The Penguin Jazz Guide (19 page)

Listening to these two fine compilations in order gives a strong sense of a band steadily coming into its creative own. So headlong is the chronology and the procession of great swing numbers that the second set spills past the point of Chick’s painfully early death. The best material on the first disc includes the fine ‘Blue Minor’, a feature for Sampson, while the second hits a peak with the terrific drive of ‘Go Harlem’ and the breaks in ‘Clap Hands! Here Comes Charley’. Once Fitzgerald started singing with the band and began to secure a wider fame, though, some of the zip went out of their playing. In its heyday, though, there wasn’t much to touch it.

JACK TEAGARDEN

Born Weldon Leo Teagarden, 20 August 1905, Vernon, Texas; died 15 January 1964, New Orleans, Louisiana

Trombone, voice

I Gotta Right To Sing The Blues

ASV AJA 5059

Teagarden; Leonard Davis, Red Nichols, Ray Lodwig, Manny Klein, Charlie Teagarden, Ruby Weinstein, Sterling Bose, Dave Klein, Harry Goldfield, Nat Natoli, Frank Guarente, Leo McConville, Charlie Spivak (t); Jack Fulton, Glenn Miller, Ralph Copsey, Bill Rank (tb); Benny Goodman (cl); Mezz Mezzrow, Arthur Rollini, Charles Strickfadden, Benny Bonaccio, John Cordaro, Chester Hazlett, Jimmy Dorsey, Art Karle, Eddie Miller, Matty Matlock, Joe Catalyne, Pee Wee Russell, Max Farley, Happy Caldwell, Arnold Brilhart, Bernie Day, Sid Stoneburn, Babe Russin, Larry Binyon, Gil Rodin, Irving Friedman, Adrian Rollini, Min Leibrook (reeds); Red McKenzie (kz, v); Fats Waller (p, v); Joe Sullivan, Jack Russin, Lennie Hayton, Arthur Schutt, Gil Bowers, Joe Moresco, Roy Bargy, Vincent Pirro, Howard Smith (p); Joe Venuti, Matty Malneck, Mischa Russell, Harry Struble, Walt Edelstein, Alex Beller, Ray Cohen (vn); Carl Kress, Jack Bland, Nappy Lamare, Eddie Lang, Dick McDonough, Perry Botkin, Mike Pingitore, George Van Eps (g); Treg Brown (bj, v); Eddie Condon (bj); Artie Bernstein, Art Miller, Jerry Johnson, Harry Goodman, Al Morgan (b); Norman McPherson (tba); Ray Bauduc, George Stafford, Herb Quigley, Stan King, Gene Krupa, Josh Billings, Larry Gomar (d). February 1929–October 1934.

Trombonist and singer Eric Felten says:
‘When I hear Big T, I hear my grandfather playing: that gorgeous, rich trombone sound and those wonderful fillips and embellishments. Those beautiful swing era ornamentations would be banished by the Bauhaus austerity of bebop, but they graced the unpretentious, aching and honest way Teagarden sang and played the blues. Growing up in thrall to the modernists, I didn’t listen to enough Teagarden, but I was lucky to have in my grandfather a teacher who was steeped in that Texas Tea. Like my grandfather, Teagarden was a farm boy who had a natural dignity as a man, and who wouldn’t think of going out without a tie.’

‘Tea’ took the trombone to new levels, with his impeccable technique, fluency and gorgeous sound, allied to a feel for blues playing which eluded many of his white contemporaries. He was also a fine, idiosyncratic singer. He was with Ben Pollack for five years from 1928 and with Paul Whiteman in the ’30s, and finally led his own swing orchestra, though it left him broke in the end. He joined the Armstrong All Stars in 1946, stayed till 1951, then toured for the rest of a life increasingly wedded to alcohol.

Teagarden’s star is somehow in decline, since all his greatest work predates the LP era and at this distance it’s difficult to hear how completely he changed the role of the trombone. In Tea’s hands, this awkward barnyard instrument became majestic, sonorous and handsome. By the time he began recording in 1926 he was already a mature and easeful player whose feel for blues and nonchalant rhythmic drive made him stand out on the dance band records he was making.

This compilation features 12 different bands and 18 tracks, which points up how easily Teagarden could make himself at home in bands of the period. One celebrated example is the treatment meted out to a waltz called ‘Dancing With Tears In My Eyes’, under Joe Venuti’s leadership: Teagarden contravenes everything to do with the material and charges through his solo. Two early sessions under his own name have him trading retorts with Fats Waller on ‘You Rascal You’ and delivering his original reading of what became a greatest hit, ‘A Hundred Years From Today’. Stricter jazz material such as two tracks by The Charleston Chasers is fine, but no less enjoyable are such as Ben Pollack’s ‘Two Tickets To Georgia’, where Teagarden’s swinging outburst suggests that he treated every setting as a chance to blow.

MILLS BLUE RHYTHM BAND

Formed 1930; disbanded 1938

Big band

Blue Rhythm

Hep CD 1008

Wardell Jones, Shelton Hemphill, Ed Anderson (t); Harry White, Henry Hicks (tb); Crawford Wethington (cl, as, bs); Charlie Holmes (cl, as); Ted McCord, Castor McCord (cl, ts); Edgar Hayes (p); Benny James (bj, g); Hayes Alvis (bb, b); Willie Lynch (d); Dick Robertson, Chick Bullock, George Morton (v). January–June 1931.

Jazz historian Bob Turner says:
‘The family trees and lineages of these early bands are a lifetime’s study. It’s wonderful to see future stars in their early years, but it’s almost more satisfying to find a group whose members have mostly just disappeared back into the anonymous mass of working stiffs.’

Although it lacked any solo stars in its early years, the Mills Blue Rhythm Band was a very hot outfit when this record was made, even though it was originally used by its boss, Irving Mills, as a substitute band for either Ellington or Calloway. The lack of a regular front-man and a rag-tag sequence of arrangers prevented the band from ever establishing a very clear identity, but it still mustered a kind of fighting collectivism which comes through clearly on its best records. Cover versions of Ellington (‘Black And Tan Fantasy’) and Calloway (‘Minnie The Moocher’) reveal what the band’s purpose was to start with, and the most interesting thing about the earlier tracks is usually the soloists’ role, particularly the impassioned and badly undervalued trumpeter, Ed Anderson. John R. T. Davies remasters with his usual care and attentiveness.

BENNY CARTER
^&

Born 8 August 1907, New York City; died 12 July 2003, Los Angeles, California

Alto saxophone, trumpet, clarinet, voice

Benny Carter 1933–1936

Classics 530

Carter; Henry ‘Red’ Allen (t, v); Dick Clark, Leonard Davis, Bill Dillard, Max Goldberg, Otis Johnson, Max Kaminsky, Eddie Mallory, Tommy McQuater, Irving Randolph, Howard Scott, Russell Smith, Duncan Whyte (t); Ted Heath, Keg Johnson, Benny Morton, Bill Mulraney, Floyd O’Brien, Wilbur De Paris, Fred Robinson, George Washington, Dicky Wells (tb); Howard Johnson, Andy McDevitt (cl, as); Wayman Carver (cl, as, f); Glyn Pacque, E. O. Pogson, Russell Procope, Ben Smith (as); Coleman Hawkins (cl, ts); Chu Berry, Buddy Featherstonehaugh, Johnny Russell, Ben Webster (ts); Pat Dodd, Red Rodriguez, Teddy Wilson (p); George Elliott, Clarence Holiday, Lawrence Lucie (g); Al Burke, Ernest ‘Bass’ Hill, Elmer James (b); Big Sid Catlett, Ronnie Gubertini, Walter Johnson (d); Charles Holland (v). May 1933–April 1936.

Scottish trumpeter Tommy McQuater, who worked with Carter in London, said (1991):
‘He was a gent, but he was also a taskmaster, who knew exactly what he wanted and wouldn’t let you go till he got it. His charts were always immaculate, and being a trumpet-player who also played saxophone, he knew his way around the sections.’

The distinguished gentleman of jazz, a dapper saxophonist, excellent trumpeter (which he kept playing surprisingly late) and an arranger with few peers, Carter was a last link to a jazz age now gone. He kept playing at the highest level until his last few years. By 1928, barely out of his teens, Benny was already arranging for various New York bands, and leading his own groups. In 1936, he was staff arranger for the BBC Dance Orchestra in London.
Back in the USA, he led his own big band, 1939–41, but cut back to a sextet before moving to Hollywood in 1945, where he wrote for film and TV, while continuing to make jazz records.

Carter’s charts, like his playing, are characteristically open-textured and softly bouncing, but seldom lightweight; though he had a particular feel for the saxophone section, and he pioneered a more modern approach to big-band reeds, his gifts extend throughout the orchestra. As a soloist, he developed in a direction rather different from that of Johnny Hodges. In the early ’30s his band was known as a proving ground for young talent, and the number of subsequently eminent names appearing in Carter sections increases as the decade advances. The London period under Henry Hall at the BBC saw some excellent recording with the local talent. There is little tension in a Carter solo, which is presented bright and fresh like a polished apple, and his seemingly effortless approach is rather hard to square with the values inherent in bebop.

& See also
Further Definitions
(1961–1966; p. 280)

THE SPIRITS OF RHYTHM

Formed late ’20s

Group

The Spirits Of Rhythm 1933–1945

Classics 1028

Leonard Feather (p); Teddy Bunn, Ulysses Livingston (g); Leo Watson, Wilbur Daniels, Douglas Daniels (tiple, v); Wilson Myers, Wellman Braud, Red Callender (b); Virgil Scoggins, Georgie Vann (d, v); Red McKenzie, Ella Logan (v). October 1933–January 1945.

Avant-garde guitarist Derek Bailey rarely commented on his influences, but:
‘I had an uncle who really liked Teddy Bunn, so I think he was quite important, early on.’

Nonsense singing, rhythmic chases, a unique group sound defined by the Daniels brothers’ use of the tiple (a kind of small Latin American guitar with variable tuning): there’s not much to dislike about the Spirits Of Rhythm. Originally the Sepia Nephews and subsequently Ben Bernie’s Nephews and the Five Cousins, the group was expanded in 1932 by the arrival of Teddy Bunn (who gives the Spirits the group’s largest claim on jazz cachet) and later by Virgil Scoggins. It also acted as a support group to novelty vocalist Red McKenzie, so to some extent the Spirits was a concept rather than a distinct act, a throwback to the old pre-jazz string bands but also a foretaste of the sharp hipster groups that came up around bebop. Along with the very different Eddie Lang, Bunn was one of the undoubted giants of jazz guitar before Charlie Christian and Wes Montgomery revolutionized the instrument, ironically often smoothing out the very features which made it different from the horns and piano.

The Spirits were essentially a singing group. Watson and the two Daniels boys sang jovial scat lines, accompanying themselves on tiples, while Bunn kept up a solid but ever-changing background. The sound is light and delicate, an almost harp-like backing for voices. Like Freddy Guy, for whom he once depped in the Ellington band, and Freddie Green, who did a similar job for Basie, Bunn understood the workings of a group instinctively and, despite being wholly self-taught, had the uncanny ability to anticipate even non-standard changes.

This Classics set contains the group’s entire output. There are two versions of ‘I Got Rhythm’, both of them featuring Bunn quite strongly; but the outstanding track is ‘I’ll Be Ready’, on which he plays crisp melodic breaks without a single excess gesture. Watson’s full-on madness was better displayed elsewhere, but he has his moments here (one bizarre
piece from 1934, ‘Dr Watson And Mr Holmes’). There are three titles with the ‘Swingin’ Scots Lassie’ Ella Logan (Annie Ross’s aunt!) and a final date from 1945, where Bunn is the only survivor from the original line-up. It’s not profound music, but if it doesn’t make you smile, check for a pulse.

WINGY MANONE

Born Joseph Matthews Manone,13 February 1900, New Orleans, Louisiana; died 9 July 1982, Las Vegas, Nevada

Trumpet

Wingy Manone 1934–1935

Classics 798

Manone; George Brunies, Santo Pecora, Dicky Wells (tb); Matty Matlock, Sidney Arodin (cl); Eddie Miller, Bud Freeman (ts); Gil Bowers, Jelly Roll Morton, Teddy Wilson, Terry Shand (p); Nappy Lamare (g, v); Frank Victor (g); Harry Goodman, John Kirby, Benny Pottle (b); Ray Bauduc, Bob White, Kaiser Marshall (d). May 1934–May 1935.

Trumpeter Yank Lawson said (1985):
‘Wingy was a buddy of Bing Crosby’s and Bing used to send him a single cufflink every Christmas.’

Another version of the story was that the joker was violinist Joe Venuti, a notorious prankster:
‘Wingy was a wild fellow; I remember him standing at a street corner blowing marijuana smoke in a policeman’s face.’

Wingy was much in thrall to Louis Armstrong as both trumpeter and vocalist, but he brought something of himself to the music as well, and his playing has a playful, dangerous edge. He lost his arm in a streetcar accident, but made do with a prosthetic arm; besides, trumpet is the only instrument that can be played, quite naturally, one-handed. He established himself in Chicago around 1930 and started leading his own bands a few years later.

The first small groups, on the
1927–1934
volume of the Classics series, offer glimpses of precocious youngsters such as Freeman, Goodman and Krupa, yet stumble on the scrappy recording quality, off-the-peg arrangements and other, second-rate sidemen. Non-specialists should start with the superior Classics 798. Manone’s derivative playing has grown in stature, his singing has a hip, fast-talking swagger about it, and the bands – with Miller, Matlock, Brunies and the excellent Arodin extensively featured – set a useful standard of small-group playing in the immediate pre-swing era. By 1935, the run of material was shifting away from jazz and into novelty pop, and it’s ironic that Manone’s ‘Isle Of Capri’ vocal sent up the genre, only to secure a hit. Even so, the group often mustered a surprisingly hard-bitten treatment on a tune such as ‘March Winds And April Showers’.