"Panama" (sometimes incorrectly called "Panama Rag"
) is a
jazz standard
Jazz standards are musical compositions that are an important part of the musical repertoire of jazz musicians, in that they are widely known, performed, and recorded by jazz musicians, and widely known by listeners. There is no definitive lis ...
. It is by
William Henry Tyers, originally entitled "Panama, a Characteristic Novelty",
published in 1912.
Jazz legends who have played and recorded the song include the
New Orleans Rhythm Kings
The New Orleans Rhythm Kings (NORK) were one of the most influential jazz bands of the early to mid-1920s. The band included New Orleans and Chicago musicians who helped shape Chicago jazz and influenced many younger jazz musicians.
History
The ...
,
Luis Russell
Luis Russell (August 5, 1902 – December 11, 1963) was a pioneering Panamanian jazz pianist, orchestra leader, composer, and arranger.
Career
Luis Carl Russell was born on Careening Cay, near Bocas del Toro, Panama, in a family of African-Car ...
,
Kid Ory
Edward "Kid" Ory (December 25, 1886 – January 23, 1973) was an American jazz composer, trombonist and bandleader. One of the early users of the glissando technique, he helped establish it as a central element of New Orleans jazz.
He was ...
, the
Eureka Brass Band
The Eureka Brass Band was a brass band from New Orleans, active from 1920 to 1975, that recorded prolifically for Atlantic Records, Pax, Alamac, Folkways, Jazzology, and Sounds of New Orleans.
The group's membership varied at any given time, u ...
, and
Humphrey Lyttelton
Humphrey Richard Adeane Lyttelton (23 May 1921 – 25 April 2008), also known as Humph, was an English jazz musician and broadcaster from the Lyttelton family.
Having taught himself the trumpet at school, Lyttelton became a professional ...
. The famous trumpet variation commonly played by
New Orleans bands and those influenced by the New Orleans style was reportedly devised by
Manuel Manetta
Manuel "Fess" Manetta (October 3, 1889 – October 10, 1969) was an American jazz multi-instrumentalist.
Early life
Manetta was born in New Orleans (district of Algiers) on October 3, 1889. He was of African and Italian descent."Subversive Sounds: ...
, who first taught it to his star trumpet pupils
Emmett Hardy
Emmett Louis Hardy (June 12, 1903 – June 16, 1925) was an American jazz cornet player during the early 1900s.
Early life
Hardy was born in the New Orleans suburb of Gretna, Louisiana, United States, and lived much of his life in the Algie ...
and
Red Allen
Henry James "Red" Allen, Jr. (January 7, 1908 – April 17, 1967) was an American jazz trumpeter and vocalist whose playing has been claimed by Joachim-Ernst Berendt and others as the first to fully incorporate the innovations of Louis Armstr ...
.
The original
tango
Tango is a partner dance and social dance that originated in the 1880s along the Río de la Plata, the natural border between Argentina and Uruguay. The tango was born in the impoverished port areas of these countries as the result of a combina ...
or
maxixe rhythm is usually discarded in favor of
4/4 time
The time signature (also known as meter signature, metre signature, or measure signature) is a notational convention used in Western musical notation to specify how many beats (pulses) are contained in each measure (bar), and which note value ...
, but can still be detected in some versions, such as the early recording by
Johnny DeDroit's Band.
Some later generations have sometimes confused it with a totally different piece of a similar name, a
ragtime
Ragtime, also spelled rag-time or rag time, is a musical style that flourished from the 1890s to 1910s. Its cardinal trait is its syncopated or "ragged" rhythm. Ragtime was popularized during the early 20th century by composers such as Scott ...
number composed by
Charles Seymour
Charles Seymour (January 1, 1885 – August 11, 1963) was an American academic, historian and the 15th President of Yale University from 1937 to 1951. As an academic administrator, he was instrumental in establishing Yale's residential colleg ...
in 1904 called "Panama Rag".
This lesser known number has been recorded by the
New Orleans Ragtime Orchestra and was reportedly played by
Buddy Bolden
Charles Joseph "Buddy" Bolden (September 6, 1877 – November 4, 1931) was an African American cornetist who was regarded by contemporaries as a key figure in the development of a New Orleans style of ragtime music, or "jass", which later c ...
when the tune was new, but is rather obscure and far from a standard.
Recordings
*
Friar's Society Orchestra (New Orleans Rhythm Kings w Leon Roppolo) (1922)
*
Luis Russell And His Orchestra. New York, September 5, 1930.
*
Bunk Johnson
Willie Gary "Bunk" Johnson (December 27, 1879 – July 7, 1949) was an American prominent jazz trumpeter in New Orleans. Johnson gave the year of his birth as 1879, although there is speculation that he may have been younger by as much as a dec ...
and his New Orleans Band. Recorded in New Orleans on June 11, 1942.
*
Louis Armstrong
Louis Daniel Armstrong (August 4, 1901 – July 6, 1971), nicknamed "Satchmo", "Satch", and "Pops", was an American trumpeter and vocalist. He was among the most influential figures in jazz. His career spanned five decades and several era ...
and the All Stars. Recorded in New York City on April 26–27, 1950. Released on the
Decca Records
Decca Records is a British record label established in 1929 by Edward Lewis (Decca), Edward Lewis. Its U.S. label was established in late 1934 by Lewis, Jack Kapp, American Decca's first president, and Milton Rackmil, who later became American ...
LP Vol. 2 - Jazz Concert.
*
Basin Street Six.
Mercury Records
Mercury Records is an American record label owned by Universal Music Group. It had significant success as an independent operation in the 1940s and 1950s. Smash Records and Fontana Records were sub labels of Mercury. In the United States, it is ...
78 rpm side (cat. no. 70219) released in 1953.
*
The Big Chief Jazz Band. Recorded in Oslo, Norway, on June 7, 1955. Released on the
78 rpm record
A phonograph record (also known as a gramophone record, especially in British English), or simply a record, is an analog sound storage medium in the form of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove. The groove usually starts nea ...
Philips
Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), commonly shortened to Philips, is a Dutch multinational conglomerate corporation that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, it has been mostly headquartered in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarters i ...
P 53033 H.
*
Al Hirt
Alois Maxwell "Al" Hirt (November 7, 1922 – April 27, 1999) was an American trumpeter and bandleader. He is best remembered for his million-selling recordings of "Java" and the accompanying album '' Honey in the Horn'' (1963), and for the them ...
released a version on his 1963 album, ''
Our Man in New Orleans''.
Al Hirt, ''Our Man in New Orleans''
Retrieved April 10, 2013.
References
External links
''Panama''
sheet music at the Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...
1912 compositions
Al Hirt songs
Jazz compositions
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