Bo Carter's 'So Long' played by Tuba Skinny.

The book 'Tuba Skinny and Shaye Cohn', updated for 2024, written by Pops Coffee, is available from Amazon, both as a paperback and as an eBook. Take a simple 8-bar tune recorded by singer-guitarist Bo Carter (real name Armenter Chatmon) in 1931. Develop it into a 16-bar (8 + 8) with new words for the great Erika Lewis to sing in a ten-piece Tuba Skinny; and you have a little work of art. Note the delightful, delicate choruses led respectively by Max and Ewan. And the glories at the end – Shaye’s perfect, intuitive muted work behind Erika’s singing, and then the final two superb, contrasting ensemble choruses. It’s also one of the very few tunes the band plays in the unusual key of Db. It was such a privilege to be there on 16 April 2018 in Royal Street, New Orleans, to film this.