Big Marv Plays Duke Ellington - Sophisticated Lady

 This is the first instrumental we've released here at Big And Tall Records, and it's appropriate that it is by one of our most influential artists in determining our outlook as a recording company. Big Marv has recorded with his own group The Hodads, as well as many others, and contributed to many other groups in assisting in song composition as well as being a recording producer. Some might accuse Big Marv of not having 'taste' in music, at least the music he performs or participates in. If taste means having a predilection for a certain thing or style, in that sense, Big Marv doesn't have it. He has a powerful love of music, even in kinds he does not understand. Music is a powerful element of the times and culture it arises out of, not so much a predictor of the ways things will be, but a mirror of how they were in a given time. He seems comfortable in sitting in on a recording for Rock and Roll, or playing Dixieland with his band, Ragtime, or even the very strange first recording he made for us, Stanky Thang, which he's confided with us that he isn't very proud of, especially for a first effort. But he refused to allow us to remove it from our catalog., and has recorded a piece of experimental music (at least for him) in a second version of a song titled Swamp Ass Joe. So this recording of Duke Ellington's jazz standard Sophisticated Lady is an example of his range in music performance.

Not many know that Marv has a background of a solid classical training, but in addition was exposed to many other kinds of music in his home town of New Orleans. He is capable of going from one style to the other, but admits that he needs much more preparation when playing compositions of classical masters, and he includes Duke Ellington and many other jazz musicians as well. 

He came to play and love Duke Ellington in his student days when he had a job as a piano player in a piano bar. Duke Ellington was one of the most requested jazz composers, so he became very familiar with his works. He plans on working up some more of Ellington's compositions, and we hope he gives us more to record. In the long term, he'd like to do a series of other composers as well. He named off Chopin, Scott Joplin, Debussy, Beethoven, Liszt, etc. He's also participated in performances of Henry Cowell, a composer in the 20th century that made it somewhat a specialty to play directly on the strings of the piano such as The Banshee, as well as the 12-Tone piano music of Arnold Schoenberg.