up across the country to replace the stoplights, and that gave me the blues. I have had numerous requests to do a blues album and want to do one, but until I can, I think you might like Toll Gate Blues.

I like to think that the Wrought Iron Rag had something to do with settling the steel strike, though it didn’t. Anyhow, dozens of the steel fraternity our rendition and thought it put them in a negotiating frame of mind. Of course, the wrought iron craze is still with us, and I thought there should be a bit of jazz music to fit the period, and possibly forestall the manufacture of a wrought iron tooth pick. The usual eight bar phrase has been doubled here, and no composition about iron is complete without a few bars of The Anvil Chorus. This is a long swingin’ number, interesting to play and to listen to, and has instantly become one of our most popular requests.

Cielito Lindo, a Mexican folk song, is the type of simple melodic song that lends itself so admirably to our New New Orleans jazz treatment. At this tempo, not only is it good to listen to, but it’s also very danceable.

On Sister Kate, Kirk plays the first chorus on the chromatic harmonica, and after the band plays the verse, comes on with the chord harmonica, which really makes for new sounds in traditional classic jazz!

Banjoker, an original I wrote for Lee Blair, the south-paw banjoist, is a light swingin’ rollicking number that acts as a sort of jazz aperitif. The title of course is a combination of the banjo and the joker that plays it.

Several years ago when I was with Duke Ellington, we were rehearsing a blues with the standard twelve bar strain and the usual chord patterns. I decided to write a longer strain with a completely different chord sequence without losing the blues quality and feeling. The Piano Blues as played very expertly and with feeling by Sonny White is the result. I’m hoping that it will become a favorite of yours.

Farewell Blues, a traditional favorite, is somewhat shorter than we usually play it, but we had so many requests to wax it that we felt we must. It has the usual round-robin of improvisations in a minor key, plus some superb rhythm work.