The Devil's Jukebox are five vaude-villains playing red-hot ragtime, dirty, dirty 1920's viper-jass and scurrilous hokum from the wrong side of the tracks.
We play Hokum!
Hokum?
What the hell is hokum?
Glad you asked.
Folks like Pokey Le Farge, C.W. Stoneking , Tuba Skinny or Leon Redbone all play their versions of it. It’s a combination of traditional viper jazz, raucous ragtime, and low down dirty acoustic blues… with some tango, Charleston and tin pan alley stuff thrown in.
It’s usually played on a mix of acoustic instruments, whatever you can grab to hand.
We use clarinet, ukulele, harmonium, hooterphone, suitcase percussion and we did use a washtub before Sir Pinky got his banjo double-bass. You can add fiddle, piano, mandolin, trumpet, all sorts into the mix, but that’s our basic line-up, one which takes inspiration from our heroes- vaudeville and burlesque stars from the 1920’s and 1930’s like the legendary Frankie Half Pint Jaxon, medicine bands, jug acts and the rougher, rawer end of traditional New Orleans jazz such as Jelly Roll Morton’s Steamboat Four, with songs that celebrate drinkin’, dancin’and raisin’ hell, dragging vintage music screamin’ and kickin’ back into the speakeasys and juke joints where it belongs.