[Dixielandjazz] Spanish Tinges and Professor Longhair

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

When I reviewed Bill Bissonnette's 2CD sampler of his New Orleans label some years ago I noted that one or two current New Orleans items featured piano work along the same lines as various New Orleanians come to the fore since 1950,  including Fats Domino and Archibald and Prof. Longhair, who seem to have pretty well the same style as Champion Jack Dupree and even the very rudimentary work of Cousin Joe (you didn't need to ask the key when playing alongside him, said Campbell Burnap, he knew only one!). 

The difference between Dupree, on the one side, and Longhair, on the other, is that Dupree after a long period working in Indianapolis played straight blues, and as intense as anybody  -- anybody who wants to hear "two-fisted piano" might listen to Dupree's "Reminiscin' Fats Waller" on which he sounds (literally!) as if he was wearing the gloves he wore in the ring. If you want to get specialised, Dupree used a lot of chording (none on the Waller fun number) distinctive of other little-recorded Indianapolis pianists most listmates won't have heard of. 
Basically, as soon as Longhair starts all the rhythms come in, and the rhythmic complications are such that blues feeling can be only so intense.  You can sing in the rain (not recommended) but singing the blues while performing what's very much an African dance though maybe with hispanic accents?  
I suspect Michael White's Klezmer exercise, for M. Bissonnette, might be slipped into a blindfold test and have some chance of being taken for Spanish.. Sephardim Rag?  
And of course the Wilmoth Houdini item sampled a little while ago was as Bill Haesler noted recorded with a US trumpeter in USA, and like the bands of Louis Russell and Duke Ellington and the unrepresentatively recorded Gene Goldkette had a New Orleans bassist, Sam Morgan's brother Al, who like the rest of the best produced big sounds that were more phrases than single notes and opened up lots of rhythmic complexities - but in balance with what other things were going on in the band. 
Luis Russell had a strong legit training in his native Panama, and possibly a kind of hispanic hearing was important. The music might not need to be Spanish, but maybe it's in trouble when a certain sort of awareness is missing,
hasta la nexta pinta!Robert R. Calder