[Dixielandjazz] In the Mood (which mood?)

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

In case anybody doesn't know, at the funeral of Peter Sellers his grieving friends discovered that he had not been kidding when he said that while working as a drummer he had got so sick of "In the Mood" he was going to leave instructions that it be played at his funeral.  I gather that he was such a professional he left no clue for the presiding clergyman concerning the reasons for this choice, and that it was announced with the suggestion that he must have been very fond of it.

I prefer the original title, "Tar Paper Stomp" and the Wingy Manone performance, but it seems Joe Garland and Eddie Durham made a few dollars out of the venture. 

As for the title "In the Mood" I very much go for an early recording by John Lee Hooker, which might equally have been called, since this is what he sings, "I'm in the mood ---  for love", though the throbbing of Hooker's guitar and his plaintively lusting basso profundo are simply nowhere near the latter, let alone Joe Garland's little earner. 


I also somewhere have a copy of the issue of Jazz Monthly in which a clipping from an English local newspaper was reproduced with its reference to Joe Loss as a "Jazz Great".  I'm sure some of Loss's musicians were happier with the obligatory repertoire than were others. And not everybody who worked with Ted Heath the dance band leader felt the extent of disenchantment expressed sometimes by Heath's sometime pianist Sran Tracey, one of whose least non-OKOM big band recordings featured some amazing playing by Acker Bilk.

This has nothing to do with the story John Dankworth told Clark Terry, about how some cows once drank ink and Mooed Indigo,

salut!
Robert R. Calder