Li'l Liza Jane, also known as Little Liza Jane and Liza Jane, is a song dating back at least to the 1910s. It has become a perennial standard both as a song and an instrumental in traditional jazz, folk music

Folk music

Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....

, and bluegrass

Bluegrass music

Bluegrass music is a form of American roots music, and a sub-genre of country music. It has mixed roots in Scottish, English, Welsh and Irish traditional music...

, and versions have repeatedly appeared in other genres including rock and roll

Rock and roll

Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...

. It is one of the standards of the New Orleans brass band

Brass band

A brass band is a musical ensemble generally consisting entirely of brass instruments, most often with a percussion section. Ensembles that include brass and woodwind instruments can in certain traditions also be termed brass bands , but are usually more correctly termed military bands, concert...

 tradition.

Origins

"Li'l Liza Jane" was first published in 1916 by Sherman, Clay & Co of San Francisco, California

San Francisco, California

San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...

 as a composition by Countess Ada de Lachau. It was described as a "Southern dialect song". The tune was featured in the 1916-1917 show "Come Out of the Kitchen".

The song's origins, however, seem to go back even earlier. The tune's similarity to the 1850 Stephen Foster

Stephen Foster

Stephen Collins Foster , known as the "father of American music", was the pre-eminent songwriter in the United States of the 19th century...

 standard "Camptown Races

Camptown Races

Gwine to Run All Night, or De Camptown Races is a minstrel song by Stephen Foster . It was probably composed in Cincinnati in 1849, according to Richard Jackson, and published by F. D. Benteen of Baltimore, Maryland, in February 1850...

" has been observed. The name "Liza Jane" or "Eliza Jane" was a standard female character name in minstrel show

Minstrel show

The minstrel show, or minstrelsy, was an American entertainment consisting of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music, performed by white people in blackface or, especially after the Civil War, black people in blackface....

s. A tune "Goodbye, Liza Jane" was published by Eddie Fox in 1871. Harry Von Tilzer

Harry Von Tilzer

Harry Von Tilzer was a very popular United States songwriter.-Biography:Von Tilzer was born in Goshen, Indiana under the name Aaron Gumbinsky which he shortened to Harry Gumm. He ran away and joined a traveling circus at age 14, where he took his new name by adding 'Von' to his mother's maiden...

 published "Goodbye, Eliza Jane" in 1903, which has some similarity to the later "Li'l Liza Jane".

Natalie Curtis Burlin

Natalie Curtis

Natalie Curtis was an American ethnomusicologist. Curtis, along with Alice Cunningham Fletcher and Frances Densmore, was one of a small group of women doing important ethnological studies in North America at the beginning of the 20th century...

's book Negro Folk-Songs, published in 1918, documents a version said to be a Negro

Negro

The word Negro is used in the English-speaking world to refer to a person of black ancestry or appearance, whether of African descent or not...

 folk song with an associated dancing game. In the "Liza Jane" dance, couples would dance in a circle, with an extra man in the middle. The extra man would "steal partners" with one of the couples, and the odd man out would go into the center and do a solo dance, then in cut in on another couple and the process would repeat.

Important recordings

Earl Fuller

Earl Fuller

Earl Fuller was an American society dance band leader, drummer and pianist.His group "Earl Fuller's Rector Novelty Orchestra" was a regular feature at Rector's restaurant in New York City. Their records were released on Victor Records, Columbia Records, Emerson Records and Edison Records and sold...

's Jazz Band featuring Ted Lewis

Ted Lewis (musician)

Theodore Leopold Friedman, better known as Ted Lewis , was an American entertainer, bandleader, singer, and musician. He led a band presenting a combination of jazz, hokey comedy, and schmaltzy sentimentality that was a hit with the American public. He was known by the moniker "Mr...

 on clarinet recorded a version of the tune for Victor Records in September of 1917 that sold well and helped establish the tune as an early jazz standard. Fuller's band recorded it as an instrumental other than an ensemble vocal chant "Oh, Li'l Liza, Little Liza Jane" on part of the chorus.

The 1918 recording with singing and banjo by Harry C. Brown for Columbia Records

Columbia Records

Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...

 helped establish the number in old time country music, although it was not the first recording of the number as has sometimes been claimed.

Bob Wills

Bob Wills

James Robert Wills , better known as Bob Wills, was an American Western Swing musician, songwriter, and bandleader, considered by music authorities as the co-founder of Western Swing and universally known as the pioneering King of Western Swing.Bob Wills' name will forever be associated with...

 and his Texas Playboys had a hit with their 1947 recording.

The 1964 record "Liza Jane" by "Davie Jones and the King Bees" is David Bowie

David Bowie

David Bowie is an English musician, actor, record producer and arranger. A major figure for over four decades in the world of popular music, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s...

's first record. Although composer credit was given to Leslie Conn, it is an arrangement of this old standard.

The Band

The Band

The Band was an acclaimed and influential roots rock group. The original group consisted of Rick Danko , Garth Hudson , Richard Manuel , and Robbie Robertson , and Levon Helm...

 recorded a version in 1968 called "Go Go Liza Jane

Go Go Liza Jane

"Go Go Liza Jane" was the A-side of the 1968 single released by Atco Records in order to capitalize on the growing success of The Band, whom had recorded the track along with two others in 1965 under the moniker Levon and the Hawks...

".

Alison Krauss

Alison Krauss

Alison Maria Krauss is an American bluegrass-country singer, songwriter and fiddler. She entered the music industry at an early age, winning local contests by the age of ten and recording for the first time at fourteen. She signed with Rounder Records in 1985 and released her first solo album in...

 & Union Station's record won a 1998 Grammy Award in the Best Country Instrumental Performance

Grammy Award for Best Country Instrumental Performance

The Grammy Award for Best Country Instrumental Performance was awarded from 1970 to 2011. Between 1986 and 1989 the award was presented as the Grammy Award for Best Country Instrumental Performance ....

 category.

The New Orleans Nightcrawlers

New Orleans Nightcrawlers

New Orleans Nightcrawlers are a Jazz and Rhythm & Blues group based in the New Orleans area. They were founded in l994 by pianist Tom McDermott, sousaphonist Matt Perrine and trumpeter Kevin Clark...

 version entitled "Funky Liza" appears on their 2001 album "Mardi Gras in New Orleans".

Otis Taylor

Otis Taylor (musician)

Otis Taylor is an American blues musician. He is a multi-instrumentalist whose talents include the guitar, banjo, mandolin, harmonica, and vocals. In 2001, he was awarded a fellowship to the Sundance Film Composers Laboratory.-Music:Taylor moved at a young age to Denver, Colorado where he grew up...

 recorded a version of this song for his 2008 album "Recapturing the Banjo." An album dedicated to black musicians playing traditional blues banjo music. Also on the album are Keb' Mo'

Keb' Mo'

Keb' Mo is an American blues singer, guitarist, and songwriter, currently living in Nashville, Tennessee, United States.-Early life:From early on he had an appreciation for the blues and gospel music...

, Corey Harris

Corey Harris

Corey Harris is an American blues and reggae musician, currently residing in Virginia. Along with Keb' Mo' and Alvin Youngblood Hart, he raised the flag of acoustic guitar blues in the mid 1990s...

, Alvin Youngblood Hart

Alvin Youngblood Hart

Alvin Youngblood Hart is a Grammy Award-winning American musician.-Career:Born in Oakland California, Hart had family connections with Carroll County, Mississippi, and spent time there in his childhood, hearing his relatives stories of Charlie Patton, "being around these people who were there when...

, Guy Davis

Guy Davis

Guy Davis is an American comic book artist primarily known for his work on Sandman Mystery Theatre and various Hellboy-related comics...