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Billboard - “roll up banner” .
Cary Koubek, musician and painter, made a painting of a jazz band in Lamb's Café in his hometown of Chicago, USA, where he studied and spent a large part of his life.
This painting was used for our "roll-up banner", a kind of rolling up billboard for our band. With permission of the artist, of course.
Lamb's Café became well-known through one of the first Dixieland trombonists Tom Brown, who began his band "Brown's Jass Band” in Lamb's Café, which was also one of the first jazz bands that brought "jazz" to the North.
Below is a brief description of Lamb's Café and the trombonist Tom Brown.
Lamb’s Café Chicago
On May 13, 1915, a five-piece white group from New Orleans arrived in Chicago for a six-week engagement at a basement restaurant at Randolph and Clark called Lamb's Café. They billed themselves as "Brown's Band from Dixieland," after their trombonist, Tom Brown, a veteran of Papa Jack Laine's marching bands. The kind of music they played was already growing familiar in black neighborhoods of the city, but most white Chicagoans had never heard anything like it, and at first they were anything but enthusiastic. The cashier covered her ears whenever the men began to play, and a string orchestra quit rather than perform on the same bandstand with anyone making such crude noises.
"[O]ur debut was pitiful," the cornetist Ray Lopez later admitted. "Those Yankees wouldn't listen or dance. They just walked out on us. We took turns talking to the customers. 'Folks, this is New Orleans music. Hot music.
People down South dance. You've got to dance. Come on and try. Have fun!'
For six nights we pleaded. No dice." Then, a touring vaudeville company reserved the café for a party and word got out that they had had a good time; after that, Lopez remembered, their music "caught on like magic" — until the restaurant closed for renovations. Brown's Band from Dixieland broke up soon afterward, and most of its members went back home to New Orleans.
But by July 8, 1922, when Louis Armstrong boarded a train at New Orleans for Chicago, the Windy City was a very different place, especially where jazz was concerned. Armstrong had been making $1.50 an evening in New Orleans; in Chicago he could look forward to $52.50 a week, plus roughly the same amount in tips from enthralled customers. "There was plenty of work [in Chicago]," Armstrong remembered, "lots of Dough flying around, all kinds of beautiful women at your service. A musician in Chicago in the early twenties [was] treated and respected just like — some kind of a god."
Tom Brown (trombonist)
Tom Brown (June 3, 1888 – March 25, 1958), sometimes known by the nickname Red Brown, was an early New Orleans dixieland jazz trombonist. He also played string bass professionally.
Tom P. Brown was born in Uptown New Orleans, Louisiana. His younger brother Steve Brown also became a prominent professional musician. He played trombone with the bands of Papa Jack Laine and Frank Christian; by 1910 usually worked leading bands under his own name. The band played in a style then locally known as "hot ragtime" or "ratty music". In early 1915, his band was heard by Vaudeville dancer Joe Frisco who then arranged a job for Brown's band in Chicago, Illinois.
On May 15, 1915, Tom Brown's Band from Dixieland opened up at Lamb's Cafe at Clark & Randolph Streets in Chicago, with Ray Lopez, cornet and manager; Tom Brown, trombone and leader; Gussie Mueller clarinet, Arnold Loyacano piano and string bass; and Billy Lambert on drums. In Chicago Gussie Mueller was hired by bandleader Bert Kelly, and his place was taken by young New Orleans clarinetist Larry Shields.
This band seems to be the first to be popularly referred to as playing "Jazz", or, as it was spelled early on, "Jass". According to Brown, once his band started enjoying popularity the local Chicago musicians union began picketing his band of non-union out-of-towners. One picketer's placards intended to link Brown's band with the Storyville prostitution district of New Orleans and the implied disreputable low life status; the signs read "Don't Patronize This Jass Music". The term "jass" at that time had a sexual connotation. The signs had the opposite of the intended effect; more people came to hear the band out of curiosity as to what "Jass Music" might be and how it could be performed in public. Brown realized the publicity potential and started calling his group "Brown's Jass Band". Some recently rediscovered Chicago newspaper advertisements list it as "Brown's Jab Band" or "Jad Band", confirming the reminiscences of Ray Lopez that the bandmembers assumed that "Jass" was too rude a word to be printed in the newspapers so they looked in a dictionary for printable words close to it, like "jade".
Years later, Brown would frequently brag that he led "the first white jazz band" to go up north. Brown's careful wording implies that he was aware that the Original Creole Orchestra preceded him and that they played jazz.
Tom Brown's Band enjoyed over four months of success in Chicago before moving to New York City, where it played for four months more before returning to New Orleans in February 1916. Upon arriving home Brown immediately started rounding up another band to go back to Chicago with him. The group again included Larry Shields; at the end of October, Brown agreed to switch clarinetists with the Original Dixieland Jass Band bringing Alcide Nunez into his band. Brown, Nunez and New Orleans drummer Ragbaby Stevens then went to work for Bert Kelly, who brought them to New York where they temporarily replaced the Original Dixieland Jass Band at Reisenweber's in 1918. Brown started doing freelance recording work with New York dance and novelty bands, then joined the band of Harry Yerkes. At the start of 1920 he was joined in the Yerkes Band by Alcide Nunez.
Tom Brown also played on Vaudeville in the acts of Joe Frisco and Ed Wynn.
About late 1921 Brown returned to Chicago and joined Ray Miller's Black & White Melody Boys, with whom he made more recordings. During this period he also co-lead a dance band with his brother Steve.
In the mid 1920s he returned home to New Orleans where he played with Johnny Bayersdorffer and Norman Brownlee's bands, making a few excellent recordings.
During the Great Depression he supplemented his income from music by repairing radios. He opened up a music shop and a junk shop on Magazine Street. He played string bass in local swing and dance bands. With the revival of interest in traditional jazz he played in various Dixieland bands in the 1950s, notably that of Johnny Wiggs. A local television station thought it would be a good idea to invite Brown and Nick LaRocca to talk about how jazz first spread north from New Orleans, but the show had scaresly started before the two old men got into an argument that turned into a fist-fight.
Tom Brown made his last recording just weeks before his death, his trombone playing apparently not suffering from the fact that he had neither teeth nor dentures at the time. Brown died in New Orleans.
Signature tune - Kom d’r in zet je hoed af.
A more hospitable welcome song and also signature tune of The Dutch All Stars Jazz Band is hardly imaginable.
Most jazz bands have chosen a signature tune from the English jazz repertoire, but we chose for the Dutch version of "Let me in", namely "Kom d’r in zet je hoed af", the song that was so popular in Holland in 1951, which we play in swing tempo.
With pleasure we show you a brief history and the song’s lyrics.
History.
In 1951 it was a radio hit for a Dutch group who called themselves "The Swinging Nightingales".
The swinging nightingales were simply Mia Kempen, Reni Boone, Ans Heidendaal and Gerard van Krevelen.
This group was founded in 1945 by bandleader Gerard van Krevelen (1909-1980) and was regularly heard on the radio during the Second World War, also at the NIR in Belgium. The band split up in 1953 when television made its entry in Belgium.
Their biggest hit "Kom d’r in zet je hoed af" was actually a translation of the song "Let me in" by the Fontane Sisters, which was covered by Blue Barron’s band and by Bobby Wayne, amongst others.
The original English version:
Let me in, I hear laughter (ha-ha)
Let me in, open up the door,
Let me in, I hear music (tra-la)
I don’t wanna weep no more
Please open the door to a stranger
Who’s weary of trouble and strife
I’ll ring you a song on my banjo
And tell you the tears of my life
English version translated from Dutch:
Come in, take off your hat
The boss of an inn in Leuven
had a nice idea.
He sings when the door is opened
and everyone sings along with him:
Chorus:
Come in, take off your hat
Come in, draw up your chair.
Just pretend you're at home,
And put all your worries aside!
A tram conductor who heard it,
loved this song at once.
He sings it at every tram stop
whether there’s room or not:
Chorus
A friendly gentleman recently rang the doorbell
One that you rarely see.
I told him: "Come in",
but I didn’t know he was the bailiff.
Chorus
I saw a very nice girl yesterday,
but she didn’t want anything to do with me.
I persevered, but I got the dent in my
forehead when her father said to me:
Chorus
I went fishing last summer.
It was scorching hot in the reeds.
A pike stuck his head above the water
and sang this song with a mean grin:
Chorus
My neighbour plays cards every week
and comes home rather late
His wife waits for him at the front door
and beats the time with a stick:
Chorus
