The Swing Book (17 page)

Classic Songs:
The one and only “Minnie the Moodier,” which made Calloway known as the Hi-De-Ho man.

Swing Trivia:
One swing-era account credits Calloway’s orchestra with the origin of the term
jitterbug.
A trombone player in the band was a lush who purportedly concocted a drink called “jitter sauce” to quell his shakes.

CD Pick:
There’s no dispute here. Fly out and buy
Are You Hep to the Jive?
(Columbia), which includes twenty-two of his all-time most righteous tunes, from signatures like “Minnie” to his teasing
of violinist Yehudi Menuhin in “Who’s Yehoodi?” It’s even got great cover art featuring Cab in one of his widest, wildest
hats.

Pounding his mallets and sweating up a storm, Hampton is a thrilling improviser and wildly inventive rhythmist, the longest-running
swing band leader in history, and an important harbinger of rock and R&B. Born in 1908 in Louisville, he grew up on Chicago’s
South Side, meeting everyone from Jelly Roll Morton to Bessie Smith through his uncle, who made and sold moonshine for Al
Capone. After moving to Los Angeles, he discovered his fortune-making instrument, the then-unknown vibraphone (it’s similar
to a xylophone but has rotating fans that create a vibrato sound), during a recording session with Louis Armstrong in 1930.
“Louis asked me if I could play that instrument and I was a brazen young guy and I said, ‘Yeah,’” recalls Hampton, who had
in fact never touched it before. Six years later he joined the Benny Goodman Orchestra, playing in the band’s color-barrier-smashing
quartet with Teddy Wilson and Gene Krupa. His most influential musical contributions came, however, once he started his own
band in 1940. Two years later he recorded “Flying Home.” The hit song featured a honking tenor sax solo by Illinois Jacquet
that presaged the balls-out sax approach of late forties rhythm and blues. Hamp, as he’s known, has continued performing into
his nineties, celebrating his ninety-first birthday in early 1999.

Classic Songs:
The rocking call-and-response tune “Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop,” plus the signature “Hamp’s Boogie Woogie.”

Swing Trivia:
Perhaps the first stage dive in music history occurred during a Hampton concert. According to
Jazz Anecdotes,
the band members were always known for their leaping and dancing, but during one gig an alto player began to walk the edge
of the stage during his solo. At one point, he fell and was caught by the crowd, playing all the way through.

CD Pick:
The two-CD set
Hamp: The Legendary Decca Recordings
(Decca) includes all the hits. Listen for the contributions of trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and singer Dinah Washington, both
of whom were with Hampton early in their careers. Especially amusing is the song “Blow Top Blues,” a trippy song about a girl
losing her marbles.

How many orchestras were there at the height of the swing craze? The Big Bands Database Web site lists more than 550 of ’em,
from the most candy-assed sweet outfits to the hottest barn burners and everything in between. Hell, even Chico Marx had a
shortlived band. So take this short list of the most important bands as just what it is: a critical sampling and the barest
of introductions.

Think disputes about dance tempos are a problem today? Well, back in 1934, just such an argument helped break up Jimmy and
Tommy Dorsey. The pair, sons of a Pennsylvania coal miner, had formed their own band together earlier that year. But simmering
disagreements came to a head onstage one night when they couldn’t agree how fast to take a song. Tommy walked off the stage
and started his own band, and a long-standing rivalry ensued. While reedman Jimmy’s Orchestra was known as a more jazzy outfit,
Tommy’s more commercial big band — he was known as the “sentimental king of swing” — earned its place as the best all-around
dance band of its era. Both orchestras boasted highly popular singers. Helen O’Connell and Bob Eberly warbled for Jimmy, while
Tommy’s knockout pair was Jo Stafford and Frank Sinatra (who consciously modeled his singing on Tommy’s melodic and perfectly
phrased trombone playing). By the fifties, however, the Dorseys reunited, only to meet early death. Tommy choked to death
in 1956; Jimmy died of cancer a year later.

Classic Songs:
Tommy’s biggest songs include the harmonizing “Marie” (with a thrilling solo by trumpeter Bunny Berigan) and Sinatra’s crooner’s
delight “I’ll Never Smile Again.” Jimmy’s biggest charter was “Tangerine.”

Swing Trivia:
How intense was their rivalry? After Jimmy hired trombonist Frank Rehak, according to
Jazz Anecdotes,
he told the musician to let loose on his solos with abandon. “Anything you can do to make Tommy mad, go ahead and do it,”
Rehak recalls Jimmy saying.

CD Pick:
The Dorsey Brothers: The Best of the Big Bands
(Sony) documents the pair’s music before the split, while
The Best of Tommy Dorsey
(RCA) features Tommy’s many hits, including three cuts with Sinatra.

The swing era’s equivalent of warm milk before bedtime, Miller’s orchestra is still the most nostalgically remembered band
of the 1940s. With a knack for turning jazz inspiration into catchy pop, Miller, who grew up in Iowa, Nebraska, and Colorado,
was a so-so trombonist but an exceptional businessman. He chased radio play relentlessly, emphasized synthesized sound over
individual solos, imposed strict rules on his musicians (down to telling them what color socks to wear), and chose sweet-style
songs with such an eye toward their commercial value that he’s been accused of hastening the end of the big bands. But Miller
unapologetically revelled in popular approval. “The majority of the people like to hear pretty tunes,” he once said. Indeed,
even today Miller has more well-known hits — “In the Mood,” “Chattanooga Choo-Choo,” “Pennsylvania 6-5000” (named after the
telephone number of the famous Hotel Pennsylvania in New York), “Moonlight Serenade”—than any other bandleader. During the
war, Miller formed a cherished military orchestra called the Army Air Forces Training Command Band, rallying servicemen and
civilians alike. His band, wrote
Metronome’s
George Simon, was “a living symbol of what America meant to them, of what they were fighting for.” After a small plane carrying
him from England to France disappeared in late 1944, the forty-year-old Miller was declared missing.

Classic Songs:
“Little Brown Jug,” Miller’s first swing success, and “Tuxedo Junction,” a song first recorded (with less chart success)
by black bandleader Erskine Hawkins.

Swing Trivia:
According to
MusicHound Jazz,
Miller found his first instrument, an old trombone lying in the basement, while working as an errand boy for a butcher’s
shop.

CD Picks:
The music of Miller’s army band is collected on
Glenn Miller: The Best of the Lost Recordings and the Secret Broadcasts
(RCA/Victor). And while it lacks the singing of fave Miller vocalist Tex Beneke, it includes all the great chestnuts. “That
was a fantastic band and much better for my money than [his earlier one],” says bandleader Bill Elliott.

As popular as the bands of either Basie or Ellington in its time, the Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra was one of the most powerful,
dependable, and stylishly dressed senders in the business for more than a decade. Lunceford formed his orchestra from a group
of players he met while in college at Nashville’s Fisk University. Launched by a six-month engagement at the Cotton Club in
1934, the band rolled out its fair share of sweet ballads, but its fast dance tunes—many set down by master arranger Sy Oliver—flew
with the best of them. Lunceford’s swing, wrote one reviewer, “carries a tremendous ‘sock,’ … the music parallel of Joe Louis’
gloved fist.” Part of the band’s punch also came from the tremendous show it put on: the musicians created synchronized routines,
waving, pointing, and sometimes throwing their instruments in the air, all in perfect unison.

Classic Songs:
The wailin’ and chargin’ “White Heat,” the sweet-as-pie “For Dancers Only,” and a song that should be required listening
for Lindy Hoppers everywhere, “Tain’t What You Do (But the Way That Cha Do It).”

Swing Trivia:
Guitarist, trombonist, and arranger Eddie Durham maintained that he devised music’s first electric guitar in 1935 while he
was a member of Lunceford’s orchestra.

CD Pick:
A hard choice between
Classic Tracks
(Kaz Records), which includes every major hit, and
For Dancers Only
(Decca), a critical fave of the editors of
MusicHound
that unfortunately does not feature “White Heat” or “Tain’t What You Do.”

One of the last surviving leaders of the big bands, Shaw is as opinionated and curmudgeonly today as he was years ago. He
frequently went into highly public “retirements,” saw eight marriages go bust, including betrothals to Ava Gardner and Lana
Turner, and often lashed out at his audience, once calling jitter-buggers “morons.” (He’s also fond of taking a swipe at dancers’
obsession with tempos. “You can dance to a windshield wiper,” he’s often said.) But all the headline-grabbing actions didn’t
get in the way of making some of the most exciting music of the swing era. Shaw played clarinet with such an alluring smoothness
that a long-running fan argument broke out over who was the better player, he or Goodman. The debate goes on to this day.
Shaw “was the greatest jazz clarinet player that ever lived,” says bandleader and Shaw partisan Eddie Reed, who’s styled his
big band on Shaw’s. “He did things on the clarinet that have never been duplicated. Period.” Shaw is also known for challenging
the color barrier when he hired Billie Holiday to sing for his orchestra.

Classic Songs:
“Begin the Beguine,” his hugely successful redo of Cole Porter’s original, the Mexican-inspired “Frenesi,” the novelty number
“Indian Love Call,” and “Nightmare,” his dark, moody theme song.

Swing Trivia:
During his many retirements, Shaw has worked as a farmer, translator, theater producer, and writer. He published a novel
in 1965 titled
I Love You, I Hate You, Drop Dead!

CD Pick:
Begin the Beguine
(Classic Jazz) offers all of the above-mentioned hits, plus Helen Forrest giving in to the inevitable on “Comes Love.”

As the house bandleader for the famed Savoy Ballroom, this human beatbox drove the music through the wall and around the block
every night of the week throughout the 1930s. Sophisticated and tightly arranged, his music had a propulsive power that continually
inspired the club’s Lindy Hoppers, sending them to ever wilder extremes. Born in 1909 to a poor Baltimore family, Webb suffered
from a spinal problem that left him short and hunchbacked. Despite these obstacles, he formed his own band in 1926 at age
seventeen, eventually signing on at the Savoy. There Webb presciently hired Ella Fitzgerald when she was just a kid, established
his reputation as one of the greatest drummers in swing, and took on all comers in a series of famous battles of the bands.
His career ended suddenly in 1939 when he died of tuberculosis at age thirty.

Classic Songs:
“A Tisket A Tasket” with Ella Fitzgerald, “Undecided,” and “Stompin’ at the Savoy.”

Swing Trivia:
At one of the most famous Savoy battles, Goodman’s orchestra came to Harlem to challenge Webb. Four thousand dancers packed
the house, five thousand were turned away, and by the end of the night, Webb’s band had sent Goodman’s packing. “I was never
carved by a better player,” said Gene Krupa afterward.

CD Pick:
The greatest-hits package
Chick Webb and his Orchestra
(Best of Jazz) offers up early Ella and some of his hardest-driving numbers. The album includes his first recorded cut, “Dog
Bottom,” a thrilling nail-biter of a ride.

With his sticks a-twirling and his hair a-flying, Krupa created a lasting archetype: the slightly mad, flashy percussionist
who won’t ever slow down. As a member of the Goodman orchestra, he’s credited with taking drums beyond their lowly status
as mere timekeepers and making them a true solo instrument for the first time. In 1938 he formed his own band, having hits
with famous trumpet soloist Roy Eldridge and singer Anita O’Day. A high-profile arrest and imprisonment in 1943 on a suspect
marijuana-possession charge (he was later cleared) seriously damaged his career, at the same time that Buddy Rich was giving
Krupa a serious run-for-the-money as a skinbeater. But his legacy is secure. Every modern rock drummer should never forget
that it all started with Krupa.

Classic Songs:
“Wire Brush Stomp,” “After You’ve Gone,” “Rockin’ Chair,” “Bolero at the Savoy,” and “Drum Boogie.”

Swing Trivia:
Krupa didn’t spend time in jail just once. According to David Stowe’s
Swing Changes,
he was once jailed for throwing a punch at a restaurant owner who refused admission to Eldridge.

CD Pick:
Listen to him do his stuff on Goodman’s classic song “Sing, Sing, Sing.” Or check out one of his two aptly titled hits collections,
Drummer Man
and
Drum Boogie.

The definitive male swing singer, Sinatra is ironically also credited with hastening the end of the big band era. In 1939
a slender, fresh-faced Frank got his start with the Harry James Orchestra and later joined Tommy Dorsey’s group, singing such
tender ballads as “Imagination” and “All or Nothing at All.” Influenced greatly by Billie Holiday, Sinatra crooned his way
to a stardom that no band singer had ever possessed before. Performing at a now-famous engagement at New York’s Paramount
Theater in the early forties, he turned bobby-soxers into love-struck fans and left the orchestra jealous for attention. That
was the beginning of a revolution that ushered in such solo vocalists as Patti Page, Frankie Laine, and Perry Como. It was
Sinatra who set the standard for them all, not just with his perfect phrasing but also for the way in which he could take
a composer’s lyrics and turn every word into his own intimate revelation. But for as much pop success as Sinatra ultimately
achieved, he never left behind his jazz roots. At the height of his Rat Pack days—when he transformed himself into an icon
of swaggering, womanizing, and ever stylish manhood—Sinatra recorded highly praised albums with both Basie and Ellington.
And when he died in 1998 at age eighty-two, the indomitable Chairman of the Board had survived to see his music catch on once
again with a hip, young audience.