The Guide to Classic Recorded Jazz (19 page)

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Authors: Tom Piazza

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BOOK: The Guide to Classic Recorded Jazz
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Page 40
Eldridge is cast as an irate neighbor awakened by the saccharine vocal. He finally decides that it's no use trying to get any sleep and that he "might as well get my horn out and practice a little"; the tempo doubles, and Eldridge tears the roof off the chalet.
Lionel Hampton, too, used his success with Goodman as a springboard from which to launch his own big band, which had even more artistic (and perhaps commercial) success than Krupa's - it was certainly longer-lived. Two good collections are
Lionel Hampton: Flying Home
(Decca/MCA MCAD-42349) and
Midnight Sun
(Decca/GRP GRD-625), the former covering the years 1942-1945 and the latter covering 1946-1947.
Lionel Hampton: Flying Home
includes two versions of Hampton's signature tune, "Flying Home," with tenor solos by, respectively, Illinois Jacquet and Arnett Cobb, along with Hampton standbys like the nascent-bop-flavored "The Lamplighter" and "Blow Top Blues," with a vocal by Dinah Washington.
Midnight Sun
includes the legendary "Mingus Fingers,'' a 1947 showcase for the bass of Charles Mingus, one of the greatest figures in postwar music.
Countless Blues
Krupa and Hampton were hardly the only big-band sidemen to make a name for themselves in the swing era. A soloist who was able to play something rhythmic or acrobatic or moving inspired awe in people; there was something magical about the ability to stand up and extemporize in that way, and for the first time members of the general population were being exposed to the phenomenon on a mass scale. People developed a taste for those individual voices, and that created a demand for them as musical personalities in their own right.
The late 1930s saw the rise of what would prove to be an enduring phenomenon - the all-star band, chosen by magazine polls and assembled for recording purposes. Musical fan magazines, of which
Down Beat
and
Metronome
were the best known (
Down Beat
is still going), started popping up in the mid-1930s to service a public for whom musicians were a kind of movie star.
Metronome
began conducting polls to find out its readers' favorite players and then putting together recording dates to feature them - as magazines such as
Esquire
and
Playboy
would do later. A document of this phenomenon is
The Metronome All-Star Bands
(RCA/Bluebird 7636-2-RB), a collection of sessions recorded between 1937 and 1949 and featuring musicians such as Benny Goodman, Coleman Hawkins, Benny Carter, Johnny Hodges, Dizzy Gillespie, and Charlie Parker, often playing in unusual juxtaposition to one another.
The musicians' stardom also created an audience for performances in
 
Page 41
which they could stretch out a little more than they could with the big bands and be heard at greater length. I'll discuss a number of these recordings here as a phenomenon of group play, but the best of them will be discussed at greater length under the appropriate soloist sections.
Musicians from the Basie and Goodman bands made some of the most famous of these recordings. In fact, tenor saxophonist Lester Young first recorded, in 1936, with a small group including Basie himself on piano. Young's first recordings are available only in scatter-shot form; the two most important are "Shoe Shine Swing" on
The 1930s: Small Combos
(Columbia CK 40833) and "Oh, Lady Be Good" on
The Essential Count Basie, Volume 1
(Columbia CK 40608). Musicians on all instruments studied these recordings carefully because Young was doing something very different in his accenting and tone (see the discussion of Young in the Soloists section); they would study his later solos with the full Basie band the same way.
Several tunes by a small group made up of members of the 1939 Basie band are on
The Essential Count Basie, Volume 1
, but more famous by far are two sides included on
The Essential Count Basie, Volume 2
(Columbia CK 40835): "Lester Leaps In" and "Dickie's Dream," which spotlighted, as the titles indicate, two of the band's star soloists (the other was trombonist Dicky Wells). Not quite as famous, but perhaps even better musically, are the recordings of the Kansas City Six, a small group from the Basie band with Eddie Durham's guitar replacing Basie's piano. Available on
Lester ''Prez" Young and Friends -Giants of the Tenor Sax
(Commodore CCD 7002), the tunes they recorded -"Countless Blues," "Them There Eyes," "Pagin' the Devil," "Way Down Yonder in New Orleans," and "I Want a Little Girl" - are models of relaxed group interplay, with Young's matchless inventive abilities at a peak. Young, on clarinet, engages Buck Clayton's muted trumpet in an exquisite, improvised dialogue at the end of "Way Down Yonder in New Orleans." "Countless Blues" is a riff piece with more fantastic clarinet from Young, and "Pagin' the Devil," named for bassist Walter Page, is a slow, muted blues at a walking tempo that sets a very mysterioso groove; both, by the way, have perfect blues solos by Buck Clayton. "Them There Eyes" contains great solos by Young on both tenor and clarinet. These sides are hard evidence that riffs can be used to set a quiet groove and not just to build to a climax.
For a change of pace, Goodman featured his own small groups as part of his regular big-band performances. The Benny Goodman Trio, with regular band drummer Gene Krupa and pianist Teddy Wilson, who toured only as a member of the trio, was a popular element of Goodman's presentations, and the group became even more popular when vibraphonist Lionel Hampton joined to make it a quartet. Even with no bass, the two small groups could
 
Page 42
generate a great bounce and drive on rhythm numbers, as well as a sustained mood on ballads like "Body and Soul" and "More Than You Know," a tribute to the musicianship of all involved. Some of their early studio recordings are collected on
The Original Benny Goodman Trio and Quartet Sessions, Volume 1: After You've Gone
(RCA/Bluebird 5631-2-RB).
Good as these are, the trio and quartet are a lot more exciting and unfettered by time constraints on
Benny Goodman Live at Carnegie Hall
(Columbia G2K 40244), where the versions of "China Boy," "Avalon," and several other tunes create a wild head of steam. The trio and quartet were reunited regularly through the years, almost always with special results; one of these occasions was
The Benny Goodman Quartet Together Again
(RCA/Bluebird 6283-2-RB), recorded in 1963 in stereo. The recordings in this set are generally a little less successful than the earlier ones, largely because Krupa keeps time on the ride cymbal rather than on the snare drum, as he did twenty-five years earlier. Still, it is a good set, and the version of "Runnin' Wild" (on which Krupa switches to brushes) is worth the price of admission.
Both Teddy Wilson and Lionel Hampton led a series of extremely important and enjoyable all-star recording sessions in the mid- to late 1930s, Wilson for Brunswick and Hampton for Victor. Some of these symposia are collected under Hampton's name on
Hot Mallets, Volume 1
(RCA/Bluebird 6458-2-RB) and
Jumpin' Jive, Volume 2
(RCA/Bluebird 2433-2-RB). Musicians from the Basie, Ellington, Hines, Henderson, Calloway, and Goodman bands contribute a mixture of solos and arrangements, all to the end of swinging - first hard, then harder, which is the only way it ever is when Hampton is around.
These are essential collections; no one should miss the fantastic drive generated by Cootie Williams, Lawrence Brown, and Johnny Hodges on "Buzzin' Around with the Bee" and "Stompology," or Chu Berry's tenor solo on "Shufflin' at the Hollywood," or the four tunes included from a 1939 session with a sax section consisting of Benny Carter, Coleman Hawkins, Chu Berry, and Ben Webster, with young Dizzy Gillespie on trumpet and Charlie Christian on guitar. The swing on almost all these sides is definitive, as Hampton used the best rhythm players, often Cozy Cole on drums and either John Kirby, who would soon be leading an important band of his own, or Cab Calloway's Milt Hinton on bass.
Unfortunately, there is at present no collection from Columbia (who owns the Brunswick material of that time) devoted to Wilson's small-band work, which included musicians from all the major bands in extremely satisfying small-group situations. Much of it is available, however, as part of the series of recordings on which Wilson led groups accompanying singer Billie Holiday; these have been collected as
The Quintessential Billie Holiday, Volume 1
 
Page 43
(Columbia CK 40646),
Volume 2
(Columbia CK 40790),
Volume 3
(Columbia CK 44048),
Volume 4
(Columbia CK 44252),
Volume 5
(Columbia CK 44423), and
Volume 6
(Columbia CK 45449) and constitute some of the most sublime jazz ever recorded.
Volume 1
is notable especially for the way Roy Eldridge and either Ben Webster or Chu Berry barbecue silly 1935 songs like "Yankee Doodle Never Went to Town" and "Eeny Meeny Miney Mo" - a good, if extreme, example of the way jazz musicians can transform almost any material into gold.
Volume 4
contains the masterpieces "Easy Living," "Foolin' Myself," ''Me, Myself, and I," and others on which Holiday and Lester Young achieve a level of musical togetherness that has never been surpassed. The only less-than-perfect thing about these sets is the fussy and self-indulgent annotation. Beginning with
Volume 6
, Holiday is less a part of a total group effect and more the main attraction - still great, but turning more into a torch singer.
Four super Wilson-led sides from 1936 are included on
Roy Eldridge - Little Jazz
(Columbia CK 45275), featuring Eldridge and some bandmates from the Fletcher Henderson organization, including Chu Berry and drummer Sid Catlett. Especially good are "Blues in C Sharp Minor," with its brooding and insistent ostinato bass figure from Israel Crosby and intense, beautiful solo work from everyone, and "Warmin' Up," an extremely exciting, up-tempo series of solos in which we can hear the musicians, some of the best of their time, exulting in what they've learned about the expectations set up by the four-four beat - how they can hammer on the beat to create emphasis and excitement, then play off the beat for surprise and implied cross-rhythms. Listen, in the last eight bars of Eldridge's fiery solo, how Catlett cranks up the emphasis on the two and four beats of each measure, to telling effect. This was a time when the style had found an equilibrium and was at its peak; the grammar and syntax had been established, and musicians were concerned with refining their abilities to make coherent statements within the common language.
Much the same can be said for at least two of four sides recorded under the leadership of drummer Gene Krupa iST-CD same principals. Available on a collection entitled
Swing Is Here: Small Band Swing 1935-1939
(RCA/Bluebird 2180-2-RB), "Swing Is Here" and "I Hope Gabriel Likes My Music" were recorded three months before the Wilson session just discussed. They lack the Olympian grandeur of "Blues in C Sharp Minor," but in its place there is a go-for-broke energy that was matched by few if any similar recording combinations. Roy Eldridge, Chu Berry, and Benny Goodman show how the big-band riff style could be adapted for small groups as intelligently as the New Orleans style had been translated for big bands in the
 
Page 44
previous decade. When each instrument is playing a different riff, the style turns into a new version of the old New Orleans polyphonic approach to ensembles.
The collection is useful, also, for showing the broad range of small group approaches that were open at the time, when the language of Louis Armstrong had become a universal medium of exchange. In fact, several of the sessions from which the album draws mate New Orleans-style players like Wingy Manone and Mezz Mezzrow with big-band stalwarts like Chu Berry and Sy Oliver. Especially good are two dates pairing trumpeter Frankie Newton with two of the greatest Harlem stride pianists, Willie "The Lion" Smith and James P. Johnson, respectively, in settings that combine a characteristic swing rhythm section feeling with a loose, jammed, New Orleans polyphonic ensemble style. A highly recommended set.
Somewhat less focused but still excellent is
The 1930s: Small Combos
(Columbia CK 40833), a collection that spans the entire decade, with glances at early 1930s all-star groups like Benny Carter's Chocolate Dandies with Coleman Hawkins, the Rhythmakers with trumpeter Red Allen and the unique clarinetist Pee Wee Russell, and working bands such as those of violinist Stuff Smith, Roy Eldridge, and bassist John Kirby. The collection also includes the great "Shoe Shine Swing" from Lester Young's first recording session and "Blues in E Flat" by a studio-only group led by xylophonist Red Norvo and including Bunny Berigan, Chu Berry, and Teddy Wilson.
Some of the most pleasing small-group jazz of the time was made by a loosely knit group of musicians, most of whom made their living playing in big bands but whose stylistic roots lay in the late-1920s Chicago dialect of New Orleans-style ensemble playing. Often brought together for recordings and concerts by guitarist and impresario Eddie Condon, musicians like trumpeters Bobby Hackett, Wild Bill Davison, and Max Kaminsky, trombonist Lou McGarity, clarinetists Pee Wee Russell and Edmond Hall, and saxophonist Bud Freeman, among others, made beautiful music together by applying the jammed ensemble feel of the Chicago style to high-quality popular tunes by Gershwin and others, as well as to older jazz tunes of the 1920s. A nice set containing twenty representative 1939-1946 tracks by this gang is
Eddie Condon: Dixieland All-Stars
(Decca/GRP GRD-637).
Fats Waller
Not all the small-group recording activity of the time was by these specially assembled studio bands; some of the best swing was recorded by regularly working small bands that had worked out their own balances between ensemble

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