Top 50 Jazz Blog

Top 50 Jazz Blog

Friday, April 4, 2025

Interracial Jazz Session (#23) Waller, Williams, Justin Ring

Call it jugband jazz. We have the prolific pianist, composer, singer, producer Clarence Williams and Clarence Todd, a vocalist who also played ukulele, piano, and on these recordings, kazoo. Then, we have Fats Waller, just a couple of years after his first recordings.

Justin Ring and Fred Hagar
  
Clarence Williams
                                          
The last performer is Justin Ring-not a well-known name. Ring was associated with hundreds of recordings, from around 1900, mostly as an arranger, also as a pianist and "percussionist." Here, he plays woodblock.

Waller always works, of course, and there are also some nice solos and polyphonic kazoos.

Jamaica Jazzers: Clarence Williams, Clarence Todd (kazoo) Fats Waller (p) Justin Ring (perc) New York, c. May 10, 1924.

  • You don’t know my mind blues- OKeh 40117, Classics (F)664 [CD];
  • West Indies blues- OK 40117, Od 03196;
  • Note: Classics 664 [CD] titled “Fats Waller 1922-1926”; rest of this CD by Waller and others, Both above titles also on JSP (E)CD927 [CD] titled “Fats Waller - The Complete Recorded Works, volume 1”


All entries are from my book “As Long as They Can Blow. Interracial Jazz Recording and Other Jive Before 1935.”