
Jim Kweskin
Latest Release

Jim Kweskin & The Berlin Hall Saturday Night Revue, Doing Things Right (Jalopy Records, 4.25.25)
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Liner Notes
Doing Things Right: Skiffling in the Modern Age
Before digital music, downloads, streaming and samples, string band music was one of the primary sources of available entertainment. Ubiquitous in the Deep South in particular, string bands in the early twentieth century appeared at social clubs, bars, restaurants, and community gatherings. A string band was often comprised of semi-itinerant musicians seeking work in the absence of permanent employment. Looking for impromptu gigs was called skiffling, and in some communities, combos as large as a quartet or quintet would go door to door, soliciting for hire. Skifflers were prepared to play the tunes requested — lieder for the denizens of the German beer hall, fado for the Holy Ghost Society, popular hits of the day for dance halls, blues and hokum for rent parties. A busy string band boasted a repertoire of songs that ran the gamut from the chart toppers to roadhouse standards, to street music and funeral dirges. With an immense archive at everyone’s fingertips, skiffling is now in less demand. DOING THINGS RIGHT, like a modern day skiffle, represents a broad array and layering of genres, affirming that music can still fold in on itself, carrying on and remaking traditions.
The Musical Revue melds a variety show of Folk, Old Time Country, Traditional Jazz, blues, Ragtime, Western Swing, New Orleans Street, Early American popular, American Song Book and more. The opening and closing numbers, Four or Five Times (Byron Sturges, 1927) and Right or Wrong (Sizemore and Biese 1921), show the range of the material itself –a foxtrot and a swing number, both rendered in the western swing style. The selection recovers jug band and blues numbers such as Casey ‘N Bill (Earl McDonald 1926), Farewell Daddy Blues (Gertrude ‘Ma” Rainey, 1924), and Ducks Yas Yas (James “Stump” Johnson, 1929). The lyrics, chord changes and voicings of these songs largely originated out of the black community, infusing the pop standards of the day like Basin Street Blues, Show Me The Way to Go Home (Campbell and Connelly, 1925), I Get the Blues When it Rains (Klauber and Stoddard, 1929) and Viper Mad (originally titled “Pleasure Mad”) (Sydney Bechet, 1929). The cross over caused the music to reach a much broader, wealthier and whiter audience.
Traced geographically, the listener moves west from New Orleans —Mardi Gras Mambo (Adams and Welsch, 1954) and When I Grow Too Old to Dream (Romberg and Hammerstein, 1934)—here played with a New Orleans street band second line rhythm –toward Beaumont, Texas and beyond with I’ll Sail My Ship Alone (Moon Mullican, 1950) Mona Lisa (Evans and Livingston, 1949) and Right or Wrong. Chronologically, What’ll I Do (Irving Berlin, 1923) preceded We’ll Meet Again (Parker and Charles, 1939) by sixteen years, but shares a sentimental durability that make those songs contemporaries even today.
The relationship to the music that came before and the music that followed, is what makes the set list. You can find multiple versions of all these songs online now, but it was from string band skifflers that we heard the first playlists. The Revue revives that tradition, launching a procession of songs distinct in style and place, and connected through shared roots.