Notes
The great American composer and bandleader Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was the first to say it outright: "It don't mean a thing, if it ain't got that swing." And how right he was. The Viper Mad Trio has taken the Duke's lesson to heart, instilling all their music with tons of swing and plenty more besides, all delivered with sophisticated nuance and musical singularity seldom mastered by such young musicians. Central to the trio's stunning exposition of the fundamental elements of trad-jazz swing is bandleader, guitarist, and vocalist Molly Reeves. Molly, now only in her early 20s, is a wise old musical soul. Despite her youthful, pixyish appearance, her creative vision embodies decades of hipster musical experience. Molly claims to have had no real interest in playing music until a pre-adolescent allergic condition derailed her "sporty kid" childhood at the tender age of 12, but she nonetheless can boast of beaucoup musical DNA. Her grandfather played bass. Her grandmother, very present during her childhood, played selections from the Great American Songbook professionally on accordion. Molly's paternal great aunt left home at 14 to play trumpet in New Orleans, ultimately recognized as one of the town's best trumpeters when she joined them in performing at a symbolic wake for Louis Armstrong, New Orleans' favorite musical son. Where Reeves is concerned, once the music bug hit her, it hit hard. Stuck at home with no outlet for her prodigious creative energy, she picked up a guitar and something clicked into place. Reeves' wise old grandma immediately recognized the budding musician in her darling descendant and sent her to a summer jazz camp whose faculty was composed of the crème de la crème of Northern California trad-jazz cats. "I knew from that moment on, "Reeves recounts, "that I wanted nothing else but to be a professional musician. And I knew music rooted in traditional jazz and jazz swing would always be where my heart is." Enlightenment can do crazy things to anyone's backward view of their own life. Setting sails for a long voyage on the seas of American jazz and swing, Reeves suddenly recalled another, even deeper influence on her musical consciousness: the sound of iconic Gypsy-jazz guitarist Jean "Django" Reinhardt. Not only did Reinhardt invent a new way of playing jazz guitar, but teaming up with violinist Stéphane Grappelli in the mid-193Os he brought to life a new conception of jazz swing by way of Le Quintette du Hot Club de France. They created an ensemble sound that remains distinctive in it's hipness, most accurately described by a veteran jazz critic as 'one of the most original bands in the entire history of recorded jazz.' Another fundamental influence was Reeve's dad, a sports fanatic and inveterate entrepreneur. Reeves' inheriting the gift of business acumen from her father helps explain how, after gigging around for a couple of years, she became proprietor, at the tender of age of 14, of a swing-jazz ensemble based on a unique twin-guitar sound. Called Red Skunk, the band has recorded three albums and remains a hot commodity, even as these notes are being written, on Northern California's Hot Jazz Jubilee festival circuit. And in 2012, having accumulated a sufficiently large financial nest egg, Reeves, along with bass player and close collaborator Kellen Garcia (late 20s), proceeded to follow the example set by her trumpet-playing great aunt, purchasing a modest home to serve as her new home base to New Orleans. There, the pair looked up a buddy of Garcia's, trumpeter Ryan Robertson (early 30s), already immersed in New Orleans' burgeoning, post-Katrina brass band scene. It wasn't long before the Mad Viper Trio was born, taking it's name from a composition by another New Orleans jazz giant, clarinet and saxophone player Sidney Bechet. For material to define their sound, the three young musicians mined the rich repertoire of pre-WWII, small-combo jazz, a body of music often marked by an e
