The Penguin Jazz Guide (25 page)

Guitarist Martin Taylor says:
‘I once asked Stéphane [Grappelli] who was Django’s favourite jazz musician after Louis Armstrong and he said: “The Scottish trombonist George Chisholm. Django loved his playing.” ’

The irrepressible ‘Chis’ was a part of British jazz for decades and the slightness of his recorded legacy is to be regretted. Like most ambitious Scots of his generation, he went South to be recognized, arriving in London in 1935 to work the dance band/jazz scene. He played with Fats Waller and wrote arrangements for the Squadronaires. He subsequently became a radio and television personality, his dry Glaswegian wit unimpaired, but often a Lord of Misrule on otherwise tame variety shows. The exposure left his trad-to-mainstream credentials unimpaired and his Gentlemen Of Jazz were a guaranteed club turn.

This Timeless compilation brings together several dates in which Chisholm featured as a member of various London groups. Four titles by Polo’s Swing Stars are fine, and there are a couple of good things under the name of Gerry Moore’s Chicago Brethren, but the pick is probably the famous Jive Five session of October 1938, with all known takes included. Besides George proving that he had few peers on the slide horn outside the US at this period, there are glimpses of the admirable McQuater, as well as an acetate made in Leonard Feather’s office in 1935, featuring a jam on ‘Pardon Me, Pretty Baby’ by the 20-year-old trombonist. Aside from its rough sound, transfers are very good. Some of the jokes were rough, too, but they don’t transfer quite as well, and only really worked in the great man’s own voice.

BOBBY HACKETT

Born 31 January 1915, Providence, Rhode Island; died 7 June 1976, Chatham, Maine

Trumpet, cornet

Bobby Hackett 1938–1940

Classics 890

Hackett; Sterling Bose, Harry Genders, Joe Lucas, Bernie Mattison, Jack Thompson, Stan Wilson (t); Jerry Borshard, George Brunies, Cappy Crouse, John Grassi, George Troup (tb); Brad Gowans (vtb, as); Bob Riedel (cl); Pee Wee Russell (cl, ts); Jerry Caplan, Louis Colombo (as); Bernie Billings, George Dessinger, Hank Kusen, Hammond Rusen (ts); Jim Beitus, Ernie Caceres (bs); Dave Bowman, Frankie Carle (p); Eddie Condon, Bob Julian, Bob Knight (g); Sid Jacobs, Eddie McKinney, Clyde Newcombe (b); Johnny Blowers, Don Carter, Andy Picard (d); Lola Bard, Linda Keene, Claire Martin, The Tempo Twisters (v). February 1938–February 1940.

Warren Vaché says:
‘I would meet his plane at Newark just so I could carry his horn case and drive him around. When I played at the Robin Hood Dell in Philadelphia with Benny Goodman, Bobby was also on the bill. He’d just returned from the Benge factory in California, and had two new cornets and a slew of new mouthpieces. He’d play a chorus, then change horn
and
mouthpiece, return to the stage, play another chorus … No matter what equipment he played he still sounded like Bobby Hackett.’

Louis Armstrong liked to keep the opposition under close observation and so, for much of the ’40s, Hackett played second trumpet under the wing of the man who had influenced his style so much. He was probably too modest for leadership, but in 1938 made the first recordings under his own name for the Vocalion label, with whom he stayed for the next two years, even though there were more lucrative possibilities elsewhere.

Hackett had worked in a trio with Pee Wee Russell, and, though temperamentally they were very different, to put it mildly, the clarinettist and guitarist Eddie Condon were first-call recruitments to the Hackett orchestra which recorded four sides in February 1938. Of these the best is the pairing of ‘At The Jazz Band Ball’ and ‘If Dreams Come True’, the latter a vehicle for Lola Bard. A different band but the same formula for the November session that same year, with ‘Poor Butterfly’ the best showing for Hackett’s sweetly melancholy cornet.
One can hear why he was billed as the second Bix – and appeared in that guise at Benny Goodman’s 1938 Carnegie Hall concert – but the intonation is different and the phrasing much more relaxed.

Thereafter he tended to use slightly larger bands with augmented saxophones. The sound is closer to the easy swing of the Miller orchestra, and the romantic tension seems to have deserted the leader. Here and there, there are flashes of brilliance, as on ‘Bugle Call Rag’ and ‘I Surrender, Dear’ from July 1939, the latter with a vocal by (the first) Claire Martin, but the latter half of the disc feels like a dying fall. Hackett continued to play with grace for the rest of his career, but the essential stuff is all here.

SAVOY SULTANS

Formed 1937

Group

Al Cooper’s Savoy Sultans 1938–1941

Classics 728

Cooper; Pat Jenkins (t, v); Sam Massenberg (t); Rudy Williams (as); Ed McNeil, Sam Simmons, Irving ‘Skinny’ Brown, George Kelley (ts); Oliver Richardson, Cyril Haynes (p); Paul Chapman (g, v); Grachan Moncur (b); Alex ‘Razz’ Mitchell (d); Helen Procter, Evelyn White (v). July 1938–February 1941.

Drummer Panama Francis said (1976):
‘I revived the band and the name to make a connection with the kind of group that used to play for dancers and for popular entertainment. We forget sometimes that’s where this music came from.’

Al Cooper was a modest saxophonist, but he led the very popular Savoy Sultans for many years, including a residency at New York’s Savoy Ballroom from 1937 to 1946. The Sultans usually played opposite the Chick Webb band at the Harlem dancehall, and visiting bands were wary of competing with them, since they were so popular with the dancers. The records are another matter: simple head arrangements, average solos and merely capable playing make one wonder why they were held in such high regard. However, playing through these 24 tracks, one can hear some of the simple appeal of what wasn’t really a big band but a small, mobile, flexible unit which covered whatever base the customers wanted. There’s also ample evidence that groups of the time and earlier quite deliberately tamed and gentrified their playing for trips to the studios, which were still regarded as an exception and rarity by most musicians. Pat Jenkins is the best soloist but there are clear pitching problems in the ensemble, more intriguing than irritating. After the war, drummer Panama Francis assembled a new Savoy Sultans, a rare example of a small swing group being so convened at the time.

ZIGGY ELMAN

Born Harry Aaron Finkelman, 26 May 1914, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; died 26 June 1968, Los Angeles, California

Trumpet

Ziggy Elman 1938–1939

Classics 900

Elman; Noni Bernardi, Toots Mondello, Hymie Schertzer (as); Jerry Jerome, Arthur Rollini, Babe Russin (ts); Milt Raskin, Jess Stacy (p); Ben Heller (g); Artie Bernstein, Harry Goodman, Joe Schwartzman (b); Nick Fatool, Al Kendis (d). December 1938–December 1939.

Trumpeter Jimmy Deuchar said of the notorious Elman embouchure:
‘Nothing mysterious about it. When you have chops like that, you could probably play trumpet with your ****.’

Though he played trumpet with enormous power, Elman has been dismissed in recent years as a
Schmaltzmeister
. Ziggy’s image was set in stone by his appearance as himself in
The Benny Goodman Story
, though by then he was too ill to play his own solos, and his parts had to be dubbed in by Mannie Klein. Goodman had hired him in 1936, impressed by his adaptability and tone (and not put off by the weird embouchure; Ziggy played, literally, out of the side of his mouth). The postwar material is better-known, but it is never much more than routine. Hayes is a similarly underrated player, but he was to do more interesting things elsewhere, and DeVito always had fascinating ideas to share. What made the prewar band interesting was the unusual front line of single trumpet and saxophone section. ‘Fralich In Swing’ is a Jewish wedding dance tune which Goodman had turned into a hit song, ‘And The Angels Sing’. It loses none of its freshness with Elman blaring away in front. The remaining material for Bluebird sticks to the basic formula and relies on essentially the same pool of Goodman-trained players, which may account for the tightness of the section work. Benny’s absence may account for the joyous, just-let-out-of-jail quality of some of the playing. Bernardi is exceptional, immediately distinguishable from his fellow altoists, and Stacy and Milt Raskin hold down the chords with calm precision. The sound quality on the whole is good, though there is some distortion on the December 1938 session.

PETE JOHNSON

Born 25 March 1904, Kansas City, Missouri; died 23 March 1967, Buffalo, New York

Piano

Pete Johnson 1938–1939

Classics 656

Johnson; Harry James, Hot Lips Page (t); Buster Smith (as); Albert Ammons, Meade ‘Lux’ Lewis (p); Lawrence Lucie, Ulysses Livingston (g); Abe Bolar, Johnny Williams (b); Eddie Dougherty (d); Joe Turner (v). December 1938–December 1939.

Musicologist Edward Tellman remembers:
‘In his later years, Pete lived in upstate New York. When I first saw him, he was playing in a little club in Niagara Falls. He used to have to climb this big ladder to get to the space above the bar where the piano was. A rather ironic elevation for a jazz master, I subsequently thought.’

Just two months from his death, Pete Johnson played his own ‘Roll ’Em Pete’ at one of John Hammond’s ‘Spirituals To Swing’ concerts. Johnson had been present at the 1938 concert as well, but now he was reduced to playing the right-hand part only, having suffered a stroke and lost part of a finger while changing a flat tyre. Along with Meade ‘Lux’ Lewis and Albert Ammons, Johnson was part of a great triumvirate of boogie-woogie piano players who developed and popularized the style.

Johnson’s mastery of boogie-woogie and blues piano is evident from the first. Classics’ survey begins with the Kansas City pianist accompanying Joe Turner on the singer’s first studio date, before two quartet tracks with Harry James: ‘Boo-Woo’ is an outright classic. All this in the year of the Hammond concert. His complete 1939 date for Solo Art is another memorable occasion, nine solos that go from the Tatum-like elaborations on Leroy Carr’s ‘How Long, How Long Blues’ to the furious ‘Climbin’ And Screamin’’ and ‘Shuffle Boogie’. The sound is thin, but Johnson’s energy and invention shine through. There are four more tracks with a small band, including Page and Turner, a solo ‘Boogie Woogie’, two trio pieces and the first trio with Albert Ammons and Meade ‘Lux’ Lewis on ‘Café Society Rag’.

His 1939 session for Blue Note (the label’s founder, Alfred Lion, had attended the ‘Spirituals To Swing’ concert and been inspired by it) is, unfortunately, split across two Classics
volumes. The sequel opens on the stunning ‘Holler Stomp’, the most audacious of boogie showcases. ‘You Don’t Know My Mind’, from the same date, is contrastingly dreamy and may remind blues aficionados of pianists such as Walter Davis and Lane Smith.

GENE KRUPA

Born 15 January 1909, Chicago, Illinois; died 16 October 1973, New York City

Drums

Gene Krupa 1939–1940

Classics 834

Krupa; Johnny Martel, Corky Cornelius, Torg Halten, Nate Kazebier, Johnny Napton, Shorty Sherock (t); Al Sherman, Floyd O’Brien, Red Ogle, Al Jordan, Sid Brantley (tb); Bob Snyder, Clint Neagley (as); Sam Donahue (ts); Sam Musiker (cl, ts); Tony D’Amore, Milt Raskin (p); Ray Biondi (g); Biddy Bastien (b); Irene Daye, Howard DuLany (v). July 1939–February 1940.

Drummer Buddy Rich said (1976):
‘The funny papers liked to make out that we’re big rivals – which we were – but that we probably hated each other like two boxers before a prizefight. So let me say, Gene was the tops; he was the President of the Drums. Always was, hands down.’

There is a memorable photograph of the young Gene Krupa at the kit, hair slick, collar and lapels soaked with sweat, mouth and eyes wide and hungry, his brushes blurred to smoke with the pace of his playing. Received wisdom has Krupa down as a showman who traded in subtlety for histrionic power, but even in comparative neglect Krupa’s impact on the jazz rhythm section is incalculable. He himself said: ‘I made the drummer a high-priced guy.’

Krupa joined the Benny Goodman band in 1934 and stayed till 1938, when his boss finally decided there was room for only one of them on stage. The drummer recorded under his own name only twice during the Goodman years.

In the spring of 1938 Krupa moved to New York and started to manage his own career. Despite some good work for Brunswick, the extra work put a strain on his invention for a while but he was getting good at balancing both sides of the job. The following year saw a step-up in output and quality and there is a strong sense of consolidation in the band, which begins to sound like a more solidly integrated unit. Krupa’s leadership is tight and very musical. Kazebier returns to the fold and O’Brien signs up to stiffen the brasses. Apart from a couple of novelty instrumentals made for dancing (‘Dracula’ and ‘Foo For Two’) the standard is very high and Krupa can increasingly be heard to experiment with rhythmic embellishments, off-accent notes, single beats on the edge of his cymbals, and with the dynamics. Even with such a powerful group, he was always prepared on occasion to play quietly and to contrast
fff
and
pp
passages within a single song, relatively unusual at that time when up was up and a ballad was a ballad. Into 1940, it’s pretty much a question of steady as she goes, even with the inevitable personnel changes. By this point Krupa can be heard to be shaping the band to his new requirements, which were much less histrionic. The Benny Carter piece ‘Symphony In Riffs’, recorded for Columbia in September 1939, and the majestic two-part ‘Blue Rhythm Fantasy’ (nearly seven minutes in total) stand out as representative masterpieces.