[Dixielandjazz] Delayed Leningrad Dixieland Jazz Band follow-up

[Dick Baker]

Listmates,

I've been catching up on a month's worth of DJML postings and have found 
Vickye Blatherwick's inquiry about a Leningrad Dixieland JB cassette 
containing recordings from the 1970s.  I have the LPs from which that 
cassette was made and can report that the personnel was

         Vladimir Voronin - tp
         Anatole Chimiris - tb
         Alexander Usyskin - cl
         Boris Yershov - bjo
         Yuri Miroshnichenko - bass
         Eduard Levin - pno
         Alexander Skrypnik - dr

It's a funny thing about American jazz in the Soviet Union:  Sam Wooding's 
band (including Sidney Bechet) went there in the early '20s, but then 
Soviet paranoia and the Cold War cut off all contact until the U.S. 
Information Agency sent them Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington in the 
1950s and 1960s.

The first exposure they ever had with traditional/dixieland jazz was Kenny 
Ball's Jazzmen of England in the late 1950s.  That visit sparked the 
formation of several amateur dixieland bands (the ones led by Grachev and 
Melkonov lasted into the 1990s) and the one and only professional dixieland 
band in the Soviet Union, the Leningrad Dixieland JB.  If you'll compare 
the Leningrad band's recordings from the '60s and '70s with Kenny Ball's 
records from the same period, you'll discover that the Leningraders were 
reproducing him note for note.  Because its music was so patently American, 
the Leningrad band was always kept in the shadows:  It wasn't allowed to 
travel to the West until the Gorbachev glasnost thaw of the late 1980s, and 
even when I saw them in Leningrad in my student days there in 1970, they 
were spending most of their time in the Siberian backwoods rather than in 
the big city--an appearance in their "home town" was rare.

By and large, traditional dixieland jazz missed the Soviet Union:  They 
started with Ellingtonian swing and moved quickly to bebop and modern.

Vickye sussed out the correct titles of some of the tunes on that tape; for 
her benefit and possibly others', here's her list with further 
amplifications in [brackets].

Hot Coronet (L.Hardin) [Cornet Chop Suey]
Gypsy Blues (J. Hodges) [Jeep's Blues]
The Entertainer (S.Joplin)
Thick Lipped Blues (J.Oliver) [Dipper Mouth Blues]
At the Jazz Orchestra's Ball (N. LaRocca) [At the Jazz Band Ball]
Moldavin Folk Melody (Traditional) [actually, Moldavian]

Ragtime (Traditional)    my note: 12th Street Rag
St. Louis Blues (B. Hendri  arr. Vi Koroleva)
Ice Cream (J. Hotins) [Joe Watkins]
I Want to go around with you   (Traditional)      my note: Just A Closer Walk
Panama (imp. on Latin-American Melody)
High Society  (traditional)
Alexander's Rag Time  (I.Berlin)


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      Dick Baker
   djml at dickbaker.org