The Penguin Jazz Guide (29 page)

The
Ellingtonians
CD valuably brings together material from a few different dates. The
1946 material with Kyle, Levy and Cole is absolutely representative, though oddly the set ends with a couple of later 1946 sides that don’t feature Rex at all. The best stuff comes from earlier, in 1940, with Brown and Bigard; ‘Bugle Call Rag’ perfectly illustrates the points above. Rex’s originals ‘Blues Kicked The Bucket’, ‘Flim-Flam’ and ‘Madeleine’ are affable enough, but he was a player first and he had found his idiom early, so there’s not much deviation in quality even when the song is second-rate. Stewart was revered in Europe and after the war went back to France to record for a number of labels, but the best of his small-group work is probably here.

LESTER YOUNG
^&

Born 27 August 1909, Woodville, Mississippi; died 15 March 1959, New York City

Tenor saxophone

The Complete Aladdin Sessions

Blue Note 32787 2CD

Young; Shorty McConnell, Howard McGhee (t); Vic Dickenson (tb); Willie Smith (as); Maxwell Davis (ts); Joe Albany, Jimmy Bunn, Nat Cole, Gene DiNovi, Wesley Jones, Dodo Marmarosa, Argonne Thornton (p); Irving Ashby, Nasir Barakaat, Dave Barbour, Fred Lacey, Chuck Wayne (g); Ted Briscoe, Red Callender, Curtis Counce, Rodney Richardson, Junior Rudd, Curley Russell (b); Chico Hamilton, Roy Haynes, Tiny Kahn, Lyndell Marshall, Johnny Otis, Henry Tucker (d). July 1942–October 1947.

Trumpeter Harry Edison said (1994):
‘You have to remember that Lester came from the south. All that strange jive talk and the eccentric behaviour, those were mechanisms for survival. No one’s going to beat on you if you’re simple-minded, so act simple-minded. Some white man is always listening to you in case you’re hatching something, so talk in a way no white man can understand. That’s the key to Lester, those first years in Mississippi. Not anything that happened since or went into his body.’

One of the most influential saxophonists ever, Lester Young marks a transition from swing to bebop. Borrowing from Frankie Trumbauer, he developed a dry, cool style, quite different from the Coleman Hawkins sound. He grew up near New Orleans and played in a family setting, but left home to start a professional career with Art Bronson and then with Walter Page’s Blue Devils. Count Basie recruited the 25-year-old but Young soon left and joined Fletcher Henderson’s band, where he replaced Herschel Evans but was initially ostracized for his unorthodox approach. He was soon back with Basie and started to record under his own name and as an accompanist for Billie Holiday. His improvisations grew ever more elegantly structured, built up from short, slightly staccato phrases. He grew increasingly dependent on drink and narcotics; his tone coarsened and his solos became more and more formulaic.

The truth is that Young’s best work was nearly all done for others. The Aladdin sessions do, however, cover some of his best work as a leader, though even some of these are for another singer, Helen Humes. Young’s cool, wry approach still seems slightly out of synch with prevailing expectations, though he is absolutely
simpatico
with Willie Smith, another figure now routinely overlooked in accounts of how jazz developed into its modern phase. The big pluses on this generously proportioned compilation are a rare glimpse of the 1942 Los Angeles session with Nat Cole and an instrumental ‘Riffin’ Without Helen’, recorded as part of the Humes session, presumably while she was off powdering her nose.

& See also
The President Plays
(1952; p. 138)

LUCKY MILLINDER
^&

Born 8 August 1900, Aniston, Alabama; died 28 September 1966, New York City

Voice, bandleader

Lucky Millinder 1943–1947

Classics 1026

Millinder; Joe Guy, Frank Humphries, Joe Jordan, Chiefie Scott, Curtis Murphy, Leroy Elton Hill, Lamar Wright, Henry Glover, Thomas ‘Sleepy’ Grider, Archie Johnson, John Bello, Leon Meriam (t); Harold ‘Money’ Johnson (t, tb); Joe Britton, Gene Simon, George Stevenson, Alfred Cobbs, Frank Mazzoli (tb); Billy Bowen, Tab Smith, Preston Love, Bill Swindell, Burnie Peacock, John Harrington, Sam Hopkins, Big Nick Nicholas (as); Eddie ‘Lockjaw’ Davis, Michael Hadley, Sam ‘The Man’ Taylor, Bull Moose Jackson, Elmer Williams (ts); Ernest Purce (bs); Ray Tunia, Ellis Larkins, Bill Doggett, Sir Charles Thompson (p); Trevor Bacon (g, v); Lawrence Lucie, Bernard McKey (g); George Duvivier, Beverly Peer, Al McKibbon, Jerry Cox (b); Panama Francis (d); Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Wynonie Harris, Judy Carol, Leon Ketchum, The Lucky Seven, The Lucky Four, Annisteen Allen, Paul Breckenridge (v). August 1943–April 1947.

Jazz historian Bob Turner says:
‘Millinder’s band was an urban survival of the kind of outfit that was plying the Midwest. He hovers close to bop more often than he’s given credit for, but Lucky knew his market and wasn’t going to risk a change of style while things were going well.’

The word ‘irrepressible’ jumps to mind. Millinder grew up in Chicago and had all kinds of showbiz jobs – including fortune-telling – before fronting bands. He ran the Mills Blue Rhythm outfit for a time. Lucky, who’d had a short dance career as Lucious Venable, recorded on his own account from the middle of the war onward to 1952, but later got out of music and worked in the alcoholic drinks business. Either way, he always had something to sell. Millinder’s sessions for Decca (there are a scant four titles for V-Disc on this volume) are energetic but middleweight titles brought to life by some bright and alert solos. Much of it yearns to be slimmed down to R&B small-band size, and Millinder’s use of vocalists such as Rosetta Tharpe and Wynonie Harris – as well as instrumentalists like Sam ‘The Man’ Taylor, Bull Moose Jackson and Bill Doggett – tells its own story about the direction of the music. A solitary date right at the end of the previous compilation (1941–1942) hints at a different direction: Dizzy Gillespie is in the band, and there’s a spirited version of ‘Little John Special’ (alias ‘Salt Peanuts’). But that was a moment of madness in the Millinder story. He sings here and there, but otherwise his great contribution – an almost maniacal energy in directing the band onstage – has been lost to posterity. These discs pall over the long haul, but in small doses they’re a worthwhile and entertaining reminder of a staple part of black music in the early ’40s.

& See also
MILLS BLUE RHYTHM BAND, Blue Rhythm
(1931; p. 48)

GEORGE LEWIS
^&

Born George Joseph François Louis Zeno, 13 July 1900, New Orleans, Louisiana; died 31 December 1968, New Orleans, Louisiana

Clarinet

George Lewis & His New Orleans Stompers: Volumes 1 & 2

American Music AMCD 100 / 101

Lewis; Avery ‘Kid’ Howard (t); Jim Robinson (tb); Lawrence Marrero (bj); Sidney Brown (bb on Vol. 1 only); Chester Zardis (b); Edgar Moseley (d). May 1943.

George Melly said (1998):
‘They all raved about Lewis because he was thought to be the “real thing”, and the stupid thing was that the worse he played, the more “authentic” they all thought it was. A complex man, I think, and I’d give a fiver to know what was going through his head.’

One of the great primitives of early and classic jazz, Lewis had a raw and untutored tone and an impassioned, technically unembellished approach to soloing. Keystone of the postwar revival in traditional jazz, he toured indefatigably. Rarely has a traditional jazz musician been documented on record in so concentrated a way as was Lewis. American Music’s patient documentation even gives street numbers and times of day for the earliest material here. Having been coaxed out of a ‘retirement’ working as a dockhand at the start of the war, Lewis was by the mid-’50s the surviving pillar of ‘serious’ revivalism, which he’d helped kick off with Bunk Johnson, working what looked like a politician’s itinerary across the US.

The early material comes across with remarkable freshness. The first tracks on
Volume 1
of the 1943 material were recorded in the drummer’s house and, though they’re more raggedy than the later sessions at the Gypsy Tea Room (high-point: two takes each of ‘Climax Rag’ and ‘Careless Love’), they provide an excellent starting-point for serious examination of this remarkable musician. Lewis’s solo breaks are oddly pitched (possibly owing to tape yaw), but the pitching remains consistent relative to other players so it has to be considered an idiosyncrasy rather than poor articulation.

& See also
Jazz Funeral In New Orleans
(1953; p. 143)

STUFF SMITH

Born Hezekiah Leroy Gordon Smith, 14 August 1909, Portsmouth, Ohio; died 25 September 1967, Munich, Germany

Violin

The Stuff Smith Trio 1943

Progressive PCD 7053

Smith; Jimmy Jones (p); John Levy (b). November 1943.

Bassist John Levy said (1984):
‘Stuff was managed by Joe Glaser – same manager as Louis Armstrong – who was supposed to be hand in hand with the Mob. He was even banned from working in Chicago because of that. But he got us booked into the Onyx Club in New York. Joe pretty much ran booking for black acts then.’

Stuff played with Alphonso Trent in the ’20s, then in a successful 52nd Street band with Jonah Jones. His career petered out in the ’40s, and from the ’50s he based himself in California and Europe. A capricious temper and a liking for alcohol did him few favours. What would have been Smith’s 90th birthday prompted a certain reassessment of his work. Those who remember his final performances in Scandinavia are fewer on the ground these days, and emphasis has fallen on the earlier and better work. Initially influenced by Joe Venuti, Smith devised a style based on heavy bow-weight, with sharply percussive semiquaver runs up towards the top end of his range.

Like many ’20s players, Smith found himself overtaken by the swing era and re-emerged as a recording and concert artist only after the war, when his upfront style and comic stage persona attracted renewed attention. Even so, he had a thriving club career in the meantime, most famously at the Onyx Club on 52nd Street, and managed to hold his ground while the bebop revolution went on around him.

The 1943 trio is typical of his pre-war and wartime work, an exhaustive documentation of the session of 17 November. Three full versions of ‘Minuet In Swing’ suggest that Smith went at a solo in a fairly deliberate way, attempting to maintain an energy level rather than rethinking his approach every time. On the other hand, an unissued ‘Bugle Call Rag’ shows that he could be thoughtful even on lighter material. It opens with the notorious ‘Humoresque’, which must have had violin teachers climbing out of windows all over town and there are multiple takes of ‘Ghost Of A Chance’ and ‘The Red Jumps’ (a Henry ‘Red’ Allen line) as well. It’s a terrific set and a nice period example of a drummerless combo.

MILDRED BAILEY

Born Mildred Rinker, also known as ‘Mrs Swing’, 27 February 1907, Tekoa, Washington; died 12 December 1951, Poughkeepsie, New York

Voice

Mildred Bailey 1943–1945

Classics 1316

Bailey; Louis Armstrong, Roy Eldridge, Charlie Shavers, Dick Vance (t); Jack Teagarden, Henderson Chambers (tb); Barney Bigard, Hank D’Amico (cl); Aaron Sachs (cl, as); Coleman Hawkins, Emmett Carls (ts); Teddy Wilson, Vernon Duke, Ellis Larkins, Danny Negri (p); Red Norvo (vib); Al Casey, Tommy Kay, Chuck Wayne, Remo Palmieri (g); Oscar Pettiford, Clyde Lombardi, Billy Taylor, Al Hall (b); Sid Catlett, Eddie Dell, Specs Powell, J. C. Heard (d); Paul Baron Orchestra. November 1943–December 1945.

Former husband Red Norvo said (1983):
‘Did we mind being called Mr and Mrs Swing? Well, it stuck better to her than to me! And, boy, could she swing. I don’t think there was another singer of that time who swung harder.’

Mildred Rinker sent a demo record to Paul Whiteman, who hired her in 1929. After four years, and a hit with ‘Rockin’ Chair’, she went solo and sang with husband Red Norvo’s group. A tempestuous personality and health problems saw her star decline in the ’40s, though there was a brief comeback near the end. She had claims to be feted on a par with Holiday and Fitzgerald – and started recording before either of them, with her first version of ‘Rockin’ Chair’ dating back to 1931 – but Bailey was more of a transitional figure. Her early records suggest a singer struggling, gently, with the old style of Broadway belting (difficult enough for someone with a small voice), while some of the later ones are almost too placid and formal; yet she never quite lost the vaudevillian tang which helped her put across risqué numbers like ‘Jenny’ or the wartime novelty ‘Scrap Your Fat’. Lacking either Holiday’s modern pathos or Fitzgerald’s monumental swing, her art is modest, stylized and innately graceful.

During the war years, she was a reassuring and consolatory voice at a time of national need and sadness and more than a few serving soldiers mention the impact of her voice on a phonograph recording or on radio during furloughs as a connection to home. This volume of Classics’ documentation is nearly all V-Disc material and starts with four titles with Teddy Wilson as sole accompanist; her delightful fluff on the intro to ‘Rockin’ Chair’ was fortunately preserved. Even on ‘Scrap Your Fat’ she turns in a sterling effort. Bailey sustains interest over long periods on modern reissues. There is a consistency and a certain mildness that never seems dull or routine. Perhaps, alongside more dramatic divas, she simply spoke of familiar things in tones that suggested someone closer at hand and more approachable.