Classic Hifi Care

Kansas City is known for building GM cars, the Chiefs, barbecue and, surprisingly, dixieland jazz. I bought a console stereo at an auction. In the bottom of the cabinet were two cassette tapes of the New Red Onion Jazz Babies. I'd never heard of them. I like this band. They are a bar band that makes the rounds in Kansas City. We went to see them at the Bristol. There were two versions of the Jazz Babies. One in the 1920's that went defunct and the New Red Onion Jazz Babies started by college buddies who wanted to revive the old sound. I thought you guys might enjoy one of their performances. Their sound is unique for a dixieland band.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOcGMExDS5w

This is not what I was looking for, but it has a bit of the history of the band. The original Jazz Babies had Louis Armstrong as a member of the band. They used different personnel from time to time, evidenced by some of the videos on this link.

https://www.bing.com/search?q=new+red+o ... da1c19c38e

Nice, but the poor pianist got buried in the mix, as usual. He was in the video but the microphone might as well have been in the men's room.

It's my common gripe. Nick Spitzer played some Bessie Smith on his show this weekend and I was hiking along with the headphones on, wondering ""deleted", who is that on piano?" And then Nick said, "...with Fletcher Henderson on the piano." 'Nuf said. A bit later he played some wonderful Irma Thomas tune from her first LP and it was just so good that I was singing along. There's nothing so dangerous as singing along to headphones. All the rest of the world can hear is the singer, and it's often not very musical. That was OK, though, it was an uninhabited stretch of road.

Chris Campbell

I probably should have posted one of their recordings, but I wanted to offer a glimpse of the band members in action. That piano player was pretty good. Some of those videos have extremely poor audio. The tuba gives the band a touch of polka flavor. Some of their vocals are unique, as well.