Word: riffs
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This week I had planned to go overboard for Benny Goodman's new band, but I've become so tired of writing in the superlative that I think I'll say something about riff tunes today...
...riff tune is a number usually played at a moderately fast tempo, and built around phrases that have been standard in jazz music for years. These tunes generally find their origin in the blues, where improvised melodies are often adaptable to orchestration. For instance, a little detective work will show you that In The Mood, a typical riff tune, is merely an arranged version of an old blues number called Tar Paper Stomp, recorded four or five years ago on Decca by Wingy Mannone. Some of our most popular novelty songs have been riff tunes, and have included Hold Tight...
...originality on the part of the composer, and seldom affords much inspiration to the band that plays it. On the other hand, it's difficult to put your finger on anything really bad about the record, except possibly the lack of originality. However, in my mind, an overdose of riff tunes will generally have a discouraging effect on jazz musicians. Any competent arranger can pick up a few old blues licks and build a tune around them, and a competent band will play it and the Andrews Sisters will sing it and high-school jitterbugs all over the country will...
...will get a kick out of the ensemble jam on the finishes. . . Cozy Cole and Chu Berry grace Cab Calloway's OREB recording A Chicken Ain't Nothing But a Bird. Tune was featured in the Southland floor show last year. . . lna Ray Button's new out offers two riff tunes: Five O'Clock Whistle and Make Me Know It (OREB). Band shows lots of promise, particularly in the rhythm section...
...handful of newsmen who happened to be in Poland last year when Adolf Hitler's army moved in with them; Cineman Arthur Menken, who filmed the desolation left by Russian bombers in Finland, the swarms of German raiders flying over Britain; Vincent Sheean, prematurely greying veteran of the Riff rebellion, Spain's Civil War, the Nazi occupation of Austria, Czecho-Slovakia, who covered the Battle of Britain for North American Newspaper Alliance; carrot-thatched, bespectacled little Hubert Renfro Knickerbocker, roving war correspondent for Hearst's International News Service, who came home last winter long enough to deliver...