He had tons of records, man, when I was growing up in Binghamton. He plays a little electric bass as more like a hobby. SD: Yeah, right, and in 1932 he was at the Roxbury Latin School, and he remembers hearing the shows from the Cotton Club and all that. But he would always tell me about hearing Ellington on the radio. He’s a big Ellington and Louis Armstrong fan, and Glen Gray and the Casa Loma Orchestra, that’s his stuff, and a little bit of Bix he talks about. Then on my Dad’s side, my Grandsir, who is still alive, played a little trumpet. I’d say she was probably, of course, compared to someone like Dave McKenna, very limited. She was really gifted, and I just wish she had lived a little longer, because I really could have learned a great deal from her. I have some tapes that I’ve got to investigate further. She played everything in C or F, but man, she could really play her ass off. “Oh, Betty is going to play now,” and at parties and stuff like that. It’s funny, because I guess for her time, it was… She was of WASP heritage or whatever, and it just wasn’t really the thing for a woman to be a Jazz pianist…
She had like a hybrid sort of boogie-woogie, some of that in there. “Embraceable You,” a lot of the great standards. She used to play “Honeysuckle Rose” and “Them There Eyes,” and sing it. She played in kind of the stride, maybe Teddy Wilson style.
She passed away when I was 19 and I had just started at Hartt I finished a year there. She used to do some gigs around Westchester and Connecticut actually, down in the Southbury area, Waterbury, Connecticut. My Nana, or Grandmother on my mother’s side (I called her Nana), played piano by ear. SD: I was actually born in Worcester, Massachusetts, but I pretty much grew up in Binghamton, New York, from the age of 6 until 18. At the end is a brief conversation with Steve’s mentor, teacher and early employer, Jackie McLean. For the occasion, here’s an interview I did with Steve in 1998, when I was putting together the liner notes for his Criss Cross CD, Crossfire.
The exceptional trombonist Steve Davis turns 50 today. 106 If You Were The Only Girl IN The World 110 Indiana. 103 I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate. 96 I Ain’t Gonna Give Nobody None of My Jelly Roll.
48 Chinatown, My Chinatown …………….… 46 Cleopatra Had a Jazz Band. 40 Bluin’ The Blues …………….….….… 38 By The Light of the Silvery Moon ….…. Kevin Yeates The Creole Jazz Band ġ2th Street Rag.
This fakebook has been produced in the following versions: C Treble Bb Treble Eb Treble Bass Clef Tuba (bass clef one octave lower) If you want versions in other keys or want more tunes added, feel free to contact me. Therefore these are all out of copyright in the USA. Madeline can be contacted through her website at: This Fake Book has been assembled with tunes that have all been written prior to 1923. Thanks to Madeline’s patience with us, her incredibly thorough analysis of our needs, her research, and of course her creativity, she was able to develop this outstanding logo. The Creole Jazz Band wordmark was created by Madeline Koeberling.