Author Archives: lucasgonze

Centennial Grand March

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This is a recording of an 1876 tune called “Centennial Grand March”. It’s a bit tricky, and when I first tried it on stage about a year ago it scared the hell out of me. Now that I’ve got it down it’s a lot of fun to play. I love the chromatic melodies, the way the parts tell a story, and the mood.

This is my third recording of work by W. L. Hayden, the composer. I did a couple pieces from Hayden’s Star Collection of Guitar Music, from which I learned Celebrated Shoo Fly Galop and Must I, Then.

MP3: Lucas Gonze – Centennial Grand March

FLAC: Lucas Gonze – Centennial Grand March

Sheet music: at the Library of Congress web site.

Feel free to share and remix per the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 unported license.

Technical notes

I got rid of the high pitched background whine in my first video by using an external iSight video camera rather than the one built into my laptop. To use an external camera you have to use iMovie 06 rather than the more recent 08 version, so I switched to 06, and it turned to be a lot better and easier to use.

Also, I got a more full and punchy sound by switching from the built-in mic to an external one, a Sure SM81.

Hippodrome bus gig June 12

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Next Thursday, June 12, I’ll be playing on a bus —

This is the Hippodrome, the official free shuttle of downtown’s Art Walk, running every second Thursday from 6-10pm. … Art Walk’s Hippodrome will serve this popular monthly event as a floating salon, featuring live music, art happenings, readings and curated conversations.

Per Mickie’s Zoo:

Starting June 12, Kim Cooper and Richard Schave of Esotouric, the eclectic bus adventure company whose tours reveal L.A.’s secret history, transform what’s been a sleepy free city DASH bus shuttle into something more appropriate to the Art Walk: The Hippodrome, a curated rolling salon. Art Walk visitors can still use the Hippodrome to get from Bert Green Fine Arts to The Hive — but with so many interesting things happening on the bus, they may find they don’t want to disembark when they arrive.

The Hippodrome is a customized former school bus brightly painted on the outside with lively graffiti-style scenes of beautiful women. Inside, passengers and performers sit face-to-face in a comfortable nightclub-style setting, with checkerboard flooring, cocktail tables and softly blinking lights. Every month the Hippodrome will feature interesting performers channeling the spirit of the neighborhood’s storied past.

The bus tour is part of Kim Cooper and Richard Schave’s Esotouric series of LA bus tours. Kim and Richard are supersmart lovers of LA, architecture, music, and history. The trips generally revolve around their stories of the city. These are trips for locals to discover their own home, rather than for visitors to gawk at homes of the stars.

I’ll also be at the Hyperion tonight at 10 and at Taix with Madame Pamita on Thursday 6/12, 6/19, and 6/26.

Your Southern Can Belongs to Me

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My first YouTube — a version of Blind Willie McTell’s “Your Southern Can Belongs to Me:”

Lots of caveats for this song, because it’s my first try at video and I don’t have my chops together yet. There’s some high-pitched noise that I couldn’t get rid of, it’s just a short clip, I didn’t use the right mic, stuff like that. But I’m really happy about video as a content type for this site. It makes a lot of sense to do my recordings with video, since the performances are always live and edit-free. In the future I’m hoping to do both a video and a standalone MP3 of every recording.

100% electricity-free Silverlake show Thursday

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I’ll do a 10PM set this Thursday at all-acoustic night at Hyperion Tavern:

This night is dedicated to creating a community of artists and musicians who don’t need the use of flashy lights, amps or mics. Our grandpappies didn’t need it so why do we?

The Hyperion Tavern is located at 1941 Hyperion Ave in Silverlake between Lyric and Delongpre Ave. Entry is always free and 21+!

That’s right, this scene is so old-school they’re against *microphones.*

Smokey Mokes

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Smoky Mokes — played by Dennis Pash and
Meredith Axelrod

A very popular cakewalk from 1899, “Smoky Mokes” was composed by Abe Holzmann. Here it is played by Dennis Pash and Meredith Axelrod on Saturday, 17 November 2007 at the 21st annual West Coast Ragtime Festival.

About the song:

Smoky Mokes was the first of Holzmann’s compositions and it was dedicated, possibly as a commercial play, to the then grand old man of Tin Pan Alley, Monroe H. Rosenfeld . It is a splendid cakewalk in AABBACCBB form with a 4-bar introduction and a 4 bar interlude between C- and B-strains whereby the AABBA and CCBB sections are in the major keys of C and F respectively. The original sheet music scores the final bar with a DC but no corresponding Fine is given – repeating the AABBA strains feels about right. It was also published as a song with a “Humorous Darky Text”. The front cover of the original sheet music shows a quartet of Negro lads- the singers of the song perhaps or may be the cake walkers? Who knows?

About the odd mandolin:

Technically, that’s a type of mandolin called a mandolin-banjo. It’s a mandolin in function with a banjo head, much like how an ukulele-banjo is essentially an ukulele with a banjo head. These instruments were created for the louder sound they produced.

Basinstreet.com says:

Abe Holzmann (1874-1939) was born in New York City. He was conservatory trained and was the composer of “Bunch of Blackberries” (1900) that was popularized internationally by J.P. sousa. “Smoky Mokes” became a very popular and successful composition.

Described as a cakewalk and two-step, we find, in the vocal parts, a text that is in Negro dialect and the song is an example of the lyrics in what were to become known as “Coon songs.” Lyrics are by W. Murdoch Lind. The lyrics are typical of many “coon” songs of the era and below we give an example of the lyrics.

There are two versions published with different covers. The vocal copy has a picture of Edna Collins in the foreground with a caricature of a Negro in the background. In the instrumental cover there is a picture of four young Negro lads. The cover reminds us that it can be used as a cakewalk or two-step. Also given on the left of the picture is a statement: “published also as a song with humorous darky text.” The given text given above is what is referred to in this statement. The cakewalk/ragtime song was primarily an instrumental form, when the words are added it became the Coon song.

E. Pique revealed

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My credits for the 1892 song Slightly on the Mash left the creators a mystery:

It was written by A. G. Send, arranged for guitar by the enigmatic E. Pique, and published by J. Oettl. I didn’t find any biographical info or other work by these people.

As it turns out, gurdonark managed to dig up more info:

I found this on Edward Pique:
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~npmelton/sfbpiq.htm

And looking up that source, which is from 1892:

EDWARD PIQUE, one of the oldest professional musicians on the coast, was born in the city of Prague, Austria, July 15, 1815. He early developed marked talent for music, and later studied guitar music with efficiency. He achieved such marked success that he received the great compliment of being summoned to play before the Empress of Russia and Austria, also the King of Prussia and Saxony and other crowned heads. He came to the United States in 1848, and the following year was united in marriage with Miss Frances Weller, of England, and three years later, in 1852, they came to California. On the evening of the day of his arrival Mr. Pique played for the benefit of Catharine Sinclair, the wife of Edwin Forrest, the great tragedian. Mr. Pique was under engagement to Harry Meiggs, and many years later his wife opened Assembly Hall as a dancing school, which was then located on the corner of Post and Kearny streets, where the White House now stands. This was for many years one of the most prominent terpischorean halls in the city, and was conducted by Mrs. Pique with ability and financial success. When Mr. Pique first came to San Francisco he sang in the opera, also in many of the churches and in concerts, and was always ready to contribute his efforts and voice in behalf of worthy charities. He has done much in composition, and received the prize composition at the second annual prize competition of Fairbanks & Cole, of Boston. Mr. Pique has been engaged in teaching for over forty years, and is one of the oldest teachers on the coast. He has numerous testimonial letters from members of the profession and friends, all testifying of his worth.

So now we know a lot more about about how this song happened. The guy who converted the original score to a guitar part was a 70-year-old gentleman from Austria. He was an educated musician, a European who had moved to the United States 37 years before at the mature age of 33, and had been in California for 33 years. He was an established player, was probably in semi-retirement, and would have been a natural candidate for this job.

According to C.F. Martin & His Guitars, 1796-1873, Pique knew the founder of Martin Guitars, Martin himself. Pique was a music teacher in Philadelphia in 1850 and also arranged popular songs for guitar.

The Gold Rush started in 1848 and he moved to California in 1852, so his motivation might have been to get rich quick on gold. Given that he was still doing pickup musical work like guitar arranging in his old age, I imagine the career change didn’t work out.

He lived in San Francisco, which was near the location of the dedicatee “Pianissimo”, who lived around present-day Silicon Valley.