MG Y-1009 BOURBON STREET BOB SCOBEY AND Lizzy· MILES Music from Bourbon Street is another way of saying Of the 12 selections, half contain vocals by the redoubt- music from the heart of New Orleans' lusty French Quarter able. Lizzie Miles, a blues shouter in the old tradition. Miss -in a word, New Orleans-flavored Dixieland music. (And Miles goes back a few years - she'll be 62 next time around the purists can argue whether such categorizing is too rigid.) - and she sings with a soaringly positive vigor. ("Lizzie In any case it happens to be one of life's smaller ironies that Miles makes Sophie Tucker sound like Shirley Temple," is one of the foremost exponents of this music around today is Scobey's turn of descriptive phrase.) Another phrase to Bob Scobey-who has never set foot on Bourbon Street; describe Lizzie Miles stems from a Down Beat critic who who hasn't, in fact, ever been near the city of New Orleans. wrote of her "honest, ungimmicked artistry." On one of the The closest that Scobey has ever come to hitting the Delta tunes here, "Tiger Rag", the lyrics are Miss Miles' own - country is the time he landed in Memphis at age 6. As this lyrics of any sort being a rarity on this venerable song. There's is written, Scobey says he has hopes of working soon in a an interesting side to another vocal on the Miles list - Buddy New Orleans club; meanwhile, as Scobey phrases it, "I feel as Bolden's "Make Me a Pallet on the Floor". A pallet in this though I've been to New Orleans. I've certainly been exposed reference has nothing in common with a painter's craft; this to the New Orleans kind of music long enough, playing with pallet is a Sou them rural colloquialism and means "bed". To Kid Ory and the other New Orleans men who wandered make a pallet on the floor would be a non-aftluent Southern far afield." farmer's way of demonstrating his hospitality to visiting relatives. Actually, the Scobey home base has long been the San Francisco area - he lives in Lafayette, Calif., not far from On four of the· tunes-including "Jimtown Blues", Oakland - and he was among those at least partly respon- "Deep Henderson", "Sweetheart of Mine" - the Scobey unit sible for the resurgence of New Orleans-style jazz in San includes the following: Bob Scobey, trumpet; Ralph Sutton, Francisco in the mid-1930s. However, as exemplified in this piano; Clancy Hayes, guitar and banjo; Bob Short, bass and album, the Scobey unit eschews any· attempt to imitate the tuba; Fred Higuera, drums. On the remainder, the unit is old style. "We apply our own techniques," Scobey says. "It's augmented with Jack Buck, trombone, and Bill Napier, the New Orleans mood, it's traditional jazz but with, you clarinet. might say, the outlook of 1957." Musical labels of any sort are anathema to Scobey and as he suggested to listeners of his Bob Scobey himself is a native of Tucumcari, N.M. (in previous album on this imprint, "We don't want to escape 1916) although he grew up in Stockton, Calif. and studied our obvious association with Dixieland but we do want our music in Berkeley - specializing at first in the classics. By efforts to be judged individually and not described as either 1938 he had developed a strong interest in traditional jazz 'good Dixie' or 'bad Dixie'. It's bad ior everyone to think in and, with Lu Watters, organized the celebrated Yerba Buena terms of classifications. No matter what anyone else chooses Jazz Band, which remained for 12 years a swinging citadel to call it, music is only as good as it sounds to you." of old style jazz in the San Francisco area. The· tunes are: ON REVIVAL DAY (Vocal) AIN'T MISBEHAVIN' (I'm Saving My Love for You) (Vocal) JIMTOWN BLUES SQUEEZE ME MAKE ME A PALLET ON THE FLOOR (Vocal) SWEETHEART OF MINE WILD MAN BLUES WHEN YOU'RE SMILIN' (Vocal) BABY, WON'T YOU PLEASE COME HOME (Vocal) DOWN AND OUT BLUES DEEP HENDERSON DGER RAG ( ~ .