Back in the 1970s, the cleverly named Stash record label brought out a series of LPs containing historic blues and jazz recordings riddled with topical content that generally pointed towards hedonism, libertinage, the pursuit of happiness, and excess hilarity. Stash released entire albums of songs about smoking, drinking, snorting, sniffing, shooting, screwing like fiends in human form, staying up all night making noise and raising hell. Stash collections bore titles like Tea Pad Songs, Weed: A Rare Batch, Pot, Spoon, Pipe ...
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Back in the 1970s, the cleverly named Stash record label brought out a series of LPs containing historic blues and jazz recordings riddled with topical content that generally pointed towards hedonism, libertinage, the pursuit of happiness, and excess hilarity. Stash released entire albums of songs about smoking, drinking, snorting, sniffing, shooting, screwing like fiends in human form, staying up all night making noise and raising hell. Stash collections bore titles like Tea Pad Songs, Weed: A Rare Batch, Pot, Spoon, Pipe and Jug, or just Reefer Songs. There was an entire album of classic blues songs about gays and lesbians, and even a special collection called Jake Walk Blues that dealt specifically with songs about prohibition liquor tainted with chemical impurities that caused irreversible damage to the central nervous system (see also Jake Leg Blues). But the favorite topic for Stash Records back in the day was always the happy-go-lucky mini-genre of the reefer song, and numbers about lighting up numbers, so to speak, was for awhile anyway the Stash record label's specialty. Some 20 years later in 1995, a collection of 14 vintage reefer songs was released by Viper's Nest Records. This was a direct reference to the traditional Harlem jazz age term for a pot head. Rosetta Howard, for example, sings "If You're a Viper" with a Chicago-based band calling themselves the Harlem Hamfats. This song was popularized by some of the nation's most famous swing musicians, including Fats Waller and violinist Stuff Smith. Cab Calloway's "Reefer Man" attracted so much attention that the Hi-De-Ho Man eventually stopped performing it after he realized that J. Edgar Hoover had assigned several G-Men to follow the band around and wait for the "Reefer Man" to materialize. This is a very enjoyable collection, and the tunes were well chosen, even if the discographical information is partially flawed and unnecessarily incomplete. Drummer O'Neil Spencer sings "Viper Mad" with the Sidney Bechet band; the zoot suited tipple-toting harmony vocal group known as the Cats & the Fiddle sing about what happens when you smoke "Killin' Jive"; mouth organist Jazz Gillum complains about his "Reefer Head Woman," and Georgia White proudly announces that "The Stuff Is Here." The range of expression on this little disc is thrilling. With "Willie the Weeper," Frankie "Half Pint" Jaxon delivers one of the weirdest, funniest, and most satisfying performances of his entire career; Bea Foote gives an arresting impersonation of a pothead taking a deep drag of "Weed" (not "Weeds" as is printed on the album cover), and the clearly buzzed pianist Buck Washington hands in a disarming request that you "Save the Roach for Me." Two of the most exciting dope-inspired swing records of the 1930s are included here; clarinetist Buster Bailey & His Rhythm Busters urge one and all to "Light Up," and trumpeter Frankie Newton's Uptown Serenaders emit a delightfully deranged salute to intoxicated noctambulism called the "Onyx Hop," a jumpin' jam named for one of Harlem's most famous nightclubs. With all this lurid acting out serving to steam up the windows and maybe make you bust out laughing, the three instrumental performances that close out When Hemp Was Hip seem like veritable masterpieces of temperance and self-control. Louis Armstrong, a lifelong devotee of "Mary Warner," offers a tribute to the "weed" called "Muggles"; Mezz Mezzrow, whose very name became synonymous with marijuana because he peddled the stuff himself, leads a fine ten-piece band in "Sendin' the Vipers," and Don Redman conducts his big band in a performance of their theme song, the elegant and atmospheric "Chant of the Weed." ~ arwulf arwulf, Rovi
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