The Levee Serenaders

The sheer number of record releases connected with this group and its own recordings could supply the impression the Levee Serenaders are an icon of popular culture, probably formed to supply entertainment and diversion to volunteer brigades as floodwaters lap at their communities. The current presence of new groups using the name or variants thereof, like the New Levee Serenaders in California, backs this up concept. Vintage jazz writers possess attempted paperwork of the real nature from the Levee Serenaders, including a merchant account in Documented Jazz: A CRUCIAL Guidebook indicating that “the entire information on this Levee Serenaders record will most likely always stay a secret….” In some instances there can be an assumption the group was come up with and proceeded to slice two songs solely throughout a break within an ongoing documenting program by Jelly Move Morton & His Crimson Hot Peppers. The largest mystery to those that hardly understand the thoughts of musicians is the reason why anyone would get back to work on a rest — if anybody would take action like that, it might be the fiendish workaholic Morton. It really is in the framework from the latter’s discography the Levee Serenaders songs get continuously reissued, compiled, and recompiled, regardless of the groundswell appealing in another of the few documented types of Walter Thomas playing the gargantuan bass saxophone. Two songs were documented, “Midnight Mama” and “Mr. Jelly Lord,” each quickly made to feature vocalist Frances Hereford in an informal yet unique pickup accompaniment. Nearer examination of documenting schedules logged for Morton’s actions indicate which the story of the situation is definitely exaggerated, both songs monitored at classes staged months aside from Red CHILE PEPPERS activity, not really hurriedly thrown collectively throughout a cigarette break. Hereford — whose name appears like somebody summoning a family pet named after an automobile — was a normal performing friend of Morton’s at different events through the pianist, bandleader, and composer’s Chicago hiatus through the past due ’20s. Research resources tend to concur that the Levee Serenaders edges are the just recordings she manufactured in her profession, however. Additional instrumentalists playing on these recordings consist of drummer Walter Bishop, dad from the popular bebop pianist Walter Bishop, Jr.