Briefly active in the mid-'30s, the Dallas Jamboree Jug Band recorded a handful of sides that have shown up on quite a few reissue collections, sometimes under the band's name and sometimes under the name of some of its members. Confusion with the just plain Dallas Jug Band is inevitable, and it would be nice indeed if there was anything just plain about that outfit. The Dallas Jug Band was an alias for the much more popular Memphis Jug Band, eager to make more records than any contract would allow and apparently not particularly zealous about giving hometown credit. The politically incorrect Picaninny Jug Band has been listed as an alias for Dallas Jug Band, adding to the confusion: this was either an alias for an alias, or the Dallas Jamboree Jug Band might have used the name. The fall of 1935 was when players such as guitarist and singer Carl Davis and washboard rubber Charles Jackson gathered together to record titles including "Elm Street Woman Blues," "Dusting the Frets," and "Flying Crow Blues." Not all the players that made up the group have been identified, while the identification attributed to at least one of the players, a bassist known only as Shorty, leaves even a Sherlock Holmes of a discographer without much to work with. Whoever was in it, the group was a fine example of Texas string band and jug band styles coming together in service of not only the usual blues but some Tin Pan Alley motifs as well. Frenchies' String Band was a similar group from the same era: both combined a firmly strummed mandolin and the sound of various brass bass instruments to create unique rhythmic textures. ~ Eugene Chadbourne