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Rifftides

Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

Other Matters: Hoses (Early Autumn, Part 2)

October 20, 2013 by Doug Ramsey

It was a fine day for the ritual of draining, coiling, labeling and storing the hoses. The canal has beenHoses 1 dry and the irrigation water off Hoses 2since Tuesday. That news is of no importance whatever and has nothing to do with the usual topics of this blog. Hoping to find a connection (hah), I searched for music inspired by hoses and found nothing but a semi-bawdy saloon song that ended up being about a garden hose only after implying that it was about something else. Therefore, we offer a song theHoses 3 first syllable of whose title is the word in question. The song, from Harry Belafonte’s best selling 1956 Calypso album, expresses the elation we felt around here after all those hoses had been stored for the winter.

 

 

 

Stumbling across that track from the Belafonte album was a reminder of what a refreshing presence he was in popular music after he decided to pursue folk music rather than jazz; in an appearance in the late forties he was once backed by the Charlie Parker quintet. The album and its big hit, “The Banana Boat Song” (“Day-oh”) launched Belafonte into a major career that included film acting as well as singing.

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Comments

  1. Bill Ramsay says

    October 20, 2013 at 8:42 pm

    I forgot that Yakima has canal water for watering one’s yard! Those were the good old days!

  2. dick vartanian says

    October 20, 2013 at 10:39 pm

    I well remember an album of his that RCA released about 1955. It contained a wonderful rendition of “One for my Baby” . I had a copy of it on tape but lost it in a fire. Don’t know if it’s still available, It would be worth having.

    • Frank Roellinger says

      October 21, 2013 at 7:11 pm

      Hi Dick, Is this it?

      • Doug Ramsey says

        October 21, 2013 at 10:24 pm

        The album exists in a CD reissue on the Fresh Sound label. On the track above, Belafonte is accompanied by Dennis Farnon (leader, arranger & conductor), Don Fagerquist (tp), Milt Bernhart (tb), Plas Johnson (ts), Jimmy Rowles (p), Howard Roberts (g), Red Callender (b), Jack Sperling (d). Recorded in Hollywood, California, on June 5, 1958.

      • dick vartanian says

        October 22, 2013 at 5:17 am

        You betcha, Frank. I really appreciate your effort in coming up with this one and I will certainly enjoy hearing it again!! Thanks for the info., Doug. I had forgotten about the “adequate” backup. I wonder what the A team would have been? This is certainly creme de la creme all the way!!

  3. Bill Crow says

    October 22, 2013 at 3:49 pm

    I knew Harry in the days when I was sharing a basement apartment on West 10th Street in NYC with Dave Lambert. Harry was still a semi-jazz singer, doing occasional club dates with his trio, and filling in his spare time working at a hamburger joint in the Village. He and Dave were writing songs, and I was surprised that when Harry got his recording career going that he never recorded any of them. One was a precursor of his island repertoire called “Mango,” which I will sing for you some day. Harry thought the Village could use a good Harlem style rib joint, and threw a big rent party to bankroll the project. Next thing I knew he was in Hollywood. He still owes me a rack of ribs!

  4. Mike Davis says

    October 23, 2013 at 3:05 am

    It’s unsurprising that you had trouble finding a song relating to hoses. There aren’t very many at all, but two I’ve managed to remember are those old dyslexic favourites: “Hose Sorry Now?” and, “Hose Kissing You Now?”

Doug Ramsey

Doug is a recipient of the lifetime achievement award of the Jazz Journalists Association. He lives in the Pacific Northwest, where he settled following a career in print and broadcast journalism in cities including New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, San Antonio, Cleveland and Washington, DC. His writing about jazz has paralleled his life in journalism... [Read More]

Rifftides

A winner of the Blog Of The Year award of the international Jazz Journalists Association. Rifftides is founded on Doug's conviction that musicians and listeners who embrace and understand jazz have interests that run deep, wide and beyond jazz. Music is its principal concern, but the blog reaches past... Read More...

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Doug’s Books

Doug's most recent book is a novel, Poodie James. Previously, he published Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond. He is also the author of Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of its Makers. He contributed to The Oxford Companion To Jazz and co-edited Journalism Ethics: Why Change? He is at work on another novel in which, as in Poodie James, music is incidental.

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