Levee serenaders

The sheer number of record releases associated with this group and its recordings could give the impression that the Levee Serenaders are an icon of popular culture, most likely formed to provide entertainment and diversion to volunteer brigades as floodwaters lap at their communities. The presence of new groups utilizing the name or variations thereof, such as the New Levee Serenaders in California, reinforces this concept. Classic jazz writers have attempted documentation of the true nature of the Levee Serenaders, including an account in Recorded Jazz: A Critical Guide indicating that "the full details of this Levee Serenaders record will probably always remain a mystery...." In some cases there is an assumption that the group was put together and proceeded to cut two tracks solely during a break in an ongoing recording session by Jelly Roll Morton & His Red Hot Peppers. The biggest mystery to those who don't understand the minds of musicians is why anyone would go back to work on a break -- if anybody was going to do something like that, it would be the fiendish workaholic Morton. It is in the context of the latter's discography that the Levee Serenaders tracks get continually reissued, compiled, and then recompiled, despite the groundswell of interest in one of the few recorded examples of Walter Thomas playing the gargantuan bass saxophone. Two tracks were recorded, "Midnight Mama" and "Mr. Jelly Lord," each quickly designed to feature vocalist Frances Hereford in a casual yet distinct pickup accompaniment. Closer examination of recording dates logged for Morton's activities indicate that the story of this situation is exaggerated, the two songs tracked at sessions staged months apart from Red Hot Peppers activity, not hurriedly thrown together during a cigarette break. Hereford -- whose name sounds like someone summoning a pet named after a car -- was a regular performing companion of Morton's at various events during the pianist, bandleader, and composer's Chicago hiatus during the late '20s. Research sources tend to agree that the Levee Serenaders sides are the only recordings she made in her career, however. Other instrumentalists playing on these recordings include drummer Walter Bishop, father of the famous bebop pianist Walter Bishop, Jr. ~ Eugene Chadbourne