Tiger Rag
The Washboard Rhythm Kings (1932). Excerpt from "The 50 Songs that Gave Birth to Rock and Roll"
Damn, this track is nasty. If part of rock and roll’s appeal is its dangerous attitude and inchoate wildness (and I like to think that it is), this 1932 recording has pretty much everything you’re looking for.
Based on its title, we know that this tune descended from the Scott Joplin-pioneered ragtime genre.
And by the band’s name and the arrangement here, we can also identify the Washboard Rhythm Kings as the kind of jug band that was omnipresent in pre-war blues.
This is where the predictability ends, however. Though they sound like a jug band, the Rhythm Kings were actually skilled jazz musicians who recorded for Victor and Vocalian just as American sank into the Great Depression.
It’s hard to say exactly where these guys came from since they were at one time known as the Georgia Washboard Stompers and, at another time, the Alabama Washboard Stompers. In any event, it was their performance on the Dixieland standard “Tiger Rag” that produced this immortal recording.
From the skiffling washboard syncopation to the frenetic horn breaks to the shouting vocals to the background hooting, “Tiger Rag” sounds like a party you wish you were at. The musicians here play with spectacular looseness, undermining any assumptions you might have about the formality of ensemble playing during the Depression.
Straight up, these guys get down; the horns stepping all over each other, blurting out missed notes; the frontline vocals scatting furiously, the background bleeding with riotous encouragement; percussion driving forward like a locomotive and barrelhouse piano making a late solo entry. This was music that rocked, and fairly hard at that.
In structure, attitude, intensity, and flat-out wildness, the Washboard Rhythm Kings’ “Tiger Rag” is everything you’d expect from a prototypical rock and roll record.
See the full list of 50 Songs that Gave Birth to Rock and Roll