The Guide to Classic Recorded Jazz (16 page)

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Authors: Tom Piazza

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BOOK: The Guide to Classic Recorded Jazz
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music unlike anyone else's. A shock may be had by turning from the Fletcher Henderson arrangements, great as they are, to
Duke Ellington and His Orchestra - The Brunswick Era, Volume 1 (1926-1929)
(Decca/MCA MCAD-42325). From the brooding opening strains of his theme song of the time, "East St. Louis Toodle-Oo," through a wild and, at times, hilarious two-part deconstruction of the New Orleans standard "Tiger Rag," Ellington has his way with the conventions of the day and invents more than one or two of his own.
Each of these pieces is more than just a showpiece for a band; each has a specific mood - often more than one - that it conveys. "East St. Louis Toodle-Oo," for example, begins with a somber minor-key figure played by tuba and saxophone in a very low register. Over this swelling minor-key theme, Bubber Miley's plunger-muted growl trumpet comes in with the first theme. When the piece goes into major for the bridge, it is as if the sun has come out. When it goes back into minor for the last eight bars, it does so with all the drama of bad luck coming back to stay. Then the key shifts to major again for a second theme, played by Tricky Sam Nanton on trombone; there are solos from clarinet, a trumpet duet, a clarinet trio, and then a final, dramatic repetition of the first melody. The piece, in other words, goes in and out of two contrasting moods, uses a startling range of instrumental timbre and coloration, tells a complete story by developing two separate themes, and does it all in under three minutes.
The same kind of range of contrasting colors can be found in other early classics, such as "Black and Tan Fantasy" and "The Mooche," both of which Ellington returned to throughout his career. There are more conventional stomp pieces, such as "Birmingham Breakdown," "Jubilee Stomp," and "Doin' the Frog,'' included here, but also a little remarked upon masterpiece called "Immigration Blues" (only on the CD issue of the set), which begins with a fanfare from the trumpets, answered by the reeds, goes into a short three-note blues phrase, answered by the tuba and the piano's left hand, goes into a trumpet solo, then an alto solo over a Spanish beat, then another trumpet solo over a background in which the time is turned around (the tuba and other rhythm instruments accent two and four, when they had been accenting one and three). Underneath a trombone solo later, Ellington has arranged the reeds playing at the bottom of their ranges for an unusual sonority, like the low horn of an ocean liner. The last chorus is a sort of jam, with reprises of the original tuba theme as well as a brief taste of the time turnaround and a coda from the growl trumpet. Not to be overlooked are several early lyrical themes stated by muted trumpet over a hushed reed background - "Take It Easy," the beautiful and durable "Black Beauty," and "Awful Sad" - which show his melodic and lyric genius, his sensitivity, and also his awareness of dynamics;
 
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rare was the band of that day that could approach lyricism this delicate without falling off into sentimentality.
Early Ellington 1927-1934
(RCA/Bluebird 6852-2-RB) has alternate versions of "East St. Louis Toodle-Oo," "Black and Tan Fantasy," ''The Mooche," and "Black Beauty," as well as early incarnations of such Ellington classics as "Mood Indigo," "Rockin' in Rhythm," "Ring Dem Bells," "Solitude," and "Creole Love Call." We hear the band's major voices as they join: baritone saxophonist Harry Carney, trumpeter Cootie Williams, alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges; we also hear how the solo statements are made a part of the ensemble sound. The individual is always allowed to make a contribution in a context that helps him make sense, and to which he has to relate in turn, or risk making no sense at all. In this way, too, Ellington's music is democratic in its essence; the individual has a responsibility for making the whole group make sense, and the group has a responsibility for giving meaning to its individual members.
The extraordinary moments in this set are too many to mention, but listen to "Saturday Night Function," with its pedal-point, or drone, effect from Wellman Braud's extremely well recorded bass. Even on a number like this, which is essentially a string of solos, the background makes a pointed statement. "Shout 'Em Aunt Tillie," with its AAB minor theme stated by both brass and reeds, the ingenious routining of "Old Man Blues" (based, as Dan Morgenstern points out in his liner notes, on "Old Man River"), especially the way the bridge is treated, the unique instrumental voicings of "Mood Indigo" and "Solitude," the shockingly apt railroad onomatopoeia (writer Albert Murray's phrase) of "Daybreak Express," the infectious jump tunes "Stompy Jones" and "Cotton Club Stomp," and the eight-and-a-half-minute "Creole Rhapsody" (two sides of a 12-inch 78-rpm record), one of Ellington's earliest extended works, in which multiple tempos, varied orchestrations of the same melodic material, and dynamic contrast contribute to a fully realized extended work, demonstrate the genius of Ellington in its early flowering. An essential set.
The most comprehensive collection of early Ellington is certainly
The OKeh Ellington
(Columbia C2K 46177), a two-disc set of material recorded between 1927 and 1930, not all of which was issued on the Columbia-affiliated OKeh label. This set includes pieces like "Hop Head," "Stack O'Lee Blues," and "Bugle Call Rag," a couple of versions apiece of classics like "East St. Louis Toodle-Oo," "Black and Tan Fantasy," and the thrilling "Hot and Bothered," and a number of rare collector's items. The set is especially valuable for showing the widely varying approaches Ellington would use in revisiting the same
 
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tunes and for showing the band's development over a three-and-a-half-year period. The album notes, by Ellington expert Stanley Dance, are very informative as well.
Both RCA and MCA have issued second volumes of Ellington material, neither of which is as valuable as either
Early Ellington
or
The Brunswick Era, Volume 1
. But
Jungle Nights in Harlem 1927-1932
(RCA/Bluebird 2499-2-RB) and
The Jungle Band: The Brunswick Era, Volume 2 1929-1931
(Decca/MCA MCAD-42348) document an Ellington band that had been honed by an extended engagement at Harlem's Cotton Club, where they played a trademark "jungle music" for white patrons who came to see all-black floor shows. There is much excellent music on both sets, but any of the three previously mentioned collections would be a better place to start listening to the early band.
Ellington's Columbia material from the early and mid-1930s is somewhat hard to find, although much of it has been issued on the European Classics label. But make sure you listen to the 1932 "Lazy Rhapsody" on
The 1930s: Big Bands
(Columbia CK 40651), a unique essay in instrumental sonority in which the solo voices of clarinet, alto, baritone sax, piano, and even Cootie Williams's wordless vocal come out of a background that they fade back into. Also of interest, and a must for the Ellington fan, is
Reflections in Ellington
(Natasha Imports NI 4016), which contains two medleys recorded by the 1932 band in stereo - not reprocessed stereo but the real thing, recorded on two machines and then synchronized. The fascinating story of the discovery of this material is told in the liner notes.
Ellington occupied the same position in every era of jazz that he did in the late 1920s and very early 1930s. We'll revisit him periodically.
Lonely Melody
Jazz-oriented bands weren't the only ones to hire what were called hot soloists in those days. Every band needed one or two musicians who could provide at least a semblance of a jazz solo. As a gross generalization, the black big bands tended to have a higher jazz quotient than the white bands, but even the sweetest of the sweet (with the possible exception of Guy Lombardo) usually had at least one hot soloist. Probably the most famous example was the orchestra of Paul Whiteman.
Whiteman was called the King of Jazz by a public and press that equated the word with the uninhibited excess and license of the 1920s life-style. Whiteman's was basically a dance band with pretensions, and little of its enormous output would be recognizable as jazz today. But throughout the late
 
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1920s and 1930s, he hired some very good musicians indeed, including violinist Joe Venuti, the Dorsey brothers, saxophonist Frank Trumbauer, trombonist Jack Teagarden, and, perhaps the best known, cornetist Bix Beiderbecke.
Most of the best of Whiteman's records were orchestrated by the great arranger Bill Challis. Records like "Changes," "Lonely Melody," and "From Monday On" have beautiful, complete statements by the short-lived Beiderbecke; they are collected on
Bix Lives!
(RCA/Bluebird 6845-2-RB). In listening to the cuts collected here, note how the jazz aspect of the performances fades in and out, like a radio station just on the edge of its range. At times, as in "San," the jazz wing of the band is given full freedom. At other times, Beiderbecke takes his solo over crooning voices, or his solo stands out in the middle of lush string arrangements like the Statue of Liberty in a cornfield. One of the most interesting cuts is ''You Took Advantage of Me," which has a full chase chorus of two-bar exchanges between Bix and his soulmate Frank Trumbauer on C-melody saxophone. But the jazz element is rarely integrated fully into the performance; the violins and other sweet elements provide a sentimental spin that was temperamentally foreign to what bands like Henderson's were trying to bring off.
Other orchestras, such as those of Roger Wolfe Kahn and, especially, Ben Pollack, could generate considerable jazz feeling when they wanted to. Pollack's most serious jazz soloists were trombonist Jack Teagarden and a young clarinetist from Chicago named Benny Goodman, who joined the Pollack orchestra when he was only seventeen. You can hear Teagarden with the Pollack and Kahn bands, as well as on several sides recorded during his mid-1930s tenure with Whiteman, on
Jack Teagarden/That's a Serious Thing
(RCA/Bluebird 9986-2-RB), which also includes some flat-out small-group jazz with the trombonist.
Good as those sides are, Teagarden gets even more of a chance to shine - alongside Goodman himself - on
Benny Goodman and Jack Teagarden: B.G. and Big Tea in NYC
(Decca/GRP GRD-609). This collection of tracks recorded between 1929 and 1934 shows what happened when the best hot soloists from the white dance orchestras of the time were turned loose to play more or less as they wished. Most of the bands on this collection were recording-studio-only affairs made up of the likes of Goodman, Teagarden, violin master Joe Venuti, the brilliant guitarist Eddie Lang, and the much-recorded trumpeter Red Nichols. Probably the best tracks here are the four 1931 sides - "Beale Street Blues," "After You've Gone," "Farewell Blues," and "Someday Sweetheart" - by Venuti and Lang and their All-Star Orchestra. Teagarden takes wonderful, characteristic vocals on the first two, and both he and Goodman shine throughout one of the best small-group jazz dates of the early 1930s.
 
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Also included on the collection are four tracks by Irving Mills's Hotsy-Totsy Gang, which featured Bix Beiderbecke in his second-to-last recording session. A highly recommended set.
One surprising figure who made records spotlighting jazz musicians such as Benny Goodman, Muggsy Spanier, Fats Waller, and clarinetist Frank Teschemacher was the entertainer Ted Lewis, who usually sang sentimental songs. "I'm Crazy 'Bout My Baby" (available on
The 1930s: The Singers
[Columbia CK 40847]) is performed by Lewis's band with Fats Waller on piano and vocal; the arrangement is a little stiff, but Waller has fun, and there's a glimpse of young Benny Goodman, too.
Some elegant and durable jazz was recorded by small groups drawn from the ranks of large dance bands such as Whiteman's. Some of the best of these were made under the leadership of Frank Trumbauer and featured Bix Beiderbecke. Probably the most famous single side they cut was the 1927 "Singin' the Blues," a beautiful song with a graceful harmonic structure that was made for storytelling. Taken at a very relaxed, underplayed medium tempo, it is an early example of a cool approach to hot jazz. (Whiteman arranger Bill Challis transcribed the entire performance and orchestrated it for the Fletcher Henderson orchestra in 1931; you can hear it on the Henderson album
Hocus Pocus: Fletcher Henderson and His Orchestra 1927-1936
[RCA/Bluebird 9904-2-RB].)
The Beiderbecke original is available on
Bix Beiderbecke, Volume 1: Singin' the Blues
(Columbia CK 45450), along with a number of other excellent items and some not so excellent. A notable factor here is the careful routining and arranging effects on even the most jazz-intensive sides, such as "Clarinet Marmalade." The soloists on most of these performances are accorded little more freedom, in fact, than they had in the big bands with which they usually worked. On some of the more ambitious ones, such as "Krazy Kat" and "Humpty Dumpty," attempts are made at futuristic effects that haven't aged well. But the most relaxed tunes, such as "Riverboat Shuffle, with its carefully arranged New Orleans-style touches, "Ostrich Walk," with its fine saxophone writing and haunting Beiderbecke solo, and ''Way Down Yonder in New Orleans," swing along very nicely and have extremely beautiful statements from Beiderbecke.

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