Indiana / Red Nichols and His Five Pennies

[Wolfe]

Take me back home again, with this timeless standard!

1929

[jazzgirl1920s]

After reading the personnel listed on the label of that recording, Indiana, you have to marvel at the later giants of the swing era of the 1930's and 1940's who were sidemen in Red's band. Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa; these musicians led top bands during the swing era and here they are in Red Nichols band. Fortunately Red Nichols Five Pennies Brunswicks were very big sellers at the time they were released and also on reissue 78's later on making his great recordings on 78 easy to find. Indiana is as classic jazz as it gets. I posted his Five Pennies version of Hurricane on my youtube page. I read that in the 1920's Red Nichols was the MOST respected, admired and copied musician in England. He was considered the top hot player, even over Bix in England at that time. Here is a link to Red's Five Pennies recording of Hurricane. I hope you like the recording and the picture of Red I added at the beginning of the recording:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1ogJ16B ... annel_page

[MordEth]

Thanks for posting this and the photo, I enjoyed the song greatly, and am glad to offer ‘Red’ Nichols among our stock avatars in the ‘people‘ category.

I need to get more musicians in there.

The avatar:

Thanks again!

— MordEth

[Henry]

"Indiana," full title "Back Home Again in Indiana," is a "reply song" to "On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away," and its lyrics even quote phrases from the older song. I have the sheet music for both songs, and the musical and text relationships are obvious. "Indiana" was published, IIRC, in 1917 ("Banks" publ. 1897) and was a brand new hit tune at the time it was recorded by The Original Dixieland Jazz Band in their first sessions (also 1917), by virtue of which it became one of the jazz "standards" throughout the '20s and '30s. Usually recorded, as here, in an up-tempo "swing" version, in its original piano-vocal form it was a moderate-tempo ballad, like "Banks" is.

BTW, the words and music of "Banks" are by Paul Dresser, brother of the novelist Theodore Dreiser (one of them, not sure who offhand, changed the spelling of the family name).

Thanks for posting this version! Clearly an arrangement (except for the solos), it features a Nichols cornet solo in Derby or felt hat mute, followed by a rough-edged trombone solo, I'm guessing by Teagarden since he was very influenced by Louis Armstrong and this solo has several Armstrong-type "licks" in it. And despite the record label listing Nichols as playing trumpet, his instrument was cornet.

[Wolfe]

Jazzgirl1920s and Henry, thanks for the insightful comments.

I'm glad you both could decipher the label information from the quick, crummy scan I put up.

[MordEth]

I'm glad you both could decipher the label information from the quick, crummy scan I put up.

Wolfe,

It’s quite readable, although if you have scans that look like this in the future you may wish to try reducing the image—making it smaller generally makes it sharper and a bit easier to read, as long as you don’t make it too small.

But it was quite readable, and thank you for sharing it (and prompting more interest in ‘Red’ Nichols here)!

— MordEth