[Dixielandjazz] Much More Panama

[TBW504 at aol.com]

This tune "Panama (A Characteristic Novelty)" by William H. Tyers was  
written as a tango in 1911 for, and named after, a well-known vaudeville act  
Aida Overton-Walker and her Panama Girls who possibly took their name from the 
 Central American country with the famous canal, although there is a Panama 
City  located on the panhandle of northwest Florida on the Gulf of Mexico, 
a popular  tourist location. A totally different tune written and published 
in 1904 by Cy  Seymour is "Panama Rag" (as recorded by the New Orleans 
Ragtime Orchestra) part  of the plethora of compositions reflecting American 
pride in the construction of  the Panama Canal, begun by a French company in 
1881 and completed by the  Americans between 1904 and 1914. I know of at least 
16 compositions which  mention "Panama" in their title. The next time I hear 
a British band announce  "Panama Rag" and then play "Panama" I shall 
scream. By the way, the final strain  usually played as the last chorus in 
"Panama" is not as written by Tyers, but is  a Fess Manetta interpolation, 
according to Butch Thompson and Charlie DeVore,  who should know. Something similar 
occurs with the confusion between "Sensation  Rag" written by Eddie Edwards 
and recorded by the ODJB and innumerable others,  and the tune also referred 
to by the same title written by Joseph Francis Lamb  and recorded by Mutt 
Carey's New Yorkers under the title of "Joplins Sensation".  In fact the 
proper title is "Sensation - A Rag". The Joplin connection is that  he 
befriended Lamb, a white composer often thought to have been black because of  his 
composing style, and helped with the arrangement. Please don't get me  started 
on "Tell Me Your Dream" almost invariably introduced as "Tell Me Your  
Dreams" thereby losing much of the lyric's import, and proof that many vocalists 
 aren't and shouldn't. I once heard "Panama" announced as a band's next 
number, "  ..... composed by Luis Russell" which one supposes is an error 
brought about by  Russell's alleged birth in the Central American country, 
Panama. Check out the  Russell entry for further details. I notice from Hillman's 
Dave Nelson that  Richard M. Jones composed and recorded (with Bertha 
"Chippie" Hill) in 1926 a  number called "Panama Limited Blues" but this referred 
to a train on the  Illinois Central line from Chicago to New Orleans. The 
late Aida Overton-Walker,  born Feb. 14, 1880 - died Oct. 1, 1914, wife of 
comedian George Walker, was  dubbed by the Defender " in 1935 as the original 
"Queen of the Curves." She  began her career as a teenage chorus member of 
"Black Patti's Troubadours." In  1899 she met George Walker, and they married 
in 1899. After she worked as a  choreographer for Williams and Walker, her 
husband's vaudevillian comedy duo. By  presenting ragtime musicals with all 
Black casts, Williams and Walker helped  forward authentic Black songs and 
dances to a form of entertainment previously  dominated by demeaning minstrel 
shows. Some sources say her Panama Girls  performed at a joint known as the 
Panama Café and collected tips in a novel and  indelicate manner unavailable 
to those of a male persuasion. Luis Carl   Russell is generally supposed to 
have been born 1902, Aug 5 at Careening  Cay, Panama, but strictly speaking 
this should be Columbia, not Panama, since  the latter did not exist when 
Luis was born, as Karl Gert zur Heide has pointed  out. (With US connivance 
Panama seceded from Columbia in 1903) Let's have some  pedantry now and again.
Brian Wood