Biography
The Jones & Collins Astoria Hot Eight assembled solely for a single recording date under a name drawn from the Astoria Ballroom and Astoria Gardens, a South Rampart Street dancehall active in New Orleans throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Cornetist Lee Collins, an early associate of Jelly Roll Morton, and tenor saxophonist David "Davey" Jones, a onetime Storyville performer among the first to adapt jazz to the saxophone, had both fronted groups at the nearby Pelican Roof Ballroom, so the unit might equally have been billed as the Pelican Hot Eight. On November 15, 1929, the octet gathered at Italian Hall, situated at the corner of North Rampart and Esplanade Avenue, where the roster also included clarinetist Sidney Ardoin, alto saxophonist Theodore Purnell, pianist Joseph Robichaux (who would bring his own ensemble to New York City for sessions in 1933), banjoist Emanuel Sayles, string bassist Al Morgan, and drummer Joe Strode-Raphael. That single afternoon produced four issued titles plus two alternate takes; the approved masters appeared first on Victor and later on its budget subsidiary Bluebird. Collins and Jones composed “Astoria Strut,” Jones and Ardoin supplied “Duet Stomp” (which features a vocal by Morgan), Morgan and Sayles wrote “Damp Weather,” and Purnell and Robichaux created “Tip Easy Blues.” The performances have since surfaced on multiple anthologies, among them Frog’s Sizzling the Blues 1927-1929 (containing the test takes), Louisiana Red Hot’s New Orleans: Great Original Performances 1918-1934, Jazz Roots’ New Orleans 1918-1929: Where Jazz Was Born, and ABC’s Jazz Classics in Digital Stereo, Vol. 1: New Orleans.