The Guide to Classic Recorded Jazz (15 page)

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Authors: Tom Piazza

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BOOK: The Guide to Classic Recorded Jazz
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Page 18
It should be noted that the New Orleans-born clarinetist and soprano saxophonist Sidney Bechet was, if anything, ahead of Armstrong as a soloist in the early 1920s. On the recordings he made with Clarence Williams's Blue Five in July 1923 (currently very difficult to find), only three months after the Oliver band's first records (and two and a half years before the first Hot Fives), Bechet's soprano is as strong and brilliant a part of the front line as Armstrong's cornet was later to be. He also takes several breaks, especially on "Wild Cat Blues," that are every bit as assured and imaginative as Armstrong's were with Henderson. Bechet, however, spent lots of time in Europe throughout the 1920s, so his influence wasn't felt to anything like the extent that Armstrong's was. Also, he lacked the extraordinary kind of personal projection Armstrong had.
The two met, however, at a session arranged by pianist and composer Clarence Williams, in a telling match of wits and imagination. "Cake Walkin' Babies," a head-to-head New Orleans front-line jam, with high-wire breaks, stop-time passages, and thrilling trading back and forth of the lead, was recorded twice, first in December 1924 and again in January 1925. Both sessions are available on
The Essential Sidney Bechet, Volume 1
(Musicmemoria CD 30229). The second version is one of the great examples of competition raising two voices up above their own heads, really one of the most thrilling moments in jazz. This shows as well as anything could what the tension between an ego straining at the leash and the commitment to overall musical sound can produce when the tension is perfect.
For more excellent New Orleans-by-way-of-Chicago small-group playing, try
Johnny Dodds - South Side Chicago Jazz
(Decca/MCA MCAD-42326), which features Dodds's totally individual clarinet playing in trio settings, in a quartet with Armstrong, pianist Jimmy Blythe, and washboard player Jimmy Bertrand, and in other fascinating settings that give a good sense of the various shapes the style could take.
Great Trumpets: Classic Jazz to Swing
(RCA/Bluebird 6753-2-RB) has some examples of this style under the nominal leadership, variously, of trumpeters Tommy Ladnier, Lee Collins, and Sidney De Paris.
New Orleans clarinetist Jimmie Noone was one of the most influential players on that instrument in the late 1920s. His band, which for a time featured piano innovator Earl Hines, played an extended engagement at Chicago's Apex Club and made a series of recordings in 1928 and 1929 using arranging devices à la Morton, along with more flat-out group improvisation A la the Hot Five. They are available on
Jimmie Noone: Apex Blues
(Decca/GRP GRD-633), a set that is well worth owning. Chicago trumpeter Jabbo Smith, a fiery player who set himself up as competition for Armstrong, led an exciting
 
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small band on a series of recordings available on the possibly hard-to-find
The Ace of Rhythm
(MCA-1347, cassette only).
Settling Down
Like trains on parallel tracks, the understanding of how to orchestrate jazz and the increased understanding of solo possibilities picked up momentum simultaneously. The big dance bands learned more and more how to integrate the new hot sounds into their repertoire by featuring both solos and arrangements that made use of the accenting and instrumental-distribution strategies learned from New Orleans jazz (and then expanded upon in ways more appropriate for the larger ensembles).
As the dance-oriented big-band sound increasingly became the apparent wave, it gathered more of the financial resources. Everybody wanted to hire the larger ensembles; there was a lot of money around, people wanted to go out dancing, and most emerging (and established) musicians of the day found work with the large dance bands. Some of the bands were closer to the spirit of jazz than others, and the sometimes very thin line between so-called hot bands and so-called sweet bands continued to be drawn throughout the swing era.
Fletcher Henderson's band was the best of the late 1920s. He insisted on topflight musicianship; the sections were crisp and defined. The trumpets most often played a melody, which would be set against a countermelody in the saxophones, with harmony parts and accents provided by the trombones. Henderson's band could combine the abandon of a New Orleans street-parade band with the precision of an Air Force drill team. The band's always impressive roster of soloists by this time included Coleman Hawkins, Rex Stewart, Jimmy Harrison, Bobby Stark, and others. The combination of crack ensemble work with strong solo statements was irresistible.
Henderson's repertoire, at least on records, consisted of popular tunes of the day, blues, specially composed rhythm numbers often concocted of riffs, and New Orleans standards like "Sugar Foot Stomp," "Milenburg Joys," and ''King Porter Stomp" updated for the new big-band style. By far the best all-around collection is
A Study in Frustration: The Fletcher Henderson Story
(Columbia/Legacy C3K 57596). The collection spans Henderson's career from the period before Armstrong's arrival to the end of the 1930s, when his band included such greats as Roy Eldridge, Chu Berry, and Ben Webster. The examples of the band's work range from highly arranged pieces like "The Henderson Stomp" (featuring Fats Waller as guest star on piano) and "Rocky Mountain Blues" to loosely worked-up masterpieces like "New King Porter Stomp." There is plenty of solo work by Hawkins and Louis Armstrong, as well as by
 
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important players like trumpeters Red Allen, Tommy Ladnier, and Joe Smith, trombonists Jimmy Harrison and J. C. Higginbotham, and many others, and plenty of opportunities to study the kinds of backgrounds Henderson and his arrangers could write to encourage and set off the soloists.
At a time when the Henderson band was developing and refining its notion of what a large ensemble could do, it also did a series of recordings emphasizing its roots in flat-out jazz.
Fletcher Henderson and the Dixie Stompers 1925-1928
(DRG/Swing SW8445/6) has some outstanding and uninhibited jazz (some of the most uninhibited jazz of the 1920s) featuring Coleman Hawkins, Rex Stewart, the little-heard trumpeter Bobby Stark, Joe Smith, and all of Henderson's other stars. While not exactly a small group (it was the full Henderson band), it gave much more free rein to the soloists. Unfortunately, the album notes list the wrong personnel.
A valuable set, especially for its generous sampling of the 1936 band with Roy Eldridge and Chu Berry, is
Hocus Pocus: Fletcher Henderson and His Orchestra 1927-1936
(RCA/Bluebird 9904-2-RB). Some of the material here sounds very dated, like "Roll On, Mississippi, Roll On" and "Strangers" (which, nevertheless, has an excellent Coleman Hawkins solo). But the set includes a strong version of "Sugar Foot Stomp" by the 1931 band, as well as some fine swing arrangements by the 1936 band, including the infectious "Knock, Knock, Who's There?" and the blistering "Jangled Nerves.''
An interesting set of sides recorded by Henderson's band in 1931 for the small Crown label is
Fletcher Henderson: The Crown King of Swing
(Savoy SJL 1152), on which the repertoire includes such popular songs as "Stardust" and "After You've Gone" and older jazz items such as "Tiger Rag" and "Milenburg Joys." Four first-rate 1933 Henderson titles are available on
Ridin' in Rhythm
(DRG/Swing CDSW 8453/4). Coleman Hawkins's exercise in the whole-tone scale, "Queer Notions," is here, as is his outstanding solo on "It's the Talk of the Town." "Nagasaki" has a great vocal by Red Allen; he plays the trumpet solo as well, not Bobby Stark as the album credits claim.
Throughout these sides, Hawkins's tenor gives the entire saxophone section its character. But by that time he was already a star and would soon be leaving for Europe, where he would be hailed internationally. The same orchestra under the direction of Horace Henderson has six sides in the
Ridin' in Rhythm
set, containing fine solos by Hawkins, Red Allen, and trombone virtuoso Dicky Wells, as well as good riff-based writing for all the sections.
Henderson arranger Don Redman later led a very influential band with the period name McKinney's Cotton Pickers, which had tremendous ensemble finesse and interesting arrangements.
McKinney's Cotton Pickers (1928-1930): The Band Don Redman Built
(RCA/Bluebird 2275-2-RB) shows the band at its
 
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best, with guest stars like Coleman Hawkins and Fats Waller; this is an invaluable document of the late-1920s New York big-band scene.
A collection that shows the influence, and the wide range of interpretation possible, of the Henderson/Redman style is
Early Black Swing - The Birth of Big Band Jazz: 1927-1934
(RCA/Bluebird 9583-2-RB). It includes fascinating glimpses of such luminaries as Earl Hines, Jimmie Lunceford, and Duke Ellington in relatively obscure early performances and less well known bands such as The Missourians (which became the Cab Calloway orchestra) and Charlie Johnson's Paradise Ten. The arrangements are as formal as Will Hudson's "White Heat," performed by Jimmie Lunceford's orchestra, and as informal as Charlie Johnson's "Hot Tempered Blues," which, informal though it is, features all kinds of combinations: notated duets for trumpets and clarinets, a violin solo with a clarinet background, and a jammed last chorus.
A perfectly encapsulated summation of what happened in the music in the time period covered by the set can be found by comparing the set's two performances by Bennie Moten's Kansas City Orchestra, "South" and "Moten Swing." "South," recorded in 1928, is a performance steeped in the New Orleans rhythmic feeling, with its characteristic sense of hesitation followed by a burst of movement ahead, like a parade beat. For "Moten Swing," however, recorded four years later, the tuba of the earlier session has been replaced by the string bass of Walter Page, playing four even beats per measure instead of the tuba's two, and the banjo has been replaced by a guitar, all of which make the beats more subtle, lighter, and forward-moving.
The Moten band, in fact, was seminal in the transition from the heavy, sometimes jerky rhythmic efforts of the first jazz big bands to the streamlined, forward-moving rhythmic feel of the best of the late swing bands and, through them, to the bebop of Charlie Parker. The band's work after Count Basie joined as its pianist is documented on
Bennie Moten's Kansas City Orchestra (1929-1932): Basie Beginnings
(RCA/Bluebird 9768-2-RB). The most enjoyable tracks, and the most modern sounding, are the ones recorded at the same 1932 session that produced "Moten Swing." One thing to listen for is the lightness of the beats in the rhythm section. Most big bands at the time sounded like a runner landing hard on every footfall; Moten's sounded like a runner landing only hard enough to propel him or her into the next stride. An interesting tune here is Moten's treatment of the New Orleans standard "Milenburg Joys," which begins with Walter Page's bass hitting on one and three, like a street-parade tuba, and then shifting into the sleekest of straight four-four.
A listen to the band's phrasing on their treatment of Rodgers and Hart's "The Blue Room" provides an insight into the nature of swing. It will be helpful for readers without a musical background to know that each of the four
 
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beats per bar can be divided in half; you can count the rhythm one
and
two
and
three
and
four (
and
one ...). The one, two, three, and four beats, which the rhythm section, particularly the bass, usually articulates, are called the down beats. The
and
half of the beat is called the up beat. The arrangement of "The Blue Room" here tends to accent the up beats rather than the down beats; this also gives the performance a forward-moving rather than a heavy-footed feeling.
But of all the big bands at the time and of all the arrangers, the one who was destined to make the greatest contribution by far was Duke Ellington.
Duke Ellington, Part I
There is no way to do justice to the work of Duke Ellington in a book this size, even if the whole book were to concern itself solely with his music. Ellington's achievement was quintessentially American and was accomplished under the conditions of life of the American itinerant bandleader - constant movement, constant management problems, and, be it said, constant inspiration from both the panorama of American life, high and low, to which he was exposed and the experience of having his music played back to him almost instantaneously by a group of some of the most talented and individualistic instrumentalists in history.
Ellington created at the highest levels throughout the whole span of a recording career that ran from 1924 to 1974. At every stage he busied himself with synthesizing what had been done and what was being done by the musicians who preceded and surrounded him, and his music, of every period, stands apart from, and above, that of his contemporaries.
From the beginning, Ellington's music dealt with formal, compositional aspects that were beyond even the very best of the day's arrangers; his choices of instrumentation, of dynamics, and of contrast between sections of a piece showed that he was thinking, from the beginning, as a composer, not just as an arranger of dance hall pieces, although almost all of what he did functioned as the highest-level kind of dance hall music as well as repaying serious formal study. Like Shakespeare, whom he resembled above all, Ellington worked on several levels at once, filling the needs of storytelling, entertainment, instruction, beautification of his chosen language, intellectual stimulation, and the presentation of emotional truth.
In the late 1920s and very early 1930s Ellington investigated all the basics of the large-band format he was working in - the sounds of sections, the role of a soloist, instrumental sonorities, dance rhythms, the New Orleans tradition, the blues, two-four versus four-four, swing - and from 1926 on produced

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