I admit I don’t know much about Frank Newton; a 78-meister like Steve Buscemi in “ghost world”, I am not. But we’ve all heard of a guy called eminem. Sometimes people can collide without ever having met. To begin at the end: April Winchell’s father, ventriloquist Paul Winchell, died the other day. This isn’t about him. April is a DJ and blogger whose website has scads of wondrous funny mp3’s. There’s a section of bad nirvana covers. There’s a scat singer who sounds like he might be possessed by demons. even vincent price is getting in the fun, cooking small boys.

But the tune I really like here is a mash-up called eminem vs. ragtime (uncensored). I don’t know the rag, though it sounds like one of the better known ones. What’s remarkable is the rhythmic sophistication of marshalll mathers’ rapping; this mash-up could never work without it. even if you hate rap, it’s hard to do well. and if we’re impressed with the way this modern rapper meshes with the old music, what are we to say about someone who created something not very different in 1937?

frankie newton was a trumpeter who stayed busy from the late 1920’s to the 1940’s, and played on billie holiday’s song “strange fruit”. he’s got bona fides if he never did anything else; jasmine records over in england offers a two-cd anthology of his work. in 1937, frankie newton and his uptown serenaders cut a hyperventilated, hilarious rave-up called onyx hop. Like any other song a band would record in those bygone days, the whole group would crowd around a single microphone in the studio, do the whole piece from start to end, and not make a single mistake; this was back when every roadhouse had a band, and there were lots of paid musicians about, though very few got rich. Every recording session was a live gig; you didn’t have the modern problem of artists making great-sounding records and being awful in person. Everybody had their parts down cold, or they got fired.

oh, yeah. the song is about weed.

and I consider it one of the best songs of the 20th century; it really sounds 50 years ahead of its time. the lunatic, high-precision ensemble playing is typical thirties hot jazz; but the vocal is a two-part singsong chant about getting stoned on cannabis down at the onyx club. it came out about the same time the big business interests got hemp outlawed; you’re never gonna hear it on the radio; it’s the punk rock of the depression. jim kweskin’s jug band covered it back in the ‘60’s, so perhaps some old hippies remember that version; but for the rest of us, it’s a breath of smoky air.