The Penguin Jazz Guide (10 page)

Original Memphis Five: Columbias 1923–1931

Retrieval RTR 79026

Phil Napoleon (t); Tommy Dorsey, Miff Mole, Charles Panelli (tb); Jimmy Lytell (cl); Jimmy Dorsey (cl, as); Frank Signorelli (p); Ray Kitchingham (bj); Jack Roth, Ted Napoleon (d); Billy Jones, Joseph A. Griffith (v): collective personnel. May 1923–November 1931.

Trombonist Paul Rutherford said (1985):
‘Here’s where the trombone starts to become a really strong voice in jazz groups, with an equal status to the cornet and the clarinet or saxophone. It changes the nature of the sound quite a bit and it challenges the other front-line soloists.’

Ladd’s Black Aces and the Original Memphis Five were actually one and the same, one of the first white bands to follow up the success of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band. Phil Napoleon, a Bostonian born in 1901, originally Filippo Napoli and uncle to pianists Teddy and Marty Napoleon, formed a group as far back as 1917, but the band-name, first used by Napoleon in 1920, was generic rather than very specific and was later used by several other leaders, including Red Nichols and Miff Mole. Remarkably, Napoleon lived on – and continued using the OMF name – until 1990.

The Ladd’s Black Aces identity was used for three years and all of their work under that flag is included on the Timeless CD. The Aces were a leaner, more streamlined outfit than the ODJB. Roth’s drumming was simpler than Tony Sbarbaro’s and the rhythms less relentless but no less driving. There’s a relatively early use of saxophone which gives a solidity, if not much individual detail, to some numbers. Though Lytell was the outstanding improviser, actual solos were still few in number and breaks based around stop-time routines were more the norm. Napoleon’s little arpeggiated rip, which he uses to start a phrase, is how he decided to swing, and while he played a firm lead, he sounds pedestrian alongside Miff Mole, who was the most advanced musician by far to play with the group. When he’s present, which is on fewer than half of the 26 sessions, the front line swings as it never does elsewhere.

Yet the Aces were a remarkably consistent band. The feel got looser and more daring as time went on, but even the earliest sides have their own giddy momentum: the very first track, W. C. Handy’s ‘Aunt Hagar’s Children’s Blues’, already sounds like a group that knew what had to be done. Jimmy Durante, in his first and, alas, last real jazz records, can just be heard stomping away on the piano on the first eight tracks. There’s a curious, addictive quality to this music and the recordings, made acoustically (in other words, not yet electronically) for the Gennett company, stand the test of time very well indeed.

For the time being, there’s only one available disc dedicated to the earliest work of the Original Memphis Five, although even this one goes as far forward as 1931. It’s still very much an ensemble music, without the solos that modern ears expect in jazz, but it would still be good to see this huge body of music – more than 400 78rpm masters – given proper reissue. Napoleon plays his useful steadfast lead, and Lytell delivers some very decent work, though he showed no capacity for progress as a stylist and is comprehensively shown up by Jimmy Dorsey, who is on the 1931 ‘reunion’; Tommy is there as well.

Rough as they may be, these are key documents in the early years of jazz recording. Newcomers often react to them with surprise: any initial impression of crudity tends to give way to lasting fascination.

NEW ORLEANS RHYTHM KINGS

Formed 1922

Group

New Orleans Rhythm Kings 1922–1925: The Complete Set

Retrieval RTR 79031 2CD

Paul Mares (c); George Brunies, Santo Pecora (tb); Leon Roppolo, Omer Simeon (cl); Don Murray (cl, as); Boyce Brown (as); Charlie Cordella (cl, ts); Jack Pettis (Cmel, ts); Elmer Schoebel, Mel Stitzel, Jelly Roll Morton, Kyle Pierce, Red Log, Jess Stacy (p); Lou Black, Bob Gillett, Bill Eastwood (bj); Marvin Saxbe (g); Arnold ‘Deacon’ Loyacano, Chink Martin, Pat Pattison (b); Frank Snyder, Ben Pollack, Leo Adde, George Wettling (d). February 1922–1925, January 1935.

Clarinettist Kenny Davern said (1992):
‘I did grow through a phase of grabbing people by the throat in New York and saying this was the only kind of jazz worth troubling about, that the New Orleans Rhythm Kings had it all taped. I got over that, but there are days now when I wonder if I was right.’

One of the major groups of jazz records, from the first stirrings of the music in recording studios, and the New Orleans Rhythm Kings’ sessions still sound astonishingly lively and vital some 80 years later. The band recorded in Chicago but had come from New Orleans: Mares was already a disciple of King Oliver (who hadn’t yet recorded at the time of the first session here), Roppolo played fluent, blue clarinet, and even Brunies made more of the trombone – at that time an irresponsibly comical instrument in jazz terms – than most players of the day. The rhythms tend towards the chunky, exacerbated by the acoustic recording, but the band’s almost visionary drive is brought home to stunning effect on the likes of ‘Bugle Call Blues’ (from their very first session, in August 1922), the relentlessly swinging ‘Tiger Rag’ and the knockabout ‘That’s A Plenty’. On two later sessions they took the opportunity to have Jelly Roll Morton sit in, and his partnership with Roppolo on ‘Clarinet Marmalade’ and ‘Mr Jelly Lord’ – something of a sketch for Morton’s own later version – invigorates the whole band. ‘London Blues’ and ‘Milenberg Joys’ find Morton more or less taking over the band in terms of conception. The final session they made, early in 1925, is slightly less impressive because of Brunies’s absence, and there are moments of weakness elsewhere in the original records: the use of saxes sometimes swamps the initiative, Mares isn’t always sure of himself, and the beats are occasionally unhelpfully overdriven. But this is still extraordinarily far-sighted and powerful music for its time, with a band of young white players building on black precepts the way that, say, Nick LaRocca of the ODJB refused to acknowledge.

This superb Retrieval edition collects all of the original masters, 12 alternative takes and the reunion session of 1935, where Mares convened a gang of contemporary Chicagoans to play alongside himself and Pecora, the results of which are surprisingly strong. In excellent sound from top-quality originals, this is the NORK as they should be heard.

KID ORY

Born Edward Ory, 25 December 1886, LaPlace, Louisiana; died 23 January 1973, Honolulu, Hawaii

Trombone, voice

Ory’s Creole Trombone

ASV CD AJA 5148

Ory; Thomas ‘Mutt’ Carey, George Mitchell, Joe ‘King’ Oliver, Bob Shoffner (c); Louis Armstrong (c, v); Johnny Dodds, Dink Johnson, Omer Simeon (cl); Stump Evans, Albert Nicholas, Billy Paige (cl, as, ss); Darnell Howard (cl, as); Barney Bigard (cl, ts, ss); Joe Clarke (as); Lil Hardin Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Luis Russell, Fred Washington (p); Bud Scott, Johnny St Cyr (bj); Ed Garland, John Lindsey (b); Bert Cobb (bb); Paul Barbarin, Ben Borders, Andrew Hilaire (d). June 1922–June 1944.

George E. Lewis, listening to Kid Ory in a ‘blindfold test’ (2008):
‘There’s someone who’s deliberately playing in an archaic style, but doing so very subtly and very well, as if he’s trying to recover some primitive essence, or perhaps because he’s aware that he’s expected to sound “New Orleans”.’

Composer of ‘Muskrat Ramble’ and an innovative player who made much use of mutes, slurs and other devices, Kid Ory invented the ‘tailgate’ style. Ironically, he spent much of his life away from Louisiana, going to California for his health just after the First World War, where he recorded the first-ever sides by an all-black group, ‘Ory’s Creole Trombone’ and ‘Society Blues’, in 1922 (or possibly they recorded before that) and going under the charming name of Spike’s Seven Pods Of Pepper Orchestra. For some purists, these – collected on this ASV compilation – and not the Original Dixieland Jazz Band’s earlier discs mark the real start of jazz recording.

Leadership of the group switched to Mutt Carey in 1925, which is why the strict-constructionists at the Classics label do not include subsequent tracks in their documentation of Ory’s work. The later things are equally valid representations, though. Ory perhaps does less special pleading later on, letting that vivid tailgating style speak for itself. Nevertheless, he was always conscious of his place in the history of the music, and he acted up to it shamelessly. Ory’s ’40s albums had Creole cooking tips printed on the sleeves. On his comeback, after nearly a decade out of music fattening up chickens, the trombonist’s rhythmic tailgating was still as salty as blackened kingfish and as spicy as good gumbo.

THE GEORGIANS

Formed 1922

Group

The Georgians 1922–23 / 1923–24

Retrieval RTR 79003 / 79036

Frank Guarente (t); Ray Stilwell, Russ Morgan, Archie Jones (tb); Johnny O’Donnell, Frank Smith, Dick Johnson, Harold ‘Red’ Sailiers (reeds); Arthur Schutt (p); Russell Deppe (bj); Joe Tarto (tba); Chauncey Morehouse (d): plus Elwood Boyer (t); Charlie Butterfield (tb); Henry Wade, Al Monquin (reeds); Roy Smeck (bj); Billy Jones, Eddie Cantor, Dolly Kay, Blossom Seeley (v). November 1922–November 1923, June 1922–May 1924.

Broadcaster Steve Race said (1991):
‘I think it’s almost more interesting to think of all those hot bands that either didn’t record, or the recordings haven’t survived. Some of them are rough and ready, but almost every time, you find some little gem or nugget buried away among the dross.’

It became familiar later for small ‘hot’ groups to be hived out of large dance orchestras. The Georgians were originally a contingent from Paul Specht’s more straitlaced dance orchestra, working at New York’s Hotel Alamac. Led by the excellent Guarente, a King Oliver student, it stood at a point somewhere between the simple ensemble style of the Original Memphis Five and the looser, more inventive methods of the early black Chicago bands. Guarente, an Italian-American, even took some lessons from Joe Oliver in New Orleans. He was the only improviser of any special merit in the band, but Arthur Schutt, hitherto largely ignored by jazz history, contributed an increasingly sophisticated book of arrangements. The later tracks on the first CD, especially the likes of ‘Land Of Cotton Blues’ and ‘Old Fashioned Love’, show real finesse coupled with a proper sense of swing. Most of the tunes have something
to commend them, and even novelty pieces like ‘Barney Google’ are sustained by Guarente’s work, although here and there (as in the plodding treatment of ‘Farewell Blues’) the group fails to make much out of the music.

The second disc takes the story up to Guarente’s departure in May 1924. The best of The Georgians’ music is here, in such sides as ‘Big Boy’ (with a great vocal by Dolly Kay) and the pair of titles which turned out to be Guarente’s swansong, ‘Savannah’ and ‘Doodle Doo Doo’. Eddie Cantor turns up to sing at one session and the disc is padded with four titles by the full Specht orchestra.

PERRY BRADFORD

Born John Henry Perry Bradford, also known as ‘Mule’, 14 February 1893 (some sources cite 1895), Montgomery, Alabama; died 20 April 1970, New York City

Piano, voice

And The Blues Singers In Chronological Order

Document 5353

Bradford; Gus Aiken, Louis Armstrong, Johnny Dunn, Bubber Miley (c); Bud Aiken, William Dover, Herb Fleming, Charlie Green, Calvin ‘Fuzz’ Jones (tb); Harry Hull (btb, b, bhn); Buster Bailey (cl); Hersal Brassfield (cl, as, ts); Garvin Bushell (as, cl); Don Redman (as); James P. Johnson, Charles Edward Smith, Leroy Tibbs (p); Gus Horsley, Stanley Wilson (bj); Walter Wright (b, bhn); Ed Jackson, Kaiser Marshall (d); Julia Jones, Louise Vant (v, acc); Ethel Ridley, Mamie Smith (v). May 1923–February 1927.

Singer George Melly said (1993):
‘The sound of Mamie Smith singing Bradford’s “Crazy Blues” is about as close as you can get, I think, to what those early minstrel shows and the vaudeville circuit must have been like. It’s where it all started.’

Raised in Atlanta, Bradford had made his way to Chicago before the First World War, and was already a veteran on the circuit – as half of a song-and-dance act known as Bradford & Jeanette – before his own songwriting started to become known. He is not much more than a footnote in most jazz histories, but his association with some of the great names and his ability to create vivid blues settings and novelty songs of real musical worth – ‘I Ain’t Gonna Play No Second Fiddle’ (with Louis Armstrong), ‘Liza Johnson Got Better Bread Than Sally Lee’ – make him a musician of real interest and charm. His vocals are workmanlike and it’s really as a blues composer (he and Mamie Smith effectively kicked off the blues craze) that he is worth remembering. This Document set doesn’t entirely exhaust the legacy and the chronological organization can be tiring, but it’s probably the best resource and there are few better ways to drive away the black dog than to put on ‘Fade Away Blues’ and then sit back for the rest.

ARMAND PIRON

Born 16 August 1888, New Orleans, Louisiana; died 17 February 1943, New Orleans, Louisiana

Violin, voice, bandleader

Piron’s New Orleans Orchestra

Retrieval RTR 79041

Piron; Peter Bocage (t); John Lindsay (tb); Lorenzo Tio Jr (cl, ts); Louis Warnecke (as); Steve Lewis (p); Charles Bocage (bj, v); Bob Ysaguirre (tba); Louis Cottrell (d); Esther Bigeou, Ida G. Brown, Lela Bolden, Willie Lewis (v). December 1923–March 1925.

Bruce Raeburn, author of
New Orleans Style and the Writing of American Jazz History
, says:
‘Piron’s orchestra is often described as a society band, but there is strong evidence that he was also playing blues to black audiences. So what you’re dealing with is a group who kept their low-down music for when they were playing in Tremé [New Orleans neighbourhood] and played something sweeter and more genteel on record.’