“FLORIDA BARN, 1958”: JOHNNY WINDHURST, EDDIE HUBBLE, RED BALABAN

The trail of home-grown jazz recordings winds back more than a hundred years, if you begin with the 1926 Earl Baker cylinders. If you’ve never heard them, they are impressive. Here’s one:

Recording jazz outside the studio, in a club or your living room, became easier as technology progressed. We have hours of home-recorded radio broadcasts, some smaller amount of living room jam sessions, perhaps more done on site in clubs. It is obviously the smallest fraction of what was performed. In our time, we have reel-to-reel magnetic tape (coming after wire recorders), disc cutters, cassette recorders, smartphones and more. I have the first recording of live jazz that I captured, from 1971, and a good deal of JAZZ LIVES is devoted to such miracles.

Still, jazz remains elusive and the music captured informally is to be treasured. What follows is the only session I know that was recorded in a barn, although I am sure some readers will write to inform me otherwise. And it is shared for the first time (aside from a few fortunate collectors) here.

We remember acts of kindness long after the person performing the kindness has moved on. I offer this hot interlude as tribute and gratitude to two men I knew, John L. Fell and Joe Boughton, and to three musicians, all of whom have gone on ahead. The next six minutes of music are luminescent in themselves: Johnny Windhurst, cornet; Eddie Hubble, trombone; Red Balaban, banjo and vocal interlude. The recording supervisor, interjecting his approval, is one Jack Rooster. The two songs are IF I COULD BE WITH YOU ONE HOUR TONIGHT and YOU TOOK ADVANTAGE OF ME, recorded 1958 in a Florida barn:

It is possible Boughton recorded this, but I don’t know. And it also sounds as if the original source was a disc rather than tape. But none of the five or even six participants is around to tell us. So pull up a folding chair or a bale of hay, and be transported.

May your happiness increase!

WHEN THE RADIO WAS HOT: “JAZZ AT STORYVILLE,” featuring PEANUTS HUCKO, JOHNNY WINDHURST, GEORGE WEIN, DICK LE FAVE, JOHN FIELD, MARQUIS FOSTER, ERWIN FERRY, EDDIE PHYFE, and NAT HENTOFF (WMEX, Boston 1951).

Johnny Windhurst

Peanuts Hucko at the Famous Door, 1946-48, by William P. Gottlieb

George Wein

There was a time when live hot jazz came pouring out of the speaker of your AM radio. We’ve heard airshots by the big bands and Charlie Parker and his friends, but radio station WMEX in Boston, for a time, offered prime live music, often hosted by a then-young Nat Hentoff. Collectors recorded and saved these broadcasts, doing us a great service decades later. My copy of this music may have originated with Joe Boughton, who passed it on to John L. Fell.

Here’s a half-hour of lively music from the spring of 1951, a Sunday afternoon session, “Jazz at Storyville,” from George Wein’s club in that city. The players are Johnny Windhurst, cornet; Peanuts Hucko, clarinet, vocal; Dick Le Fave, trombone; Wein, piano; John Field, string bass; Marquis Foster, drums, later joined by Erwin Ferry, trombone, with Eddie Phyfe replacing Foster.

The repertoire is what you would hear at Eddie Condon’s club in New York, and that is no bad thing: INTRODUCTION / ROYAL GARDEN BLUES / SQUEEZE ME (scat vocal Hucko) / STEALIN’ APPLES (Hucko, Wein, Field, Foster) / Eddie Phyfe, drums, replaces Foster; Erwin Perry, tenor saxophone added for EASTER PARADE / WHEN YOU’RE SMILING / IMPROVISATION FOR THE MARCH OF TIME (or DEEP HARLEM) //

I’m most charmed by Hucko’s vocal, Windhurst’s electricity, and Wein in splendid form, but this half-hour stands as testimony to the durability of the common hot language, call the results what you will:

Seventy-one years old, but it doesn’t show its age.

May your happiness increase!

BOSTON, 1951: BOBBY HACKETT, VIC DICKENSON, GENE SEDRIC, TEDDY ROY, BILL GOODALL, BUDDY LOWELL (WHDH: The Music Box, Copley Square, March 26, 1951)

As Richard Vacca, author of THE BOSTON JAZZ CHRONICLES, can tell us, Boston was a hot town for jazz, vying with Chicago for second place to New York City. In the Forties and Fifties, there seemed to be a regular commute between the two cities, with steady gigs flourishing. Louis and Bird, Bechet and Tatum, Newton and Sullivan, Fats and Big Sid . . . the list of performers and performances is a long one. And there were radio broadcasts from Boston clubs. Here’s a brief taste of what was happening and what was captured off the air.

Bobby, listening to Vic Dickenson at Childs Paramount, October 1952

This glimpse into an animated past comes from the Music Box, where Bobby Hackett had a residency in early 1951, with his great friend and partner Vic Dickenson, trombone; Gene Sedric, clarinet; Teddy Roy (an old Boston friend), piano; Bill Goodall, string bass; Buddy Lowell, drums.

Caveat for the sensitive: there are vestiges of AM-radio static. (The original tape ran quite fast, but the generous Chris Tyle stepped in and fixed that, so nicely.) But you are made of strong stuff, and can surmount such things. The songs are Bobby’s theme for these gigs, STREET OF DREAMS, and then three “Dixieland” classics, SQUEEZE ME, ROYAL GARDEN BLUES, and BYE AND BYE. The band usually broadcast on Fridays, but this was a Monday-night special. The tape came to me from my dear friend and benefactor John L. Fell, his source unknown. Both Bobby and Vic are in tremendous form, leaping into their solos.

More from Spring 1951 in Boston is coming soon: the Hackett band in a longer broadcast, and a Sunday-afternoon jam session from Storyville, featuring Johnny Windhurst, Peanuts Hucko, Dick Le Fave, George Wein, John Field, Marquis Foster, and guests.

Don’t touch that dial.

May your happiness increase!

HOT SOUNDS IN ILLINOIS (1939-1950): GEORGE BARNES, BOYCE BROWN, JIMMY McPARTLAND, BUD FREEMAN, ROSY McHARGUE, TUT SOPER, JOHNNY WINDHURST, MIFF MOLE, DARNELL HOWARD, DON EWELL, JOE RUSHTON, SQUIRREL ASHCRAFT, JACK GOSS, BUD WILSON

What follows is what I would call a Hot Jazz Mixtape — forty minutes of unissued performances, their provenance a matter of informed guesswork — that serves as an aural tour of Red Hot Chicago, 1939-50, combining club and living room music.

I was “trading tapes” with fellow collectors from the mid-1970s, and that usually consisted of in-person handoffs, “You recorded X last week? I’d love a copy of that!” “Sure, if you will copy your 78 acetate of A and B for me.” There was a good deal of finger-to-the-lips secrecy; some tapes had DO NOT COPY written on them in red or orange crayon — prohibitions we promptly violated, because it was important that a friend hear the new treasure. I would like to think that I and my fellow scoundrels did some good in making music heard, and we were busily buying records and compact discs, so we absolved ourselves of the crime, “Your cassettes are cutting into my sales!” The accusing ghost of Frank Newton never appeared in my bedroom to upbraid me, which I am thankful for.

The music that follows was sent to me by that rare person, a woman jazz collector, whose name I will keep unwritten; her tapes were annotated in pretty cursive, often with strips of paper — coarse-grained and narrow — of the kind most often seen as cash register tape or court reporters’ paper. This tape was labeled PRIVATE CHICAGO, and I have copied down all the information she supplied below.

Here’s the skeletal listing, with commentary to follow.

LADY BE GOOD / TIN ROOF BLUES Miff Mole, trombone; Darnell Howard, clarinet; Don Ewell, piano; unidentified drummer. Jazz Ltd., 1949

BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC Johnny Windhurst, trumpet; Jack Gardner, piano; others 1950

SUNDAY Bill Priestley, cornet; Bud WIlson, trombone; Squirrel Ashcraft, piano, others

BLUE BELLS OF SCOTLAND Jimmy McPartland, cornet; Joe Rushton, bass saxophone; Squirrel Ashcraft, Bill Priestley, guitar

YOU TOOK ADVANTAGE OF ME McPartland, Bud Freeman, tenor saxophone; Rosy McHargue, clarinet; Joe Rushton 1939

TUT STOMPS THE BLUES Boyce Brown, alto; Tut Soper, piano; Jack Goss, guitar 1945

LADY BE GOOD McPartland, Boyce, Rosy McHargue 1939 (incomplete)

SWEET LORRAINE George Barnes, electric guitar 1940

But a few explications. The Miff-Darnell-Ewell band was a regular working unit; the drummer might be Booker T. Washington or someone remembered by Marty Grosz as “Pork Chops.” The performances that follow are most likely recordings made at the Evanston, Illinois house of Squirrel Ashcraft, and some of them may have been issued on the MORE INFORMAL SESSIONS record label — Hank O’Neal’s project — but I gather that there were certain songs the musicians liked to jam on, so that there might be multiple versions of BLUE BELLS OF SCOTLAND, Jimmy McPartland’s tribute to the land of his people; Bud Freeman would play ADVANTAGE where and whenever. TUT STOMPS THE BLUES might come from a gig recording from a Chicago hotel. There are wonderful glimpses of my heroes Windhurst, Gardner, Soper, and the magnificently elusive Boyce Brown. But for me, the treasure is the concluding SWEET LORRAINE, featuring a nineteen-year old George Barnes, already dazzling.

For more from and about the young George Barnes — masterful even in his teens — visit here — and enjoy this:

To learn more about George, hear more, and purchase some of his invigorating music, visit https://georgebarneslegacy.com/.

I hope you enjoyed the aural travelogue of Hot, Chicago-style. And if you follow your ears to any of the players above, so much the better.

May your happiness increase!

QUITE RARE and QUITE HOT: NAPPY LAMARE and his RENDEZVOUS BALLROOM ORCHESTRA, SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA. Collective personnel: JOHNNY WINDHURST, CHUCK MACKEY, GEORGE THOW, LOU McGARITY, BUD WILSON, JOE YUKL, MATTY MATLOCK, MARVIN ASH, MORTY CORB, NAPPY LAMARE, RAY BAUDUC, NICK FATOOL, JOHN FREELING (September 1947)

You wouldn’t think that a long-playing record issued in the US in 1974 could be rare, but this one is — I heard this music first on a cassette from one of my devoted collector friends, and then found a copy for sale (inexpensively, because I think few people sensed what delightful music it contains) — and it isn’t even listed in Tom Lord’s comprehensive THE JAZZ DISCOGRAPHY. So I thought it would only be right to share it with you.

Lamare is not well-known, or if he is, it’s for novelty vocals with Bob Crosby and Wingy Manone, and later in his career he was placed in the role of a straw-boater-and-striped-jacket-banjo-player, which reputation tended to follow him, especially for those of us who saw his apparently stereotypical records at yard sales. But it’s obvious he could play, he could swing, and he could inspire an ensemble. I offer this 1941 Epiphone advertisement as proof of life without a straw boater:

But to our musical sermon for today.

The facts, according to Jack Webb, who loved this music.

a) Chuck Mackey, Johnny Windhurst, trumpet; Matty Matlock, clarinet; Lou McGarity, trombone; Marvin Ash, piano; Nappy Lamare, guitar; Morty Corb, string bass; Nick Fatool, drums. 9.14.47

b) George Thow, trumpet; Matlock; Bud Wilson, trombone; Eddie Miller, tenor saxophone; Lamare, Ash, Corb, Ray Bauduc, drums. 9.28.47

c) as for a) but Joe Yukl replaces McGarity and John Freeling replaces Fatool 9.21.47.

The songs: DIPPERMOUTH (a) / PEG O’MY HEART (b) / IN THE MOOD (a) / WOLVERINE BLUES (a) / SENSATION RAG (b) / I’M GONNA MOVE TO THE OUTSKIRTS OF TOWN, vocal Lamare (b) / CHARMAINE (c) / TIM ROOF BLUES (c).

Recorded by Dave Caughren onto 12″ acetates with a single microphone, released on Fairmont Records LPM 105.

You’ll have your own champions here, but Fatool, Bauduc, Windhurst, and McGarity make the angels dance:

May your happiness increase!

REMEMBERING KENNY (Part Two): Words BY MIKE KAROUB, HOWARD KADISON, JAMES CHIRILLO, KEVIN DORN, DAN BLOCK. Music by KENNY DAVERN, JOHNNY WINDHURST, CUTTY CUTSHALL, DAVE FRISHBERG, JACK SIX, CLIFF LEEMAN (1961)

 

HOWARD KADISON:  Sunday nights, I’d sometimes go with Davern to Ratner’s Dairy Restaurant on Second
Avenue. The waiters were noted for their abrasiveness and truculence. Kenny would
bait them: “How are the blintzes?” “They’re always good.” “I didn’t ask about always, I
asked about NOW!” And so it would go, ending in a generous tip.

DAN BLOCK:  Kenny had a mind like an encyclopedia. His knowledge not only of jazz, but archival classical recordings was amazing. My last memory was hanging out with him in New Orleans after he played in a bookstore with Bob Wilber. He held court with three or four of us for about an hour and a half. It was unforgettable.

KEVIN DORN: Something he said to me, sitting at the bar of the Cornerstone: “It’s one thing to come up with your own sound in a style that’s brand new. But to come up with your own sound in a style that’s older, that was there already, is a different and difficult challenge.” I always thought that was a deep observation and something he certainly achieved.

JAMES CHIRILLO: Every note he played had a sound as big as a house, no matter the register, and every note had an intensity that said: “This is how it’s supposed to go.” I still miss him.

MIKE KAROUB: I was playing bass in Jim Dapogny’s Chicago Jazz Band and we played opposite Davern at a show at the University of Chicago, some time between 1990-92. He might have been there with Butch Thompson or his own group. (Butch had Franz Jackson also.)

I checked into the Blackstone Hotel. Never having met Davern, I saw him outside. I walked up to him in my trench coat – Kenny looking tough in a leather coat — and said, “Uncle Ken, I need a Lucky Strike.” (Or I may have said, “Kenny, give me a Lucky Strike,” but you get the idea.) He said, “OK, man,” and handed me one. He instinctively knew I wasn’t a real hood. We chatted for a second, then later, probably at the intermission. Strangely, I don’t recall if there was a closing number with massed bands, “all hands on deck,” so I have no recollection of playing with him!

I know that when we were teenagers, I told my dear friend Jon-Erik Kellso, “If I ever meet Davern, I’m going to wear a trench coat like the Detroit mafia and demand a Lucky Strike.” I think he was bemused by our. 25 year old impetuous behavior.

Ten years later, at the Atlanta Jazz Party, after my set with Banu Gibson, I went to catch Kenny’s set and sat in front. He waved, and after the show he came down to me. I said, “Uncle Ken, I brought us some Luckies.” He had exhausted his supply (he was very dedicated) so I was in like Flynn.

“Michael, my nephew, I am so glad you could make it.” He sat down, ordered us coffee, and told stories about being on the road with Jack Teagarden.

I have no idea how he knew who I was unless Jon-Erik tipped him off (although I barely saw Jon, who was a floating “all star”) or saw the program or remembered me from Chicago. I believe he smoked unfiltered Lucky Strikes (unfiltered Camels his second choice). In any case, he acted like it was the biggest deal that I came to his show. And I was really some long lost relative. I was kept too busy for the rest of the festival to see Uncle Ken. Again or ever again, as it turned out. Ordinarily, I’m not that forward but. something told me this was a once in lifetime deal and to seize the day.

MICHAEL STEINMAN: I saw him a few times when I was still in college and shy (complicated by my attempts to record every note on some variety of tape). One Sunday, I’d seen him in the late afternoon at a Your Father’s Mustache Balaban and Cats session, and then my friend and I went down to the Half Note to hear Ruby Braff. Kenny walked in, I saw him, and exuberantly said, “Kenny!” and seeing his amused expression — part “Who the hell are you?” and part suppressed hilarity, I remembered my place in the cosmos and said, “Mister Davern . . . ” and he looked at me and said, in mock-hauteur, “Oh, pardonnez-moi,” gave me a satiric look and walked away.  When I saw him for the last time, in Denver, October 2006, I thought it prudent to leave that incident in the past.

And now for some delightful rare music.

The tape that follows (audio only) isn’t from my collection, but the dropouts vanish after three minutes.  Recorded by Dave Frishberg, It’s the only evidence I know of Kenny Davern’s Washington Squares, a band he loved, performing at Nick’s in 1961.  The repertoire is ancient; the inventiveness and energy are startling.  It’s Kenny, clarinet; Johnny Windhurst, cornet; Cutty Cutshall, trombone; Dave, piano; Jack Six, string bass; Cliff Leeman, drums.  I read in Edward N. Meyer’s biography of Kenny, JUST FOUR BARS, that Buzzy Drootin was the chosen drummer (imagine a world where your sub on the job is Cliff?), that Buzzy recommended Frishberg, and that Frishberg brought along Jack Six.  Unusual and uplifting partners for such a band, but everyone is in exceptional form.

Did I say we miss Kenny Davern?  We certainly do.

May your happiness increase!

“HOW’S YOUR LOUISNESS?” (January 1, 1947)

To celebrate the publication of his book REALLY THE BLUES, Mezz Mezzrow was the star of a concert at New York’s Town Hall on January 1, 1947 as a benefit for the American Committee for Yugoslav Relief.

The basic band was Muggsy Spanier, Sandy Williams, Sidney Bechet, Mezz Mezzrow, Sammy Price or Art Hodes, Wellman Braud, Baby Dodds.  Later in the evening Bob Wilber’s Wildcats were added: Johnny Glasel, Ed Hubble, Bob Wilber, Dick Wellstood, Charlie Traeger, Eddie Phyfe.  Coot Grant and Kid Sox Wilson also performed.  The concert was recorded on twelve-inch acetates on two machines (hooray!) and ten performances were issued on lp — Jazz Archives JA-39 — but what follows was not.

Quite simply, it is an exultant hymn of praise to Louis.

It’s a life-changing performance of WHEN YOU’RE SMILING by Johnny Windhurst, unlisted in Tom Lord’s discography, with Bechet, prominent, and Dick Wellstood on piano.  My guess is that the veterans gave place to the Youngbloods, but it’s Windhurst who catches our ears and our hearts.  Rather like Hot Lips Page in his prime, Windhurst seems energetically lit from within, and just when you think he might have had enough or done enough, he takes another chorus.  Radiantly.

After Mezz’s announcement, the roadmap (to my ears) is one ensemble statement of the theme, one chorus by Bechet; one chorus by Wellstood; one by Eddie Hubble, trombone; two choruses by Windhurst with Bechet and the ensemble joining in. The tape I was working with was a copy of a reel-to-reel tape where the plastic had started to decay, alas, so there is some distortion and tape squeal.  But if you can turn away from Windhurst’s shining Louisness because of these flaws, we don’t have much to say to each other.

Incidentally, the question, “How’s your Louisness?” is, I believe, a co-invention of two of my favorite people, Riley and Clint Baker. . . . it is another way of saying, “How’s your internal spiritual compass?” and “Have you spread some joy today?”  They do, and certainly young Mister Windhurst does.

Play it again, and feel the warmth of that smile.

May your happiness increase!

 

SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE GIRLS’ SCHOOL (December 1, 1951)

Concord Academy, Concord, Mass., established 1922 for grades 9-12, enrollment less than 500 students.  Surely I don’t understand upper-class girls’ boarding schools, but it seems the last place one would find a hot jazz concert — or was it a dance? — in late 1951.  Then again, jazz was still the popular music.  Doing research on the Boston hot jazz scene of this period, I came upon this passage from a 1950 story in the Harvard Crimson about the genesis of the school’s hot band, the Crimson Stompers.  Savor this as a relic of a vanished time, please:

They went twice to Smith College (Gifford is carried away by the memory where 200 girls in sweat shirts and dungarees sat in a semicircle and shrieked for the real oldtimers like “Coal Cart Blues” (an Armstrong standby).

That, I think, is the emotional connection between Concord Academy and jazz.

One of the musicians, cornetist Johnny Windhurst, then 25, had substantial fame.  Windhurst had been the second horn in Sidney Bechet’s quintet that broadcast from the Savoy Cafe in 1945; he had returned to the Savoy in 1949 with Edmond Hall’s band that had Vic Dickenson in the front line.  In New York, he had performed with Eddie Condon, Jack Teagarden, James P. Johnson, and other notables, at Town Hall and the Stuyvesant Casino; in 1952, he would be playing regularly at Eddie Condon’s on West Third Street.  Windhurst turned down opportunities to travel, would not learn to read music, and stayed close to home until his death in 1981.  He is a glorious player, his solos arching towards the skies.

Trombonist Eddie Hubble was an early associate of Bob Wilber, a superb extension of Jack Teagarden, and by this time he had performed with Red McKenzie, Wild Bill Davison, Frank Chace, George Wein, Doc Evans, Joe Sullivan.  He, too, was heard on Boston radio broadcasts.

“Ollie” Taylor [Oliver S. Taylor, Harvard, ’53] may not have continued on with music, and his recorded career is limited to two performances linked to drummer Walt Gifford.  But he was playing alongside professionals as early as 1948.  His father was a Harvard history professor, and the Harvard hot band, the Crimson Stompers, formed and rehearsed at the Taylor house.

I know even less about the fine supportive pianist Pete Hewitt: he recorded three sides with a band led by Gifford that also had Hubble.  Where did he go after Harvard?  Walt Gifford, Harvard ’52, managed the Crimson Stompers, and he had a professional career which I can follow into the Sixties, he did not get the notice his work deserved.  (Then again, I say to myself, “Who does?”)

That Boston-and-beyond scene was flourishing: Ed Hall, Frank Chace, and Frank Newton played and recorded with iterations of the Crimson Stompers; the young woman who would become Barbara Lea — born Leacock — was both their star singer and Windhurst’s girlfriend.

I also am reasonably sure that the music was recorded by Joe Boughton, who was an early and pious Windhurst devotee [archivist? stalker?], a wonderful thing, seventy years later — although I have a half-memory of some musician writing something like, “Wherever we’d be playing, he’d show up with the damned tape recorder and it would be running.”  To my right, as I write this, I have a photograph of Windhurst on my wall, inscribed to Boughton, with surprise at a “sober Saturday”! Thank goodness we have slightly more than a half hour of the music: all “Dixieland” classics, and beautifully played: strong soaring solos, wonderful rhythm (you don’t miss a string bass), nice riffs and backgrounds.  As young as they were, they were splendidly professional.  And not to slight Ollie Taylor, it is Windhurst and Hubble who continue to astonish (they were both continuing to do so when I saw them, separately, in 1971 and 1972.)

I also don’t know anything about a school like Concord Academy and its cultural anthropology.  Was this a dance?  Did the girls get to invite their beaux?  Or was it a social event where the band played for listening?  I don’t sense a large room crowded with eager teens; in fact, it’s hard to sense an audience at all.  I wish I knew, but here’s the music.  And what music!

In Windhurst I often hear Hackett, but Bobby with almost insolent ease, fluidity and power — although it’s clear that he’s absorbed Louis and the Condon trumpet crew.  When he moves around on the cornet, there’s never any strain, as he accomplishes versions of super-Bix.  And that sound! — full and shining.  Next to him, Hubble echoes Teagarden but also the slippery power and audacity of Lou McGarity and Brad Gowans.  Taylor’s approach is slightly less assured — more Parenti than Hucko — but his earnest lyricism is sweetly appealing, and occasionally (hear the end of his chorus on ONE HOUR, where he asks himself, “What would Pee Wee do?”) he comes up with memorable phrases, although occasionally he’s not completely familiar with the song.  Hewitt is wonderfully orchestral and spare at once, summoning Stacy and streamlined stride (SAINTS is the best example); he isn’t fancy in the ensembles, but you feel him providing solidly moving chordal support.  And Gifford plays splendidly for the band, sometimes pushing the hi-hat in the best Jo Jones fashion, otherwise relying on snare and bass drum, always thinking of what the band needs at the moment in the nicest Wettling manner.  It’s a very cooperative band — players who had worked together and readily created supporting figures.  And although the repertoire is familiar as “Dixieland,” the rhythmic emphasis here is on swing: they’re playing the tunes rather than copying the hallowed recordings.  Hear how Hubble and Windhurst leap into their solos on SAINTS.

Can you tell I admire this band?

The songs are WAY DOWN YONDER IN NEW ORLEANS / IF I COULD BE WITH YOU / JADA / JAZZ ME BLUES / SOMEDAY SWEETHEART / SAINTS / SUGAR (faded out):

The recording — I feel certain it’s tape or a 33 rpm acetate — has been edited to eliminate both applause and pauses between songs, and the microphone is inside the band so that we hear the musicians’ comments to each other.  Was it broadcast on the local radio station?  And the recordist turns up the right knob while Hewitt solos so that his sound isn’t lost: this isn’t an accidental “capture.”

On Facebook, I hear many young bands showing their skills — sometimes simply their enthusiasm.  I wish many of them would study this tape: it’s a model of how to play this repertoire with great expertise and passion while making it look easy, aiming for polished small-band swing rather than trying to replicate some more ancient evidence.

Enjoy the glowing sounds as well as the little mysteries that accompany them: the people who could have explained it all are gone. Think of a time when such a band could exist and play a date at a local school.  Days gone by for sure.  (I wonder whether Concord Academy has its own archives: one can dream.  I will send this post to them.)

P.S.  I invite the word-averse to skip what follows.  Between 2006 and 2020, I carried video recording equipment to gigs; with large interruptions, I had brought audio equipment from 1971 to 2006 and sometimes beyond.  Through the immense kindness of jazz benefactors John L. Fell, Bill Coverdale, Bill Gallagher, Bob Hilbert, Roy Bower, Bert Whyatt, Tom Hustad, Hal Smith, Ricky Riccardi, Sonny McGown, and others, I’ve amassed hours — years, it seems — of rare recordings, primarily on audiocassette.  Thanks to a grant from the Charles Sammut Foundation and Laura Wyman’s encouragement, I figured out how to convert those cassettes into moderately-competent YouTube videos, and I’ve been doing this for the last month.  Why?  Some of this activity is an antidote to pandemic boredom-and-loneliness, but there is also my thought that when my executors come to clean out my apartment, and they are a very hip bunch, no one has room for three or four hundred cassettes.  It pained me that if I didn’t do something about it, my tapes (for example) of Bobby Hackett, Vic Dickenson, Joe Thomas, Teddy Wilson, Jo Jones, Bennie Morton . . . would never be heard.  That was intolerable to me.  So I hope you greet these audio rarities with the pleasure that I take in sharing them.

May your happiness increase!

HAPPY 95th BIRTHDAY, GEORGE WEIN!

In front, Bobby Hackett, Louis Armstrong, George Wein; behind them, Joe Newman, Dizzy Gillespie — at the July 1970 celebration of Louis at the Newport Jazz Festival.

I saw the pleasing news on Facebook — and in an online source called CELEBRITY ACCESS, which summed it all up with a video and these words (if the New York Times had a front-page story, it eluded me, alas):

NEWPORT, RI (CelebrityAccess) — George Wein, the legendary pianist, jazz and festival promoter, turned 95 on Saturday.

Wein, who founded the Newport Jazz Festival and co-founded the Newport Folk Festival, also played a key role in the creation of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.

Wein’s birthday was marked by tributes from the likes of James Taylor, Senator Jack Reed, Dianne Reeves, Jason Moran, Nate Smith, and Ben Jaffe.

George deserves a little more fuss.

The Newport Jazz Festival, which he founded in 1954 — and is still a going concern — featured everyone.  The Preservation Hall Jazz Band to Archie Shepp. Duke, Louis, Miles, Trane, Dizzy, Monk, Hamp, Benny, Billie, Roy, Hawk, Pres, Ben.  What other festival featured both Donald Lambert and Sonny Rollins?  If you didn’t appear at Newport — in its now sixty-six year span — you had died before it began [Bessie Smith, Charlie Parker, Frank Newton, Hot Lips Page] or you had missed your set.  George’s reach was extensive and his tastes heroically inclusive.  Those who never got to Rhode Island were nourished by recordings and performance film footage; George created tours — Europe and Japan — that brought the music to eager audiences who would otherwise not have partaken of it first-hand.

Before Newport, George had clubs in Boston: Storyville and Mahogany Hall, where you could enjoy Sidney Catlett, Stan Getz, Sidney Bechet, Lee Konitz, Erroll Garner, and other deities.  When the Newport Jazz Festival took a brief trip to New York, as the Kool Jazz Festival or the JVC Jazz Festival, I was able to see Benny Carter, Allen Eager, Charles Mingus, Lee Wiley, Gene Krupa and others who gladden my heart.  In the early Fifties, George also had a record label — Storyville — where you could hear Milli Vernon and Beryl Booker, Ruby Braff, Teddi King, Ellis Larkins, Johnny Windhurst and Jo Jones.  I’m also reasonably sure that George’s generosity — not publicized, but apparent — kept some musicians in gigs and dinner for long periods.

Incidentally, I am doing all of this delighted salute from memory: George’s 2004 autobiography, MYSELF AMONG OTHERS, is a much more detailed view at almost six hundred pages, so I know I have left out a great deal for which George deserves praise.

George also loves to play the piano and to sing, and although I think those activities have slowed down or ceased in recent years, his pleasure in these activities emerged most fully in the Newport All-Stars, a group that at various times featured Tal Farlow, Pee Wee Russell, Buzzy Drootin, Stephane Grappelli, Joe Venuti, Red Norvo, Norris Turney, Scott Hamilton, Warren Vache, Bud Freeman, Slam Stewart, and others: George’s discography begins in 1951 and its most recent entry is 2012.

I’d like to offer some swinging evidence of George as pianist: not at his own festival in Newport, but at the Grande Parade du Jazz in Nice, in July 1977: a nearly nineteen-minute jam on TAKE THE “A” TRAIN, nominally under the leadership of clarinet legend Barney Bigard — featuring Jimmy Maxwell, Joe Newman, trumpet; Clark Terry, trumpet and flugelhorn; Eddie Daniels, tenor saxophone; Slam Stewart, string bass; Bobby Rosengarden, drums.  Notice the atypically expansive piano solo that George creates at the start: percussive, surprising, mobile . . . and watch Barney Bigard’s delighted face at the end.

Happy birthday, George!  Our lives would be much poorer had you chosen another career.

May your happiness increase!

I WOULD HAVE LIKED TO GO, BUT I COULDN’T

Had someone taken me, I could have seen Coleman Hawkins play — he did live until 1969 — but this concert I missed: my parents did not know each other yet.

That’s Hawkins, Freddy Johnson, piano, and Maurice van Kleef, drums, in Amsterdam, April 20, 1938.  The inscription reads: “To Aunt Hattie, In remembrance of all her kindness to my family and self. I shall never forget it, Freddy.”  The photograph is in the collection of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Here’s something surprisingly rare — not only because pieces of paper don’t always survive for eighty years — the impetus for this posting.

The seller’s link is here ; the price: $767.99 or “make offer.”  (His other items are intriguing — some posters are autographed — but lovers of “pure jazz” will find only a Louis Jordan concert poster to fixate on.)

To make up for the concert that perhaps none of my readers attended, here (thanks to Heinz Becker, one of the great gracious swing benefactors of YouTube, who has uploaded a stellar record library for us) is that trio, a marvel of swing energies:

I KNOW THAT YOU KNOW:

The ferocious SWINGING IN THE GROOVE:

DEAR OLD SOUTHLAND:

WAY DOWN YONDER IN NEW ORLEANS:

WHEN BUDDHA SMILES:

and the gorgeous BLUES EVERMORE (a themeless improvisation on ONE HOUR, which some YouTube correcter tells me is IF I COULD BE WITH YOU ONE HOUR TONIGHT):

What rhapsodic majesty and unflagging swing he displayed.  These sides do not make up for having missed the concert, but we grasp the consolations we can.

And just for fun: I couldn’t go to this 1949 jazz party either.  I was closer to being born (my parents had met and more) but it still didn’t help.  I’m glad I am able to go hear music now!

May your happiness increase!

“BEST SESSION IN TOWN”: OUR HEROES, GIGGING AROUND

Buck Clayton, Bob Wilber, Johnny Windhurst, 1951:

Red Allen, 1956,

Tony Parenti, 1949:

Pee Wee Russell, 1964:

I am tempted to close this very unadorned exhibit of treasures with a sigh, “Ah, there were wonders in those days!”  That sigh would be a valid emotional reaction to the glories of the preceding century.  But — just a second — marvels are taking place all around us NOW, and those who lament at home will miss them.

May your happiness increase!

EDDIE CONDON, BUD FREEMAN, and THE CREATION OF JOY

Eddie Condon, Bud Freeman, and I go ‘way back, although those two gentlemen would not have noticed me all that much.  I only saw Eddie once at close range, in the summer of 1972, and at several late concerts; I saw Bud once at a Newport in New York tribute to Eddie.

But I have been following both men since I was a youth in suburbia, when department stores had record departments and there was always a reason to walk to the one nearby or tag along when my parents, who loved to shop for what I think of as home-trivia, went to one that I couldn’t walk to.

I started collecting Louis Armstrong records, which should not shock anyone. But soon I decided that Jack Teagarden was fascinating as well, and bought THE GOLDEN HORN OF JACK TEAGARDEN, which featured Pee Wee Russell, Eddie, Wild Bill Davison, George Wettling, and others.  Then, in 1969, the Mainstream label started to issue vinyl compilations drawn from the Commodore Records catalogue.  Most, if not all, were in reprocessed stereo, had obtuse liner notes, limited discographical information . . . but here I could hear SERENADE TO A SHYLOCK.  I was hooked for life.  And I became a deep convert to Condonia, and the territory known as the Land of Bud.

Both of them are ferociously underrated musicians and their music, when mentioned, is often viewed patronizingly.  More about that later.  But I would fight for the Commodores and later Deccas to be taken as seriously as any small-group recordings of the period.  Click here for several sound samples: clear your mind of jazz-history debris (the categorization of this music as Not Terribly Innovative and Created Mostly by Caucasians) and listen.

I’ve had the new Mosaic Records cornucopia of the Condon / Freeman Commodore / Deccas 1938-1950 sitting on my coffee table, the box unwrapped but the discs still virginal, for two weeks now.  I think I was afraid of breaking the spell.  Sometimes the hallowed records one remembers just aren’t what one has idealized, and one hears all the flaws.

But I began to listen, and disillusionment never appeared.  I approached the set in two ways — front and back — starting with the first Commodore session (admiring the way that I could hear shadings and subtleties I’d never heard before) and then the later Deccas . . . unheard Dave Tough, James P. Johnson, Johnny Windhurst, and more.

Here are the details.  Eight CDs, 199 tracks, many new Decca alternates, everything in gorgeous sound, $136.00.  Wonderful photographs, many new to me — and I’m a Condon obsessive.  Notes by Dan Morgenstern, a real plus.

The Commodore and Decca band sides of the first period, 1938 to 1944, are elated and elating music.  Even at slow tempos, a delicious energy bubbles through.  Condon and the Blessed Milt Gabler, the guiding light of Commodore, favored obscure pop songs of the early Twenties — PRAY FOR THE LIGHTS TO GO OUT, TELL ‘EM ABOUT ME, YOU CAN’T CHEAT A CHEATER, IT’S TULIP TIME IN HOLLAND, as well as impromptu blues and durable ballads. Where some of the later Commodore sessions (for example, those led by Muggsy Spanier) sound heavy in their earnestness, the Condons sound light, frisky.  One can study a record like MEET ME TONIGHT IN DREAMLAND or TAPPIN’ THE COMMODORE TILL for its ensemble lightness or densities, as well as the glowing solos.

And the Deccas that follow are almost as glorious — with alternate takes of beloved performances (IDA and JUST YOU, JUST ME) as well as familiar ones in wonderfully clear sound.

As with any Mosaic set, the incautious listener will go down into the depths and arise befuddled by an over-abundance of beauty.  Although the price is far lower than a collection of the original 78s, I urge any student of the music to listen with serious caution, as one might have in 1938 or 1945: two sides, at most, making up a listening session.

I have written elsewhere at length about my hopes for a re-evaluation of Eddie Condon as a color-blind prophet of authentic music, but here I wish to praise him as a beautiful Intuitive, someone who knew what tempos (the plural is intentional) would work, a guitarist who knew the right chords and whose beautiful sound uplifted any group.  Even in his last appearances, when the guitar was more an ornament than an instrument, Eddie knew how to make a group cohesive and sprightly.  I mean to take nothing away from Freddie Green, but rhythm guitarists and aspiring swingsters should study his work on these sides.  And if you take contemporaneous sides recorded by similar bands where Condon is not present, his absence is immediately heard and felt.  That’s the musician.  As for the man, history — taking his actions and utterances as the only evidence — has leaned towards a portrait of a man more enamored of alcohol than anything else, a wise-cracking smart-ass whose jibes were often mean. Some of that might be true: his quick-witted retorts were often not gentle, but the music, ultimately, is what counts.  And the Mosaic set offers it in glorious profusion.  (I would offer the WOLVERINE JAZZ sides as an engaging way to play “jazz repertory” that isn’t bound and gagged by the originals.)

Several heroes also shine through these sides.  One of the most noble is Jack Teagarden — as singer and trombonist.  I suspect that Teagarden has been ill-served by his durability (which is an odd statement, I admit) and his narrowing repertoire.  If one were to see him merely as a re-creator, say, of BASIN STREET BLUES into infinity, one would do him a great disservice.  I defy any trombonist to be as limber, as inventive, as surprising.  And as a singer he is simply glorious, even on the less inspiring material, such as IT’S TULIP TIME IN HOLLAND (which I find and always found terribly endearing).

I can’t say enough about Charles Ellsworth Russell, so I will simply say this.  To me he is the equal of Lester Young, of Benny Carter, and (yes!) of the King of Swing.  Too much has been made of his “eccentricities,” which are ultimately the hallmarks of an utterly self-aware and courageous musician.

The later Commodores often featured a violently effective front-line pairing of Wild Bill Davison and George Brunis, but these sides most often have Bobby Hackett and other lyrical trumpeters / cornetists: Max Kaminsky, Billy Butterfield, even Johnny Windhurst.  Hackett is my idea of angelic music: let that statement stand by itself, and Kaminsky’s even, compact playing is a wonderful model.  The rhythm sections on these records are delights in themselves: consider Jess Stacy or Joe Bushkin, George Wettling, Dave Tough, coming-to-the-rescue Lionel Hampton and even on one long delicious 1943 date, Sidney Catlett.  I can’t ignore delicious cameos by Fats Waller and Lee Wiley.

In 1969 and onwards, I tended to skip over the Bud Freeman trio sessions (with Stacy and Wettling).  How narrow my perspective was.  I now hear them as gloriously radical creations, slyly subversive answers to the Goodman Trio. In some ways, they are the most “free” recordings before the term became more common in jazz: three rollicking eccentrics going at it, each on his own path, improvising wildly and sometimes acrobatically.

And since Miles Davis is the Great Exalted Potentate of All Jazz in the past decades, I present this little passage (found my accident) where he speaks of Lawrence Freeman:

Lester had a sound and an approach like Louis Armstrong, only he had it on tenor sax. Billie Holiday had that same sound and style; so did Budd Johnson and that white dude, Bud Freeman. They all had that running style of playing and singing. That’s the style I like, when it’s running. It floods the tone. It has a softness in the approach and concept, and places emphasis on one note.

I didn’t make that up.

Rather than reading more of my words, I hope you listen to the music presented on the Mosaic site.  These sessions are as precious as any of the more “hallowed” contemporaries.  I would put them next to the Ellington, Hampton, Basie small groups of the period, and they stand up splendidly in comparison to the independent-label recordings of the Forties.  Clear your mind of the odious categorizations and enjoy.

Postscript: before writing this post, I intentionally did not read the beautiful liner notes by Dan Morgenstern, who was on the scene and knew Eddie . . . because Dan’s influence is so strong (in the best way) that I wanted to attempt to write this from my own perspective.  But I know that Mister Morgenstern and I will agree.

May your happiness increase!

“HIS TALE NEEDED TELLING”: THE ODD BRILLIANCE OF P.T. STANTON

I am fascinated by those great artists whose stories don’t get told: Frank Chace, Spike Mackintosh, and George Finola among many.  I revere the heroes who have been celebrated in biographies, but where are the pages devoted to Quentin Jackson, George Stafford, Danny Alvin, Dave Schildkraut, Gene Ramey, Joe Smith, John Nesbit, Denzil Best, Vernon Brown, Shad Collins, Ivie Anderson, Walter Johnson, John Collins, Allan Reuss, and fifty others?

But there are people who understand.  One is Andrew Sammut, who’s written beautifully about Larry Binyon and others.  Another scholar who has a great love for the worthy obscure is Dave Radlauer.  Dave’s diligence and willingness to share audio evidence are remarkable.  He has done noble work on the multi-instrumentalist Frank “Big Boy” Goudie on his website JAZZ RHYTHM, an apparently bottomless offering, splendidly intimidating in its munificence — with webpages and audio programs devoted to many luminaries, well-known (Louis, Goodman, Shaw, Carter) as well as the obscure (Jerry Blumberg, Benny Strickler, Bill Dart, and three dozen others).  It’s not just music, but it’s cultural context and social history — close observation of vanished landscapes as well as loving portraits of characters in unwritten jazz novels.

Here’s a quick example.  For me, just to know that there was a San Francisco bar called BURP HOLLOW is satisfying enough.  To know that they had live hot jazz there is even better.  To hear tapes of it delights me immensely.

And listen to this, another mysterious delight: a quartet from the MONKEY INN, led by pianist Bill Erickson in 1961, with trombonist Bob Mielke and a glistening trumpeter or cornetist who had learned his Hackett well.  Was it Jerry Blumberg or Johnny Windhurst on a trip west?  I can’t say, but Unidentified is a joy to listen to.

But back to P.T. Stanton. I will wager that his name is known only to the most devoted students of West Coast jazz of a certain vintage. I first encountered him — and the Stone Age Jazz Band — through the gift of a Stomp Off record from my friend Melissa Collard.

Radlauer has presented a rewarding study of the intriguingly nonconformist trumpeter, guitarist, occasional vocalist Stanton here.  But “here” in blue hyperlink doesn’t do his “The Odd Brilliance of P.T. Stanton” justice.  I can only warn the reader in a gentle way that (s)he should be willing to spend substantial time for a leisurely exploration of the treasure: nine pages of text, with rare photographs, and more than fifty otherwise unknown and unheard recordings.

Heard for the first time, Stanton sounds unusual.  That is a charitable adjective coined after much admiring attention.  A casual listener might criticize him as a flawed brassman. Judged by narrow orthodoxy, he isn’t loud enough; his tone isn’t a clarion shout. But one soon realizes that what we hear is not a matter of ineptitude but of a different conception of his role.  One hears a choked, variable — vocal — approach to the horn, and a conscious rejection of the trumpet’s usual majesty, as Stanton seems, even when officially in front of a three-horn ensemble, to be eschewing the traditional role in favor of weaving in and out of the ensemble, making comments, muttering to himself through his horn. It takes a few songs to accept Stanton as a great individualist, but the effort is worth it.

He was eccentric in many ways and brilliant at the same time — an alcoholic who could say that Bix Beiderbecke had the right idea about how to live one’s life, someone who understood both Bunk Johnson and Count Basie . . . enigmatic and fascinating.  And his music!

In the same way that JAZZ LIVES operates, Dave has been offering his research and musical treasures open-handedly.  But he has joined with Grammercy Records to create a series of CDs and downloads of remarkable music and sterling documentation. The first release will be devoted to the Monkey Inn tapes; the second will be a generous sampling of Stanton and friends 1954-76, featuring Frank “Big Boy” Goudie and Bunky Coleman (clarinets), Bob Mielke and Bill Bardin (trombones) and Dick Oxtot (banjo and vocals). Radlauer has plans for ten more CD sets to come in a series to be called Frisco Jazz Archival Rarities: unissued historic recordings of merit drawn from live performances, jam sessions and private tapes 1945-75.

I will let you know more about these discs when they are ready to see the light of day.  Until then, enjoy some odd brilliance — not just Stanton’s — thanks to Dave Radlauer.

May your happiness increase!

A FEW GLOWING SECONDS OF GLORY

When I returned to my apartment in New York, I thought, “I need music in here. Music will help remind me who I am, what I am supposed to be doing, where my path might lead.”  Initially I reached for some favorite performances for consolation, then moved over to the crates of homemade audiocassettes — evidence of more than twenty-five years of tape-trading with like-minded souls.

One tape had the notation PRIVATE CHICAGO, and looking at it, I knew that it was the gift of Leonora Taylor, who preferred to be called “Gypsy,” and who had an unusual collection of music.  When I asked drummer / scholar Hal Smith about her, he reminded me that she loved the UK clarinetist Archie Semple. Although I don’t recall having much if any Archie to offer her, we traded twenty or thirty cassettes.

PRIVATE CHICAGO had some delightful material recorded (presumably) at the Evanston, Illinois house of Edwin “Squirrel” Ashcraft — amateur pianist, sometime composer, friend / benefactor to jazz musicians. Squirrel was both a dear friend of Pee Wee Russell, Joe Rushton, Eddie Condon, Boyce Brown, Johnny Mercer, George Barnes, Lee Wiley, Jimmy McPartland, Bud Freeman, and many others — one facet of a very intriguing life.  He deserves a biography.

But back to the music.

I played through the side of the cassette, rewound it, and played it again.  And I kept returning to a short improvisation: BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC, played by Johnny Windhurst (cornet or trumpet) and Jack Gardner (piano) with possibly other players in the background — I hear a murmuring clarinet offering harmony notes — recorded, Gypsy’s typed notes say, circa 1950.

Neither Windhurst nor Gardner is as well known as they should be. Windhurst (1926-1981) was recognized young as a brilliant player, and got to play with the best — Sidney Bechet and Pops Foster in Boston when he wasn’t voting age, then Ed Hall, Vic Dickenson, Kenny Kersey, John Field, Jimmy Crawford a few years later, moving on to be one of Eddie Condon’s regulars, briefly recording with Jack Teagarden and on his own date with Buell Neidlinger, on a Walt Gifford session, with Barbara Lea (he was both colleague and boyfriend) then moving upstate to Poughkeepsie, New York, where he died too young (once being mugged and beaten) of a heart attack.

I saw him in person once, at Your Father’s Mustache in New York in 1972 — with Herb Hall and Herb Gardner (the latter someone who is very much with us) and Red Balaban.  Windhurst was capable of the most beautiful melodic flights of fancy — a cross between heavenly music of the highest order and Bobby Hackett — but he couldn’t read music, disdained the idea of doing so, and thus turned down higher-paying and possibly higher-visibility gigs from bandleaders.  I read somewhere that Woody Herman wanted to hire him, offered him good pay, promised to teach him to read, but Windhurst — a free spirit — would have none of it.

There is one video extant of Windhurst — I wrote about it, and him, in 2009 (and received wonderful comments from people who had played alongside him) here.

I did not know much about pianist Gardner, except that what I’ve heard suggests a delicate barrelhouse approach, and I seem to recall he was a large man called by some “Jumbo Jack.” But an exquisite biographical sketch of Jack by the diligent writer and researcher Derek Coller can be found here.  (Our Jack Gardner is not the man who led an orchestra in Dallas in 1924-5.)  Jack first recorded with Wingy Manone and Jimmy McPartland, then got more visibility with Harry James (you can hear him on SLEEPY TIME GAL and he is also on Sinatra’s first recording with James) 1939-40, then he crops up with Muggsy Spanier, Red Nichols, Bud Freeman, and after being captured on sessions at Squirrel’s from 1950-52, we hear no more from him.

I know THE BATTLE  HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC as a very assertive religious song in which the enemies of the Lord receive divine punishment:  “He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored / He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword,” and so on, even though later verses of the song — known to how many? — suggest that there is a balm of kindness.

More importantly than the theological, I and others know it as a hot number — think of “Red Nichols” as played by Danny Kaye and “Louis Armstrong” as played by himself in THE FIVE PENNIES, sending the sermon. Everyone from Art Hodes to George Lewis to Gerry Mulligan has recorded it, but I suggest that no version you will ever hear matches the sweet delicacy of this brief celestial interlude by Windhurst and Gardner.

Windhurst doesn’t venture far from the melody — the recording catches less than a whole chorus, and aside from a bluesy transformation near the end, it is melodic embellishment rather than harmonic improvisation.  But he treats the melodic line with lightness, fervor, and love; every note is caressed; his tone is so beautiful as to make “golden” into an affront.  Gardner plays a simplified version of barrelhouse support but never gets in Windhurst’s way. The whole duet is tender, yearning — the music of the spheres in under a minute.

Glory, glory, hallelujah.

May your happiness increase!

LOOK. LISTEN.

Considering the context — James P. Johnson, solo piano, playing his own HARLEM STRUT — the advertising exhortations seem reasonable.

Over a twenty-five year period, James P. was recorded — in the studio, on radio, and in concert — alongside Bessie Smith, Clarence Williams, the Blue Note Jazzmen, Henry “Red” Allen, Sidney Catlett, Pee Wee Russell, Freddie Green, Dicky Wells, Max Kaminsky, Zutty Singleton, Perry Bradford’s Jazz Phools (with Louis, Buster Bailey, Kaiser Marshall), Lavinia Turner, Trixie Smith, Fats Waller, Sadie Jackson, Louis Metcalf, Cootie Williams, Garvin Bushell, Jabbo Smith, Gene Sedric, Johnny Dunn, Ethel Waters, King Oliver, Teddy Bunn, Spencer Williams, Cecil Scott, Roy Smeck, Mezz Mezzrow, Tommy Ladnier, Eddie Dougherty, Rod Cless, Sterling Bose, Pops Foster, Omer Simeon, Ida Cox, Pete Brown, Frank Newton, Walter Page, Jo Jones, Hot Lips Page, J.C. Higginbotham, Lionel Hampton, Charlie Christian, Al Casey, Yank Lawson, Pee Wee Russell, Brad Gowans, Eddie Condon, Wild Bill Davison, Jimmy Rushing, Vic Dickenson, Vernon Brown, Sidney Bachet, Tommy Dorsey, Baby Dodds, Dave Tough, Johnny Windhurst, George Brunis, Albert Nicholas, Bunk Johnson, George Wettling . . . which sounds as if he recorded with everyone in creation.

Here is his 1923 solo, BLEEDING HEARTED BLUES:

And his 1930 romp, JINGLES:

And the musing 1944 ARKANSAW BLUES:

From the middle of the Twenties, James P. (1894-1955) was comfortably earning money because of royalties on his most famous compositions (consider CHARLESTON, ONE HOUR) but he wasn’t satisfied to be a composer of hit songs.  He wanted to be known and respected as a serious composer of extended works, perhaps the race’s answer to George Gershwin.  He didn’t gain the respect and attention he desired, which hurt him. Both his discography and biography suggest that he was not always in good health — another good reason for our not having even more recorded evidence.

I wonder if James P. was more than the cliche of the popular entertainer yearning for serious acceptance, but a man who knew that he had more to offer than writing thirty-two bar songs and playing piano, solo or in bands.  Did he distance himself from “the music business” or did it ignore him because he would not fit in to one of its tidy categories?

James P.’s pupil Fats Waller died younger, but received more attention because of his ebullient personality: hundreds of recordings, radio broadcasts, film appearances.  Willie “the Lion” Smith outlived them both and was always ready to play, sing, and talk.

I wish James P. had recorded more, had received more attention of the kind his talents deserved. If someone uncovers a James P. trove, I’d like to know about it.

Because this blogpost threatens to slide into the morose, I will offer a recording that has never failed to cheer me up: the duet of James P. and Clarence Williams on HOW COULD I BE BLUE? What a pleasure to hear James P. somewhat awkwardly negotiate the vaudeville dialogue . . . and then to hear his intense rhythmic lead, his melodic inventiveness, in the duet that follows:

May your happiness increase!

“EXCUSE ME, SIR, DO YOU HAVE A MATCH?”

I don’t smoke, but this sacred artifact (from eBay) tempts me:

And the reverse:

Now, the word “D****LAND” irked Mister Condon, so I hope he didn’t see too many of those matchbooks on East Fifty-Sixth Street.

I wanted to know what occupies that address now, and found this — a perfectly serene Sutton Place apartment building.  I would trade it all for one set with a group selected from Yank Lawson, Buck Clayton, Johnny Windhurst, Bobby Hackett, Cutty Cutshall, Peanuts Hucko, Bob Wilber, Dave McKenna, Bob Haggart, Morey Feld — some of the heroes who played at this club.

Oh, well.

“We’ll always have RINGSIDE AT CONDON’S,” as Bogie tells Ingrid in CASABLANCA.

May your happiness increase!

ATLANTA 2012: BOB SCHULZ and FRIENDS: “RIVERBOAT SHUFFLE”

Good stuff.  The real thing.  Beyond category.  Too good to ignore.

Bob Schulz, cornet; Russ Phillips, trombone; Allan Vache, clarinet; Mark Shane, piano; Richard Simon, string bass; John Cocuzzi, drums.

May your happiness increase.

I’LL PAY THE TOLLS AND FIND PARKING. WHO WANTS TO JOIN ME?

From the national attic and time machine known as eBay . . .

Thank you, Jack Crystal, for making such things possible.  That I wasn’t even born yet is only a slight impediment to the imagination.

May your happiness increase.

WORDS AND MUSIC FOR BARBARA LEA (St. Peter’s Church, April 16, 2012)

We miss Barbara Lea, and the gently loving memorial service held last night at St. Peter’s Church didn’t make our loss any smaller.

She gave us so much music for nearly fifty years that it seemed only proper that her friends and musical colleagues (one and the same) crowded the room to do her honor in words and music.

What Daryl Sherman — the evening’s most empathic, witty host — called Barbara’s “extended family” was there both in substance and in spirit.

For those who weren’t there, a thirty-two bar synopsis.

For words: Jan Wallman spoke of having Barbara perform at her club countless times, shaping her program to the individuals in the audience; George Wein remembered her as that remarkable creature in 1951, a “Wellesley girl who sang jazz”: Roger Shore told us how “the song came first” for Barbara; Jack Kleinsinger recalled a memorable “Highlights in Jazz” concert and surprised me by saying that the cornetist Johnny Windhurst had been his first mentor in jazz; Loren Schoenberg’s tribute had him thinking “WHAT WOULD BARBARA LEA DO?” in every situation, so fine was her critical vision; Nat Hentoff’s remarks focused on Barbara’s recordings; David Hadju recalled not only Barbara but the late Roy Hemmings; Lewis Chambers reminded us that what looked easy for her was the result of hard work; Frannie Huxley’s story of Barbara at college brought us a girl we hadn’t known; Peter Wagenaar’s story of falling hard for Barbara and her music from a distance was more than touching, as was Annie Dinerman’s reading of Barbara’s lyric for MOTHER, MAY I GO OUT TO SWIM.

For music: Ronny Whyte sang and played THANKS FOR THE MEMORY with lyrics I had not known; Joyce Breach offered Alec Wilder’s BLACKBERRY WINTER, which George Wein followed by singing and playing SUGAR (in memory of Lee Wiley as well as Barbara).  Marlene VerPlanck tenderly created IS IT RAINING IN NEW YORK? holding spellbound a New York audience on a cloudless night; Sue Matsuki made us laugh with FRASIER (THE SENSUOUS LION) and Karen Oberlin made BITTERSWEET resonate for Barbara and Billy Strayhorn.  Daryl Sherman wickedly delivered the naughty LORELEI, all of the laughs intact; Dick Miller played a strong medley of LIKE SOMEONE IN LOVE and OH, YOU CRAZY MOON; Steve Ross slowed down YOU’D BE SO NICE TO COME HOME TO for voice and piano; Bob Dorough emphasized HOW LITTLE WE KNOW; Melissa Hamilton caressed I’M GLAD THERE IS YOU.  Throughout, lovely support and solos were floated by us from pianist Tedd Firth, bassist Boots Maleson, guitarist James Chirillo, and tenor saxophonist Harry Allen — all great singers of melodies.

But the stage belonged to Barbara — in a photo montage over our heads that showed her with Duke Ellington and Morey Amsterdam, with Johnny Windhurst, Cutty Cutshall and Eddie Barefield, with Dick Sudhalter, Daryl Sherman, Harry Allen, and Keith Ingham; Bob Haggart, Larry Eanet, James Chirillo — and many of Barbara and her dearest friend Jeanie Wilson, the two of them grinning like mad, fashionable or down-home.

And the musical interlude of videos by Barbara had great power — singing Bix and Hoagy, in front of a late Benny Goodman band, having herself a time, pacing through Noel Coward and a dramatically slowed-down BEGIN THE BEGUINE.

All of us send thanks to the people who made Barbara’s life better — Jeanie and her husband Bill, their friend and Barbara’s, Robert “Junk” Ussery, and the diligent, gracious Daryl and Melissa Hamilton . . .

In her last years, Barbara didn’t speak.  But her voice still rings:

JAZZ IS “PLAYING YOUR PERSONALITY,” SAYS ROSWELL RUDD

Years ago, my beloved collector-friend John L. Fell sent me a cassette of “One Night Stand” broadcasts from Chicago’s London House, featuring an Eddie Condon unit.  The trumpet and clarinet were immediately identifiable as Johnny Windhurst and Pee Wee Russell, but I had no idea who made up the rest of the excellent small ensemble.  In the last few months, I found out that the pianist was someone I had seen once or twice in New York City (circa 1972) named Buddy Blacklock and that the trombonist was exceedingly famous as a bold explorer, someone still with us: Roswell Rudd.  I’d known that Roswell had played early on with a Yale Dixieland band called ELI’S CHOSEN SIX — but had not recognized him on these tapes.  I sent him a copy through Jerry Suls and, thanks to Verna Gillis, finally got to talk to him about the music:

Boy, that music sure brought back a time and place — the personalities.  These were my heroes — I was a twenty-five year old guy.  It was definitely a high point — exhilarating and humbling at the same time.  I wasn’t copying anybody, and I’ve held on to that.  Really, that’s all I’ve had, and I’ve learned from other musicians — particularly improvisers, that playing your personality is what this music is all about.  And so if I don’t sound like somebody else — and it’s not for lack of trying! — it’s probably because I try to play my personality and get better and better at it. 

I ended up in that band because my friend Buddy Blacklock, who occasionally played piano with Eli’s Chosen Six, the college band that I came up with, was able to bring me on board with Eddie Condon.  And also with Johnny Windhurst, I think Wild Bill Davison a few times, and Jimmy McPartland a few times.  These were the older musicians I came up with, as a kid, so to have finally got to where I could hold my own with them, that was a great feeling and it was very inspiring.  Inspiring and encouraging.  Cutty Cutshall was nice about my sitting in. 

I was lucky.  A lucky guy.  I stood next to Pee Wee Russell, who played his personality — as Louis Armstrong did, and only the greatest people in this music have.  He really achieved something there, and all you can say about him is that you know who it is after a couple of notes — and you know it’s going to be a great musical ride.  Yeah, Pee Wee — it’s all in there with Charlie Parker, it’s all in there with Duke Ellington . . . I think you know the folks!  The musical ingredients, the elements, all the stuff that you need, and they are putting it together in ways nobody else can. 

What a great privilege to be in the same room with it, and also to be on the bandstand.  I wanted to bring everything that I could to the music.  You know, this is a music where you are playing off other people, and you really have to be listening and responding and respecting and complementing what’s going on around you.  This process has been with me all along, and the more I could learn about music — especially being able to hear and react — the better I could play with anybody.  It didn’t really matter who.  It’s a question of how well you can hear and what you can bring to your response.  You know, it’s all about call-and-response.

I can’t play the London House tapes for you — here is what might be a sequence of Roswell in the past, footage from the 1958 JAZZ ON A SUMMER’S DAY with Eli’s Chosen Six, also featuring Lee Lorenz (cornet) and Walt Gifford (drums):

The present and future, for Roswell and for us, are encapsulated in his new project — a CD to be called TROMBONE FOR LOVERS, concentrating on beautiful jazz treatments of standards.  I’ve written about it here: beautiful-standards/ and hope you will read about and then support this project.

If you think of Roswell as someone far distanced from beautiful melodies, please listen to what follows — an idiosyncratic but powerfully lyrical trio performance of DANNY BOY from February 10, 2012 with Lafayette Harris, piano; Ken Filiano, bass:

ROSWELL RUDD’S NEW PROJECT: BEAUTIFUL STANDARDS

Roswell Rudd — eminent jazz trombonist and composer — might seem an unusual figure to be in JAZZ LIVES, but he has deep roots: early work in Eli’s Chosen Six, improvising with Steve Lacy, and more.  In fact, Roswell and I have been delving into a period in his life, around 1960, when he played in an Eddie Condon unit that broadcast from the London House in Chicago.  His colleagues?  How about Pee Wee Russell and Johnny Windhurst?  More to come . . .

But right now, I would like to alert you to Roswell’s newest project, TROMBONE FOR LOVERS.  Here’s what he has to say:

Hello Friends, Family, Fans and Music Lovers …

I am writing you with some very exciting news. As of today, I have officially launched a campaign to fund the recording of my next album, a collection of standards entitled “Trombone For Lovers”.

For this project, I am using Kickstarter.com, a well-known website used for raising money for artistic projects of all kinds. Kickstarter’s website explains everything in detail, but basically, it’s a system where sponsors support projects at different levels in return for “rewards.” Among other perks, I am offering up private trombone lessons and live performances in return for your generous donations.

At this time in my life I am particularly interested in the great STANDARDS … Songs we all know that mark moments in our lives. I am currently arranging a number of tunes that are classics of American jazz, folk, roots, gospel, country and soul … Timeless compositions from the likes of Duke Ellington, Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, Bob Dylan and Brian Wilson. And I promise we’ll have some beautiful surprises for you!

For this album, I will be collaborating with the young producer Ivan Rubenstein-Gillis. We recently worked together on a version of “Feeling Good”, the lead track from my latest CD, “The Incredible Honk”. Things went so well that we want to keep those good feelings going. We will be joined by the dynamic rhythm section of drummer Aaron Comess and bassist Richard Hammond, as well as some wonderful guest singers and instrumentalists from my distinguished list of musical associates. If we raise enough money, I plan to record several tunes with a string section, in lush and full arrangements.

We have set our fundraising goal at $20,000. This will cover the bare bones, essential costs associated with producing the album, including rehearsing the musicians, time in the recording studio, mixing and mastering. However, it goes without saying that the more money we can raise, the greater options we will have, and the more expansive our project ultimately can be.

Please check out my fundraising page which contains many more details about this project. If you have any questions please send me a personal email and I would happy to discuss. Also, please pass this email along to any friends/fans/music lovers who might be interested in helping out!

So many of you have been so supportive of my music over the years.

WITH YOUR HELP, WE CAN MAKE CONTINUE TO MAKE GREAT MUSIC HAPPEN!!!     THANK YOU FOR YOUR GENEROSITY!!!  I  AM READY TO TACKLE THE STANDARDS!!!

Roswell Rudd

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1554876228/roswell-rudd-records-an-album-of-standards

BILL DUNHAM REMEMBERS BARBARA LEA

The good friend of JAZZ LIVES, pianist and bandleader Bill Dunham, sent his recollections of Barbara Lea for us:

I guess I’m Barbara’s oldest friend – both in terms of age and friendship.  She was at Wellesley (where she was Barbara Leacock out of Detroit) when I was Harvard in the late 40’s.  We met on a blind date and dated briefly (I was pretty inept and Larry Eanet took over in that department).  It was there that I introduced Barbara to the Harvard Crimson Stompers a Dixieland band that was really a hot item among the college jock fraternities (Dartmouth, etc.) Her singing career started!  I was a member of the Stompers at the time and can remember how we were all knocked out by this Wellesley girl’s singing!

During her senior year at Wellesley and after graduation she sang at local Boston clubs – some not too upscale including a Mafia-run club where she called me one night and asked me to please come down the next night because she had been threatened by a gang thug.  I was to call a police lieutenant should there be a confrontation.  I was not too enthusiastic about this assignment but fortunately it went OK with me sitting nervously clutching the policeman’s phone number.

As you know, Barbara made scores of LPs, CDs, etc.  One of my favorites is the one she made with Johnny Windhurst, a marvelous young trumpet player.  He incidentally sat in with the Grove Street Stompers a number of times.

Barbara has often been labeled as a young Lee Wiley. Yes, one can pick up traces of Wiley in her singing but Barbara was her own person and had her own approach to singing the great standards with a beautiful, pure, ungimmicky voice!

I have been a close friend of hers since college and will really miss her!

Another pianist with young Barbara Lea