The Penguin Jazz Guide (18 page)

Long residency at the Cotton Club, and good pay and conditions, meant that the personnel remained fixed, and the band made a colossal number of records. There are dead spots, but most of them are still listenable today, and Calloway’s status as a proto-rock-and-roller, a generation earlier than Louis Jordan, remains unchallenged.

JOE VENUTI

Born Giusseppe Venuti, 16 September 1903, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; died 14 August 1978, Seattle, Washington

Violin

Joe Venuti 1930–1933

Classics 1276

Venuti; Charlie Teagarden, Manny Klein, Ray Lodwig (t); Jack Teagarden (tb, v); Tommy Dorsey (tb); Pete Pumiglio (cl, bs); Jimmy Dorsey (cl, as, bs, t); Arnold Brilhart (as); Bud Freeman (ts); Adrian Rollini (bsx, gfs, p, vib); Frank Signorelli, Lennie Hayton, Irving Brodsky, Phil Wall (p); Eddie Lang, Dick McDonough (g); Joe Tarto, Ward Lay (b); Paul Graselli, Neil Marshall (d); Harold Arlen, Hoagy Carmichael, Smith Ballew (v). October 1930–May 1933.

All bass-players know this story:
‘A New York musician got a call one day that a bassist was needed for a gig downtown. He turned up at the appointed time, early on a freezing morning. Five minutes later, another bassist arrived, and then another, until there were thirty of them. The men shuffled about for a time, smoked and stamped to keep warm. Then the penny dropped. “Hang on”, said one of them, “did Joe Venuti call you as well?” ’

A legendary practical joker, Joe claimed to have been born on an emigrant ship in mid-Atlantic. He befriended Eddie Lang as a boy and they worked together on the New York dance band and small-group jazz recording scene. Joe formed his own band in the ’30s, then returned from war service to feature regularly on radio. He made a comeback in the later ’60s, but he was essentially a pre-war man.

Venuti wasn’t the only violinist to play jazz in the ’20s, but he established the style for the instrument as surely as Coleman Hawkins did for the saxophone. He was a key figure on the New York session scene of the era and appears on many dance band records alongside Beiderbecke, Trumbauer and the Dorseys; but his most important association was with Eddie Lang, and although their partnership was curtailed by Lang’s death in 1933, it was a pairing which has endured like few other jazz double-acts. Their best work was packed into a relatively short period and it includes some of the most entertaining jazz of its day, quirky and wry. This 1930–1933 Classics volume covers sessions for Victor, OKeh, Columbia and Vocalion. Besides the strange feat of having two of the greatest American songwriters as featured vocalists, there’s a greater emphasis on small groups here, and there are at least two classic dates: the magnificent tracks by the Lang–Venuti All Stars from October 1931, and the February 1933 session where Jimmy Dorsey played trumpet – and where Lang and Venuti played together for the last time.

& See also
EDDIE LANG, The Quintessential Eddie Lang 1925–1932
(1925–1932; p. 23)

CASA LOMA ORCHESTRA

Formed 1927, as Casa Loma 1929

Ensemble

Casa Loma Stomp / Maniac’s Ball

Hep 1010 / 1051

Bobby Jones, Dub Shoffner, Joe Hostetter, Frankie Martinez, Grady Watts, Sonny Dunham, Frank Zullo (t); Pee Wee Hunt (tb, v); Fritz Hummel, Billy Rausch (tb); Glen Gray (as); Clarence Hutchenrider (cl, as); Pat Davis (as, ts); Art Ralston (as, ob, bsn); Les Arquette (cl, ts); Ray Eberle (as, cl); Kenny Sargent (as, v); Howard Hall (p); Mel Jenssen (vn); Jack Blanchette (g); Gene Gifford (g, bj); Stanley Dennis (b, tba); Tony Briglia (d); Jack Richmond (v). October 1929–December 1930, March 1931–February 1937.

Saxophonist Benny Carter said (1992):
‘Casa Loma survived by giving the people what they wanted. It was a careful band, everything carefully rehearsed, nothing left to chance.’

Formed by Glen Gray out of the Orange Blossoms – themselves an offshoot of the Jean Goldkette orchestra – when that touring group was stranded at the Casa Loma Hotel in Toronto in the year of the Wall Street Crash, Casa Loma have a strange place in the music’s history. The early stuff is competent dance band fare, although something peculiar happens halfway through a very stodgy ‘Happy Days Are Here Again’ (on the first disc, which is here really for reference rather than musical quality), when it suddenly bursts into a hot performance fired by Hunt’s trombone. Similarly, ‘San Sue Strut’ seems to be twice as fast as anything else here and the title-track is a fair display of early white swing. It’s the second CD which has all the famous Casa Loma music: Gifford’s charts for ‘White Jazz’, ‘Black Jazz’ and ‘Maniac’s Ball’ have the orchestra as a precision-driven locomotive, riffs piling on one another, tempos mercurial if uncomfortably stiff. Aside from Hunt, a genuine personality, the soloists lacked much individuality and the reed-players seem especially unremarkable, but Rausch’s ‘Smoke Rings’ became a signature piece, and Hutchenrider was capable of
some interesting statements. The assault on ‘Put On Your Old Grey Bonnet’ is exhilarating, but by the second version of ‘Royal Garden Blues’ the band sounds anonymous. Larry Clinton took over from Gifford and his ‘A Study In Brown’ is the farewell track here: it led nowhere. Scholars will welcome these handsome compilations.

DON REDMAN

Born 29 July 1900, Piedmont, West Virginia; died 30 November 1964, New York City

Alto and soprano saxophones, piano, celeste, vibes

Shakin’ The Africann

Hep CD 1001

Redman; Henry ‘Red’ Allen, Shirley Clay, Bill Coleman, Langston Curl, Reunald Jones, Sidney De Paris (t); Claude Jones, Benny Morton, Fred Robinson, Gene Simon (tb); Jerry Blake (cl, as, bs); Robert Cole, Edward Inge (cl, as); Harvey Boone (as, bs); Robert Carroll (ts); Horace Henderson, Don Kirkpatrick (p); Talcott Reeves (bj, g); Bob Ysaguirre (bb, b); Manzie Johnson (d, vib); Chick Bullock, Cab Calloway, Harlan Lattimore, The Mills Brothers (v); Bill Robinson (tap-dancing). September 1931–December 1932.

Saxophonist Dewey Redman said (1999):
‘I can’t prove it, but I think he was my cousin, distant cousin. Little guy, played alto saxophone and conducted with his left hand – that tickled me.’

Redman remains one of the essential figures of the pre-war jazz period and his band’s strange theme tune, ‘Chant Of The Weed’, one of the age’s most memorable. He started out as lead saxophonist and staff arranger with Fletcher Henderson’s band (though he often didn’t receive credit), infusing the charts with a breathtaking simplicity and confidence, eventually leaving in 1928 to front the highly successful McKinney’s Cotton Pickers. This was his most celebrated music, but some of the music under his own leadership in the ’30s surpassed his earlier charts, even if the recordings are inconsistent.
Shakin’ The Africann
(
sic
) is a good sampling of Redman’s activities just after leaving McKinney’s Cotton Pickers. There are fine versions of the bizarre ‘Chant Of The Weed’, which deserves to be considered on its considerable musical daring as well as for its celebration of the jazzman’s favourite relaxant, together with originals like ‘Hot And Anxious’ and ‘Trouble, Why Pick On Me’. The set ends with two versions of ‘Doin’ The New Low Down’ with tap-dancing from Bojangles Robinson and on the other version a slightly crazed vocal from Cab Calloway, as if there were any other kind. There are good Redman compilations around, in decent sound, but this is the set of choice: a fine band at its zenith, playing intelligent charts with improvisatory flair. Even before the ‘Swing Era’ was officially born, Redman’s bands held the seeds of bebop.

ART TATUM
^&

Born 13 October 1909, Toledo, Ohio; died 5 November 1956, Los Angeles, California

Piano

Art Tatum 1932–1934

Classics 507

Tatum (p solo). 1932, March 1933–October 1934.

Buddy DeFranco said (1991):
‘Art Tatum is the first modern jazz performer … on any instrument.’

Almost blind from birth, Tatum travelled widely in the ’30s, recording as a soloist and accompanist until he formed a trio in 1943. A master of every kind of jazz piano style, he nevertheless was not interested in composing himself and preferred to work infinitesimal variations on standard material. He fell victim to uraemia, at just 45. The scale of Tatum’s achievements makes approaching him a daunting proposition even now. His very first session, cut in New York in 1933, must have astonished every piano-player who heard any of the four tracks. ‘Tiger Rag’, for instance, becomes transformed from a rather old-fashioned hot novelty tune into a furious series of variations, thrown off with abandon but as closely argued and formally precise as any rag or stomp at one-quarter of the tempo. If Tatum had only recorded these and nothing more, he would be assured of immortality; yet, like Morton’s early solos, they are both achievements in their own right and sketchbooks for the great works of his later years.

& See also
Complete Pablo Solo/Group Masterpieces
(1953–1955; p. 147)

NAT GONELLA

Born 7 March 1908, London; died 8 August 1998, Gosport, Hampshire, England

Trumpet

Nat Gonella And His Georgians

Flapper PAST CD 9750

Gonella; Bruts Gonella, Johnny Morrison, Chas Oughton, Jack Wallace (t); Miff King (tb); Jack Bonser, Jock Middleton, Joe Moore, Ernest Morris, Mickey Seidman, Albert Torrance (cl, as, bs); Pat Smuts, Don Barigo (ts); Harold Hood, Monia Liter, Norman Stenfalt (p); Roy Dexter, Jimmy Mesene (g); Will Hemmings (b); Bob Dryden, Johnny Roland (d). January 1935–October 1940.

Humphrey Lyttelton said (1990):
‘Nat was one of my heroes, perhaps because he was English, one of us, and if one Englishman could play like Louis Armstrong, well … Funny thing is, I didn’t meet him until he was nearly 90 and near the end.’

Nat’s Georgians – in which brother Bruts played Joe Oliver to his Pops – was one of the most successful British hot bands of the pre-war years. There have been various ‘Georgian’ revivals (the title was taken from his big hit, ‘Georgia On My Mind’) since that time and in the ’80s Nat was still singing, though no longer playing his horn. The Armstrong influence is so overt as to be unarguable, and yet Gonella brought something of his own as well, a wry, philosophical shrug as he threw off neat aphoristic solos with the biting tone and earthy humour his fans loved. This Flapper disc is a very good selection of early material. Nat spent a little time in America at the end of the decade, and its influence can be heard in the bluesier and more relaxedly rhythmic swing of the later cuts. The New Georgians stuff from 1940 is – heretical though it may be – superior to the original band’s output. There’s a novelty edge to many of the tracks, but Nat’s vocal on ‘The Flat Foot Floogie’ and even ‘Ol’ Man River’ is never less than musical and in the latter case quite moving. A bit of an institution, who will be fondly remembered by anyone over the age of 60 and who may prove mystifying to anyone under.

CHICK WEBB

Born William Henry Webb, 10 February 1909, Baltimore, Maryland; died 16 June 1939, Baltimore, Maryland

Drums

Rhythm Man / Strictly Jive

Hep CD 1023 / 1063

Webb; Ward Pinkett, Louis Bacon, Taft Jordan (t, v); Edwin Swayzee, Mario Bauza, Reunald Jones, Bobby Stark, Shelton Hemphill, Louis Hunt, Nat Story, George Matthews, Irving Randolph (t); Robert Horton, Jimmy Harrison, Sandy Williams, Ferdinand Arbello, Claude Jones, George Mathews (tb); Garvin Bushell, Hilton Jefferson, Benny Carter, Chauncey Houghton (cl, as); Louis Jordan (cl, as, v); Eddie Barefield, Pete Clark, Edgar Sampson (as); Elmer Williams (cl, ts); Wayman Carver (ts, f); Ted McRae, Sam Simmons, Elmer Williams (ts); Tommy Fulford, Don Kirkpatrick, Joe Steele (p); John Trueheart (bj, g); Bobby Johnson (g); Elmer James (bb, b); John Kirby, Beverley Peer, Bill Thomas (b); Bill Beason (d); Ella Fitzgerald, Chuck Richards, Charles Linton (v); collective personnel. March 1931–November 1934; June 1935–March 1940.

Mick Carlon is the author of
Riding on Duke’s Train
:
‘Step aside, Baby and Zutty: Here comes the future. With his pain-wracked spine and billion-watt smile, Chick Webb showed the thirties how to swing. Courage never sounded so danceable.’

No recording does justice to the artistry of Chick Webb, who has some claim on the title of founder of the Swing Era. This tiny man was already an experienced bandleader when he took over the Savoy Ballroom in 1933, hiring Ella Fitzgerald two years later. He’d come to New York from his native Baltimore as a teenager and quickly made a reputation as a highly intelligent musician (though he never learned to read a score) and as a showman. Webb radically simplified some earlier elements of jazz drumming, minimizing the use of double-time passages and restricting his solo breaks to short but immaculately constructed fills. But he also knew the value of spectacle, playing a large kit that had been adapted to suit his physical infirmities – Webb suffered from congenital tuberculosis of the spine, and it killed him before he was 40 – and placed on a large riser in the middle of the band.

A Classics compilation goes back rather earlier than this nicely mastered set, and the two tracks included there by the 1929 Jungle Band are useful points of comparison for anyone not persuaded by Webb’s later sophistication; they’re crude and backward-looking. By 1931, Webb was running a great band. A fine session from that year includes a memorable arrangement by Benny Carter of his own ‘Blues In My Heart’ and a valedictory appearance by Jimmy Harrison, who died not long afterwards. Edgar Sampson handled the best of the earlier arrangements, and though the band didn’t harbour a great future soloist of the magnitude of a Webster or Young (Ella tends to be the one alumna cited), Webb could boast fine soloists in Taft Jordan (later to join Ellington), Sandy Williams, Bobby Stark, Wayman Carver (who made a little history by getting his flute out) and Elmer Williams, as well as a rhythm section that was almost unrivalled for attack and swing. Webb’s mastery of his enormous kit (a challenge for recording engineers of the day) allowed him to pack a whole range of percussive effects into breaks and solos which never upset the momentum of the band. His distance from the showmanship of Gene Krupa, who would far surpass him in acclaim, was complete. Buddy Rich, by contrast, was a devotee of Webb’s and learned a lot of stagecraft listening to his music.