"FUNERAL SONGS" - Dead Man Blues

"We weep when a child is born into this world. We sing and dance when the good Lord takes someone home." - Mourner at a Jazz FuneralDivided into two discs, Funeral Songs & Dead Man Blues, featuring New Orleans players such as Kid Ory, Jelly Roll Morton, King Oliver, and some of the best Louis Armstrong I've ever heard. Many of these songs sound like they were recorded on the second line. The liner notes have lots of history tracing the funeral music from Europe to Africa, all the way to New Orleans. After the Civil War, all the marching band horns were cheaply available at pawn shops for whoever wanted to play. Wonderful photos from jazz funerals. Great deal, better music. (Amazon)

The traditional New Orleans Jazz Funeral is as much a part of New Orleans culture as is traditonal jazz itself. If could almost be said, the jazz grew out of the funeral music of the New Orleans of the late nineteenth century. The roots of the tradition are believed to be hundreds of years old, and to be connected to the culture of the people who occupy the are of West Africa that is now called Benin and Nigeria; this region of Africa was known as the "Slave Coast" to the Europeans of the seventeenth century. The captured people of that area took with them to the New World a sophisticated social structure that included two aspects important to the traditional New Orleans Jazz Funeral. Firstly, societies, often secret, were formed to ensure that their members received a proper burial at the time of death, and secondly, a funeral was seen as a major celebration. With the "Christianisation" of the African-Americans that occured over the ensuing centuries and with the growth of the Baptist and Methodist Churches in particualr, another factor came into play that surely strenghtened this notion of a funeral as a celebration. This was the commonly held belief that a birth, an arrival in the secualr world, was a time for tears, and a death, an end to earthly sorrows, was a time for rejoicing.
So, it would be unusual for a New Orleans inhabitant not to be a member of some organisation or other. On their death, that individuals would be accompanied to their final resting-place by the brass band of the society of which he or she was a member. The traditional New Orleans Funeral had two stages accompanied by music. The first was a procession of mourners journeying slowly to the cemetery accompanied by a brass band playing a slow, mournful dirge or spiritual. This was followed after the burial itself by a lively return from the cemetery to the sound of rousing music. And what better rosing music could there be than that played by a couple of "hot" jazz musicians?
Wonderful compilation with songs by Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Kid Ory, Jelly roll Morton, Clarence Williams, the Eureka Brass Band and many more. (The Zero G Sound)

trax CD 1:
1. When The Saints Go Marching In - Louis Armstrong 2. Just A Closer Walk With Thee - George Lewis 3. Sing On - Eureka Brass Band 4. Feelin' The Spirit - J. C. Higginbotham 5. Low Down Blues - Bunk Johnson 6. Oh, Didn’t He Ramble - Jelly Roll Morton 7. The Lonesome Road - Louis Armstrong 8. West Lawn Dirge - Eureka Brass Band 9. StJames Infirmary - Louis Armstrong 10. Precious Lord, Take My Hand - George Lewis 11. Dead Man Blues - King Oliver 12. Closer Walk - George Lewis 13. Nobody Knows The Trouble I've Seen - Louis Armstrong 14. Going To Shout All Over God’s Heaven - Louis Armstrong 15. Sweet Lovin' Man - King Oliver 16. Gloryland - George Lewis 17. Blues For Jimmie - Kid Ory 18. Lawd, You Made The Night Too Long - Louis Armstrong 19. Bourbon Street Parade - George Lewis 20. Bye And Bye - Louis Armstrong 21. Poor Old Joe - Louis Armstrong
trax CD 2:
1. New Orleans Function - Louis Armstrong 2. I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say - Jelly Roll Morton 3. You Tell Me Your Dream - Eureka Brass Band 4. Elder Eatmore’s Sermon On Generosity - Louis Armstrong 5. Do You Call Dat Religion - Clarence Williams 6. Jonah And The Whale - Louis Armstrong 7. Old Time Religion - Clarence Williams 8. Go Down, Moses - Clarence Williams 9. Lord, Lord, You’ve Been Too Good To Me - Bunk Johnson 10. Basin Street Blues - Louis Armstrong 11. Ol’ Man Moses - Louis Armstrong 12. Lord Deliver Daniel - Clarence Williams 13. Heaven, Heaven - Clarence Williams 14. It’s Me, O Lord - Clarence Williams 15. Perdido Street Blues - New Orleans Wanderers 16. Canal Street Blues - Henry "Red" Allen 17. We Shall Walk Through The Streets Of The City - George Lewis 18. Cain And Abel - Louis Armstrong 19. When It's Sleepy Time Down South - Louis Armstrong 20. South - Kid Ory 21. Joseph ‘N His Brudders - Louis Armstrong 22. As Long As You Live, You'll Be Dead If You Die - Louis Armstrong 23. Where The Blues Were Born In New Orleans - Louis Armstrong
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