JUST HERE, RIGHT THERE - Tiger Dixie Band

JUST HERE, RIGHT THERE (CVLD046)

Tiger Dixie Band

And one day a tiger started playing...
“From Italy to New York City”

1. WHEN THE SAINTS GO MARCHING IN (Traditional)

What is this sound, what is this music?
The question caught me on the eighth of the twenty-five steps, as white as my hat, of that great ship that had crossed the ocean to bring me to America.
Strange music I had never heard, notes reflected like distant waves in the reflections of windows hanging from houses so tall they cast shadows on the sun.
For days and days the sea had cradled me and in the blue I had vomited all my past. But now I was in New York, in the big city, and I had decided to caress it by diving into the elegant and delicate arms of a mermaid with green eyes, deep as an orgasm eight thousand miles from the rocks that pierced my window, like the desire to start over to feel alive.

Tribute to Scott Joplin
2. MAPLE LEAF RAG (Scott Joplin)
“ From New York to New Orleans”

The train wheels slowly started turning, taking me south with them.
That barefoot boy with an orange mandolin silenced old men and children while his melody played in my mind, riding the flat ripples of the Mississippi. Beyond the wooden seats, hard as the face of the black man across from me, my thoughts raced into a world where the horizon would never find limits. In New Orleans, where art, sex, and prayer met every night to release into the air that jazz music that made even the moon smile, Henry Matranga told me that my sweat would never be rewarded but that bringing whiskey to classy black people was still a job. And one evening a man smiled at the mirror, licking a sparkling diamond suspended between his milk-white teeth, then sat at the piano to win the crown of a melody enclosed in a moment that tastes of eternity.

Tribute to Jelly Roll Morton
3. WOLVERINE BLUES (Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton)
4. PANAMA (William H. Tyers)
5. TIN ROOF BLUES (Leon Roppolo, Paul Mares, Ben Pollack)

But my tears fell into the whiskey when someone who spoke my language got on stage and with his band started a frantic piece, whose title had something to do with a tiger. At the time he didn't know it, but soon that sound, which seemed faster than time, would be captured in a sound groove. And in that rotating black circle, those notes would travel around the world to entertain men and women I would never know.
Then the black pianist stopped licking his diamond, stood up, took his hat, and without saying a word, slowly walked away.

Tribute to D. J. LaRocca
6. FIDGETY FEET (D.J. LaRocca – Larry Shields)
7. TIGER RAG (D.J. LaRocca)
“Nov. 1917, The closing of Storyville – From New Orleans to Chicago”

One night, uniforms with golden stars on their chests came, and Storyville went away in a comet of notes, leaving its children sitting in the dust. Then I put on my new shoes and went to Chicago, where a strange musician with a sack-shaped mouth, touching the sky with his cornet, made the emotions dance happily on the edge of the soul.

Tribute to Louis Armstrong
8. MUSKRAT RAMBLE (Edward “Kid” Ory)
9. BASIN STREET BLUES (Spencer Williams)
10. STRUTTIN’ WITH SOME BARBECUE (Lillian Hardin Armstrong)

One Sunday on the steamboat a boy kicked the sheet music, adjusted his blonde hair, and pulled out a solo. Suddenly the steamboat began to spin on itself, getting lost in the wind of Chicago in a
whirlwind of sounds, as if the whole city had decided to dress in those notes that seemed to unite, in a late summer melody, the black and white of jazz.

Tribute to Bix Beiderbecke
11. BILL BAILEY (Hughie Cannon)
12. ROYAL GARDEN BLUES (Clarence & Spencer Williams)
13. WHO’S SORRY NOW (Ted Snyder)
14. I’VE FOUND A NEW BABY (Jack Palmer & Spencer Williams)
“Just Here, Right There - Back to Italy at present day”

Now I'm back where I was born decades ago. I'm sitting with my eyes closed as the sun slowly descends the mountain. A distant sound awakens my gaze: a group of musicians plays with familiar sounds, playing and laughing with the passion of a century just born. I watch them and smile as my feet follow a rhythm that, flying over the sea, bounces through space and time.
I close my eyes again and someone whispers in my ear "Just here, right there."

15. THE DISCLAND (Maurizio Scomparin)
16. THE REVENGE OF THE ELEPHANT (D.J. LaRocca, Paolo Trettel)
17. GOOD MORNING BLUES (Fiorenzo Zeni)

18. WHEN THE SAINTS GO MARCHING IN (Traditional)

TIGER DIXIE BAND
Paolo Trettel (trumpet)
Luigi Grata (trombone; tuba on 11, 12, 16)
Stefano Menato (clarinet; soprano sax on 5, 9, 17)
Giorgio Beberi (bass sax; tenor sax on 5, 9, 11, 12; out on 17)
Enrico Merlin (banjo; acoustic guitar on 5, 9, 17; add. mandolin on 1)
Carlo Alberto Canevali (drums, percussion)

Special guests:
Fiorenzo Zeni (tenor sax on 2, 10, 12, 16, 17; soprano sax on 11)
Beppe Pilotto (acoustic bass on 5, 9, 17)

Production: Velut Luna / Tiger Dixie Band
Executive Producer: Marco Lincetto
Sound Engineer: Marco Lincetto
Digital Editing and Mastering: Fabio Framba
Project and storyboard: Enrico Merlin
Photos: Sergio DeCarli
Novel: Andrea Manfredi
English Translation: Francesca Menna
Layout: L’image
Trading Consultant: Yair Wahl

Recording was made at Public Auditorium, Chiuppano-Vicenza, Italy, on October 22-23th, 2000, using the ultimate and the most advanced digital technology, based upon Prism Sound Dream AD2 24Bit/96kHz AD converter.