Late Night Trashy Mandolin Music

[CarlM]

I have been working on Winin' Boy Blues on guitar lately. The full Jellyroll Morton lyrics certainly occupy the trashy category. Have not gotten to trying it on mandolin yet. I guess it was originally trashy piano music.

[Paul Statman]

[QUOTE=Charles E.;1833334]

Oh, my, yes - please do! That would be great to see. Ever since first seeing this referenced, I've considered it one of the most enjoyable published appraisals of mandolin music, right up there with the article from the NY Times stating that "Few noises are so disagreeable as the sound of the picking of a mandolin" and "no well-informed person ever called the picking of a mandolin music." (Side note: that also was published in August - 8/20/1897. Perhaps the effect of heat of the dog days of summer were a factor in the authors' moods, long before the term "Dawg days" might have brought smiles to readers' faces.)





Lets try that again....

This is hilarious. The author may well have been tone deaf, and was clearly not clairvoyant. Thanks for posting this, Charley. Good one!
*I'm having a Dawg day today, as it happens...

[Mandolin Cafe]

Took the liberty to increase the size of the text on this one. I have pretty good eyes but that's pretty hard to read and some aren't going to know how to use the browser tools to increase it.

[urobouros]

I play late at night all the time but it's usually just poorly. Perhaps I'll work up my way up to trashy by next year

[journeybear]

Thanks, Scott. Wish I'd thought to do that. Glad you did.

I'll just add the headline and attribution: New York Times, August 20, 1897

Perhaps you could do your magic to this, too.

[Sue Rieter]

That article is a riot.

But I'm wondering....


Was the writer confused about the difference between mandolins and banjos ??

[trodgers]

Great Scott! That article is pure gold, and confirms quite a few suspicions I've had over the years.

[Bob Gnann]

Way down in Memphis, Tennessee there lives a girl named Cindy
With a meat shop on her block she's always got the gimmes
There's meal called Southern eel that you can't resist from trying
Everytime you walk that block you can hear Miss Cindy crying:
"Oh da beedle um bum, come and see me if you ain't none,
Make a dumb man speak, make a lame man run,
Sure miss plenty if you ain't had none...."

Is that trashy enough?

Help me out ... I believe that was from the Kweskin Jug band.

[journeybear]

Yes, Kweskin ... but it goes a lot further back ...



There's also this version, but it's a bit "uptown" ...



These and many other fine and dandy trashy songs did Kweskin resurrect from oblivion and popularize during the Great Folk Scare of the late 50s-early 60s. I've done this gem in three different bands over the years.

However, as stated before, the incident in play occurred much earlier than this delightfully dotty ditty, so this would not have been played.

[Bob Gnann]

JB that's great! Don't know where you find this stuff in your archives but I love the history. Now that we have a trashy enough anthem let's all converge on Kansas!

[Mandolin Cafe]

It's the anniversary of the report of Late Night Trashy Mandolin Music played yards from Cafe headquarters on this date 1890. Long live Late Night Trashy Mandolin Music.

[Mark Gunter]

Hear, hear!

[journeybear]

By a marvelous coincidence, yesterday was the day I picked up two mandolins from my luthier after a couple of years. It was great to be reunited with Molly, my main mandolin, after so long. And almost as pleasing, hearing my luthier refer to her sound in such glowing terms. For such a skilled practitioner of the sonic arts to praise my humble plain A so, when he has worked on a great many much finer instruments of all types, some 35,000 of them by his estimation, it filled my heart with pride and joy. And listening to her sing and ring, bearing out his description, I could barely contain my delight. When I finally got back home and could play some pretty music on her, my desires were satisfied, complete. Now to get busy knocking out some good old ratty raucous trashy tunes!

[tjmangum]

"And the road goes on forever and the party never ends!" Mr. Keen's ancesters must have been a part of this disturbance!