The Guide to Classic Recorded Jazz (38 page)

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Authors: Tom Piazza

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BOOK: The Guide to Classic Recorded Jazz
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Bluebird 6460-2-RB), on which Nance (playing both cornet and violin) and tenor saxophonist Zoot Sims accompany the great ex-Basie vocalist on a program consisting mainly of popular standards. And Nance can be heard as part of an all-star trumpet section (including Clark Terry, Nat Adderley, and Harry Edison) on
Budd Johnson and the Four Brass Giants
(Riverside/OJC-209).
Swing Trumpets
The 1930s flowering of trumpet styles in the wake of Armstrong was a kaleidoscope of individualists, but none was more individual than Henry "Red" Allen, who hailed from Armstrong's hometown, New Orleans. Allen had a beautiful, burnished sound and an unorthodox, rhythmically free approach to melody. He was one of the great blues players, and he could always be relied upon to do the unexpected; his playing was remarkably free of clichés.
To find Allen's early work, for the most part, you have to pick through various collections on which he is featured with big bands of the 1930s. Two good 1929 sides, "Swing Out" and "Pleasin' Paul," can be found on
Early Black Swing - The Birth of Big Band Jazz: 1927-1934
(RCA/Bluebird 9583-2-RB); their sessionmate, the fabulous blues "Feeling Drowsy," is on
Great Trumpets: Classic Jazz to Swing
(RCA/Bluebird 6753-2-RB). Allen can be heard in fine form on two early-1930s sides included on
The 1930s: Small Combos
(Columbia CK 40833) - an up-tempo "Who's Sorry Now?'' with the Rhythmakers and the brooding "There's a House in Harlem for Sale" with his own small band. His melody statement and vocal on "Out Where the Blue Begins" (on
The 1930s: The Singers
[Columbia CK 40847]) are both totally characteristic - the asymmetrical phrases, the insinuating nuances and attention to detail.
The 1930s: Big Bands
(Columbia CK 40651) presents short glimpses of Allen on "Can You Take It?" with Fletcher Henderson and on "St. Louis Wiggle Rhythm" with the Blue Rhythm Band.
Hocus Pocus: Fletcher Henderson and His Orchestra 1927-1936
(RCA/Bluebird 9904-2-RB) has a great Allen solo on the title track, and there is a lot of good Allen with the bands of Fletcher and Horace Henderson on
Ridin' in Rhythm
(DRG/Swing CDSW 8453/4).
The absolute cream of mid-1930s Allen is on two hard-to-find LPs on the Collector's Classics label -
Henry Allen and His Orchestra 1934-1935, Volume 1
(CC 13) and
1935-1936, Volume 2
(CC 46), which I mention only because the material is so extraordinary. Of the two, the first is significantly the better, presenting Allen at the top of his 1930s vocal and instrumental game in all-star settings with the likes of tenor saxophonist Chu Berry and trombonists Dicky Wells and J. C. Higginbotham. The sessions have the relaxed but focused groove that so distinguished Teddy Wilson's mid-1930s recordings, a mixture
 
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of high spirits, judicious organization, and inspiration.
Volume 1
has Allen addressing such first-rate pop tunes as "Rosetta," "Body and Soul," and "I Wished on the Moon," along with more novelty-type numbers like "Truckin''' and the riotous "Roll Along, Prairie Moon," on which Allen and the band engage in some vocal call-and-response, and Allen eggs the soloists on with shouted exhortations. This is worth putting out an all-points alert for.
Volume 2
isn't quite as strong; the material is a little weaker and the accompanying cast less stellar, but it's still fine, with items like "Chloe," "On Treasure Island," and "Lost" heading up the list. These tracks have also been issued on CD on the European Classics label.
An important album, featuring what was a formidable early-1930s team for a while, is
Henry "Red" Allen and Coleman Hawkins 1933
(Smithsonian Collection R022), which includes "Jamaica Shout" and the beautiful "Heartbreak Blues" recorded under Hawk's leadership, as well as some fine tracks by the Allen-Hawkins orchestra. The music is a little more subdued than that on the Collector's Classics items but very worthwhile.
Allen kept getting better and better; by the mid-1950s his mastery of tonal shading, phrasing, and dynamics was almost unparalleled, and he had one of the most distinctive styles in jazz.
World on a String
(RCA/Bluebird 2497-2-RB), originally issued in 1957 as
Ride, Red, Ride in Hi-Fi
, is one of the best Allen sets ever issued; Allen explores the horn's full range of subtlety in performances of good pop tunes like "I Cover the Waterfront," "'Swonderful," and "Love Is Just Around the Corner," as well as his mid-1930s racehorse-tempo feature with the Mills Blue Rhythm Band, "Ride, Red, Ride." Allen is joined here by trombonist J. C. Higginbotham, clarinetist Buster Bailey, a solid rhythm section including drummer Cozy Cole, and his old friend and partner Coleman Hawkins, who very nearly steals the show, especially on the nastily swinging "Algiers Bounce."
Also fine is
Coleman Hawkins and Red Allen: Standards and Warhorses
(Jass CD-2). This late-1950s small-group recording reunion produced phenomenal music from both Hawkins and Allen on a program mixing standards like "Mean to Me," "Stormy Weather," and "All of Me" with unpromising-sounding Dixieland staples like "Bill Bailey" and "When the Saints Go Marching In." Don't be fooled by the repertoire. Allen's phrasing on things like "Frankie and Johnny" and "The Lonesome Road" reaches a very high level of abstraction and emotional expressiveness, at which stylistic pigeon-holing becomes even more meaningless than usual. Listen, too, to his use of space; he often lets several beats go by between phrases, creating a sense of surprise and suspense about where he will begin and end his ideas. A total gas.
Allen and Hawkins were together, too, for the epochal 1957 television spe-
 
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cial "The Sound of Jazz," on which Allen led a band including Hawk and trumpeter Rex Stewart through blistering versions of "Rosetta" and Armstrong's "Wild Man Blues.'' The readily available Columbia set
Sound of Jazz
(CK 45234), while packaged as if it were the soundtrack from the show, is not; the music here is from a recording session done four days before the live telecast with many of the same musicians and is considerably less inspired than the music actually heard in the show. While the two Allen tracks are good, the versions on the actual soundtrack of the television show, which has been issued in various incarnations, blow them out of the water. "Wild Man Blues" has truly inspired work from everyone (in addition to Allen, Hawkins, and Stewart, the group included trombonist Vic Dickenson, clarinetist Pee Wee Russell, pianist Nat Pierce, guitarist Danny Barker, bassist Milt Hinton, and drummer Jo Jones), and on "Rosetta" the rhythm section strikes a savagely swinging groove (listen to them under Allen's vocal), which doesn't let up until the end. The show itself is available on videotape, and you will want to own it.
Muggsy Spanier was a fine cornet player very much in the Armstrong/King Oliver mold. He was a master of the plunger mute and of blues playing, and he was an active figure, first in Chicago, then in New York, then all over the country, beginning in the mid-1920s. In 1939 he formed a band that recorded tunes from the New Orleans repertoire ("Dippermouth Blues," "Someday Sweetheart," "Sister Kate") along with popular songs like "Dinah" and "At Sundown" in a modified New Orleans ensemble style over a swing rhythmic background. The records, released under the sobriquet Muggsy Spanier and His Ragtime Band and available as
At the Jazz Band Ball - Chicago/New York Dixieland
(RCA/Bluebird 6752-2-RB), are some of the most enduring traditional jazz recordings ever made.
The tragically short-lived Bunny Berigan was one of the best trumpet players of the 1930s. He made his living playing with various big bands (including Benny Goodman's and Tommy Dorsey's) before forming his own, and often his solo work is found in the middle of otherwise schmaltzy arrangements. His great hit recording of the perennial "I Can't Get Started," as well as his classic solos on "Marie" and "Song of India" with Tommy Dorsey's orchestra, are available in a number of forms, usually surrounded with less satisfying performances of pop material.
But Berigan can be heard uncut with schmaltz in eight tracks on
Jazz in the Thirties
(DRG/Swing CDSW 8457/8). Four - "What Is There to Say?," "The Buzzard," "Tillie's Downtown Now," and "Keep Smiling at Trouble" - feature him at length in 1935 as a sideman in a small group led by the unique tenor saxophone stylist Bud Freeman (who also plays clarinet here). "The Buzzard"
 
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is a perfect capsule version of Berigan's style at a nice bright tempo; he gets around the horn, using the lower register comfortably, throwing in well-chosen grace notes and triplets, using the upper register very sparingly and only when it makes musical sense. The out choruses have Berigan and Freeman engaging in a spirited two-man improvisation that builds to an exciting climax. "Tillie's Downtown Now" is a sixteen-bar blues on which Berigan builds his two choruses masterfully, staying in the middle register for the first, then moving into the upper in the second. His solo on the jaunty "Keep Smiling at Trouble" is also a model of construction both logical and daring, starting out way low on the horn.
The four sides under his own leadership (also recorded in 1935) are less inspired as group performances, and Berigan's playing is not quite as fresh as on the Freeman session. Berigan was perhaps a little too generous in allotting solo space to his sidemen (Edgar Sampson on alto and clarinet, Eddie Miller on tenor, and stride pianist Cliff Jackson), but he is heard to good advantage on a tune associated with Bix Beiderbecke, "I'm Coming Virginia" (drummer Ray Bauduc sounds as if his ticket is stamped for New Orleans, not Virginia), and he serves up a mess of blues on a tune titled, simply, "Blues."
Bunny Berigan and the Rhythm Makers, Volume 1: 1936 and 1938
(Jass J-CD-627) has lots of excellent short Berigan trumpet solos set, unfortunately, into dated-sounding arrangements of largely second-string pop tunes, like diamond chips in so many plastic rings. Berigan takes good meaty solos on a few tracks, though, among them "Dardanella" and "That's a Plenty" (a short but stunning statement).
Swing Is Here: Small Band Swing 1935-1939
(RCA/Bluebird 2180-2-RB) finds Berigan on three tunes by a studio group assembled by arranger Gene Gifford. Berigan's lead playing is wonderful to hear, but he is really featured only on ''Nothin' but the Blues," on which he shows his Armstrong roots in the best possible way, along with his hallmark ability to cover the entire horn without sounding contrived.
Berigan can also be heard in perfect, extremely inventive blues choruses on "Blues in E Flat," recorded with xylophonist Red Norvo, available on
The 1930s: Small Combos
(Columbia CK 40833), and "Blues," a studio jam session with Fats Waller on piano, on
Great Trumpets: Classic Jazz to Swing
(RCA/Bluebird 6753-2-RB). He also accompanies Billie Holiday in grand style on eight 1936 tunes on
The Quintessential Billie Holiday, Volume 2
(Columbia CK 40790). He was one of the most natural players in jazz; even when he isn't in such stellar company, his work lights up any surroundings.
Hot Lips Page, a Kansas City giant who had played with Walter Page's Blue Devils and, later, Bennie Motens orchestra, was one of the most powerful and authentic blues players on any instrument and an authoritative player on any
 
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type of material, as well as an engaging singer. Page is represented far too spottily on records, but he can be heard throughout much of
Bennie Moten's Kansas City Orchestra (1929-1932): Basie Beginnings
(RCA/Bluebird 9768-2-RB). His first-rate plunger playing sparks 1930 tunes like "That Too, Do Blues," "When I'm Alone," and "Somebody Stole My Gal," but he shines brightest on the sides from the band's famous 1932 session in Camden, New Jersey. On "Toby,'' he plays a leadoff solo in which he floats over the time à la Armstrong (this, by the way, is one of the most ferocious big-band recordings ever made), and his open-horn solo on "Moten Swing" is a small masterpiece, perfectly constructed, sweet-toned, and imaginative (check out his upward and downward glissandos in the last four bars). His solos on "The Blue Room," "New Orleans" (the muted one, after the vocal), "Milenburg Joys," "Lafayette" (astonishing plunger work at a high tempo), and "Prince of Wails" (on the Bluebird set, the title is misspelled "Wales," missing the pun) are just as good and by themselves would have guaranteed him a place in jazz history.
Page can also be heard at some length on the hard-to-find
All Star Swing Groups: Pete Johnson, Cozy Cole
(Savoy SJL 2218, LP only). He plays some earthshaking blues at a relentless medium stomp tempo on "Page Mr. Trumpet" with a group led by pianist Pete Johnson and figures prominently in "J.C. from K.C." and "Pete's Housewarming" from the same session. He sounds as if he was out to burn the roof off the studio. On six other tunes on the album, Page plays with another group under Johnson's direction, singing the dozens with the plunger mute on "Atomic Boogie" and "Backroom Blues." On the outstanding four-LP collection
Swing Street
(Columbia Special Products JSN 6042), Page and Johnson grill up some real Kansas City blues with singer Joe Turner on "Cherry Red" and "Baby, Look at You," two classic sides that also include Charlie Parker's teacher Buster Smith on alto saxophone. (On the same set, Page performs the blues "Walkin' in a Daze" with his own band.)
Page can be heard with tenor players Chu Berry and Lucky Thompson on
Chu Berry/Lucky Thompson - Giants of the Tenor Sax
(Commodore CCD 7004), on which Page sings a great version of the ballad "Gee, Baby, Ain't I Good to You." And for an example of Page's sly vocal blues style, listen to "Just Another Woman" on
How Blue Can You Get? - Great Blues Vocals in the Jazz Tradition
(RCA/Bluebird 6758-2-RB). That's a mellophone he's playing, by the way, not a trumpet.
Wild Bill Davison would have deserved his nickname on the basis of his cornet playing alone, even if his behavior had been sober as a church deacon's, which it wasn't. Not a major stylist in terms of melodic invention, his playing nevertheless had a razorlike edge and demonic swing that sparked the playing

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