“The first radio broadcast to emanate from Camp Kilmer was heard over 193 stations of the Blue Network on March 15 (1945?) when the “Victory Parade of Spotlight Bands,” featuring Benny Goodman and his orchestra, came to camp. Here the “King of Swing” and the rest of the show hold rehearsal on the stage of Theater 4, which had been equipped for radio broadcasting.”
I hadn’t known about any of this — but my friend, jazz scholar David Weiner, sent it along. Now I also know that there’s a New York City office of the National Archives — a place to visit!
Jamaica Knauer captured this inspiring performance of DIPPER MOUTH BLUES at the July 2007 Bix Fest in Davenport, Iowa — with a quintet of unusual suspects gathered together as the “Flatland Hot Five”: Sue Fischer (drums), Steve Pistorius (piano), Tom Fischer (clarinet), Dave Bock (trombone), and Andy Schumm (cornet). It’s one of those performances that makes you rethink the emphasis on “originality” in jazz improvisation — for, although hardly a note in this cherished creation is new, the effect is still stirring, uplifting. Everything old can be new again when approached as if old and new were lively, interchangeable . . .
Perhaps this is what it sounded like when Joe Oliver took the stage at the Lincoln Gardens?
I couldn’t resist the title. Nor could I resist the music.
Readers who have been following my Whitley Bay videos will gather that I am delighted by Swedish trumpeter / cornetist Bent Persson and by clarinet virtuoso Aurelie Tropez. What could be better than to find them sharing a bandstand — Bent sitting in with the Red Hot Reedwarmers (including Stephane Gillot, alto, Martin Seck, piano) on July 11, 2009. It’s a natural blend: the Reedwarmers are inspired by the misic of Jimmie Noone, particularly of his Apex Club Orchestra, which used a similar blend of instruments. And Bent’s hero (mine, too) — Louis — recorded with Noone a few times in the early Twenties, although Noone’s trumpet partners were usually lesser-known players, my favorite among them being Guy Kelly.
First, the Reedwarmers perform the very sweet FOREVERMORE, wistful tremolos all over the place:
Then, after Bent had joined them and they had settled themselves, another late-Twenties hit (I think of it most often in Miff Mole’s and Ethel Waters’s versions), BIRMINGHAM BERTHA:
Bent sat out a request from the audience — the pretty LOVE, YOUR MAGIC SPELL IS EVERYWHERE:
Finally, they joined forces on LOOKIN’ GOOD BUT FEELIN’ BAD, which I associate with an explosively hot 1929 recording by Fats Waller and his Buddies . . . dare I say that this performance equals its noble predecessor:
Anthony Barnett, poet / scholar / onlie begetter of compact discs that overflow with jazz violin rarities, informs us:
For those of you who are in Denmark on August 14th there will be a centenary memorial concert for Stuff Smith at the little church where he is buried: Klakring Kirkegaard, Juelsminde, not far from the provincial town of Horsens. Please note this is nowhere near Copenhagen.
Also, quite remarkably for The Strad magazine there is a good four-page tribute to him by the UK doyen of classical violin history Tully Potter in the August issue.
The Beloved and I are fond of a certain kind of antique store — not too expensive, devoted to fine French furniture costing thousands, and not specializing in rusted tools and old newspapers. She is currently entranced by certain kinds of McCoy pottery (planters, not the terrifying cookie jars); I, predictably, look for sheet music and old records. I might gaze longingly at a Victrola but have no intention of making a commitment to one.
Sheet music is often in terrible shape if it’s been stored in the barn, and if it’s been well-cared for, the prices rise. Today we were in Sheffield and Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and I was directed in one store to a fine small collection of music. Someone had taste: there were Cole Porter songs I’d never heard of, a Swing Era-vintage STOMPIN’ AT THE SAVOY, and a batch of early African-Americana: IF THE MAN IN THE MOON WAS A COON and BY THE WATERMELON VINE, MAH LINDY LOU. But these nicely-preserved artifacts were out of my price range.
Records, too, are usually disappointing: the great days of junking for Paramounts and Gennetts are long, long gone. More typically I face Bobby Vinton and Frankie Carle, Donna Summer and Christmas songs. Now and then a popular Goodman or Glenn Miller collection emerges, or a Jazztone from the Fifties, but such appearances are not the rule.
Today, which happened to be the first Monday in August, before we turned for our temporary country home, the Beloved said, “Let’s cross the street and go into that shop, the one advertising farm tables.” The shop was somewhat disorderly, and the owner was surprised, he said, that he could direct me to some sheet music (which turned out to be in bad shape). On the way there, my vigilant eye was caught by a pile of records — microgroove issues without cardboard jackets scraping against one another mingled with 78s.
When looking through records, one tends to make judgments on what one finds most often: too many Sammy Kaye and Eddie Fisher records and I begin to droop. 78s from the Fifties, obviously, are newer and have had fewer chances to crack and break. All was reasonably dull until I came to two records, almost adjacent to one another. I asked the owner, as innocently as I could, what he was charging, and he said, “Oh, a dollar apiece.”
When I took my two finds to him, he said, “Oh! These are more valuable. I thought that pile was only Sinatra and Tony Bennett.” I stood there quietly and said, “Yes, they are more valuable. What do you want for them?” And he smiled at me, rather resignedly, and said, “Oh, a dollar apiece,” which I happily paid him. It was an odd moment: he knew they were worth more but was being generous and perhaps feeling relieved of the burden of two more objects that threatened to overwhelm him.
Neither record is in splendid condition. But they both have been played over and over again, which makes them more valuable emotionally even if some eagle-eyed grader would rate them somewhere between V- and G. Who knew that Bix and Bing got to Massachusetts, and that they had been preceded by the Original Memphis Five? Someone in the Twenties had, as they say, an ear. And you can now see the results.
The photographs are slightly blurry, but my pleasure in these discoveries and the casual generosity of the shop owner is sharp and clear. “From Monday on, we’ll be in clover . . . !”
One of the highlights of the 2009 Whitley Bay International Jazz Festival (July 12, 2009) was the two-hour concert given by Swedish trumpeter / cornetist / Louis Armstrong scholar Bent Persson — leading an all-star big band in tribute to the music Louis made in the Thirties. The band was genuinely “all-star,” including Nick Ward (drums), John Carstairs Hallam (bass), Martin Litton (piano), Jacob Ullberger (banjo / guitar), Jean-Francois Bonnel, Matthias Seuffert (reeds), Paul Munnery (trombone), Beat Clerc (trumpet), Michael McQuaid (trumpet / reeds), Ludvig Carlson, Spats Langham, Elena P. Paynes, and Bent himself (vocal), and one of two musicians whose names I didn’t catch or write down — being busy clutching my video camera like a man on a mission. Which I was!
If you’ve never heard Bent, something wonderful awaits. And seeing him play Louis’s solos (and variations on them) you realize once again how majestic Louis’s accomplishments were — and are. And the band got the spirit, swinging out in the best Thirties way, with no “repertory” stiffness.
The flexibility of this big band was due to several factors — first, the musicians’ deep familiarity with the repertoire and their professionalism, but also the two extended rehearsals Bent called, on Saturday and Sunday mornings, to run through the arrangements. He didn’t spare himself, playing the difficult solos without avoiding the high notes. Non-musicians aren’t usually invited to watch the band rehearse, but Bent generously invited me in advance. I brought my video camera (telling him that it would be good material for the documentary someone was bound to do on him) as well as my notebook.
Here are some things I saw and heard:
Before the full band arrived, the trumpets and saxophones were ready, and Bent said, “Maybe we should start with something that is going to be difficult for the saxes, like – - – - ?” and he named a song. One of the saxes said quietly, “I’d be just as glad to wait.”
When rehearsals started, Bent showed himself to be the very oppposite of the stereotypical bandleader. Nothing ruffled him; he was cheerful and generous with praise. One of the musicians was late, and Bent asked, “Did they get X?” to which the answer You may play louder on that. Don’t be too careful!”
When Bent announced that the next song would be BODY AND SOUL, I heard one musician say, deadpan. “Great tune. I think I know this.”
At the second rehearsal, Bent walked in, saw me setting up my camera, grinned, and made the musicians’ joke that was new to me: “Shoot! The enemy will appear at any moment!”
Later, when the band was working through THE SKELETON IN THE CLOSET (which is really a full-scale dramatic piece), Bent pointed out that the introduction had to be properly spooky: “It says very loud and horrible in the music.” And, when the band — hard workers all — had concluded the beautiful WHEN IT’S SLEEPY TIME DOWN SOUTH, Bent said, happily, “Very nice! Lovely! First take!”
Here are the first selections from this Sunday afternoon concert:
I GOT RHYTHM served to introduce the band; it’s modeled on Louis’ Chicago OKeh recording, with that comic ending (Bent says it was based on a radio theme: does anyone know the name of the closing motif?):
I’M IN THE MARKET FOR YOU was a very appealing song (I saw Ray Nance do it once, and it was marvelously touching. Spats Langham has the right spirit here.). But what puzzles me is that it was a film song (from “High Society Blues”) presumably stressing how love was more important than the stock market, a sentiment worth remembering today. But how any songwriters could have thought to make the stock market a subject for pop song in the post-Crash world amazes me. Would we know this song if Louis hadn’t taken it up?
I’M A DING DONG DADDY (From Dumas) is another 1931 oddity, written by Phil Baxter, if I remember correctly. Once you hear the written lyrics, complete with treacherous “p”‘s for a singer to pop, you’ll understand why Louis chose to scat his way through the verbal thickets:
INDIAN CRADLE SONG never emerged from its obscurity, although it’s quite a tender melody — one of the early Thirties ventures into native Americana, going back LAND OF THE SKY BLUE WATER and, earlier, to RED WING. Bent sings it sweetly:
BODY AND SOUL, complete with awkward lyrics — which the Beloved always remarks on as syntactically part-Yiddish – ”My life a hell (wreck) you’re making” could have been a conversational lament straight from Second Avenue:
YOU’RE DRIVING ME CRAZY, complete with rocking verse to start and the closing modulation, as well as a loose, swinging vocal by Ludvig Carlson:
Finally (for this post), JUST A GIGOLO, which Louis must have heard and loved from Bing’s recording:
“The first radio broadcast to emanate from Camp Kilmer was heard over 193 stations of the Blue Network on March 15 (1945?) when the “Victory Parade of Spotlight Bands,” featuring Benny Goodman and his orchestra, came to camp. Here the “King of Swing” and the rest of the show hold rehearsal on the stage of Theater 4, which had been equipped for radio broadcasting.”
