Capering & Kickery

CD Review: Minuets & Optional Dances ~ Ignatius Sancho

I recently saw the eighteenth-century African-British composer Ignatius Sancho (1729-1780) described as "largely forgotten", which struck me as an odd way to describe someone who's been the subject of a modern biography (Ignatius Sancho: African Man of Letters, by Reyahn King, Sukhdev Sandhu, James Walvin and Jane Girdham (1997)) and a one-man play in both London and New York City, recently had a new collection of his letters published (Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African, edited by Vincent Carretta (2015)), has had both facsimile and modern editions of his music published (including Ignatius Sancho (1729-1780), An Early African Composer in England: The Collected Editions of His Music in Facsimile, by Josephine B. Wright (1981) and at least five books of his works in modern notation from Africanus Editions), whose music is being recorded and performed, and, last but not least, whose dances have been the subject of at least a couple of books of reconstructions.  We should all be so forgotten!

It occurred to me that I had one of those recordings, Minuets & Optional Dances (2015), by the Afro-American Chamber Music Society Orchestra, tucked away somewhere.  I hadn't ever done much with it because it consists primarily of minuets, which are not something I spend much time on.  But the 240th anniversary of his death seems like a good day to dig it out!

CD Review: The Ragtime Women

The Ragtime Women is an old recording -- it's dated 1977 and was originally issued as a vinyl LP.  But it's a new acquisition for me, the third and last of the albums expanding my ragtime music collection this summer.  The theme is, obviously, female ragtime composers, and the liner notes give some interesting background on how a smattering of women (and middle-class white women, at that) contributed to a field primarily (and properly) associated with black composers.  The short answer: upright pianos in the home, access to plenty of ragtime sheet music, and the huge number of female home pianists created the conditions for some successful composers to emerge.  Resurrected from historical obscurity on this album are Julia Niebergall, Gladys Yelvington, Muriel Pollock, May Aufderheide, Mabel Tilton, Charlotte Blake, Louise V. Gustin, and Adeline Shepherd.  The liner notes include as much biographical information as was available at the time for each.

The album was assembled by pianist Max Morath (1926-), an accomplished performer as well as an author and a composer in his own right who is something of a modern legend himself as "Mr. Ragtime".  More information about his career and huge backlist of recordings may be found here and here.  His musical quintet for this album also includes Ruth Alsop (cello), Allen Hanlon (guitar, banjo, mandolin), Lynn Milano (bass), and Remo Palmier (guitar).  The sound of the album varies from pure piano-rag to more of a southern string band sound.

All the pieces except one on The Ragtime Women date from 1899 to 1917, with the exception being a modern composition by Kathy Craig, "Romantic Rag", which has some issues with danceability but an authentic feel that will fit in just fine as background music at a 1910s event.

CD Review: Hello, Frisco!

Hello, Frisco! (2007) is an album of vocal ragtime music featuring singer Ann Gibson and, once again, pianist Frederick Hodges (of Kitten on the Keys and Ragtime Dance Party).  As with Kitten on the Keys, this is a more of a listening album, but most of it still works well for dancing if, and only if, one likes dancing to music with lyrics.  Personally, I love it, but those who do not should avoid this album, since every single track has vocals.  For those who want to listen before (or instead of) buying, the entire album may be heard via a YouTube playlist here.

I've talked about Frederick Hodges before, and don't want to repeat myself, but his improvisational piano style (authentic for ragtime) is always a treat.  His full bio may be found on his website.  Ann Gibson does not appear to have a website, but here's her brief bio from the liner notes:

Singer Ann Gibson, who has been crowned by her fans as “The Duchess of Ragtime,” has been gracing Bay Area stages for over ten years with her velvety voiced renditions of songs from the ragtime era through the 1930s. She has worked as vocalist for the Black Tie Jazz Orchestra and the California Pops Orchestra. She has also produced music reviews for the Art Deco Society of California acclaimed for their originality of content and attention to authentic detail in presenting popular music from the Art Deco Era. Miss Gibson was classically trained as a child on piano, French horn, and also sang with several local choirs. Her father, local band leader and composer Bob Soder, was instrumental in her development as he exposed her to many different forms of music, from classical to jazz.

Keep in mind that this was written in 2007.  A longer but equally out-of-date bio may be found here.

Album Review: A Midsummer Regency Romp

Well, it's only taken me three years to get around to reviewing this digital-only album from the top-notch UK dance band Green Ginger!  A Midsummer Regency Romp came out in the summer of 2016, and I've been happily using tunes from it off and on ever since.

The short version of the review: buy the album from Bandcamp here!  But be aware that (1) the time range is rather wide for "Regency", (2) only eleven out of fourteen have suitable repeats (six) for historical style dancing, and (3) one of those is...problematic.  Contact Green Ginger directly for extended (twelve-repeat) tracks.  And be wary of the dance reconstructions in the accompanying booklet.

CD Review: Kitten on the Keys

Kitten On the Keys is an album of "Ragtime, Novelty, and Stride Classics" from famed concert pianist Frederick Hodges, previously noted here as part of the Crown Syncopators, whose album Ragtime Dance Party I heartily recommend for both dancers and listeners.  Kitten on the Keys is more of a listening album, with enough musical flourishes that the dance beat on some pieces can be hard to track.  I wouldn't necessarily suggest using many of these pieces for newer dancers, but it's a treat for listeners and more experienced dancers should be able to manage fairly well.  

The brief liner notes explain Hodges' approach: 

The professional pianist, however, correctly understood that sheet music was to be used as a guide or a blueprint for constructing a full and satisfying piano solo...the professional pianist strove to create a unique and special arrangement that gave the piano roll and record buying public a good reason to buy yet another record of the rag hit of the day.  

Employing this historically correct approach, I have taken delight in creating my own arrangements of the rags on this CD.  Only in rare instances do my arrangements reflect the published sheet music, and then only when the published arrangement or sections thereof were so musically satisfying that little embellishment or expansion was required.  Nevertheless, my goal has been to perform these rags in an authentic manner, fully consistent with the performance styles of their composers and of the best professional pianists of the ragtime era.

More information about Hodges' substantial accomplishments may be found on his own website (warning: music autoplays!)

This is a piano-only recording, which is appropriate for the ragtime era.  Most of the music is best suited to one or more of the two-step/one-step/foxtrot family of dances, but the highlight of the album for me is a rare half-and-half track, "Drawing Room Echoes".  The liner notes are brief, but interesting.  

CD Review: The Grand Victorian Ballroom

The Grand Victorian Ballroom: Waltzes, Quadrilles, Contras, Polkas, and Other 19th Century Dance Music (Gaslantern Records, 2012), with its accompanying sheet music, is the second of two CDs I received for my birthday earlier this year, along with North & South.  But unlike North & South, this album was designed for dancing, so it is both beautifully played for listening pleasure and entirely functional as dance music.  The musicians, once again, are the members of the Orchestra of the Gilded Age (I still don't know exactly who those members are) conducted by Jeffrey Hunter.

As with North & South, there are no liner notes included with the disc, but the Gaslantern website has all the details of sources, composers, dates, etc.  All of the tunes except the two contra dances are dated between 1850 and 1870, perfect for a mid-century or American Civil War-themed ball.  The contras are also quite appropriate; though their tunes are older, they were still popular and attached to common dances in this era. 

While the focus is on American composers, the album includes the two quadrilles with European connections: the Prince Imperial Quadrille (French, but popular in America) and a Lancers set adapted from Jacques Offenbach's opera, La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein.

My immediate advice: if you enjoy mid-nineteenth-century dancing, proceed directly to Gaslantern's website to order this CD.  It's not available digitally; you have to buy the actual disc.  The sheet music can be ordered in either physical or PDF format and includes dance notes for the quadrilles and contras. 

If you want more information first, a track-by-track breakdown is below.  

The Grand Victorian Ballroom: Waltzes, Quadrilles, Contras, Polkas, and Other 19th Century Dance Music (Gaslantern Records, 2012), with its accompanying sheet music, is the second of two CDs I received for my birthday earlier this year, along with North & South.  But unlike North & South, this album was designed for dancing, so it is both beautifully played for listening pleasure and entirely functional as dance music.  The musicians, once again, are the members of the Orchestra of the Gilded Age (I still don't know exactly who those members are) conducted by Jeffrey Hunter.

As with North & South, there are no liner notes included with the disc, but the Gaslantern website has all the details of sources, composers, dates, etc.  All of the tunes except the two contra dances are dated between 1850 and 1870, perfect for a mid-century or American Civil War-themed ball.  The contras are also quite appropriate; though their tunes are older, they were still popular and attached to common dances in this era. 

While the focus is on American composers, the album includes the two quadrilles with European connections: the Prince Imperial Quadrille (French, but popular in America) and a Lancers set adapted from Jacques Offenbach's opera, La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein.

My immediate advice: if you enjoy mid-nineteenth-century dancing, proceed directly to Gaslantern's website to order this CD.  It's not available digitally; you have to buy the actual disc.  The sheet music can be ordered in either physical or PDF format and includes dance notes for the quadrilles and contras. 

If you want more information first, a track-by-track breakdown is below.  

CD Review: North & South

I received the CD North & South: Forgotten Music from the American Civil War (Gaslantern Records, 2013) and its accompanying sheet music as a birthday gift this year, and a very lovely gift it was!  Sixteen new pieces of historical music, beautifully played by the Orchestra of the Gilded Age, conducted by Jeffrey Hunter, many of them suitable for dancing!  

The actual disc features a gorgeous historical battle scene, but there are no real liner notes included.  Happily, almost all the information one could want appears on the album website: not merely dates and lengths, but composers, background notes, and even the musical key of each piece. 

This is a "listening" CD, not made specifically for dancers, but many of the pieces will work for dancing.  As usual, I've gone through the album track by track and made notes about which pieces are danceable and for what.  

Of special note: the album is divided into two themes, "North" and "South", with the pieces for each named in honor of particular Union or Confederate leaders or otherwise connected to one side.  If one's dancers or listeners are apt to find such celebratory naming problematic, be careful which half you select from!

CD Review: Ragtime Dance Party

Ragtime Dance Party is the one and only album released by the Crown Syncopators, a San Francisco-based trio that performs at ragtime music festivals on the West Coast.  I've never had the pleasure of dancing to their music in person, which this album makes me very much regret.  Per the title, every single tune is danceable as well as a joy to listen to.  I highly recommend it for anyone who enjoys American music and dance of the 1890-1920 era.

The Crown Syncopators consist of Frederick Hodges (piano), Victoria Tichenor (drums), and Marty Eggers (tuba).  They don't seem to have a website, but their appearances are listed on Hodges' event schedule here.

The CD comes with ten pages of liner notes that contain the background on each piece and reproductions of the original sheet music covers.  Along with familiar favorites like Scott Joplin, James Reese Europe, and James Scott, I was especially pleased to see in the mix a couple of less-familiar female composers, Grace Marie Bolen and Adeline (or Adaline) Shepherd, both of whose careers were cut short by marriage.

As usual with ragtime, the boundaries between dances are quite fuzzy.  The same piece played at a different speed can be a one-step or two-step, or even a foxtrot.  Style counts as well; some pieces that are in the right tempo range just don't "feel" foxtrot to me, and some pieces "feel" like cakewalks and others don't.  With an experienced group of dancers, I'd just play the tunes and let the dancers find their own way, but for those who are looking for music for specific dances or need a little more guidance, here's how I've categorized each piece.  Note that some are listed in multiple categories!

CD Review: The Robert E. Lee

The Robert E. Lee (1997) is a neat little album of solo piano played by the famous musician Bob Milne, who is not only a top-notch ragtime pianist, music historian, and "national treasure" who performed at The Library of Congress in 2004, but also has the astonishing ability to "play" multiple tunes at once in his head, meaning that he can do incredible tricks like playing music in 3/4, 4/4, and 5/4 simultaneously.  There's a fascinating article about his abilities at Mlive.com.

The CD title and the famous tune "Waiting for the Robert E. Lee" both refer to the famous steamship which won a race from New Orleans to St. Louis in 1870.

I have had The Robert E. Lee sitting around for over a decade but only ever used one track, "Trouble in Mind", regularly, as an interesting change of style for when I DJ for modern blues dancers.  Until I started teaching ragtime more often than usual this year I hadn't really gone through the rest of the album carefully.  The CD wasn't recorded specifically for dancing, so some of the pieces don't have the regular rhythm one would desire, but about half of them are quite good for dancing, a few others are workable, and the piano playing is invariably a joy to listen to even for the less danceable tunes.

CD Review: Magnetic Rags

I snapped up Magnetic Rags: Ragtime for Brass (2000), from the Avatar Brass Quintet, years and years and years ago, but I had never made much use of it in dancing.  But this spring I've found myself needing ragtime music much more frequently than usual for classes and workshops, so I've been digging deep into my playlists for something other than Spare Parts and the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra.  Magnetic Rags was not intended for dancing, and it's certainly a dandy listening album, but it has enough tracks usable for dancing to make it a worthwhile purchase for dancers as well.  The exclusively brass instrumentation (trumpet, flügelhorn, horn, trombone, and tuba) gives it a pleasantly different sound from most ragtime recordings.  

The arrangements and one of the pieces are by noted modern ragtime composer William Ryden, who also provided the extensive liner notes, including an explanation of his selections for the album:

Ragtime is not easy to define.  Perhaps the closest I can come in a musicological sense is to call it a dance-based American folk music that features a syncopated melody against a regular accompaniment.  In another sense it is a melding of African and Western musical cultures.  These definitions apply, however, to all the ragtime songs, dances and even some marches written from the middle 1890s to about 1920.  What we think of today as classic ragtime are the more formal instrumental compositions, mostly for piano, written during that period.

The album program is all "classic rags", including works by a cornucopia of well-known composers as Scott Joplin (of course), George Gershwin, James Reese Europe, Eubie Blake, Irving Berlin, as well as a few by more obscure artists.  

More from Green Ginger!

A few months ago I noted that the UK dance band Green Ginger had begun making extended tracks of some of their country dance tunes so that they would have a repeat structure useful for historical sets and progressions, which require specific numbers of repeats for specific lengths of sets, as described in detail here.  Most notably, six or twelve repeats are useful for three- or four-couple sets.  Seven repeats, which I gather are frequently used for modern-style country dancing, are not useful for much of anything, historically speaking.  

Since I generally teach to recordings and therefore have a bottomless appetite for new music that I do not have to wrestle with music editing software to make useful, I am delighted to discover that they have continued the project, and have recently made some new tracks available.

I do not plan to make a habit of posting every time Green Ginger puts out something new, but I will create a "mothership" post here for their country dance tracks and update it as new music comes out.  

CD Review: Dancing by the Shore: Victorian Music from Nahant

One of my students asked me at class last night whether he owned all of the dance trio Spare Parts' CDs.  Apparently not, as he was surprised to hear about the ten-year-old Dancing by the Shore: Victorian Music from Nahant.

This album seems to get less attention than their others, perhaps because the music on it cannot be pigeonholed into a single era.  The word "Victorian" in the title is a bit of a stretch; more than a third of the tracks are technically pre-Victorian.

The tunes for Dancing by the Shore were pulled from sheet music in the archives of the Nahant Historical Society, and the recording was originally advertised as for its benefit.  Each piece has some connection to the town of Nahant, Massachusetts, which was a popular island resort in the nineteenth century.  The cover image, at left, is a depiction of the Nahant Hotel in the 1850s.

Spare Parts plays as a trio (of varying components), and they make high-quality, musically-engaging recordings good for both dancing and listening.  That this album is great for the latter is a given.  I will discuss the details of the tracks purely in the context of their usability for historical dancing.

Long enough to dance to!

If one is not lucky enough to have musicians available for balls and classes, finding usable recordings of Regency country dances can be a bit of a challenge.  While there are quite a few CDs on the market billed as Regency or Jane Austen-era music, they are often made up mostly of music from other eras.  Even the ones that are actually suitable selections for the time period frequently include only a few country dances.  And it is, alas, very typical for those tunes to be recorded at the lengths used for modern English country dance: three to seven times through the music.  

Since historical country dancing needs the length of the music matched to the length of the set, and the lengths can be quite lengthy, most of these recordings are not very useful without substantial work with music editing software to add a substantial number of repeats.

So I am very happy to note that the UK band Green Ginger, whose album Music for Quadrilles is one of my very favorites for the Regency era, has very considerately offered for online purchase a set of extended-length versions of seven of the country dance tunes from their Grand Waterloo Ball 2015 album, namely:

• "The Waterloo Dance" (12 x 24 Reel)
• "The College Hornpipe" (12 x 32 Hornpipe)
• "Cupid in Armour" (6 x 64 Waltz)
• "Bonaparte in a Knapsack" (12 × 32 Jig)
• "The Oldenburgh Bonnet" (12 × 32 Reel)
• "The Young Widow" (12 × 32 Jig)
• "Lord Dalkeith’s Reel" (12 × 24 Reel)

I'm especially excited that this batch includes "Waterloo", which is a tune I use regularly at balls but for which I have never had a good recording.  Along with "Lord Dalkeith's Reel", it is one of two twenty-four-bar arrangements in this set of tunes.  That length is fairly rare compared to the quantity of recordings made for thirty-two-bar dances.

Six of the seven tracks are twelve times through, which is the proper length for a four-couple set for a triple minor dance or a five-couple set for a duple minor one.  The last is a sixty-four-bar (!) waltz offered six times, which will work for a three-couple set either duple or triple minor.  It could also be thought of as thirty-two bars twelve times or used for a (very lengthy) waltz.

As usual for Green Ginger, the sound is rich and the instrumentation is lovely: fiddles and piano, mercifully free of out-of-period accordions.

The seven tracks are available for individual download only on the page for the Grand Waterloo Ball 2015 album.  They are at the very bottom of the list of download links.  Note that they are not included if you just buy the whole CD (online or otherwise).  You have to purchase them individually and separately.  The CD has only the shorter versions.

I'm hoping that Green Ginger will do long versions of other tunes from their current and future CDs, so I would like to encourage everyone who does Regency-era country dance to purchase these extended tracks for your own use and to demonstrate to the band that it is worth the trouble to make them.

CD Review: The Music of Francis Johnson & His Contemporaries: Early 19th-Century Black Composers

I recognized the name Francis Johnson (1792-1844) as the composer of various pieces of early-nineteenth-century American music found in library collections here and there, but I had not actually sought out his work specifically until this winter, after my dinner companion at a ball in Gettysburg in November told me a bit about his history as a famous African-American composer and bandleader who played for, among other things, society balls in Philadelphia and the summer resort town of Saratoga Springs, New York.  Since I'm always interested in dance music of this era, I picked up the CD The Music of Francis Johnson& His Contemporaries: Early 19th-Century Black Composers to see what I thought of his music.

From a dancer's perspective, it turned out to be a spectacularly good purchase.  The sound is beautiful, and almost every track on it is useful for dancing.  It's especially valuable for those willing to do a little work with music editing software.

CD Review: Dance and Danceability

Getting useable music for Regency-era dancing is a chronically frustrating problem, and there are very few albums I can recommend wholeheartedly.  Many of the recordings advertised as "Regency" or "Jane Austen" suffer from a weirdly expansive idea of "Regency era" that goes back to the 17th century or forward to the 20th.  Almost all have an incorrect number of repeats of the music for period dancing, which matches repeats to set length in a specific way that does not accord with modern recording habits.

Dance and Danceability is an Austen-themed album of country dance tunes from the Scottish dance band The Assembly Players (Nicolas Broadbridge, Aidan Broadbridge, and Brian Prentice).  Aidan Broadbridge is a name that may be especially recognizable to Austen enthusiasts -- he was the fiddler for the 2005 film adaptation of Pride & Prejudice as well as the fictionalized pseudo-biopic Becoming Jane (2007).

Sadly, this is one of the frustrating CDs.

CD Review: The Whistler and His Dog

All these posts about foxtrot the last few months have inspired me to dig around in my old CDs for some foxtrot music I haven't already used a hundred times.  The Whistler and His Dog: More Music from the Arthur Pryor Orchestra Collection is a very old CD (1989) from the wonderful Paragon Ragtime Orchestra, whose Knockout Drops I discussed several years ago.  As with Knockout Drops, it has plenty of very danceable music.  This is all the more amazing since I don't believe Paragon, which at the time of this recording was only a few years old, ever actually plays for dancers.

The pieces on this CD are taken from the sheet music collection of one of Scott Joplin's contemporaries, "legendary trombonist, conductor composer/arranger, Arthur Pryor (1870-1942)" and played using period orchestral arrangements when available.  Paragon notes on its website that this is the recording played by Disney on its "Main Street U.S.A." at Disneyland, Disney World, and Disneyland Paris.  It's a wonderful listening CD for anyone who likes ragtime music.

So what does it hold for dancers? 

CD Review: Mozart: German Dances

I've collected a fair number of albums over the years in the optimistic hope that art recordings might somehow be usable for dancing.  Often, that doesn't work out terribly well.  But after teaching a Regency waltz class last weekend and deciding that I absolutely had to have new waltz pieces for this era, I dug up one of my really old CDs, Mozart: German Dances by Capella Istropolitana under the conducting of Johannes Wildner.  This is a 1990 CD from Naxos that features no fewer than twenty-five Mozart "danses allemandes" dated from 1789 and 1791, all between one and four minutes long.  I can't say whether they were specifically intended for waltzes rather than for ländlers or other 3/4 time dances, but they certainly make dandy waltzes.

CD Review: Grandview Victorian Orchestra

I ordered the Grandview Victorian Orchestra's CD Elegant Music from Times Gone By in the wake of a pleasant email exchange with musical director John Reading about quadrille music last autumn.  The album is a mix of country (contra) dance medleys of various sorts mixed with a few other tunes and played on an interesting instrumental mix of piano, fiddle, hammered dulcimer, bodhran, shaker, banjo, and acoustic bass.  I'm not sure about the acoustic bass, but the other instruments are legitimate for late nineteenth-century America and provide a more "rural" sound than most of the music I use, very appropriate for country dance tunes. 

The music mix is definitely from "times gone by", though not all of those times are actually Victorian and will need to be considered on a case-by-case basis for historical events.  The arrangements are really lovely, though, and it makes a great listening CD even if not every track is strictly correct and/or usable for historical dancing.

My comments on the individual tracks follow.

CD Review: The Pride & Prejudice Collection Volume III

After their first and second Pride and Prejudice Collections, I knew just what to expect from the Pemberley Players' Pride and Prejudice Collection Volume III: a very beautifully performed set of dance tunes, of which many are considerably out of date for Jane Austen's lifetime, let alone her novels, and of which none of the reasonably period tunes are played in a useful repeat pattern.  I was actually wrong about one thing: two of the tunes are played in a historical repeat pattern!  What luck!

Otherwise, this CD is about what I expected: eighteen tunes, of which eleven are way too early for a Austen-oriented collection.  Despite the name, these CDs are really mixes of tunes covering a century and a half or so, mostly before the Austen era.  The Pemberley Players are superb musicians and extremely nice people who let me use some of their tunes in our stage production of Pride and Prejudice back in April, but I do wish they would make an all-Austen-era recording rather than a modern English country dance mix.

CD Review: The Pride & Prejudice Collection Volume II

After my experience with the first Pride & Prejudice Collection from the Pemberley Players I wasn't in a big hurry to get their second CD, The Pride & Prejudice Collection Volume II, which is subtitled "The Jane Austen Dance Kit".  Once again, the music is beautiful and the playing expert...and the selection of tunes bizarre (though better than the first collection) and the repeat structures unusable for actual historical dancing without modification.  Since I knew what to expect this time, I was not as disappointed as before, but I remain exasperated at the gap between the advertising and the actual music.  This is a nice collection for modern English country dancers doing dances modern-style from a wide range of eras, but it is not by any stretch of the imagination a "Jane Austen Dance Kit".

CD Review: The Civil War Grand Military Ball

The Civil War Grand Military Ball dates back to 2007, but I only recently encountered it while looking for new nineteenth century dance music.  It is the fourth recording by the Tennessee-based 52nd Regimental String Band and the first to consist specifically of dance music.

The most immediately noticeable difference between this album and most of my others is that most of the tracks include vocals, which may or may not be to everyone's taste for dancing.  I have mixed feelings about it, myself.  I prefer my nineteenth-century dance music instrumental rather than vocal, but with a couple of notable exceptions (see below) I enjoyed the singing and was amused to realize that the two songs ("Polly Wolly Doodle" and "Kemo Kimo") in one medley are ones I remember singing versions of as a little girl growing up in Texas.

CD Review: Music for Quadrilles

Fans of Regency-era quadrilles will definitely want Music For Quadrilles, a CD by Kevin Smith and Green Ginger (Cas Sloan and Ian & Meryl Thomson), an excellent dance band which frequently plays for Regency balls in England.  The album includes three full quadrille sets as well as two Regency waltz tunes and several pieces for later Scottish country dancing that are also quite usable for nineteenth-century dance. 

This is one of the rare Regency (mostly) dance CDs that I can recommend without reservation.  The music mix is three violins (or two and a viola) and piano, which is both beautiful and very appropriate for Regency-era dance unless one is offended by a modern piano rather than a Regency-era pianoforte.  The music is for the most part documentably late eighteenth- or nineteenth-century, and sources are listed for all of it, though some are not dated and thus are something of a pain to track down.

CD Review: Returning Heroes

Brand new this month -- the release party is coming up in a couple of weeks -- is the dance band Spare Parts' latest CD of mid-nineteenth-century dance music, Returning Heroes.  After dancing for many years to music from their earlier CD, The Civil War Ballroom, it's a delight to have new music for this era!

The short review: it's a great CD; buy it immediately if you enjoy dancing of the Civil War era.  

The longer version follows.

Disclaimer: the musicians of Spare Parts are personal friends, and my advance copy of this CD was sent to me as a gift.

CD Review: Home Sweet Home

I picked up this 2002 album by the Dodworth Saxhorn Band last year when they were engaged to play for the Remembrance Day Ball I call for in Gettysburg each November.  It's not specifically a dance recording, but there are three labeled dance tunes on it and a couple more that are usable as such.

The Dodworth Saxhorn Band, as the name implies, consists primarily of saxhorns, a marching band instrument with a more mellow sound than a modern brass band.  The saxhorn apparently was particularly popular with Civil War-era marching bands, and the group uses original instruments built between 1840 and 1900 and tuned to a high pitch, nineteenth-century style, for a very authentic sound.  The Dodworth of the band's name refers to the family of New York dancing master Allen Dodworth, who had a notable career as a musician, composer, and bandleader before turning to dance.  The group is modeled on the Dodworth family's own band, founded in 1825 by Allen's father Thomas and reformed in the 1830s by Allen himself first as the National Brass Band and then as the Dodworth Band.

Most of the nineteen tracks on Home Sweet Home are songs or concert pieces from the era, including a short rendition of "Yankee Doodle" and popular pieces like "Goober Peas" and "The Battle Hymn of the Republic."  An exception in this otherwise-period set of selections is "Ashokan Farewell", a modern piece by Jay Ungar which is associated with the Civil War because of its use in the Ken Burns documentary.

But for the dancer, the pieces of most interest are the dance tunes.  These include the familiar "Prima Donna Waltz" and "Cape May Polka", both well-played at danceable tempos.  It's nice to have new versions of these old favorites with such an interestingly different sound.  The third labeled dance piece is the "Jumping Galop", played at a very brisk 150 beats per minute.  While period dancing masters do suggest high speeds for the galop (Dodworth himself suggested 152, and his contemporary M.B. Gilbert listed 144), most modern dancers are more accustomed to around 125, so this tempo may be a bit of a shock.

Two tunes not labeled as such, but usable as slower (around 125 bpm), less driving galops are "Skyrockets" and "Listen to the Mockingbird".  The latter includes mockingbird noises.

The "Dixie Medley Quickstep" is a nifty little medley, but at less than two minutes long it is not a workable length for a Grand March.

While not primarily for dancers, dance music played on authentic instruments is not easy to come by, so Home Sweet Home is worth picking up despite the few dance tunes, and will be even more enjoyable for anyone who likes nineteenth century vocal music.  It is available from CDBaby and a number of other online retailers.  Excerpts may be heard on the band's Myspace page.

CD Review: The Pride & Prejudice Collection

I'm always interested in suitable dance music for the Regency/Jane Austen era, but having expected that, I was very disappointed in The Pride & Prejudice Collection from the UK-based Pemberley Players that is subtitled "A Selection of Dances Popular in the 18th and 19th Centuries."

But first, the good parts:

The Pemberley Players are an English quintet under the leadership of David Fleming-Williams that specializes in playing country dance music.  They have an absolutely lovely sound: a piano, two violins, a cello, an a flute.  I suspect they aren't using an 18th-century piano, but I don't know enough about the difference in sound for it to matter for me.  The strings are beautiful, and the instrument mix very suitable for the era.  You can tell this is an experienced dance band: they keep their tempos steady and avoid artsy tricks that make things difficult for dancers.  It's a lovely listening experience.

As a source of usable period dance music, however, it's got some problems. 

CD Review: The Regency Ballroom

The very short version of this review is: historical dance band Spare Parts' The Regency Ballroom is one of the very best and most diverse recordings available for Regency-era dance music, and everyone should go out and get their own copy to support the making of such recordings.

The longer version follows.

But first, a disclaimer: the musicians of Spare Parts are personal friends, the band has played for my Regency Assemblies for the past several years, the selection of dances on this CD parallels the program of those Assemblies, and I served as one of the dance consultants for the recording and thus received a copy of it for free.  Unsurprisingly, I am very pleased with it.  I do not, however, receive any financial benefit from its sales or anything like that.

So what's on the CD?

CD Review: Knockout Drops

I'm frequently asked for recommendations for period dance music, especially for the turn-of-the-century ragtime era of the 1890s-1910s.  Fortunately, there are quite a few CDs which are commercially available and useful to the social dancer, among them the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra's 1997 album, Knockout Drops.

The Paragon Ragtime Orchestra is a leading exponent of vintage American popular music with the rich and varied sound of a twelve-piece orchestra (wind, brass, percussion, and strings).  Working from period orchestral scores, they play concerts, radio shows, and silent film programs as well as producing several CDs and a DVD with their accompaniment to the silent film, The Mark of Zorro.  Though as far as I can tell they do not play for dance events, they include a great deal of lively dance music in their repertoire, much of which is played in a way usable for dancing (not always a given with music played as concert pieces).  I recommend Knockout Drops for anyone searching for good one-steps and two-steps as well as for those who simply enjoy popular American music of this period.

Paragon director Rick Benjamin's liner notes contain a wealth of detail about the history of ragtime music and about the historical context of the tunes and their composers.  The title of this CD is taken from the first track, Frank Klickmann's "Knockout Drops," about which the notes say it is:

a ribald allusion to the shocking modis-operandi of the White Slaver, much in the news that year with the passage of a Federal law "prohibiting the interstate transportation of women and girls for immoral purposes."

Musically, Knockout Drops features a rich selection of popular tunes of the ragtime era.  It includes two Scott Joplin rags and a Sousa march as well as good recordings of old favorites such as "The Teddy Bear's Picnic" and "At a Georgia Campmeeting."  One-step and foxtrot medleys incorporate tunes such as "I Ain't Got Nobody" and "Ragtime Cowboy Joe," and an amazing 1905 two-step medley includes a whole cornucopia of Civil War-era songs from "Battle Hymn of the Republic" to "Dixie."

Though many of the tunes are given dance types (one-step, foxtrot, etc.), not all of them are usable as labeled.  Looking at the tunes purely as dance pieces, Knockout Drops includes: