Neatwork
2003
1937-1949
About This Album
If Oran Thaddeus "Hot Lips" Page had chosen someone besides Joe Glaser to be his manager, maybe Lips wouldn't have found himself regularly stashed on the back burner. This was probably done to keep Lips from upstaging Glaser's main Afro-American trumpet-and-vocal act, Louis Armstrong. That's how Dan Morgenstern explained the perpetual setbacks Page grappled with throughout much of his difficult career. He did make a lot of records, and most of them are solid. This particular volume of Alternate Takes also contains rarities which are not "alternates" but one-of-a-kind treasures. Exhibit A is the "Blues in B Flat," a duet with Fats Waller recorded at Carnegie Hall in January of 1942. Previously issued in 1980 on The Fats Waller Story, Radiola's pastiche of rare broadcasts and live performances, this was apparently the only portion of the concert to be recorded for posterity. Maybe that's a good thing, as Waller's alcohol consumption is said to have sabotaged his playing throughout the rest of that night. Page causes his audience to bust out laughing when he sings a humorous lyric which Eric Clapton was to use about 25 years later (opening "Outside Woman Blues" from Cream's Disraeli Gears).
Track List (try tracks 4,6,10,18,20 and 21)

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