Talk:Crazy Rhythm (song)

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To-do list for Crazy Rhythm (song): edit · history · watch · refresh

Here are some tasks you can do:
  • Verify: All citations
  • Expand: Still looking for the genesis anecdote
  • Disambiguation: Albums, Films, Bands, Books
  • Other:
    • Redlinks: Joseph Meyer (songwriter), Here's Howe, Harry Francis, Edgar Jackson, Dudley Fosdick
    • External links
    • Images: Albums; Kahn's orchestra?

[edit] Sources

Rather than clutter the listings, I'll suggest we keep sigs out of this section. Anyone is welcome to edit these remarks, again omitting sigs -- or discuss at length in a new section and sign -- or both. If you want to know exactly who edited which source and how, please see this page's history.


All Music hits 306 times for "crazy rhythm" as a song title. This is a comprehensive site and offers, among other things, images of album covers and song samples.

I ran the 4 results pages through a database to remove artist name duplicates and found 167 unique listings. Discounting compliation albums, I feel "at least 150" is a reasonable claim. Search for albums reveals 15 jazz-genre albums with the exact name Crazy Rhythm and many more slight variations.


This source gives a complete discography of RWK&O, with photo of the band. Recording details are given, which when examined reveals that the A-side of CR was "Imagination". Dudley Fosdick is shown on mellophone here and Miff Mole on trombone (in the band, not necessarily on CR). This is interesting but distinct from Fosdick's appearance on the Moler's recording of the same number.

Also note Real Audio feed of CR; this is a check on "as". The two appear to be identical.


Vanilla listing of Victor releases; a check on "redhot".


Immediate source for RogerWolfeKahn-CrazyRhythm.ogg. Note claim of PD. Ignore sporty eyepatch and crossbones; they seem to do a good job of respecting actual copyright. Detailed public domain and fair use rationales at Image talk:RogerWolfeKahn-CrazyRhythm.ogg. This citation is not given here to back up public domain claims but to show provenance of the media file (admittedly, not good).


This tap dancing fanatic has both the LP and a concurrent Japanese 78 of the same version of CR.

"...Gene comes in tapping clearly, even on the 78, and then Doris's bright happy singing follows. The second chorus is Gene's tap solo.... In the movie, Gene does the Crazy Rhythm number in a jungle setting and actually does not tap."

No corroboration on this point yet.


Pay site. The words "one of his most acclaimed recordings" are a direct quote.


This source has put together a list of "Fifteen Great Recordings":

"For seventy-five years a procession of timeless jazz moments has been captured on disk. Here are some of the very best."

CR covered by Carter and Hawkins is listed #5. That's out of 75 years of jazz recordings. Also,

"With Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli they made lightning strike on 'Crazy Rhythm'..."

A check on "ebo"; if anything, a stronger statement of importance. Also specific catalog info on this recording.


This is a pay site but fortunately you can read the relevant text for free.

Andrew Hill, as we note in his article, "has preferred to play his own compositions." He belongs to a certain class of musicians who seem to play for a rather exclusive audience of diehard fans and other musicians. Yaffe writes:

"At New York City's Birdland this past March, pianist Andrew Hill accepted Playboy's Artist of the Year Award, smiled for the cameras and then, without a single announcement, spent an hour filling the room with his distinctive, slightly deteriorating brand of pianistic alienation...." (emphasis mine)
"Perhaps aware that he was leaving listeners adrift after accepting a plaque from Hefner's empire, Hill, who never plays anyone's standards but his own, began playing the opening motif from Meyer and Caeser's 1928 "Crazy Rhythm." The drums played against the piano and the bass repeated an off-kilter Latin beat, but Tin Pan Alley was somewhere buried in the subtext..."

Yaffe goes on to quote part of the lyrics. This source backs up the claim that CR is inescapable; Hill is about the least-likely jazzman to even consider performing publicly anything so popular.


  • [9] "pbill-lyrics" Lyrics at "Perfessor" Bill Edwards

Most sources that list CR lyrics give only the chorus -- probably because that's all that's heard on the original 78. Perfessor Bill has the actual sheet music itself; his site is also the source for the sheet music cover that graces the article. (He has, by the way, an extensive collection of sheet music cover images.)

A drawback is that Bill Edwards is a jazz expert and professional pianist but his website is a little hard to navigate. The sheet music cover, extensively noted, and his own MIDI piano performance is at [1]. Email has gone out to him for a free license for that MIDI.

[edit] References

  1. ^ "Crazy Rhythm" at All Media Guide
  2. ^ Roger Wolfe Kahn & His Orchestra at The Red Hot Jazz Archive
  3. ^ Victor label at The Victor Orthophonic Page
  4. ^ Public domain songs at Appleswitcher
  5. ^ Tea for Two at Tap Wonderland
  6. ^ Carter, Benny at Encyclopædia Britannica Online
  7. ^ Diamond Jubilee of Jazz at American Heritage
  8. ^ Brilliant Corners, David Yaffe's review of Hill's 2006 Birdland concert at The Nation
  9. ^ Lyrics at "Perfessor" Bill Edwards


This article is well begun but hardly complete. I have all the citations one could ever desire many citations, images, and even the original 1928 recording, which I believe has fallen into the public domain. I assure editors that various redlinks are not in error but point to real jazz figures and entities, which may eventually get their own articles -- I have material for those, too. At some point, I'll dump a subpage of notes somewhere and go through the article, citing sources.

Much work to be done and I'd appreciate it if you hold your comments for a few days. I have to go earn a living, or at least eat. Thank you. John Reid ° 20:08, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Read above comment

I rm uncat. Yes, it's uncat. It's unsourced. It's incomplete. Needs to be fixed. So, fix it. Or wait while I do. Or comment here on talk, if you think something's being overlooked. Thank you. John Reid ° 22:26, 23 November 2006 (UTC)


(Btw Is it just me or is the sample corrupt?)