The Guide to Classic Recorded Jazz (22 page)

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Authors: Tom Piazza

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BOOK: The Guide to Classic Recorded Jazz
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replacement for Cootie Williams, who had just left to join Benny Goodman's orchestra. This became the classic solo, played note for note even by Cootie Williams after Cootie rejoined the band in 1962.
The Smithsonian's
1941
set also includes a select number of alternate versions of classics such as "Take the 'A' Train," "Chelsea Bridge," Ray Nance's violin feature "Bakiff,'' and Mercer Ellington's fine tunes "Jumpin' Punkins" and "Blue Serge" recorded for Standard Transcriptions, which are very worth owning. The entire series of 1941 Standard Transcriptions recordings, including a number that were left off the Smithsonian set, are available on CD as
Take the 'A' Train - The Legendary Blanton-Webster Transcriptions
(Vintage Jazz Classics VJC-1003-2).
Small Groups
A number of small-group performances from the era I've been discussing are available, some classic and some forgettable. Absolutely necessary is
The Great Ellington Units
(RCA/Bluebird 6751-2-RB), a collection of sides made in 1940 and 1941 under the nominal leadership of Johnny Hodges, Rex Stewart, and Barney Bigard, yet all bearing the unmistakable Ellington stamp.
These are much more "shaped" performances than the average small-group jazz date of the same period; compare them, as a group, with the material on the Lionel Hampton
Hot Mallets, Volume 1
(RCA/Bluebird 6458-2-RB) collection, for example. Whereas the Hampton-led performances - including the ones using Ellington band members - are, with some exceptions, light frameworks for blowing, these tend to be complete performances, with careful backgrounds, variation in mood, and unusually structured material, yet with a greater emphasis on the solo voice than in most of the Ellington big-band arrangements of the time. In that sense, these may be seen as an extension of the big-band concerto performances, such as "Concerto for Cootie," in which a full-dress context is designed to set off one or another of the band's major voices. The twenty-two performances on this CD are some of the most satisfying small-group jazz ever recorded.
One of the constants in the set is the bass of Jimmy Blanton, heard to especially good advantage in this more stripped-down setting. On Hodges's up-tempo "Squatty Roo," Blanton nearly jumps out of the speakers at you from behind Hodges's swaggering alto solo. On a piece like "Passion Flower," a Strayhorn effort, his bass is used to add another harmonic and even contrapuntal element to the ensemble.
There are great solo moments by Ray Nance, Lawrence Brown, and Ben Webster (lots of good Webster here), as well as some fine Ellington piano. My favorites, this year, are the Rex Stewart sides, especially the blues-drenched
 
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"Mobile Bay" and the lyrical and poignant "Some Saturday," not to mention "Poor Bubber," a tribute to early Ellington trumpeter Bubber Miley, with its chanting saxophone background, and Webster's solo on "Linger Awhile." But then, there are also Bigard's "Charlie the Chulo,'' in which the leader's clarinet engages Ellington's piano in a riveting dialogue, the mysterious Ellington composition "Lament for Javanette," Hodges's exquisite playing on "Day Dream," and the first recording of Mercer Ellington's "Things Ain't What They Used To Be."
The Duke's Men - Duke Ellington Small Groups, Volume 1
(Columbia C2K 46995) is a two-CD mixed bag of recordings from 1934 through 1938, led by Rex Stewart, Cootie Williams, Barney Bigard, Johnny Hodges, and Ellington himself. Much of it can stand comparison with the material on
The Great Ellington Units
, especially some Ellington mood pieces such as "Indigo Echoes," the haunting "Blue Reverie," with its chromatic introduction and soprano saxophone filigrees by Johnny Hodges (another version of this tune may be found on
Benny Goodman Live at Carnegie Hall
[Columbia G2K 40244] - as played by the members of the Ellington orchestra guesting that night, including this session's Hodges, Harry Carney, and Cootie Williams), and Williams's growl specialty "Echoes of Harlem." The set also boasts quite a few swingers in which the small-group horns are arranged imaginatively around the soloists. There's some less interesting material here, too, but the set is well worth having. The liner notes by Helen Oakley Dance, who produced many of the sessions represented in the set, are a bonus, with valuable and engaging insights into the band and the mechanics of the recording process.
A much less satisfactory set is
The Duke Ellington Small Bands - Back Room Romp
(Portrait RK 44094), which duplicates a number of items from
The Duke's Men
. Although the set contains some good music, it is hard to recommend since the sound is atrocious and the producer didn't even bother to include personnel listings.
One of the most original of all the Ellington small groups had only two members: Ellington and Jimmy Blanton. They recorded two duets for Columbia, mentioned earlier, and included in the Smithsonian's 1939 set, but a feast of their duet work is available on
Duke Ellington: Solos, Duets, and Trios
(RCA/Bluebird 2178-2-RB). They recorded four sides in October 1940, when Blanton was just shy of his twenty-second birthday; all are included here in at least two takes, for a total of nine performances, and the alternate versions make for fascinating comparison with the master takes.
The first of the duets is "Pitter Panther Patter." Other bassists before Blanton, especially Wellman Braud, Walter Page, John Kirby, and Milt Hinton,
 
Page 57
had played the instrument with great drive and definition, but none had mastered the possibilities in melodic lines to the extent that Blanton had; his arrival had the same effect on bassists that Charlie Christian had on guitarists. "Pitter" is taken at a medium bounce tempo, and the two voices trade back and forth like a practiced tap-dance duet, Ellington's stride playing and augmented chords suspending the time for Blanton to make incredible double-time runs and blues phrases that reach way down into the gutbucket. You have to go back to the Armstrong/Hines "Weather Bird" to hear anything comparable.
The other tunes from the session are no less astonishing. "Body and Soul" and "Sophisticated Lady" are ballad tours de force in which Blanton shows his ability both arco and pizzicato ("Pitter" is all plucked). "Mr. J. B. Blues'' is a medium walking blues with a rock-steady tempo which seems as natural as can be until you realize that Blanton only actually walks (plays four-to-a-bar) for a total of about four bars in the first take and not at all in the brighter-tempo second. It is a tribute to the absolute rhythmic sense of orientation of both men that the tempo is never in doubt although it is almost never overtly articulated. An amusing moment in take two is when Blanton quotes Buck Clayton's trumpet solo from Count Basie's recording of "One O'Clock Jump." Blanton plays two bowed choruses on the blues, too. These duets sum up a moment in the music when the range of options available to every player was being radically expanded.
Black, Brown, and Beige
After the last of the recordings in
Duke Ellington: The Blanton-Webster Band
(RCA/Bluebird 5659-2-RB) were made, there was a hiatus of about two years in Ellington's studio activity due to a strike called by the musicians' union against recording companies. By the time Ellington got back into the studio, certain key members of the band had departed - notably Ben Webster and Barney Bigard - and there had been something of a falling-off in the level of sustained brilliance and originality in the three-minute form that marked
The Blanton-Webster Band
recordings.
Partly this must have been because nobody could have kept going at that pace without a rest, partly because of the personnel changes. Although this period of the mid- to late 1940s has usually been deprecated by critics, what Ellington was doing was still in a class of its own, and many of these recordings are extraordinary in their own right. Another reason, though, why the level of originality and sustained invention in the short form had leveled off at this time may have been that Ellington was beginning to investigate long
 
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forms in earnest. The first result of this aspect of his career was the monumental "Black, Brown, and Beige," a nearly fifty-minute-long work premiered at Ellington's first Carnegie Hall concert in January 1943.
Ellington had, almost from the beginning of his career, been intrigued with longer forms and had recorded a number of pieces that were issued on two or more sides of 10- or 12-inch 78-rpm recordings. Among these were "Creole Rhapsody" on
Early Ellington 1927-1934
(RCA/Bluebird 6852-2-RB), the less formal two-part "Tiger Rag" on
Duke Ellington and His Orchestra - The Brunswick Era, Volume 1
(1926-1929) (Decca/MCA MCAD 42325), and "Reminiscing in Tempo," currently unavailable, which took up four record sides. But these longer forms were an outgrowth of the formal concern that Ellington had shown in his earliest masterpieces, such as "Black and Tan Fantasy'' and "East St. Louis Toodle-Oo."
Still, nothing Ellington had written or recorded to that point matched "Black, Brown, and Beige" in scope. You can hear the piece in its entirety, as it was performed at Carnegie Hall, on
The Duke Ellington Carnegie Hall Concerts -January 1943
(Prestige P-34004), which includes many other excellent items from a period when Ellington's band wasn't in the recording studio. Leonard Feather's liner notes discuss the piece and the significance of the concert. The sound, however, leaves something to be desired.
"Black, Brown, and Beige" was not, as some have mistakenly claimed, an attempt by Ellington to use European structures in his writing but was rather a highly successful use of American forms such as the blues, popular song forms, riffs, and other vernacular elements in assembling a longer form. Ellington's longer works will be discussed in the next Ellington section, but for now understand that Ellington was, and had been, engaged in taking what he needed from the European conceptual bag (the concerto and concerto grosso pieces, for example, as well as rondo forms and miniaturized sonata-like contrasting-form pieces such as "Black and Tan Fantasy") and asking himself what an American version would sound like.
When Ellington finally did get back into the studio in December 1944, almost the first thing he did was to record some sections from his large work. These four long sections, collected on the three-CD
Black, Brown and Beige
(RCA/Bluebird 6641-2-RB), present a good look at some of the thematic material Ellington offered in the piece, particularly the famous "Come Sunday," but leave out the sense of the composition's whole structure. Still, the sound is excellent, much better than the Carnegie Hall material, and the set is very worthwhile. Most of the Bluebird set is devoted to shorter-form material from the 1944-1946 band. As mentioned, much of this material can't match the 1940-1941 sides for sheer breathtaking timelessness, but there is still so much
 
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material to listen to here of such high quality. Included are the new Ellington compositions "Blue Cellophane," "Transblucency," and "Rockabye River," along with another long-form piece, ''The Perfume Suite."
The set also includes revisitations of Ellington standards like "Mood Indigo," "Black and Tan Fantasy," and "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)," which show that Ellington was engaged in an ongoing dialogue with the implications of his own past work and was never satisfied with anything in its final shape. One fine 1946 track should be mentioned, although it is not an Ellington composition: Hal Mooney's "Swamp Fire," with its fabulous and well-recorded bass playing by Oscar Pettiford, probably the greatest bassist in jazz after Blanton and an off-and-on member of the Ellington constellation. Another good reason to pick up this set is the accompanying booklet, with outstanding notes by Ellington expert Andrew Homzy.
Ellington's Carnegie Hall concerts were regular events, and Prestige has issued three sets in addition to the
January 1943
collection. Collectively titled
The Duke Ellington Carnegie Hall Concerts
, each one presents a mixture of Ellington standards, new pieces, and, usually, an extended work composed for the occasion.
December 1944
(Prestige P-24073),
January 1946
(Prestige P-24074), and
December 1947
(Prestige P-24075) are all stunning examples of the composer's range, and that of his band, and include many of Ellington's spoken introductions as well as pieces unavailable in other incarnations.
 
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Chasin' the Bird
The years of world war II brought a new approach to group playing, one that had been brewing for several years and was implicit in the sound of the Count Basie rhythm section as well as in the playing of tenorist Lester Young, guitarist Charlie Christian, bassist Jimmy Blanton, and several others. It had been hammered out, rhythmically and harmonically, in jam sessions in Harlem by a group of younger musicians including Christian, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, and Charlie Parker. The first recordings of the kind of music they worked out, called bebop, or just bop, show what they were aiming toward - precision of execution at high speeds, harmonic sophistication, a closer wedding of the accents a musician played to the harmony, and a more contrapuntal, front-line role for the rhythm section instruments, especially the piano and drums.
Although a number of big bands played music that made use of the harmonic and rhythmic devices (and, often, the clichés) favored by the modernists, bebop was, finally, music of the small group. Jazz had always placed a premium on inventiveness and presence of mind, but Parker, Gillespie, Fats Navarro, Bud Powell, and a handful of others upped the ante considerably. Their music demanded virtuosity, and, like a self-fulfilling prophecy, virtuosity, brilliance, ideas - the ability to think quickly on one's feet and exhibit grace and wit under great pressure - became part of the aesthetic.
To play the new music correctly, musicians had to be able not only to swing but to articulate complicated melodic material that fit all the extra harmonic nooks and crannies that were being discovered and explored, sometimes at

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