rich18
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Post by rich18 on Jul 1, 2024 11:14:59 GMT
Hi all, Just curious if anyone here plays jazz on a tricone resonator at all? Heard a few people on YouTube playing jazz on a resonator and it sounds really good. Also wondering if anyone knows of any famous musicians who play jazz in a tricone. Cheers Rich.
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Post by Michael Messer on Jul 1, 2024 12:13:58 GMT
The most famous jazz player that used a National Tricone was Argentinian guitarist, Oscar Aleman. Most of Oscar's pre-war recordings were made on his Tricone.
Rumour has it that during World War 2, just before he returned to Argentina from France, his beloved Tricone was taken from him by the Nazis and used for the war effort. In other words, melted down.
There are still a few gypsy jazz players using single cone National and National-style guitars. Check out the French band, Opus 4, and the German band, Sons Of The Desert.
Shine On Michael
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Post by twang1 on Jul 1, 2024 12:14:07 GMT
I do play old style swing music with a wooden single cone resophonic and it sounds very good. Regarding jazz with a tricone: OSCAR ALEMAN ! Frank
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Post by archtopeddy on Jul 1, 2024 13:20:45 GMT
Greg Ruby comes to mind... A longtime Oscar Aleman fan. Here with his band, the Greg Ruby6 with an arrangement by Artie Shaw in the instrumentation of Oscar Aleman's 1939 Danish Sessions band.
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rich18
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Post by rich18 on Jul 1, 2024 19:38:18 GMT
Thanks for all the replies. Will definitely check out all the recommendations. For some reason I never thought of jazz played on a single cone, would of thought it wouldn't have the sustain, but, that'd be interesting to hear as well. Cheers all.
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rich18
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Post by rich18 on Jul 1, 2024 19:44:45 GMT
Man, just listened to the video posted of Greg Ruby. Loving it, the tricone sounds great. They have a really nice tone for jazz and if course the volume to cut through a band.
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Post by vastopol on Jul 9, 2024 22:03:18 GMT
I've met Chino sometimes, he's not always playing Jazz, not allways on Tricone, but he's got something special crossing slide, Blues and Swing with a certain latin flair, and he's Argentino like Oscar Aleman:
Jonathan Stout; very subtle and articulate: He plays with top notch musicians, (even with Chloé Feoranzo who appear on Clarinet in Greg Ruby previous video).
I've just discovered the Wheatleys arcadians:
We've heard about Oscar Aleman melted down tricone, but since I've read the book "Les As du Musette" by Dominique Cravic, I am wondering if it wasn't some legend...even from Oscar Aleman Lips.
In this book we can understand the fascinating life of the musical scene in Paris , and many crossings between brand new musical styles like Tango, Rumba, Martinique's Biguine (perhap's the most splendid resonator tenor guitar idiom), Gipsy Jazz of course, all blooming at this time and in this place. (in this marvelous book there's also an invaluable interview from a musician who knows Gino Bordin, by Cyril Lefebvre, retracing his biography from first hand).
Oscar Aleman is known to play wenever some guitarist is needed, he even replaced Django sometimes, they used to be friends, and Oscar had Soon adopted a Selmer guitar for the rest of his life.
What is troubling is the view of a Belgian Musette group, adorning a "Fotosonor disc" (a large picture covering the whole surface of a 78 rpm disc)
And there's a shinny tricone behind the accordion !
Not much musicians ever heard about resonator instruments in these early times...how this guitar came here ?...
I canot imagine a melted down tricone; I prefer to dream about another version of this sad story; perhaps Oscar prefered the light weight of the Selmer for roaming from gig to gig in buzy Paris nights ? That make sense if you see some of his energic dancing while playing; and without any strap !!! This presence on stage may had seduced Josephine Baker and certainly was part of their shows.
Does he swap his tricone for a Selmer before being molested by Nazis?... Or just on a hurry, when he feels he had to leave Paris as soon as he can.
I bet the Belgian Tricone doesn't have no sticker, because Oscar choosed to erase the sheild on his, and that makes me dreaming too...why ?
Perhaps in these dark times and in diferent peoples mind, the word "National" doesn't sound so good... strangely I think I can understand that today in France...
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Post by zimmharpo23 on Jul 10, 2024 8:27:49 GMT
I've met Chino sometimes, he's not always playing Jazz, not allways on Tricone, but he's got something special crossing slide, Blues and Swing with a certain latin flair, and he's Argentino like Oscar Aleman:
Jonathan Stout; very subtle and articulate: He plays with top notch musicians, (even with Chloé Feoranzo who appear on Clarinet in Greg Ruby previous video).
I've just discovered the Wheatleys arcadians:
We've heard about Oscar Aleman melted down tricone, but since I've read the book "Les As du Musette" by Dominique Cravic, I am wondering if it wasn't some legend...even from Oscar Aleman Lips.
In this book we can understand the fascinating life of the musical scene in Paris , and many crossings between brand new musical styles like Tango, Rumba, Martinique's Biguine (perhap's the most splendid resonator tenor guitar idiom), Gipsy Jazz of course, all blooming at this time and in this place. (in this marvelous book there's also an invaluable interview from a musician who knows Gino Bordin, by Cyril Lefebvre, retracing his biography from first hand).
Oscar Aleman is known to play wenever some guitarist is needed, he even replaced Django sometimes, they used to be friends, and Oscar had Soon adopted a Selmer guitar for the rest of his life.
What is troubling is the view of a Belgian Musette group, adorning a "Fotosonor disc" (a large picture covering the whole surface of a 78 rpm disc)
And there's a shinny tricone behind the accordion !
Not much musicians ever heard about resonator instruments in these early times...how this guitar came here ?...
I canot imagine a melted down tricone; I prefer to dream about another version of this sad story; perhaps Oscar prefered the light weight of the Selmer for roaming from gig to gig in buzy Paris nights ? That make sense if you see some of his energic dancing while playing; and without any strap !!! This presence on stage may had seduced Josephine Baker and certainly was part of their shows.
Does he swap his tricone for a Selmer before being molested by Nazis?... Or just on a hurry, when he feels he had to leave Paris as soon as he can.
I bet the Belgian Tricone doesn't have no sticker, because Oscar choosed to erase the sheild on his, and that makes me dreaming too...why ?
Perhaps in these dark times and in diferent peoples mind, the word "National" doesn't sound so good... strangely I think I can understand that today in France...
Thank you for posting these clips, the tricones sound beautiful. Great, great music. Cheers Andy
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Post by Michael Messer on Jul 10, 2024 8:33:38 GMT
A great collection of jazz on Tricones there.
Martin Wheatley is the only one of those players that I have met. Martin was playing with Bryan Ferry for a while, he was in the Bryan Ferry Orchestra. I seem to remember that many years ago Martin came to my house to collect an Exploding Palm Tree Tricone.
Shine On Michael
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Post by archtopeddy on Jul 10, 2024 18:09:49 GMT
Here's Jonathan Stout again, this time on a 1930 National Tricone. He talks quite a bit about it at the beginning as well as use of Tricones in early jazz. If you want to hear how it sounds, go to around 3:58 and hear him play a 1928 Roy Smeck song called Itching Fingers. Nice to hear a guy who knows this style well, playing a period song on a period piece of gear. Jonathan's speciality is old-style choral melodies, particularly in the Allan Reuss style. But he's also a killer Charlie Christian style guitarist which he plays on a period Gibson ES-150CC, usually with a Vintage 47 brand VA 185G model amp.
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Post by Michael Messer on Jul 10, 2024 19:55:44 GMT
Jonathan Stout is a great player, very enjoyable to listen to. Thanks for introducing us to him.
The Triplate has a couple of anomalies that are worrying me - firstly, those two extra dot markers are to my knowledge, not original. Also, if I am seeing correctly, it has non-spiral cones, which if they are real National cones, are from around three years earlier. At first I thought it may be an earlier guitar, but the back is shaped, not flat, so it is a 1930 guitar. Hmmmm...
Shine On Michael
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Post by archtopeddy on Jul 10, 2024 21:01:12 GMT
Jonathan Stout is a great player, very enjoyable to listen to. Thanks for introducing us to him. The Triplate has a couple of anomalies that are worrying me - firstly, those two extra dot markers are to my knowledge, not original. Also, if I am seeing correctly, it has non-spiral cones, which if they are real National cones, are from around three years earlier. At first I thought it may be an earlier guitar, but the back is shaped, not flat, so it is a 1930 guitar. Hmmmm... Shine On Michael When it comes to Triplates, you guys know your business! I know this thread is about tricone and jazz, but if I can divert for just one input, if you like the Allan Reiss style swing guitar melody Jonathan Stout plays, he had an informative YT vid a few years back explaining how to play it. Worth checking out if you want to learn.
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pearsall
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Post by pearsall on Jul 11, 2024 9:00:05 GMT
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Post by pascal on Jul 11, 2024 10:22:31 GMT
![](//storage.proboards.com/302874/thumbnailer/hEKb0CwHeDhz0omAXHaR.png) ![](//storage.proboards.com/302874/thumbnailer/y0kVSLGzHv0eYAOfv0Ue.png) Oscar Aleman and one of his tricone...
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Post by archtopeddy on Jul 11, 2024 18:13:17 GMT
Love these examples of tricones playing jazz. In fact, I posted a few examples myself. However, one can't help but notice there aren't examples of people playing a more modern jazz style. All the examples are 1930's styles and earlier. Now of course, in some ways this makes sense because the purpose of playing a resonator was for volume and volume-inducing technologies were changing quickly going from resonators to big archtops to electrics in less than ten years. I don't think four to the bar Freddie Green style rhythms work as well on resonators, and as for sophisticated single line work and chord melodies, other than Django Reinhardt or Oscar Aleman, seem to parallel with the development of electric guitars. And any slide guitar in jazz that was around, involved electrics by then with players like Alvino Rey.
Perhaps metal bodied guitars were just too harsh sounding to fit well with a jazz band. (Personally, I think this is why players moved to guitar from the banjo in the first place.) And as we know resonators fit well with blues and country perhaps for the same reason they don't seem to best suited for jazz -- they provided a more rootsy sound.
Early Hawaiian music is another area where tricones flourished and in my mind the skills needed and the sounds produced were just as closely akinned to early jazz as Oscar Aleman. But even in this case, the Hawaiian players were quick to move to electric lap steels.
So my question is, have there been other jazz players with a post 1930's sound that played a tricone? If so, I'd like to hear them. It would be interesting to hear a contemporary player like Julian Lage or Bill Frisell work up something on a tricone (or even a single cone).
Just my thought. I'd like to hear someone contemporary explore the instrument in jazz rather than just use it for the novelty factor.
That's just my thoughts...!
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