The Penguin Jazz Guide (50 page)

The reality is that from the mid-’50s, and encouraged by the ability to buy exactly the kind of music one liked on long-playing records, there was no longer a jazz audience, but jazz audiences. There had always been local music scenes, often with quite distinct styles, spread right across the United States and even in redoubts of what was insultingly called ‘hillbilly music’ like Memphis, but increasingly New York (particularly) and Chicago exerted an enormous gravitational pull. Most of the major recording labels were based there. The downtown club scene was immeasurably larger than any other in the country. The other important media were based there.

As musicians gravitated to the city, jazz recording devolved into niches, catering for modernists, cool-school aficionados, swing loyalists, ‘Dixieland’ revivalists, fans of jazz singing and other smaller indulgences. The rapid spread of microgroove recordings on sleek, otter-smooth polyvinyl chloride discs, presented in handsome illustrated covers, made record albums objects of desire in themselves. Now durable enough to be carried around without risk of breakage, albums became badges of cultural positioning on campus and on the club scene: rolled newspaper, green carnation, Masonic handshake,
carte de visite
and
passe-partout
. Simply carrying the right album became a badge of status.

The image of the jazz musician was also solidifying, often ambiguously so. In 1938, Dorothy Baker had published
Young Man with a Horn
, a jazz novel loosely based on the self-destructive life of Bix Beiderbecke. It was filmed in 1950, with Harry James dubbing Kirk Douglas’s horn-‘playing’, but became more controversial for a lesbian subplot than for its jazz content. However, the title alone became an iconic phrase, an image of the improvising musician as part angel, part devil, constantly ranged against the forces of darkness but also capable of bringing a dark vision to experience, violent and self-harming by turns, but stoutly in opposition to any given aspect of mainstream culture: black rather than white, ‘entrepreneurially violent’ (as Norman Mailer put it in his controversial
Dissent
essay ‘The White Negro’), but a resister, differently uniformed, rejecting each and all aspects of the new commercial culture, including the new pop music. Jazz and pop would only join hands again uneasily in the ’70s and ’90s.

What did happen in the later ’50s, though, was that jazz became the music of second resort for many music fans. Classical music listeners would soon be smuggling copies of
Sketches Of Spain
and
Kind Of Blue
, or displaying Chet Baker’s cheekbones on their coffee tables. There was a loose alliance between the young, civil-rights inspired folk fans and traditional jazz players. Like it or not, this was made possible by an industry that was putting out a vast amount of musical ‘product’. Even oppositional tastes put money in corporate wallets.

Novelist John Clellon Holmes had coined the ‘Beat Generation’ label in a November 1952 issue of the
New York Times Magazine
, published shortly after the appearance of his novel
Go
, a thinly dramatized
roman à clef
in which Holmes appears as Paul Hobbes (a significant
choice of name given the Leviathan of the military-industrial complex that haunted them all) and Jack Kerouac as Gene Pasternak. The image the novel created of lives lived on the edge, socially precarious, personally abusive, but always in the interests of personal freedom and creativity, had a great impact, on which Kerouac’s
On the Road
, written in 1951 but only published in 1957, built significantly. Holmes followed up the following year with
The Horn
, the story of a broken-down jazz musician’s final days and the lives of the people – friends, fellow players, ex-lovers – who try to find him. It is loosely based on Charlie Parker’s demise, though Parker was comfortable in a European aristocrat’s apartment in his last days, not trailing the streets, spitting blood. There are ironies everywhere in the status and bearing of jazz at this period, but the new jazz warriors knew that the LP was their most potent icon, and the late ’50s was a period of unparalleled musical production, hardly equalled since.

HELEN MERRILL
^&

Born Jelena Ana Milcetic, 21 July 1930, New York City

Voice

Helen Merrill With Clifford Brown And Gil Evans

Emarcy 838292-2

Merrill; Clifford Brown, Art Farmer, Louis Mucci (t); Jimmy Cleveland, Joe Bennett (tb); John LaPorta (cl, as); Jerome Richardson (as, ts, f); Danny Bank (f); Hank Jones, Jimmy Jones (p); Barry Galbraith (g); Oscar Pettiford, Milt Hinton (b); Joe Morello, Osie Johnson, Bobby Donaldson (d); strings, horns. December 1954–June 1956.

Helen Merrill said (1992):
‘Musicians like to work with me because I built my style round the sound of instruments, not other singers. I was comfortable in just about any key and they didn’t have to think about what used to be called a “girl’s range”.’

Helen Merrill has never made a bad record, and while she scarcely conforms to the image of a swinging jazz singer, she’s a stylist of unique poise and sensitivity. Her early work is as involving as her mature records. She worked with most of the early boppers, but also with Earl Hines, and began recording around 1954. She lived in Italy for some years, later in Japan, and returned to Chicago and New York in the ’70s. A Verve contract restored her eminence in the ’80s and ’90s.

She sings at a consistently slow pace, unfolding melodies as if imparting a particularly difficult confidence, and she understands the harmonies of the songs as completely as she trusts her way with time. Consider what she does here on ‘Falling In Love With Love’. The song comes out on the side of an agenda quite different from the usual, while ‘Don’t Explain’ has an edge that falls between sardonic and weary. It is her unfailing sense of time, though, that gives these lingering performances a sensuality which is less of a come-hither come-on than the similarly inclined work of a singer such as Julie London. Merrill thinks about the words, but she improvises on the music too. Her treatment of ‘Don’t Explain’ is cooler yet no less troubling than Billie Holiday’s exaggerated pathos, and ‘What’s New’ is a masterpiece. Brown’s accompaniments on seven tracks make an absorbing contrast to his work with Sarah Vaughan, and Evans’s arrangements on the other eight songs are some of his most lucid work in this area.

PEE WEE ERWIN

Born George Erwin, 30 May 1913, Falls City, Nebraska; died 20 June 1981, Teaneck, New Jersey

Trumpet

Complete Fifties Recordings

Lone Hill Jazz LHJ 10122

Erwin; Andy Russo (tb); Sal Pace (cl); Billy Maxted (p); Charlie Treagar (b); Tony Spargo (d). 1955–1956.

Cornetist Warren Vaché said (1982):
‘He was the most generous guy in the world. I’ve said sometimes that he was the glue that kept me together, and that was the kind of man he was. It wouldn’t have mattered who he was playing with, or teaching, he was yours for the duration.’

Pee Wee was playing on American radio when still a boy. He worked with Benny Goodman and Ray Noble, and helped Glenn Miller create his celebrated sound. He did extensive studio work in the ’40s, then gigged at Nick’s through the ’50s. Erwin’s poise as a trumpeter is akin to Hackett’s, but he was a hotter player, with more to say for himself. There’s not a lot of stuff on CD; for some reason, Pee Wee doesn’t seem to strike a chord nowadays. The Lone Hill jazz release brings together Erwin’s two sextet albums
Accent On Dixieland
and the live
At Grandview Inn
. The players might be second-string Dixielanders, and some of the material is hoary, but the music sustains a high standard: Pace is a lusty clarinet man, Maxted is neat and tidy, and Erwin himself peels off one exemplary solo after another.

In later years, he co-owned a music store in Teaneck, New Jersey, where he befriended young mainstreamers (like Warren Vaché) and played as he pleased.

JO JONES

Known as ‘Papa’ and ‘Chicago’; born 7 October 1911, Chicago, Illinois; died 3 September 1985, New York City

Drums

The Essential Jo Jones

Vanguard 101/2

Jones; Emmett Berry (t); Lawrence Brown, Freddie Green (tb); Lucky Thompson (ts); Rudy Powell (cl); Count Basie, Ray Bryant, Nat Pierce (p); Tommy Bryant, Walter Page (b). August 1955–April 1958.

Cornetist Ruby Braff remembered playing with Jo Jones (1983):
‘He’d never say: “Let’s play … whatever.” He’d just start and you’d be expected to pick it up. I’d scratch around for something that approximately fitted the beat and he’d always grin and nod as if to say: “You got it! That’s
exactly
the tune I meant!” He was nuts to work with.’

He’s probably now less well known to younger fans than either Elvin Jones or Philly Joe Jones, neither of them related, though Philly Joe’s name was adopted by musicians to distinguish him from Chicago. None the less, Papa was one of the most influential percussionists in the history of the music, changing the sound of the drums by switching emphasis from the bass drum to the hi-hat.

Jones was the subtle driving force of the Basie band between 1934 and 1948 and the Count repaid the compliment with a guest spot on Jo’s solo disc, giving ‘Shoe Shine Boy’ a touch of the old magic. The other participants are familiar enough as well, with Berry, Green and Thompson all prominent. Inevitably, a lot of emphasis falls on the drums, but Jones is such a nimble, light player that he is always estimably listenable. The 1958 session with Ray and Tommy Bryant (originally an album called
Plus Two
) is mostly the pianist’s
work, but Jo revels in those bluesy themes and produces some of his best small-group work on record, always precise but loose-wristed and supple and capable of hair’s-breadth turns in awkward spots. An essential record for anyone interested in the evolution of jazz drumming.

COLEMAN HAWKINS
^&

Known as ‘Bean’; born 21 November 1904, St Joseph, Missouri; died 19 May 1969, New York City

Tenor saxophone

The Stanley Dance Sessions

Lone Hill Jazz LHJ 10189

Hawkins; Buck Clayton, Roy Eldridge (t); Hank Jones (p); Ray Brown, George Duvivier, Wendell Marshall (b); Mickey Sheen, Shadow Wilson (d). November 1955–February 1958.

Bassist Ray Brown said (1994):
‘It was a little bit like being in the studio with Moses. You found yourself listening to Bean, as if any minute he was going to deliver something grand and mysterious. And the thing was, he was doing that all the time; it just didn’t seem dramatic at the time.’

Hawkins sailed through the bebop years like an eagle who manages to sail above the smaller falcons, now barely moving his wings, held aloft by a monumental authority. The first six tracks here constitute one of the classic Hawkins LPs,
The High And Mighty Hawk
, once issued on Felsted. Hawkins and Clayton front a swinging quintet and they open with a monumental blues performance, ‘Bird Of Prey Blues’, that runs for 11 gripping minutes. Lone Hill have chosen to fill up the CD with four tracks cut a few days earlier, with Eldridge (terrific on ‘Honey Flower’) replacing Clayton, as well as two incongruous inclusions from a 1955 New York concert where the tenorman blows a minute or so of a cappella sax before a fine ‘The Man I Love’. Bits and pieces, but hard to beat as a representation of Hawk in his best latter-day form.

& See also
Coleman Hawkins 1929–1934
(1929–1934; p. 38),
Coleman Hawkins 1939–1940
(1939–1940; p. 74)

CURTIS COUNCE

Born 23 January 1926, Kansas City, Missouri; died 31 July 1963, Los Angeles, California

Double bass

The Complete Studio Recordings: The Master Takes

Gambit 69258 2CD

Counce; Jack Sheldon, Gerald Wilson (t); Harold Land (ts); Carl Perkins (p); Frank Butler (d). October 1956–January 1958.

Drummer Frank Butler said (1979):
‘I don’t know why that group wasn’t noticed. Maybe it didn’t fit at the time, or maybe it wasn’t “West Coast” enough. Curtis swung pretty hard. He could have gone toe-to-toe with any of the New York guys.’

Counce’s late-’50s quintet was one of the more resilient bands working on the West Coast at the time. It was also one of the most influential, though seldom remarked today. This Gambit set pretty much rounds up the whole discography, though as is often the way with these exercises in out-of-copyright completism, the term turns out to be somewhat relative, for the set doesn’t
include any of the material on
Exploring The Future
, which was made for Dootone. Instead, it brings together three LPs,
You Get More Bounce With Curtis Counce
,
Landslide
and
Carl’s Blues
, together with some other bits and pieces released later as
Sonority
. As the titles make clear, Counce liked to namecheck his solo stars, and that self-effacing quality may have contributed to his own eclipse. His own strongest moments as soloist come on ‘A Night In Tunisia’ and ‘How Long Has This Been Going On?’ from the grab-bag
Sonority
.

Landslide
was a fine record, showcasing Land’s beefy tenor – the title-track is a notably dark and un-Californian slice of hard bop – and Sheldon’s very underrated, Dizzy-inspired playing. Perkins, remembered best for his strange, crab-wise technique, was probably on better form with this band than anywhere else on record, but the real star – acknowledged on ‘The Butler Did It’ from
Carl’s Blues
and ‘A Drum Conversation’ from
Sonority
– is the percussionist, who shared Counce’s instinctive swing. He is also the dedicatee of ‘A Fifth For Frank’ (the harmonic interval? a bottle of hooch?) on
Landslide
.