I'm not sure how many of you will be interested but I just got a carefully selected CD of really hot recordings of the musette masters of the late 40s and early 50s: Medard Ferrero, Gus Viseur and Jo Privat. It's a cut above a lot of recordings of this instrument because the compilers have gone to the trouble to select only hot dance tracks and ignore the loads of pop tracks these guys recorded. As close as you'll get to Django on a button box and, IMO, utterly charming. Some of the tunings are so wet you'll need to towel down after listening but that is a small price to pay for some wonderful music.
The CD is Brelan D'As: Mon Amant de Saint-Jean on the Paris Jazz Corner label. Artwork by Robert Crumb who now lives in France and records in a revivalist band on this label. (I don't think much of the band Crumb plays with but this is a gem.)
Downloads here:
folk-mp3-100-138.lyricstemple.com/7a102f18.html
Adjust your berets, puff a Gitane, have a little sip of absinthe and sit back for a button box treat.
Historic Musette Dance Recordings
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ceemonster
- Posts: 66
- Joined: Sun Sep 10, 2006 8:08 pm
yes, i have a slew of these anthologies....they began bringing them out about ten years or so ago....the caveat is that the same stuff recurs on collections by different labels and it is easy to unknowingly buy redundant stuff....i'm figuring it must be public domain or something....there are published sheet music books you can also get....and they are worth it, because musette is not jazz requiring improvisation, a la django [see below], so the sheet music [at least the authentic collections] reproduces the original sound really well....
i love paris musette but play it on piano accordion, whereas i play b/c button box for irish trad. a more accurate description of this genre would really be "pre-django." the "musette" stuff was the dance-hall music that predated django on the paris scene in the 20s and 30s. musette, or "bal musette" was not swing jazz like django. it was not improvisational or was minimally improvisational at best. musette music was played in traditional dance forms such as tango, fox trot, paso doble, waltz, etc. this music arose in ghettos of italian laborers who were in paris to get work, and [as anyone would
] quite naturally had their accordions along for the ride....it was played in montmartre dance halls which were considered shady, declasse, brothely and gangstery---all that fun stuff. r. crumb also did a really cool set of illustrated mock trading cards about musette, each with a wonderful color portrait of a musette artist [and accordion] and a nifty little bio on the back.
the advent of swing jazz actually put the bals musette out of business....everybody was crazy for le swing and django, and they got bored with musette....but it has been seeing a big revival since the mid 90s-ish.....check out the belgian jazz accordionist richard galliano, who has been creating improvised jazz based on musette.....he also does the same with tango......his music is ravissement....
i love paris musette but play it on piano accordion, whereas i play b/c button box for irish trad. a more accurate description of this genre would really be "pre-django." the "musette" stuff was the dance-hall music that predated django on the paris scene in the 20s and 30s. musette, or "bal musette" was not swing jazz like django. it was not improvisational or was minimally improvisational at best. musette music was played in traditional dance forms such as tango, fox trot, paso doble, waltz, etc. this music arose in ghettos of italian laborers who were in paris to get work, and [as anyone would
] quite naturally had their accordions along for the ride....it was played in montmartre dance halls which were considered shady, declasse, brothely and gangstery---all that fun stuff. r. crumb also did a really cool set of illustrated mock trading cards about musette, each with a wonderful color portrait of a musette artist [and accordion] and a nifty little bio on the back.the advent of swing jazz actually put the bals musette out of business....everybody was crazy for le swing and django, and they got bored with musette....but it has been seeing a big revival since the mid 90s-ish.....check out the belgian jazz accordionist richard galliano, who has been creating improvised jazz based on musette.....he also does the same with tango......his music is ravissement....