Jimmy Lunceford Crowdfunding Campaign Starts on Thursday, July 27 [UPDATED]

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Last year, lindy hoppers and jazz enthusiasts around the world rallied to support the transcription of the music of the great Chick Webb. It was an enormous outpouring of love for his music that culminated in a killer concert at Lindy Focus in Asheville in December 2016.

Michael Gamble and his crew are doing it again with another crowdfunding effort to support the transcription of the music of bandleader Jimmie Lunceford. Here's Michael telling you all about it.

In short, people will get to kick in funds to get as much of Lunceford's music transcribed as possible. You can purchase an individual song, which will then be made available as charts to bandleaders around the world for the first time. How cool is that?

The crowdfunding campaign kicks off on Thursday, July 27 at 8pm Eastern Time. Last year, the campaign blazed through their fundraising goal and a lot of the choice songs were taken within a day or so. So get ready if you want to participate.

Update: July 27, 3:00pm PT

On the Facebook page for the campaign, they announced what tracks were being transcribed. Here they are, in alphabetical order:

  • Ain't She Sweet
  • Annie Laurie
  • Blues in the Groove
  • For Dancers Only
  • Four or Five TImes
  • Harlem Shout
  • He Ain’t Got Rhythm
  • Hi Spook
  • It’s Time to Jump and Shout
  • Jay Gee
  • Jazznocracy
  • Jeep Rhythm
  • Le Jazz Hot
  • Lunceford Special
  • Margie
  • My Blue Heaven
  • Oh Boy
  • Organ Grinder’s Swing
  • Pigeon Walk
  • Posin’
  • Rhythm is Our Business
  • Rose Room
  • Shut Out
  • Stomp it Off
  • Strictly Instrumental
  • Swingin’ on C
  • Twenty Four Robbers
  • Uptown Blues
  • Wham (Re-Bop-Boom-Bam)
  • Whatcha Know Joe

MORE ABOUT SONG SELECTION AND PROCESS

A few Lunceford “hits” are not on this list - notably White Heat, Avalon and ‘Taint What You Do. That’s because, unlike the rest, there actually are high quality and accurate arrangements of these available currently. Also, for several of the other more popular tunes, we are aware that “stock charts” exist, and the transcribers will have access to those, if needed, as a jumping-off-point, but we’ve determined that in those cases a new transcription will bring us the closest to accurate recreation!


ARCHIVAL RECOVERY

In addition to the other 26 transcriptions, this project will include four tunes that were recovered from Lunceford’s original book of band charts archived at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History in Washington DC. Each of these tunes is in decent shape, but still require some work cleaning up and re-notating before they can be performed. Because these will ultimately require a little less of a transcriber’s time, they are a little cheaper to sponsor, so might make a good sponsorship choice for a group or individual that has limited funds, but still wants to participate in a pretty awesome act of historical preservation! These tunes are: Lunceford Special, Rhythm Is Our Business, Jay Gee, and My Blue Heaven.

To support the campaign, head to their Indiegogo page.