The Penguin Jazz Guide (27 page)

There is now ample choice for collectors and just about any option will evidence Charlie’s speed of thought and devotion to a sound which is both electric in its embrace of amplification and organic as well. Though we have tried to avoid box sets, some are more insistent than others. This Columbia set offers 98 tracks, including 70 master takes. If that’s too much, there is a shorter compilation which will do for most. The sound quality is exquisite, a model for all reissue programmes. A devil’s advocate question lurks, though. How important in the history of the music was Charlie Christian? Is there anything here that really merits such extravagant packaging, or was he just another of those artists re-created by a
posthumous mythology, the kind of thing that inevitably attaches to a young genius who dies of TB at just 26? We’ve returned to these recordings umpteen times down the years. They have never failed to excite and satisfy.

WOODY HERMAN
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Born 16 May 1913, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; died 29 October 1987, Los Angeles, California

Clarinet, alto and soprano saxophones, voice

Woody Herman 1939

Classics 1128

Herman; Clarence Willard, Jerry Neary, Steady Nelson, Mac MacQuordale, Bob Price (t); Neal Reid, Toby Tyler (tb); Joe Bishop (flhn); Joe Estrin, Ray Hopfner, Joe Denton (as); Saxie Mansfield, Pete Johns (ts); Tommy Linehan (p); Hy White (g); Walter Yoder (b); Frank Carlson (d); Mary Martin, Mary Ann McCall, The Andrews Sisters (v). January–August 1939.

Woody Herman said (1977):
‘[“At the Woodchopper’s Ball”] was a triumph of persistence. The record company just kept putting it out until the public gave in and made it a hit. Nothing more to it than that. It’s not Beethoven.’

Herman began playing as a child in vaudeville, took over the Isham Jones band in 1936 and kept it afloat until the mid-’40s. His Second (1947–9) and Third (1952–4) Herds were star-studded big bands, led with indomitable showmanship. He constantly updated his repertoire while never neglecting his library of swing-era hits and was still leading small groups and larger bands into his 70s, although his last years were troubled by tax problems.

On 4 April 1939, the band cut five titles, including ‘At The Woodchoppers’ Ball’, ‘Big Wig In The Wigwam’, ‘Blues Upstairs’ and ‘Blues Downstairs’. Although the immortal ‘Woodchoppers’ Ball’ was no more than Joe Bishop’s head arrangement on the blues, it eventually became a huge hit, selling in the millions. Some of the later sessions on this disc feature music of similar quality, including ‘Casbah Blues’ and ‘Midnight Echoes’; but Herman still lacked a major arranging presence, and subsequent volumes in this series see the band return to the sweeter material of before, with novelties like ‘Peace, Brother!’ and ‘The Rhumba Jumps’ taking up too much studio time.

& See also
Blowin’ Up A Storm!
(1945–1947; p. 102),
Woody’s Winners / Jazz Hoot
(1965, 1967; p. 321)

JOHN KIRBY

Born 31 December 1908, Baltimore, Maryland; died 14 June 1952, Hollywood, California

Double bass

John Kirby 1939–1941

Classics 770

Kirby; Charlie Shavers (t); Buster Bailey (cl); Russell Procope (as); Billy Kyle (p); O’Neil Spencer (d, v). October 1939–January 1941.

Kirby’s ex-wife Maxine Sullivan said (1980):
‘Our CBS radio show was called
Flow Gently, Sweet Rhythm
. Some people like to think jazz has to be dirty and wild. No reason why it can’t be elegant as well, and that’s what John Kirby was.’

They played in white ties and tails – and they often sounded that way – but the Kirby Sextet has exerted a small and subtle influence on recent jazz. The original septet, led by Buster
Bailey, shed a member and Kirby (a better organizer and front-man, despite his instrument) was appointed leader. Many of the early arrangements are, surprisingly, credited to Charlie Shavers, and it’s fascinating to hear him sound so well-mannered, both with horn and with pencil. Titles like ‘Opus 5’, ‘Impromptu’ and ‘Nocturne’ on an earlier Classics volume and borrowings from Schubert, Chopin (‘The Minute Waltz’, inevitably) and Dvořák don’t point to a burning desire to swing the classics the way Kirby’s wife Maxine Sullivan was swinging Scottish folk material. It was more pragmatic than that. An ASCAP ban meant that groups could only perform out-of-copyright material. Kirby’s music might seem a by-way, but play him alongside one of Dave Douglas’s classical settings or some other similarly inclined recent leader and the lineage becomes more obvious.

HARLAN LEONARD

Born 2 July 1905, Kansas City, Missouri; died 1983, Los Angeles, California

Bandleader

Harlan Leonard And His Rockets 1940

Classics 670

Leonard; James Ross (t); Edward Johnson, William H. Smith (t); Fred Beckett, Walter Monroe, Richmond Henderson (tb); Darwin Jones (as, v); Henry Bridges (cl, ts); Jimmy Keith (ts); William Smith (p); Efferge Ware, Stan Morgan (g); Winston Williams, Billy Hadnott (b); Jesse Price (d); Myra Taylor, Ernie Williams (v). January–November 1940.

Poet Kenneth Rexroth said (1977):
‘I asked him if it was true that he’d once fired Charlie Parker, and if so, in what circumstances, but he just smiled enigmatically, like a cat that had just eaten a canary.’

The forgotten man of Kansas City jazz. Leonard worked with Bennie Moten from 1923 to 1931, then joined the Kansas City Sky Rockets and took over three years later, keeping the group going in the city until 1945, when he left the music business. When Basie left for New York, Leonard’s orchestra took over many of the Count’s local engagements. But he didn’t make many records; all 23 surviving tracks are here. No one will claim it as a great band in the usual sense of innovative and packed with fine soloists, but it is a very good band indeed at what it does. At some level it lacked individuality and some of the tracks are built round the kind of devices which Basie was personalizing to a much greater degree, the section work is occasionally suspect, and the KC rocking rhythm is something they fall back on time and again. But something good is to be found in nearly all these tracks, and some fine soloists, too – Bridges is an outstanding tenorman and Beckett (admired by J. J. Johnson) a surprisingly agile trombonist, and the trumpets hit the spot whenever they have to. Scholars will prize six early arrangements by the young Tadd Dameron, and one shouldn’t miss the blues-inflected vocals of Ernie Williams, a lighter Jimmy Rushing.

SIDNEY BECHET
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Born 14 May 1897, New Orleans, Louisiana; died 14 May 1959, Paris, France

Soprano saxophone, clarinet

Sidney Bechet 1940–1941

Classics 638

Bechet; Gus Aiken, Henry ‘Red’ Allen, Henry Goodwin, Henry Levine, Charlie Shavers (t); Rex Stewart (c); Jack Epstein, Vic Dickenson, J. C. Higginbotham, Sandy Williams (tb); Alfie Evans (cl); Rudolph Adler, Lem Johnson (ts); Don Donaldson, Earl Hines, Cliff Jackson, Mario Janarro, Willie ‘The Lion’ Smith, James Tolliver (p); Everett Barksdale, Tony Colucci (g); Wellman Braud, John Lindsay, Wilson Myers, Harry Patent, Ernest Williamson (b); Baby Dodds, J. C. Heard, Arthur Herbert, Manzie Johnson, Nat Levine (d); Herb Jeffries (v). September 1940–October 1941.

Soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy said (1983):
‘The sound of Bechet playing “The Mooche” did it for me. That sound was so hard but also so lyrical, I was immediately hooked.’

Bechet was the first great saxophone soloist in jazz, and perhaps the first musician to play extended solos in the music, as opposed to short breaks. Even before Louis Armstrong came along, he was playing vertical improvisations on the chords of a tune. Like Pops, Bechet grew up in New Orleans, transported his style north and then became the American star in Europe. A pioneer of the soprano saxophone, Sidney managed to combine its intense, sometimes treacherous tonality with the warm, woody sound of the clarinet.

Bechet himself contributed to the heav’n-taught image confected in a notorious Ernest Ansermet essay. Sidney’s autobiography,
Treat It Gentle
, is a masterpiece of contrived ingenuousness; John Chilton’s superb biography gets closer to the truth. Bechet was an exceptionally gifted and formally aware musician whose compositional skills greatly outshine those of Louis Armstrong, his rival for canonization as the first great jazz improviser. Armstrong’s enormous popularity – abetted by his sky-writing top Cs and vocal performance – tended to eclipse Bechet everywhere except in France. Sidney’s melodic sense and ability to structure a solo round the harmonic sequence of the original theme (or with no theme whatsoever) have been of immense significance in the development of modern jazz. Bechet made a pioneering switch to the stronger-voiced soprano saxophone in the same year as Ansermet’s essay, having found a secondhand horn in a London shop. Within a few years, his biting tone and dramatic tremolo were among the most distinctive sounds in jazz.

After a relatively slow start to his recording career as leader, Bechet soon got into a groove, feeding an increasingly hungry audience with top-flight discs. In April 1941, Bechet fulfilled the logic of his increasingly self-reliant musical conception by recording two unprecedented ‘one-man-band’ tracks, overdubbing up to six instruments. ‘Sheik Of Araby’ is for the full ‘band’ of soprano and tenor saxophones, clarinet, piano, bass and drums; so time-consuming was the process that a second item, ‘Blues For Bechet’, had to be completed without bass or drums, leaving a fascinating fragment for RCA to release.

In September of the same year, Bechet made another classic trio recording, this time with Willie ‘The Lion’ Smith and Everett Barksdale, on electric guitar. Though the two sidemen provide no more than incidental distractions, the trio sessions were more compelling than the full band assembled on that day (Charlie Shavers plays monster lines on ‘I’m Coming Virginia’, as on the October ‘Mood Indigo’, but is otherwise ill-suited); ‘Strange Fruit’ is one of Bechet’s most calmly magisterial performances, and the two takes of ‘You’re The Limit’ seem too good to have been dumped in the ‘unreleased’ bin, though perhaps the absence on either of a commanding solo from Bechet put the label off. A month later, in the same session that realized ‘Mood Indigo’, Bechet cut the utterly awful ‘Laughin’ In Rhythm’, a New Orleans version of ‘The Laughing Policeman’ that, despite a taut soprano solo, hardly merits revival. Dickenson also plays beautifully on ‘Blue In The Air’, one of the finest of Bechet’s recorded solos.

& See also
King Jazz: Volume 1
(1945; p. 99),
The Fabulous Sidney Bechet
(1951–1953; p. 132)

CLAUDE THORNHILL

Born 10 August 1909, Terre Haute, Indiana; died 1 July 1965, New York City

Arranger

Snowfall

Hep CD 1058

Thornhill; large orchestra. September 1940–July 1941.

Singer and pianist Diana Krall said (2002):
‘I grew up listening to Claude Thornhill records. They were considered to be very cool, and I guess they were.’

Formally trained, Thornhill began working for New York bands in the mid-’30s – he arranged ‘Loch Lomond’ for Maxine Sullivan – before touring with his orchestra from 1940. After war service, he re-formed the orchestra in 1946 and hired Gil Evans and Gerry Mulligan to write many of the band’s arrangements. Their work was the forerunner of the
Birth Of The Cool
school.

With the revival of interest in mood-music mandarins like Martin Denny and Arthur Lyman, it’s not inconceivable that Thornhill’s work could catch the ear of those seeking something in the classic easy-listening style. His band was never a striking commercial success, though Thornhill’s interest in a meticulousness of sound – subtle section-work, carefully filtered reed textures, the static bass harmony provided by Bill Barber’s tuba parts – resulted in little classics like his theme, ‘Snowfall’. But his relationship to jazz is rather hazy, given the formalized tone of the band, and though there were major cool-school players in the orchestra and it features much of the early work of Gil Evans and Mulligan as arrangers, many of the recordings are exotically ephemeral.

The earliest studio recordings have been restored to print by Hep’s excellent compilation, and from the first tracks it’s clear why Thornhill was so popular with audiences seeking sweet music. There seem to be the scent of freesias and the feel of lace-work around such scores as ‘Alt Wein’ and ‘Love Tales’, dappled by the leader’s piano. He stacks up clarinets, quietly, or threads the reed section around simple brass comments which can’t even be called riffs. A piece such as ‘Portrait Of A Guinea Farm’ is as exotic as society music would ever get. ‘Snowfall’ itself is a flawless miniature. But there are also numerous vocal features, such as ‘Mandy Is Two’, which may bring on impatience in the listener. The sleeve-note suggests that Thornhill’s band was ‘too musical’ to secure wider success, but that was not a problem which bothered such musical orchestras as Ellington’s or Goodman’s.

The sequel is
Buster’s Last Stand
, also on Hep, and in fact the label has done more for Thornhill’s reputation than anyone, with a nice list of compilation reissues that include some valuable transcriptions taken between 1947 and 1953.

DUKE ELLINGTON
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