I wrote about the delightful but less-celebrated trombonist Vernon Brown here a day ago. Readers and friends suggested more examples of “Brownie”‘s talents, and I am happy to present them here. First, with the King of Swing in March 1938, where he’s called by name:
Then, going back to his first recorded solo, in 1926, from Hans Eekhoff’s collection:
And this delight, thanks to Nick Rossi (with Herschel Evans and Jess Stacy):
This wonderful 1947 session also allows us some James P. Johnson:
and moving us closer to the present, here are two long performances from a 1954 session issued on Columbia as JAM SESSION AT CARNEGIE HALL, a benefit concert for the Lighthouse, the band led by Mel Powell. They are Ruby Braff, Buck Clayton, Vernon Brown, Urbie Green, Tony Scott, Lem Davis, Buddy Tate, Mel Powell, Steve Jordan, Milt Hinton, Jo Jones:
LIGHTHOUSE BLUES (Vernon is the first trombone soloist, with a mournful sound; Buck follows):
I could spend the next months digging out wonderful recorded evidence of Vernon Brown’s mastery, but this will have to do for the moment. Jazz, like any art, is full of people who never get their star on the Walk of Fame . . . but we would be so much poorer if we never knew them.
Last May I published a piece I called SAYS WHO?. In it, I asked questions about fame and reputation. Who makes the stars? Who gives out the gigs? Who decides who is worthy of attention? It wasn’t about conspiracy theory, the Jazz Illuminati deciding who shall prosper and who shall go into retail, but the questions continue to trouble me.
Tonight’s example is trombonist Vernon Brown (1907-79) who played and recorded regularly with Benny Goodman for twenty-one years, also with Harry James, Sidney Bechet, Jean Goldkette, Artie Shaw, Muggsy Spanier, Eddie Condon, Wild Bill Davison, Bobby Hackett (who is behind him in the photograph below) Billy Taylor, Lee Wiley, Martha Tilton, Hank D’Amico, Bud Freeman, Sidney Catlett, Connee Boswell, Paul Whiteman, Wingy Manone, Cozy Cole, Bing Crosby, Jerry Jerome, Yank Lawson, Billy Butterfield, and other luminaries.
He never had a recording session under his own name; he may never have “placed high in the polls,” but he surely could play.
Because it was Brown’s birthday a few days ago, one of the Facebook sites that celebrate such occasions posted a summary of his career. I think it was factually accurate, although the nameless (although ubiquitous) jazz journalist summed up Brown’s work in a few choice phrases. He was “a journeyman but a reliable musician.” He was “never a major star but was considered quite valuable in sections of big bands and for occasional solos.”
I was annoyed by the posthumous assessment. It’s a grudging two-star review.
And then I looked at Brown’s discography: Benny Goodman, never known for keeping inferior players in his band, made Vernon Brown a regular member of his trombone section for twenty years, from 1937 to 1958.
Something else happened. When you’ve been listening to music as long and as intently as I have, there is a nicely maintained mental jukebox that finds the relevant selection, drops the needle, and whether I want it to or not, begins to play.
What I began to hear was Vernon’s solo on ONE O’CLOCK JUMP, by the Goodman band on January 16, 1938, at a little place called Carnegie Hall. You’ll hear Jess Stacy, Babe Russin (or is it Vido Musso?), Vernon, Benny, Jess again, and Harry James:
I first heard that record in the second half of the 1960s, and I can hum Vernon’s solo to you today. It is honest swinging blues playing, in the tradition but completely recognizable and personal. Had it been performed by someone with a higher ranking in the mythology of jazz: let’s say Vernon had had dramatic personal troubles, had died young, had suffered any of the various maladies that affected jazz musicians, we might be holding this solo up as if it were a jewel, to be revered.
But he seems to have been undramatically professional, someone who showed up to the gig, read the charts, didn’t fall off he stand, didn’t go to jail. There are no good Vernon Brown stories.
Here he is alongside Sidney Bechet, Mezz Mezzrow, James P. Johnson, Bernard Addison, and in 1947:
and in 1945, with Bud Freeman, Charlie Shavers, Dave Tough, Edmond Hall (although he’s mis-credited on the label, a rare Keynote error:
I am sure that my readers can come up with other, perhaps even more memorable examples of Vernon Brown soloing. My point here is not to assemble his greatest solos or even go through his discography. But the dead cannot speak for themselves, and they should be safe from carping assessments. A musician who played so well and for so long is no “journeyman.”
Not everyone is equal and not every musician is “the GOAT,” a deplorable phrase and acronym. But everyone deserves respect in generous measure. ”Be nice to the dead. Someday you’ll be dead too.”
Clarinetist Nathan Tokunaga turned seventeen in December 2023. Let that fact sink in.
He has technical mastery of the clarinet and other reeds, no small thing, but what he has in abundance is a fine musical intelligence. In every phrase, he shows his deep understanding of the tradition, the history of the music, but he isn’t an A.I. creation: he goes for himself, phrasing in his own way. And we are glad.
Here he takes on a Benny Goodman feature — Fats Waller’s STEALIN’ APPLES — usually played faster than fast — and delightfully shows us how it is done in 2023.
He’s accompanied by the nobly empathic Dave Stuckey, guitar, with the Hot House Gang rhythm section: Josh Collazo, drums; Mikiya Matsuda, double bass; Chris Dawson, piano. All of this good noise happened at the Jazz Bash by the Bay in Monterey, California, in March 2023:
And on a personal level, which is more important than we ever want to say, Nathan is much more adult than many of the chronological adults I encounter: gracious, humble, funny, and seriously aware. I didn’t discover him: others have had the pleasure of watching him become the person he is meant to be, but I certainly admire him and look forward to the next time I will be in the room when he and his peers make music. Onwards, Youngblood!
And a big cyber-hug to Messrs. Stuckey, Dawson, Matsuda, and Collazo, who all set the earth spinning in the nicest swinging ways.
These autographed photographs are for sale at eBay: here‘s the link. (Also signed photographs of Jo Jones, Ivie Anderson, William McKinney, Lee Morse, Big Sid Catlett, Norma Talmadge, Ruth Etting, Marion Harris, Red Allen, Andy Kirk, Cozy Cole, and much more.)
GENE KRUPA and a host of admirers and band members, starting from the back [I see Roy Eldridge, Dodo Marmarosa, Anita O’Day, Remo Biondi, Nate Kazebier, Vido Musso, Teddy Blume, Sid Weiss, Johnny Desmond]. I would assume that the enthusiast carried this photograph from gig to gig:
and the crowded front [Gene himself, Billy Gladstone, Jess Stacy, Nat Jaffe, Connie Haines, Big Sid Catlett, Tony Briglia, Red Norvo, George Wettling, Coleman Hawkins, Teddy Wilson]. The seller says that there’s a Billie Holiday signature in there, but it eludes me:
and his former boss, BENNY GOODMAN [Harry James, Ziggy Elman, Bud Freeman, Teddy Wilson, Lionel Hampton, Pee Wee Monte, Louise Tobin, Jess Stacy, Art Rollini, Red Ballard, Vernon Brown, Noni Bernardi, Harry Goodman] for “CHARLES SURES,” someone not known to me:
The Krupa photograph is listed at USD 1850.00; Benny, at a mere 450.00.
What would a tribute to Gene and Benny be without some of their music? Here is a little more than an hour from a party Benny threw on January 16, 1968, a famous anniversary.
The Goodman photograph dates from 1938, plus or minus, and the signatures are people then in his band or close to it. The Krupa photograph spans a larger period of time, and it’s unlikely that all those people were in one place at the same time, signing away. Swing Era detectives can do a better job of defining the time periods more accurately.
But I feel there’s no substantial time gap between the photograph and the signatures, which is not always the case. (Incidentally, from what I know of these musicians, I have no reason to doubt the authenticity of the signatures.)
A vivid example of a later signature is also on the seller’s page: Jo Jones:
The holes in the corners say to me that someone had this tacked to the wall, a fitting tribute. Jo’s health, hairline, and necktie place this PoPsie Randolph photograph no later than, say, 1960. But his labored printing is from two decades later: I speak from experience, for Jo signed two record jackets for me in 1981 and 1982 in much the same way. (True, he could have been leaning against a wall while inscribing this.) Does that diminish the value of the photograph? Perhaps, for some. But it is still a blessed relic.
Be prepared to lose yourself in the photographs. They are as remarkable as their subjects.
Dreams do come true. Sometimes the impossible is possible, and available.
Recently I posted the raw video footage of the CBS News coverage of the party above, which you can see here. Then, a surprise. A collector, Jacqueline Purvis, found me and asked if I’d like to hear the music from that party, the tape recorded by Goodman scholar Russ Connor. I’d been hoping to hear this since 1973 or so when I bought my copy of BG ON THE RECORD, so I said YES immediately. She sent it to me: more than an hour of the best sounds. Some days later I politely asked if I might share the music with you, not expecting a positive outcome. But Jacqueline said YES. So here we are. Don’t say I don’t do things for the JAZZ LIVES audience. And YES, it’s only the audio.
It’s Benny, with Jess Stacy, piano; Gene Krupa, drums (George T. Simon fills in at the start while Gene’s drums are being set up); Ruby Braff, cornet; Lionel Hampton, vibes. Audience chatter and drink orders free of charge.
SWEET LORRAINE (Benny, Ruby, Jess, Hamp) / I WANT TO BE HAPPY (add Gene) / IF I HAD YOU / AVALON / SOMEDAY SWEETHEART / ROSETTA / BODY AND SOUL (Benny, Jess, Gene) / I WOULD DO MOST ANYTHING FOR YOU (Ruby and Hamp return) / DON’T BE THAT WAY / STOMPIN’ AT THE SAVOY:
Ornamenting this with a photograph of young Benny is my whimsy.
And, in the spirit of the holiday, any ungracious carpers, nit-pickers, complainers, and Corrections Officers will receive assignments for JAZZ LIVES’ mandatiory community service.
Thank you fervently, Jacqueline, Benny, Jess, Gene, Ruby, Hamp, and Russ.
And because very little is truly irrelevant, this 2016 article describes that Benny’s penthouse apartment was up for sale at $8.6 million. I don’t think that someone standing on the street can still hear the faint sounds of scales and Mozart, but it’s worth a visit.
But CBS News was invited, and although segments of film documenting this event have been in circulation on YouTube for a long time, I was given a copy of the color film — abrupt cuts and odd edits, but eighteen minutes total, a watermark free of charge. I’m going to guess that someone out there might appreciate this.
Invited musical guests include Jess Stacy, piano; Gene Krupa, drums; Lionel Hampton, vibraphone; Ruby Braff, cornet. This raw footage, with gaps, comes from CBS News coverage, narrated by David Culhane; the [excerpted] selections include ROSETTA, interview with Benny; interview with Lionel; AVALON; BODY AND SOUL; IF I HAD YOU (?); AVALON; audience shots; the cake; THE SONG IS ENDED (?):
and for those who like “comparison and contrast,” three segments that have been on YouTube:
1.
2.
3.
It’s all precious. Russ Connor, Benny’s bio-discographer, brought his tape recorder and caught the whole evening, but where that tape is, I don’t know.
My title, I think a borrowing from Poe, refers to those musical performances, rare and surprising, that have gone unobserved on YouTube for months and years. Volume One can be found here.
Joe Castro with Louis Armstrong and Teddy Wilson, backstage at Basin Street in 1956
Doris Duke is usually identified as tobacco heiress, philanthropist, and socialite. She’s less well-known as a fervent supporter of jazz and an amateur pianist. She and pianist / singer / composer Joe Castro had a lengthy relationship, and Doris’ devotion to jazz led her to stage and record jam sessions in studios on both coasts. Two CD box sets on the Sunnyside label, under Castro’s name — LUSH LIFE and PASSION FLOWER — collect astonishing recordings in first-rate sound, the participants relaxed and eloquent. Here, Castro is not the pianist, but Doris’ friend Teddy Wilson is.
Teddy and Stan Getz only recorded together on one other occasion — the soundtrack of the BENNY GOODMAN STORY, but nothing quite so personal as this quartet, where they are supported splendidly by Bob Berteaux, string bass; Jimmy Pratt, drums. I hear parallels to PRES AND TEDDY (which had not yet happened) and the Lester Young – Nat Cole – Buddy Rich date, but Stan is very much himself here, and the quartet soars and muses beautifully.
FALCON BLUES (BLUES IN G):
SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME:
JUST ONE OF THOSE THINGS:
OUT OF NOWHERE:
I WANT TO BE HAPPY:
“Hidden in Plain Sight”? When I assembled these titles for this post, I noted that the music had been on YouTube for three years and none of these performances had received more than a hundred views. Surprising is the most gentle way I can put it. Some digging on YouTube often yields treasure.
The bare facts: Charles Henry Christian, electric guitar (July 29, 1916 – March 2, 1942).
I’m not sure that much could be sadder than that. But Charlie had one piece of good fortune in his brief life. However you write the story of his “discovery,” he was well-known, heard by many, and captured by various microphones for our listening and that of future generations. From August 1939 to June 1941, he appeared in the recording studio, the concert hall, radio studios, and after-hours jazz clubs. Tom Lord’s standard online jazz discography lists 94 sessions on which he appears, and his recorded oeuvre can (loosely) be contained on ten compact discs.
Between 1992 and 1994, the French CD label “Masters of Jazz” attempted to present his recorded work complete on eight discs. Nearly a decade later, they issued a ninth volume which presented music that had eluded them, plus three performances that had never appeared on record . . . which it’s my pleasure to present here. The preponderance of Charlie’s recorded work was with Benny Goodman, who was generous in featuring his brilliant young sideman. (Not only that, but had Christian been working with a less-famous organization, how much of his work would have been lost to us?) Two of the three performances, alas, incomplete, are with Benny’s Sextet. But Charlie had another life, one blessedly captured by Columbia University student-archivist Jerry Newman . . . so we can follow him to Minton’s Uptown House.
The blissful music.
POOR BUTTERFLY, April 27, 1940 (Christian, Goodman, Lionel Hampton, Johnny Guarnieri, Artie Bernstein, Nick Fatool):
STOMPIN’ AT THE SAVOY, May 8,1941 (Christian, Lips Page, Joe Guy, Don Byas, Kermit Scott, “Tex,” Nick Fenton, Kenny Clarke):
STOMPIN’ AT THE SAVOY, June 1941: the last recording we have of Charlie, “Monte Prosser Dance Carnival,” Madison Square Garden, New York City (Christian, Goodman, Cootie Williams, George Auld, Guarnieri, Walter Iooss, Fatool):
Charlie, we miss you. Thank you for the jewels you left us: they still shine so brightly.
And if you are, like me, fascinated by Benny Goodman, you’ll want to read this. Enthralling.
Benny Goodman, taciturn and reserved, was larger than life and remains so in death, with several selves created through the perceptions of those who knew him and those who mythologized him.
One self was the IRREPLACEABLE MUSICIAN, as evidenced here:
His playing was both exultant and expert; he made superb music on his own (an eight-bar solo on a 1931 dance-band recording is both immediately recognizable and completely uplifting); he gathered superb musicians around him for fifty years and gave them space to express themselves.
He hired Black and White musicians who were seen onstage, in films and television: Teddy Wilson and Lionel Hampton pre-dated Jackie Robinson. He drew inspiration from the greatest musicians of his time and was himself an inspiring force. And he brought American music to audiences who might otherwise have not known it, and his sixty-year career is a monument to his love of the music.
But even when Benny was alive, another, darker self was given room — and posthumously, the INEXPLICABLE ECCENTRIC has grown, fueled by anecdote after anecdote.
Some of them are surely true: he was so engrossed by the music and his craft that he didn’t remember people’s names; he demanded perfection of others, the same level of art he expected of himself. Few bosses are heroes to their subordinates, and satirizing one’s employer is a time-honored way of reducing their power. Benny was frugal, but he had come from real poverty where “having nothing to eat” meant empty cupboards; he was self-absorbed, but spent much of his life in physical pain.
That second perception also comes from our uneasy relation to heroic achievers in recent times. People applaud the striver, but when someone is too successful, those same people become envious. The audience can buy the records but they are resentful that they didn’t play the music that filled Carnegie Hall. A public person’s fame, coming from unique abilities, makes them feel inadequate and they take the only revenge they have, creating destructive narratives.
“She’s a great singer.” “Yes, but she was mean to the waitstaff.” And more.
The tale of Benny, putting on a sweater because someone else says they’re cold makes better copy than another beautiful solo or ensemble, another triumph. The King of Swing, once a monarch, must be dethroned, must be brought down below us. A Facebook commenter recently offered Benny in subjective miniature: two negatives to one positive and of course, an emoji:
Hard taskmaster – but great musician . Not known for being over generous 😂.
Benny was also unfortunate to become famous, to live long, to die wealthy, without any of the suffering some expect from jazz heroes.
So the collective assessment slants towards cheap, mean, thoughtless Benny — as if the inventive virtuoso who stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Billie Holiday, Lester Young, and Charlie Christian was merely a dim memory.
But a new work, a screenplay titled simply GOODMAN, by Alessandro King, has the power to change all that.
King is, in his own words, “a mega swing fan,” a playwright who’s spent the last years researching Benny, his music, his world, and coming to new understanding of what has been taken as truth for so long. And he’s also a singularly gifted dramatist.
Although many good books have been written about Benny, he remains larger than any biography or discography. King’s screenplay embodies the reality that Benny’s life was inherently and consistently dramatic, not just one successful performance after another, that the dramas persisted when there were no crowds in evidence. When I read it, I was entranced by King’s ability to see, to perceive situations that made Benny who he is. His Chicago poverty; his work ethic; his romantic entanglement with Billie Holiday; his fraught relations with his spiritual brother John Hammond; his intense need to create and share his art. In GOODMAN, Benny comes alive as a person — not simply as a face attached to a clarinet nor as a collection of unpleasant quirks — a son, a friend, a lover, a pioneering artist.
It will be an engrossing film.
But I should let Alessandro take the stage.
I have been very lucky that my writing style has evolved in recent decades, from simple naturalistic stage plays to expansive screenplays and pilots. This development has been contemporaneous with my passion for the music of Benny Goodman, which began with a single compilation CD and is now embodied in a collection of over 2,500 songs spread out over 150 discs; there is not a day that goes by without my listening to Goodman’s music or thinking about its maker.
These two through-lines have overlapped in my screenplay GOODMAN, and it is perhaps because of this melding that GOODMAN is the best thing I have ever written. The script conjures Benny’s role in the launch of the swing era and demolition of the music industry’s racial segregation, and I am proud to say the results have garnered attention from organizations such as New York Stage and Film and the Academy Nicholl Fellowship.
I am confident that this movie is ready to be made. To that end, I have accepted Michael Steinman’s generous offer to promote the piece on Jazz Lives, in the hope that it will be recognized by those who’d perhaps appreciate it most: members of the music community. Please accept my invitation to read the first twelve pages of the script here; if you are interested in perusing the full screenplay, please email me at AlessandroMKing@gmail.com.
Thanks very much for reading this self-promotion. As a token of my gratitude, please enjoy this photograph of my grandmother snagging an autograph from a certain reed player; is this the only visual evidence of Benny getting caught incognito (without glasses)?
GOODMAN is a marvelous human story, subtle and revealing. Reading the screenplay, each time I saw the movie in my head. Now I want to see it on the screen.
My friend Howard Kadison, invaluable musical colleague of Donald Lambert, reminded me of those simple deep words from Lester Young. They may seem anachronistic, especially since some perceive jazz as a series of improvisations on the melody that, as they progress, leave the melody behind. Pure melody, some still think, belongs to “sweet” bands populated by musicians unable or unwilling to take improvisatory risks.
But the great jazz players — stretching from Bunk Johnson to Sonny Rollins, including Louis, Bobby Hackett, Jack Teagarden, Teddy Wilson, and many others — knew and know that respect for, even reverence for, the original melody can bring great rewards. “Let me hear that lead!” Louis said.
It helps, I am sure, to have a lovely melody to begin with. YOU AND I, words and music by Meredith Willson, a hit in 1941, is one. Its whole notes suggest that, had it been written in 3/4 time, it would have made a splendid Viennese waltz. The movement between notes is simple: one could pick out the line on the piano, but the harmonies are not usual, and the result is an arching melodic line that seems just right for a yearning singer or instrumentalist with near-operatic scope.
I hadn’t known about Benny Goodman’s quartet version, but it’s a small tender masterpiece: thanks to Alessandro King, about whom you will hear more, for sharing it with me. Obviously there was no conflict of interest between the “fitch Bandwagon” (Fitch was a brand of shampoo) and the Maxwell House Coffee Hour. (Were these accounts handled by the same agency?)
The Quartet is not like any other Benny had, although he did make a number of recordings with a clarinet-trombone front line. It’s the magnificent Lou McGarity, with Mel Powell, piano, and Ralph Collier playing very quiet drums. The whole performance is less than three minutes, but what beauty they create in such a small space! in my mind’s ear, I can hear Benny mapping out the performance before they begin: “Mel, you take four bars; I’ll play sixteen; Mel, you take the bridge, then I’ll come back for the last eight. Then we’ll finish with the last sixteen: Lou, you play the first eight with me, and I’ll finish it.” It’s presumably taken from a private acetate and then issued on Sunbeam Records (SB 158). And it’s a quiet joy:
I’ve listened to this gorgeous miniature perhaps two dozen times since I first heard it. It doesn’t reveal all its beauty the first time, but glows even brighter on each new hearing. A compact subtle gem. And melodic playing at this level is the highest art.
We don’t often use “Benny Goodman” and “New Orleans” in the same sentence, but this sublimely relaxed performance suggests we might have been wrong.
It’s reminiscent of the happy ease of the 1935 Trio, with a smooth rhythmic push throughout provided by Sid Weiss, string bass, and Morey Feld, drums. Benny and Teddy seem joyously in synch and free. The sound isn’t perfect but one’s ear gets used to it quickly.
Deep Goodman collectors no doubt know this music, but it hasn’t been issued in any commercial form that I know of. And it’s a consistent pleasure, free from the demands of the recording studio.
Municipal Auditorium, New Orleans, “National Jazz Foundation,” WWL radio broadcast: LIMEHOUSE BLUES / EMBRACEABLE YOU / AFTER YOU’VE GONE / BODY AND SOUL / ‘WAY DOWN YONDER IN NEW ORLEANS / ROSE ROOM / THE WORLD IS WAITING FOR THE SUNRISE / HALLELUJAH! / THE MAN I LOVE / BOOGIE WOOGIE / HONEYSUCKLE ROSE / ON THE SUNNY SIDE OF THE STREET //
My tape copy is from the collection of the late John L. Fell; audio limitations are to be expected: acetates transferred to magnetic tape of unknown generations from the original.
And since so much conversation about Benny is detached from his music, let me urge you to put the mocking anecdotes aside and just bask in the sounds: the melodic fluidity, the rhythmic ease, the masterful playfulness. I propose that those qualities are more important than whether Benny forgot someone’s name.
This post is for Alessandro King and Nathan Tokunaga, both of whom understand Benny in deep ways.
About a year ago, I posted this video, one of those moments when commercial broadcast media and high art created something memorable together. It doesn’t need explication; for me, reverence is the most appropriate reaction.
Now, through the kindness of my friend Alessandro, I can share with you the complete audio of that encounter. The slight buzz suggests that it was recorded directly from someone’s television set, but the music is beyond compare. Grandpa could still play (!) and Rich, often accused of bluster behind the drum set, is a marvel of creative listening. For me, the delight comes from Rowles, that sly subversive one-man orchestra, with sets and costumes, going his own unexpected ways.
It was a “talk show,” so, first, a little chat:
Then, to the real business at hand, LIMEHOUSE BLUES:
A too-brief consideration of AS LONG AS I LIVE:
and that rare thing, an I GOT RHYTHM played for itself alone:
We must thank Merv Griffin for making room for this wondrous interlude, so precious then and now.
The imaginative types among us sometimes launch the idea of the music we know with a central figure removed from the landscape — a much-diminished alternative universe. What, we say, would our world have been like had young Louis Armstrong chosen to go into waste management? Imagine the musical-cultural landscape without Sinatra, Bing, Billie? Quickly, the mind at play comes to a stop, because such absences are so unimaginable that they serve to remind us of the power of these individuals long after they have left the neighborhood.
I’d like to add a name to that list — Benjamin David Goodman, born in Chicago. These days it seems that Benny, once the King of Swing, is either taken for granted so deeply that he is forgotten, or he is reviled for bad behavior. To the former, I can only point to our cultural memory loss: if it’s older than breakfast, we’ve forgotten its name, so hungry for new sensations we appear to be.
And to the latter, I see it as rooted in an unattractive personal envy. We can’t play the clarinet like Benny; we don’t appear on concert stages, radio, and television. (I exempt professional musicians, often underpaid and anonymous, from this: they have earned the right to tell stories.) This reminds some of us that all the bad things our classmates said of us in fourth grade still are valid. So some of us energetically delight in the Great Person’s failings, as if retelling the story of how he didn’t tip the waiter makes up for our inability to equal his artistic achievements, and the life of diligent effort that made them possible. Benny could behave unthinkingly, but we’ve all done that. If we understood our own need to tear down those larger than ourselves, perhaps we would refrain from doing it. Bluntly, feasting on the story of Benny putting on a sweater says much more about our collective insecurities than about his obliviousness. But enough of that: we have beautiful music to savor here.
I don’t know if the New York Jazz Repertory Company, such a wonderful enterprise in the 1970s and onwards, was George Wein’s idea or perhaps Dick Hyman’s — but it was a marvel. If someone proposed a concert tribute to Bix Beiderbecke, well, you could bring Joe Venuti, Spiegle Willcox, Paul Mertz, and Chauncey Morehouse to the stage alongside Zoot Sims, Vince Giordano, Warren Vache, Bucky Pizzarelli — the best musicians readily available having a splendid time amidst the Ancestors, the Survivors. Concerts for Louis, Duke, and Basie were just as enthralling. The NYJRC experience was a kind of jazz Camelot, and its moments were shining, perhaps brief, and surely memorable.
The Nice Jazz Festival had enough expert musicians — expert in experience and in feeling — to put together NYJRC evenings, and here is a July 1979 one devoted to not only Benny but to the worlds he created.
For me, imagining a world without “BG” is again unthinkable. He wasn’t the only person who made hot music — creative jazz improvisation — such an accessible phenomenon for the widest audience, an audience perhaps unaware that they were dancing to great art, but he did it. And he wasn’t the only person to have Black and White musicians on the public stage, but his contributions to racial equality are too large to be ignored. And he himself made great music and inspired others to do so.
Enough polemic. But Benny remains a King, and efforts to dethrone him are and should be futile.
Both Dick Hyman and Bob Wilber had worked with Benny, and their love, admiration, and understanding shine through this concert presentation devoted to his big band and small groups of the Swing Era. The band is full of Goodman alumnae (we must remind ourselves also that Benny was active on his own in 1979) including Pee Wee Erwin, an integral part of Benny’s 1935 orchestra. Hyman not only plays brilliantly but supports the whole enterprise; Wilber embodies Benny in his own lucent fashion, and Pug Horton sweetly summons up a whole raft of Benny’s singers. Too, the individual players get to have their say in their own fashion — something that was a lovely part of the worlds Benny made and made possible.
Here’s ninety minutes of music, delightful on its own and as an evocation of a masterful musician and his impact on us, whether we acknowledge it or not.
The New York Jazz Repertory Company: Bob Wilber, clarinet; Dick Hyman, piano; Arnie Lawrence, Haywood Henry, Norris Turney, Budd Johnson, reeds; Eddie Bert, Britt Woodman, Mike Zwerin, trombone; Jimmie Maxwell, Ernie Royal, Pee Wee Erwin, Dick Sudhalter, trumpet; Bobby Rosengarden, drums; Bucky Pizzarelli, guitar; George Duvivier, string bass; Pug Horton, vocal.
Warming up / George Wein announces / LET’S DANCE (Hyman, Wilber, Lawrence, Hyman) / KING PORTER STOMP (Maxwell, Wilber, Maxwell, Zwerin, Budd, Hyman, Bucky, Duvivier) / STOMPIN’ AT THE SAVOY (Hyman, Wilber, Bert, Budd, Bert, Bucky, Wilber) / BODY AND SOUL (Wilber, Hyman, Rosengarden) / CHINA BOY (trio) / SEVEN COME ELEVEN (add Bucky, Duvivier) / add Pug Horton, vocal / GOODNIGHT, MY LOVE / SILHOUETTED IN THE MOONLIGHT / SOMEBODY ELSE IS TAKING MY PLACE / Pug out / RACHEL’S DREAM / big band returns / STEALIN’ APPLES arr. Henderson (Hyman, Wilber, Erwin, Turney, Woodman, WIlber // Intermission: Wilber introduces the orchestra while Bucky plays GOODBYE // SWINGTIME IN THE ROCKIES (Budd, Wilber [alto], Hyman, Henry, Bert, Lawrence, Wilber, trumpet section trades / PAGANINI CAPRICE No. 24 arr. Skip Martin (Hyman, Wilber, Budd) / A SMOOTH ONE (Wilber, Maxwell, Budd, Bucky, Hyman, Duvivier, Rosengarden) / AS LONG AS I LIVE / AIR MAIL SPECIAL / (add Pug, big band reed section returns) WE’LL MEET AGAIN / WHEN THE SUN COMES OUT / WHAT A LITTLE MOONLIGHT CAN DO (Hyman) / (Pug out, full band) SING SING SING (Wilber, Rosengarden, Budd, Wilber, Maxwell) / GOOD-BYE //
As the waitperson says when she puts your fish tacos in front of you, “Enjoy.”
“Benny Goodman stories” are legendary, and since tales of odd or mean behavior are good copy, they are durable. There’s the man who couldn’t remember his daughters’ names, the villain of the Ray, the man who put on a sweater when the sidemen were cold . . . if you care to, you can add to the list.
But for every truth there is a counter-truth, so here are two brief interview segments I did with the Eminence Dan Morgenstern in 2019, resetting the balance in ways that will surprise anyone committed to the idea of the wicked King of Swing.
and more:
I think the emphasis on a cruel miserly inexplicable Benny has also led to a meager assessment of his gifts. Consider these examples. If you played them for someone who knew nothing of the legends and gossip, I think they would be astonished by the music made by the Unknown Clarinetist — and the music he made possible.
and a few years later, in two versions:
I could expound at length on the reasons Benny has been attacked as a person (and he had his failings: no bandleader is always a hero to the people he employs) but that’s another blogpost, one I will leave aside for the moment. For one thing, he became prosperous, which is at odds with the myth of the jazz creator as suffering doomed outsider. Ultimately, though, mocking someone as emotionally lacking or imbalanced is an easy way to undermine the validity of their art. Benny should be regarded for his work — on the level of, let us say, Benny Carter and Bobby Hackett — rather than for his foibles. Who among us doesn’t have them?
Fairness, not vindictiveness. The time is ripe for a balanced view.
I don’t quite know the circumstances that made this unusual and wonderful meeting possible, nor how this was recorded . . . but it’s a marvelous event.
Here are the 1963 performances, posted on YouTube by someone I don’t know.
First, a brisk POOR BUTTERFLY featuring Bobby Hackett, cornet, with the Brubeck rhythm section of Dave, piano; Eugene Wright, string bass; Joe Morello, drums. And you can hear Bobby express his pleasure when the song concludes. Then, Benny Goodman joins in for an eleven-minute SWEET GEORGIA BROWN, with the magical Paul Desmond adding his alto saxophone and choruses of riffing and an improvised ensemble. As an encore, SUNNY SIDE OF THE STREET, a standard the CD liner notes indicate that Brubeck had never recorded before (his solo is anything but formulaic) and that Desmond had never recorded at all, with the same unusual but congenial front line:
I’ve not been able to find out anything more about this performance. The official Brubeck website corroborates the details above, although noting that the other tracks on the CD are not all correctly labeled. As to the Rock Rimmon Jazz Festival? I saw that Rock Rimmon is in Manchester, New Hampshire, and I already knew that Benny had recorded an original called ROCK RIMMON with a small group including Ruby Braff for Capitol Records, but the trail grows cold there. At least we have the music!
Festivals make odd stage-fellows, but here the unusual combination is completely enlivening. . . .twenty-four minutes of friendly exploration of the common language of lyrical swing. Bless the players, the expert sound crew, the archivists who preserved this, and the company (Domino Records) that issued it, and the person posting it on YouTube for us to savor.
The title once referred to the fastest (and most expensive) way of delivering the mail: in 1940, Charlie Christian invented this line — as a member of Benny Goodman’s sextet. It was initially titled GOOD ENOUGH TO KEEP, and that certainly has remained true.
This 2014 performance is more than a homage to the red-label Columbia recording: it has its own vibrant or is it vibraphonic life, thanks to Chuck Redd and John Cocuzzi, sharing the metal keyboard alongside Eddie Erickson, guitar; Anti Sarpila, clarinet; the late Dave Stone, string bass; Butch Miles, drums:
Here’s how the eBay seller described this unique object:
“Absolutely mammoth early 1940s photo album with 690 original photographs. Album of Allen, an African American man – a chauffeur, photos of his friends and family, the family he works for and various travel locations. Rochester, NY, factors heavily – not sure if Allen, the family he works for – or both, are from Rochester. Also a lot of photos in New York City.
There are photos of famous jazz age / big band era musicians and band leaders performing, including Cab Calloway, Cozy Coles, Benny Goodman, Charlie Christian, Erskine Hawkins, Dolores Brown, Tony Pastor with the Andrew Sisters, Bunny Berigan, with some of the photos autographed.
Measuring 12 x 8 inches and 4 inches thick. Album has wooden cover, with WWII Army Navy Excellence award decal and initial decals “A R A.” There are only a couple of photos of a man in uniform, nearly all photos are civilian, and most are of African Americans. Photos in various sizes: mostly 5 x 3 ¼ inches, 4 x 3 black and white and some 6 x 4 with more sepia tone. Photos are attached to album by photo squares, a handful of photos are loose from the album . . . .”
The auction ended Thursday, and when I checked on Wednesday the high bid was over eight hundred dollars. So it’s not mine.
BUT. Through the magic of “Save image,” which sounds rather mystical, I can share a few particularly evocative photographs. Allen was not an obsessive jazz or big band fan, but the few photographs in the album suggest that he got around and heard some of the good sounds so easily accessible then.
First, some photographs of non-musical realities.
Charming everyday life, perhaps a Sunday outing in spring?
I don’t know whether Allen took the photograph of his five friends, but the caption suggests a fine witty approach to life, at the beach or otherwise.
Even though Allen was presumably the family chauffeur, that’s a comfortable photograph, to me.
Now, to music. Allen went to see the Erskine Hawkins band, and the captions suggest he had a fine swinging time.
The leader to the left, who autographed the photo (at a later date, I presume) and one of Hawkins’ saxophonists to the right: either Paul Bascomb or Julian Dash, I assume.
Witty captions left and right, and the gracious Mr. Berigan (who had beautiful unhurried handwriting) in the middle.
Cozy “Coles,” working for Cab Calloway.
Finally, the prize for those of us whose life revolves around such glimpses:
Benny, with immense casualness — in a pose your clarinet teacher wouldn’t recommend — and a quick signature, but a new glimpse of Charlie Christian, which also helps to date the album.
I wish we knew more about Allen, but this was his prize, and we assume someone will always recognize our treasures as ours . . .
The highest bidder won this prize for $1325 (plus $12 shipping) and for them, a world opens up. I hope the photographs get seen by as many people as possible. This was the link, although I don’t know how long it will remain.
Thanks to Nick Rossi for bringing this box of treasures to my attention.
Puccini, Jolson, Rose, Goodman, and innumerable jazz groups — one of the reliable get-off-the-stand numbers, here performed by the EarRegulars at the Ear Out (326 Spring Street, Soho, New York City) on Sunday, May 23, 2021. They are, from left, Jon-Erik Kellso, trumpet; Pat O’Leary, string bass; Scott Robinson, C-melody saxophone and trumpet; Chris Flory, guitar (who played this song with Benny, himself).
And about this performance? All I can say is Yes.
Here’s hoping you find your love in Avalon, or someplace even closer, and you bring that person to the Ear Out on a Sunday afternoon before winter comes, as we know it will.
It is raining in my world, so that is reason to work more on closet-archaeology (“What was I saving this for?”) and other probing questions, which led coincidentally to emotional-musical introspection. Thanks to Nick Rossi, who holds the lantern for so many of us, I wandered to this brief lovely rousing performance (November 23, 1937):
Three choruses and an extension, a masterpiece of individual improvisations and collective Swing architecture. Imperishable. If you need subtitles: the Benny Goodman Trio, which was Benny, clarinet; Teddy Wilson, piano; Gene Krupa, drums — performed live on the Camel Caravan radio program, recorded for us by the Blessed William Savory and shared with us by the equally Blessed George Avakian. (I understand there are many hours of unheard BG in the Savory discs, but don’t know the state of the negotiations that would make them audible.)
And one more. Anyone for pineapple and plumeria, still fresh, from June 29, 1937?
I heard these recordings when I was still in the first years of high school — the gift of a friend who had played clarinet in his childhood, who later, as a math teacher, helped me pass the Regents — and they stuck with me. Doug Brown, thank you across the decades.
Then and now, I delight in Benny’s enthusiasm, his special kind of melodic embellishment; Teddy’s marvelous pulse and harmonic surprises; Gene’s energetic delight. (If you think that Gene is “heavy” on these recordings, listen to the way Benny and Teddy are inspired by him, then ask yourself, “Is this what I am hearing or am I merely repeating what someone else has said?”)
And one other thing. These were brand-new popular tunes in 1937 (you can look up their histories at your leisure) so it wasn’t a ponderous matter of “the classics from the Great American Songbook,” but three masters having fun with new music. What a blessing such music was made, and captured.
One of the benefits of “straightening up” is that, occasionally, treasures resurface. Here’s one whose importance I can’t overestimate. But before I write a word more, this airshot of SING SING SING comes to us because of the generosity of Loren Schoenberg, master of so many arts, who played it on a broadcast he did over WKCR-FM perhaps thirty-five years ago. I captured it on cassette, and now share it with you. (Loren generously provided a pitch-corrected version for JAZZ LIVES.) It was not issued on Jerry Valburn’s set (lp and CD) of Goodman-Catlett recordings, should you reach for that set. Your ears will tell you so.
If you needed more evidence of the superhuman power and joy that Sidney Catlett brought to any group in his two-decades-plus playing career, this should do it. It also suggests, words I write with some ruefulness, why Benny Goodman fired him. Listening to this performance, it’s hard not to believe that Sid was leading the band and Benny was doing his best — which was considerable — to keep up. It also reminds us how much music the Swing Era bands created in performance that the 10″ 78 count not capture, because this performance is ten minutes long. Real life — for dancers, a band released from the recording studio. I bless the unidentified recordist, and so should you.
Here are the names of the heroes in that wonderful band, although on this performance, aside from brief ventures by Vido Musso and Mel Powell, by my count, six of the ten minutes are given over to a Catlett-Goodman experimental interlude in duet improvisation:
Billy Butterfield, Cootie Williams, Jimmy Maxwell, Al “Slim” Davis, trumpet; Lou McGarity, Cutty Cutshall, trombone; Benny Goodman, clarinet; Skip Martin, Clint Neagley, alto saxophone; Vido Musso, George Berg, tenor saxophone; Chuck Gentry, baritone saxophone; Mel Powell, piano; Tom Morgan, guitar; Marty Blitz, string bass; Sidney Catlett, drums. Broadcast, “Meadowbrook,” Cedar Grove, New Jersey, September 27, 1941.
This is an extraordinary piece of music, full of courage, energy, and joy. I hope you feel about it as I do, and that, once again, we may extend our gratitude to Sidney, Benny, Loren, and someone sitting in front of the radio with a microphone and a disc cutter.
If you read the freeze-dried accounts of American popular music history, this music had been dead for thirty years, when “the Swing Era” expired. But how wrong that oversimplification is, proven by these eight minutes. A very lively corpse, no? This segment is from the Merv Griffin Show (Merv was a big-band singer before he became a talk-show host, television producer, and real-estate mogul, among other attributes) featuring musicians I won’t have to identify — Benny Goodman, Buddy Rich, Jimmie Rowles, Bucky Pizzarelli . . . you can figure out who Jack Six is and what he is doing by process of elimination, if you don’t already know him. The two songs chosen are a very mellow AS LONG AS I LIVE, harking back to the Sextet recording with Charlie Christian and Count Basie, and then — quite rare in “modern times,” I GOT RHYTHM played as itself. Beautiful playing from everyone — inspired and inspiring:
I’m aware that there are far larger things to get annoyed about, and I am sure that my ire is both pointless and the result of forty years in college classrooms, where accuracy was not always evident in my students’ work. But I attempt to be accurate when it is possible. When someone offers a factual correction to something I’ve written, I might hiss through my teeth, but I change my text. So the biographical sketch of Charlie Christian that follows is irritating in many ways.
Charlie Christian December 1, 2006 Edward Southerland
It is not too far a stretch to say that everybody who plays the electric guitar owes something to Charlie Christian.
He was born in Bonham in 1916, but when his father, a waiter, suddenly became blind in 1918, the family moved to Oklahoma City. Christian began his musical career on the cornet, but soon gave it up for his father’s favorite instrument, the guitar.
The guitar took the young man to Los Angeles where he met one of the country’s most influential jazz critics and writers, John Hamilton. Bowled over by Christian’s uncompromising talent, Hamilton took the young man to the Victor Hugo restaurant in L.A. to meet Benny Goodman on August 16, 1939. Without telling the band leader, Hamilton set Christian on the bandstand. Goodman had the band play “Roseland,” a number he thought the guitar man would not be able to follow, but follow he did. After one pass, Christian took a solo, and then another and after 18 breaks, each different from the others, he had a job with the King of Swing.
Despite his success, Christian’s legacy to jazz faded after he died of TB and pneumonia in 1942 at the age of 25. When he died, Christian was brought home to Bonham to be buried. A few years ago, a Japanese jazz lover traveled half way around the world to find the grave of this all but forgotten musician, and Charlie Christian was forgotten no more. There is an exhibit about Christian in the Fannin County Historical Museum, each year Oklahoma City hosts a jazz festival in his honor, and once again, the young man with guitar is celebrated by music lovers everywhere.
Over the years, the Red River Valley has contributed more than most know to the music of the land, particularly in jazz, early rock ‘n’ roll and Western swing. Everyone knows Reba McIntire, the Oklahoma girl with the big voice, and Sherman remembers native son Buck Owens with his own section of U.S. Highway 82. Decades before these stars became icons others blazed trails of their own. Texoma has had its fair share of contributors to the world of music. These are just a few.
This article appeared in the Winter 2006 issue of Texoma Living!.
Reading it, I wondered if the author had asked a friend for some facts and had heard them incorrectly through a bad phone connection. I amuse myself by writing here that “John Hamilton” played trumpet with Fats Waller, and that “Roseland” was a dance hall of note in New York City.
If I could draw, I would create a cartoon of Charlie’s magical transportation: “The guitar took the young man to Los Angeles . . . ” I do not know what to say about this assertion: “Despite his success, Christian’s legacy to jazz faded after he died of TB and pneumonia in 1942 at the age of 25.”
At least this writer didn’t “get the impression” that Charlie was a heroin addict, and he doesn’t say that he was discovered at a late-night jam session . . . both examples taken from the recent prose of a Jazz Authority, nameless here.
You might ask, “Don’t you have anything better to do, Michael, than take pot shots at someone writing in a ‘regional’ magazine about a subject they can’t be expected to be an expert on? I would tell you, “Yes, I have much better things to do: you should see my kitchen counter. I have laundry that’s piling up, and I should be walking more, blogging less.”
But we know that the internet grants permanence to assertions, and assertions become granite: so a small inaccuracy, repeated and blurred through repetition, becomes a major falsehood — and in that way, it feels like an insult to the dead, who can no longer stand up (not that mild-mannered Charlie would have) and say, “Quit making up that crap about me. It isn’t true!”
In a world where so much source material is available for people who no longer need to leave their chairs, I’d hope that more care would be taken by writers who want to be taken seriously. Had Mr. Southerland been a student in a freshman writing class of mine, had he handed this essay in, I would have written “no” and perhaps even “No!” in the margins and returned the essay with “Please see me” on the bottom and asked him to revise it — sprinkling in some facts, rather like oregano and crushed red pepper on pizza — if he wanted a passing grade.
I won’t go so far as to hypothesize that slovenly “research” indicates a laziness of perception, which is a failure of analysis resulting in a civilization’s slide into darkness. But I won’t stop you if you want to pursue that notion.
The good news is that Charlie Christian’s “legacy” is not “faded.” Consider this precious 1941 artifact, where he’s gloriously present next to Dave Tough, Johnny Guarnieri, Artie Bernstein, Cootie Williams, and George Auld:
I will paraphrase Lord Byron to say, “Southerland and his ilk will be read when Christian and Goodman are forgotten. But not until then.”
JAZZ LIVES 