I’m planning a Summer Evening Croquet Party. Croquet on the lawn, light fare, plenty of drinking (collins, whiskey sours, Long Island Ice Teas, G&Ts), white dinner jackets on the men, summer dresses for the women. What I need is music - nothing produced before 1960, please. Suggestions should keep with the theme - A Drunken Summer Night.
I’d recommend going for the 1910 deal. You’ll need straw boaters for the men.
And ragtime music…not the ordinary everyday piano stuff, but orchestral ragtime: the stuff that’d be played by small mixed strings/brass/woodwind groups in hotel ballrooms, discreetly placed behind the potted ferns, for dancers.
Not obtrusive unless you want it to be, and you can dance to it, if you want to.
Here’s a recording to start you off:
Scott Joplin; The Red Back Book/Elite Syncopations, performed by the New England Conservatory Ragtime Ensemble under the baton of Gunther Schuller. Angel CDC-7 47193 2
Do you know how difficult it is to find a straw boater? I’ve called a dozen haberdashers and no one seems to have any ideas. “You want a what?” is the usual response. You could probably buy them for about $5.00 at one time - in every clothing store in town. Take a straw hat, add a grosgrain ribbon around the crown, and you’ve got yourself a natty little cover for your noggin.
…or, if you’d prefer the post-WWII elegance-with-dry martinis approach, try some Claude Thornhill. His big band combined the sophistication of Gil Evans’ early arrangements with a nod to bebop but maintained a smooth, cool sound (Miles Davis co-opted it, along with Evans and Gerry Mulligan, for his later “Birth of the Cool” nonet recordings). The instrumentation helped: Evans and Thornhill added F horns and tuba to the usual swing-band mix, and all the saxes doubled on clarinet. It all resulted in a foggy and rich and beautiful ambience.
Claude Thornhill and His Orchestra; The 1948 Transcription Performances. Hep Records CD 17
Imagine my surprise - you can buy a straw boater on line for a mere $75.00. Now, for the spats…