Yes, Ellington, authentically, down to the grease and funk: expertly performed by Nick Rossi’s Jazzopaters at Mr. Tipple’s in San Francisco, on April 20, 2024. The flawless video is by Sunny Tokunaga.
THE MOOCHE was a dance, an Ellington standby for forty-five years. The wonderful musicians are Nick Rossi, banjo, leader; Patrick Wolff, alto saxophone, clarinet; Colin Hancock, cornet; Victor Imbo, trombone; Nathan Tokunaga, tenor saxophone, soprano saxophone, clarinet; Kamrin Ortiz, baritone saxophone, alto saxophone, clarinet; Rob Reich, piano; Clint Baker, double bass; Riley Baker, drums.
Somewhere, as I write this, a group of earnest musicians is doing their own “Ellington tribute,” which features SATIN DOLL and TAKE THE “A” TRAIN. I am glad that any music is performed in the name of Ellington, but I want Nick Rossi’s Jazzopaters to catch the eyes and ears of concert producers, club owners, swing dance organizers, festival planners. They are the real thing, offering vibrant living history, delightful to dance to.
And here’s PELICAN DRAG, from October 28, 2023, different personnel but the same groovy heart:
Let me whisper in my most subtle tones: “Don’t sleep on this band!”
And for those who are wide-awake to beauty, you can learn (and hear) more at
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.
Guitarist-scholar Nick Rossi has an excellent ear for what’s good and true and often overlooked. His most recent project has been a deep immersion into the Ellington-and-Strayhorn small-group recordings of the Thirties and early Forties. The result wasn’t one of Nick’s splendidly-researched essays: no, much better, a well-rehearsed and thoughtfully-assembled jazz recital, two sets at Mr. Tipple’s Recording Studio in San Francisco, California, on October 28. The band was Nick Rossi, guitar; band leader; Patrick Wolff, alto saxophone, director; James Dunning, trumpet; Remee Ashley, trombone; Nathan Tokunaga, clarinet; Kamrin Ortiz, baritone saxophone; Rob Reich, piano; Mikiya Matsuda, double bass; Riley Baker, drums.
I couldn’t be there, but I and you have the next best thing: superb video coverage by Sunny Tokunaga. Here are two delightful performances. The first, less familiar, is PELICAN DRAG, composed by Harry Carney for a 1940 Columbia / OKeh session but not issued until the microgroove era; the second is the perennial MOOD INDIGO, which Duke was performing and recording back in 1930 for various labels.
PELICAN DRAG, featuring the startlingly accomplished Nathan Tokunaga:
MOOD INDIGO, showing off Rob Reich, James Dunning, Remee Ashley, and Nathan:
I hope for more performances by this ensemble . . . gigs as well as videos, so that we can see them in person. Gorgeous music, full of emotion and grace — AND — such an occasion gives me and others an excuse to use the word JAZZOPATERS in conversation, something that probably hasn’t happened since 1938 or so. Evidence:
It may have been a long time since you or I could say to a friend, “Have you heard the new disc by Barney and his Jazzopaters? You must come up and hear it!” but the music is what counts, and the music is so splendidly alive here. Thank you, Nick and colleagues!
which contained six sides that Teddy had recorded as a sideman with “Redd Evans and his Billy Boys” for Vocalion Records — great records I think few had ever heard.
But a little online research — my effort to answer the question, “How had Teddy or John Hammond or someone else heard of Redd Evans, and what had they heard that would lead them to offer him more than one record date?” led me to these listings in the DAHR:
Victor BS-019565 10-in. 2/11/1938 A shack in the back of the hills Lewis “Red” Evans and the Boys Jazz/dance band, with male vocal solo director, vocalist
Victor BS-019566 10-in. 2/11/1938 Please be kind Bama Boys Jazz/dance band, with male vocal solo director, vocalist
Victor BS-019567 10-in. 2/11/1938 Thanks for the memory Lewis “Red” Evans and the Boys Jazz/dance band, with male vocal solo director, vocalist
Victor BS-019572 10-in. 2/11/1938 Thanks for the memory Lewis “Red” Evans and the Boys Jazz/dance band, with male vocal solo director, vocalist
Victor BS-019573 10-in. 2/11/1938 Prove it Lewis “Red” Evans and the Boys Jazz/dance band, with male vocal solo director, vocalist
Victor BS-019574 10-in. 2/11/1938 Moments like this Bama Boys Jazz/dance band, with male vocal solo director, vocalist
I also found out that the February 11, 1938 session had the following personnel, some names completely unknown, others familiar to those of us who have studied the period: Russ Case, trumpet; John Potoker, piano; Art Ryerson, guitar; Syd Debin, string bass; Bobby Jones, drums. February 11, 1938, New York City.
I have been able to find nothing about Debin and Jones. Potoker was recognizable to me as a member of Tommy Dorsey’s orchestra, and part of a Charlie Shavers date (1946) for Vogue on its short-lived picture record line. But the first record date I found for him was in 1945. Russ Case was famous — an early Goodman trumpeter, someone appearing with Teagarden, the Boswell Sisters, and Trumbauer. Most intriguing was this early appearance by guitarist Art or Artie Ryerson, explicated by guitarist-scholar Nick Rossi: Artie staking his claim as perhaps one of the first US guitarists to show an explicit Django influence! Ryerson told my friend (and journalist) Jim Carlton that he heard Django on record in 1935 and was influenced by him for the next several years. This, to my ears, is proof of that claim. Ryerson elsewhere in the interview was pretty good with dates by the way – even if he is off by a year or so (which he may very well be based on the research I’ve done around Django’s US record releases), that still gives him ample time to absorb the influence by the time of the recording in question. And who else WAS showing a Django influence in the USA on record in February 1938?
Luigi Lucaccini pointed the way to this gem:
and Javier Soria Laso added more delightful evidence:
These sides are hidden gems in the best pop-songs-swung Thirties tradition. Yes, Evans was more confident on the later sides (or was it Victor’s microphone setup?) but the instrumentalists are splendid; the ocarina solos are delightful — not jokey at all — and the overall effect is polished and homespun at once. And we remember that these three pop tunes were classics in their own way — more memorably recorded, perhaps, by Mildred and Maxine, but touching. I am especially fond of Leo Robin’s wry-mounful lyrics to MEMORY, so true and witty at once; his niece told me a few years ago in conversation that the narrative came from her uncle’s very real heartbreak, and the genuineness comes through in every turn of phrase.
I decided to look deeper on my own and found the two remaining sides from the 1938 date, surprising myself.
PROVE IT:
A SHACK IN THE BACK OF THE HILLS:
If I’d heard any of those sides coming out of a record store speaker or jukebox, I would have been entranced, As I am now. And the gentlemen of the ensemble play so sweetly and easily.
And by the way, if you want what Germans call “the thing in itself,” a reputable eBay seller has the 78 of MOMENTS LIKE THIS and PLEASE BE KIND for sale — $25.00 plus 8.63 shipping) here.
Thanks again for kind erudite diligence, Luigi, Javier, and Nick.
This post — and the musical surprise it contains — are inspired by my friend Nick Rossi’s celebration of Sidney Catlett’s birthday on Facebook. Nick posted the cosmically glorious STEAMIN’ AND BEAMIN’ by an Edmond Hall group on Blue Note — including Bennie Morton and Harry Carney, so you know it’s remarkable.
There are two or three sessions that Sidney graced, late in his recording career, that have eluded me: one is by “Gloria Mac,” which I suspect might be a mis-typing of “Gloria Mae”:
Gloria Mac (vcl) acc by Dick Vance (tp) Sandy Williams (tb) Hilton Jefferson (as) George “Big Nick” Nicholas (ts) Bill McRae (p) Thomas Barney (b) Sidney Catlett (d) New York, May 5, 1949 G657 The one in your memory Abbey 75 G658 What is this thing called love ? –
I dream of hearing Sandy Williams backed by Sidney . . .
I thought the other session would be equally elusive, but I found two of the four sides on the Internet Archive, the treasure chest of unimagined joys:
Kirby Walker Orchestra : Dick Vance (tp) Benny Morton (tb) Hilton Jefferson (as) Sam “The Man” Taylor (ts) Kirby Walker (p,vcl) Al Hall (b) Sidney Catlett (d) New York, June 28, 1949
CO40919 Oh I’m evil Col 30178 CO40920 High brow blues 30170 CO40921 Juke box time 30178 CO40922 Shut up 30170
Before I proceed to the music — that delightful reward — I will note that Kirby Walker doesn’t impress me greatly as lyricist or singer, but he is middle-competent. Both sides are well-arranged, with a written duet for Taylor and Jefferson: I would guess that the charts are by Dick Vance, and they are reminiscent of Hot Lips Page and Wynonie Harris’ contemporaneous efforts: good-time music, no demands made on it to be innovative. And while you’re listening closely, pay attention to the beautiful sound and reliable drive of Al Hall — someone I had the good fortune to see in person circa 1974-5 (Bennie Morton as well).
But the reason to shine a light on these brief interludes is the magisterial presence of Sidney, whose powerful accents, rimshots, and direction are strong but never obtrusive. HE is leading the band, propelling, orchestrating, and shaping the performances. Masterfully.
Hereis OH I’M EVIL. (You can find another version of Kirby Walker performing this song on the air, for the 1947 THIS IS JAZZ series, on YouTube.)
And hereis JUKE BOX TIME (when did the juke box get the name “piccolo”?) with Sidney in especially wonderful form in the second half of the record — kicking Taylor into action and then driving the band exuberantly.
He was such a phenomenon: a percussion orchestra who could be so very gentle when the music required it. Gone in 1951, his loss a tragedy that still reverberates. The only compensation for his abrupt death, his short life, is that he was very well-represented in recordings from 1928 (Al Wynn) to 1950 (Muggsy Spanier): everyone wanted the Catlett magic in their band, from Bechet to Byas to Bird. They knew full well what having Sidney behind the drums meant.
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.
This three-disc set released by Fresh Sounds is a cornucopia of pleasures, both musical and scholarly.
Arv Garrison (1922-60) was a superb guitarist, swinging and inventive, who understood how the melodic and rhythmic inventions of Django Reinhardt and others could be expanded into “the new thing” of Forties bebop. Although his recorded legacy is compact, it’s impressive and diversified. In his prime, he was respected and sought-after, as the names below prove. But for most of us he was hidden in plain sight. Now we can applaud what we approved of subliminally.
Garrison was adaptable; he fit easily into any context while remaining true to himself. He would be a wonderful question for a jazz-trivia night: “What musician played with Charlie Parker, Leo Watson, and Frankie Laine?” Although the most recent recording in this set is from 1948, his work still sounds fresh, and he doesn’t have a small assortment of favorite licks that grow overfamiliar quickly: he is, in the phrase beloved of new audience members, “making it up as he goes along.”
Here’s one version of WHERE YOU AT? — reminiscent of Frishberg before Frishberg:
The new focus on previously known recordings this set encourages is indeed enlightening: “fresh sounds” indeed. I’ve known only a dozen of the sixty-plus performances on this set, but I confess I never paid Garrison proper attention. Listening to YARDBIRD SUITE or A NIGHT IN TUNISIA, for instance, I was captivated by Bird and Miles; laughing my way through the Leo Watson session with Vic Dickenson, I knew there was an excellent guitarist, but I was waiting for Leo and Vic to return. (I’m sorry, Arv.)
But now, listening to him with new attention, I admire the easy brilliance of his soloing — his long lines that surprise, his reliable swing, and what he adds to the tonal color of the whole enterprise. Garrison knew his Django deeply, but he also had absorbed some of Charlie Christian’s loping audacity, and he easily breathed the harmonically-complex air that was 1946-48 California and New York. I also hear a creativity that runs parallel with Les Paul and Oscar Moore — who could be unaware of the early Nat Cole Trio recordings? — but he isn’t copying anyone. Garrison is comfortable in early classic Dial Records bebop; he can play a ballad with grace and emotional intelligence; he can swing out in the best Forties fashion. He’s delightful alongside Frankie Laine; he romps on his own, and he has confidence: in an AFRS broadcast where he solos alongside Barney Kessel, Les Paul, and Irving Ashby, he stands out. If he was intimidated by such fast company, no one heard it.
The nimble string bassist and singer-composer Vivien Garry, who married and outlived Garrison, was more than an oddity, more than a protege. She was the leader on more than half of the performances here, and she is far more than Samuel Johnson’s lady preacher. In fact, had the world of record producing been different (if our world was also) this would have been properly a dual feature. Her recording career began earlier and ended later; she performed with Benny Carter, Shorty Rogers, Jimmy Giuffre, and was an integral part of two “all-girl” sessions. Garrison, a rather unworldly (or other-worldly?) young man, was no self-promoter, so we have to thank Garry for making a number of these record dates and radio appearances happen. Garrison was handsome, but Garry was that rarity — an attractive young woman jazz musician — and that helped a great deal in getting gigs, especially in the world of the late Forties where jazz and “entertainment” were friends. (Listen to Art Ford, on the WNEW broadcast — one that includes Charlie Ventura, Babs Gonzales, Kai Winding, and Lionel Hampton! — fuss over Arv and Vivien’s attractiveness, and you’ll understand.)
The musical content of this set is delightfully consistent; I listened to the three discs in two sittings, which is not my usual restless habit. Connoisseurs of the rare and obscure will also find much to delight them: private recordings, AFRS and commercial radio broadcasts, live remotes from a jazz club, and commercially issued 78s on the Sarco and Exclusive labels. Even scholars deep into this time and place will find surprises, and it’s easy to celebrate these three discs as musical anthropology of a world truly in flux.
The great surprise and pleasure is the nearly eighty-page book, with color illustrations (photographs and record labels, club ads) that accompanies this set. I’ve only read portions of it, because I wanted to listen to Arv and Vivien and friends without multi-tasking . . . but the book — to call it a “booklet” would be inaccurate — begins with twenty pages of intertwined portraiture by James A. Harrod and Bob Dietsche, the latter of who met and interviewed Vivien in the mid-Eighties, and it ends with Harrod’s detailed discography of the set.
In the middle is the real prize: nearly forty pages of beautifully detailed biographical-musical analysis by guitarist-scholar Nick Rossi, who has become one of my favorite jazz writers alongside Dan Morgenstern, Mark Miller, Loren Schoenberg, Dave Gelly, and Ricky Riccardi. Rossi does more than trace Garrison’s life from boyhood — staying up all hours playing along with Django in his room — to the sad end in a swimming accident before his 38th birthday. He has a fine awareness not only of guitar playing but of the art and history of jazz guitar and the contexts in which it became the jazz monolith it now is. Rossi’s writing is direct, evocative, clear, modest, and it welcomes the reader in, unlike other writers busy showing off how clever they are.
I’ve listened to the set with great pleasure, mingled with ruefulness that Garrison’s life and career ended as they did; now I plan to read Rossi’s essay with equal pleasure, and go back to the music. If that seems an expenditure of time and energy, I assure you that this set has already repaid me in excitement, discovery, and joys.
You can purchase the set at Amazon, no surprise, or directly from Fresh Sounds here, as I did (don’t let the price in euro scare you off if it’s not your native currency). Either way, it’s a lovely set.
The pandemic brought us many things that we had not requested, and I will forbear listing them here. But it also brought marvelous musical surprises — our jazz heroes are resilient, and many adapted to the challenge of sewing individual creations into a swinging tapestry. You’ve seen the delightful results: musicians in different “rooms,” which might be thousands of miles away, everyone with headphones or earbuds, making delightful swing harmonies although not able to shake hands or hug. Miraculous and there’s nothing else to call it. Many of my friends have made the technological hurdles seem no more than cracks in the sidewalk, but a new and rewarding group effort has been the merging of the superb singer Alice Spencer with Hal Smith’s Overland Swing Express.
A few words about Ms. Spencer of Austin, Texas. Just as the world is full of restaurants, some producing full stomachs and happy satiety, others producing uneasiness, there are many who call themselves “singers.” Alas, only a small percentage know what it means — that it is more than being personable, chipper, good to look at, well-dressed. Singing is the most personal of the arts, with no keyboard or valves to get in the way, the singer has a message to send us, a story to tell, with only her voice, her dramatic sense, her facial expressions: no tenor saxophone to use as a big shiny prop.
Alice Spencer brings to her songs a remarkable emotional maturity that is beyond her years: put plainly, she sings like a Grownup rather than a Cute Teen.
Her voice has shadings, dark and light; she bends phrases stylishly; she lets us know that she knows what the words mean: she’s not copying famous recordings nor is she singing by rote. And her performances are both emotionally dense and light-hearted: hear her little exhalation of breath at the end of T’AIN’T GOOD — as close to a wordless “Gee, that was fun!” as anyone could create, or the way she wends her way through WHAT SHALL I DO IN THE MORNING? — which, in other hands, could have been maudlin, but when you hear her final sixteen bars and note the sign-off of a gently raised eyebrow, you know that Alice has been having a good time “being sad” and then holding it, gently, at arm’s length. Don’t miss out on the cluster of rapid-fire notes in the middle of T’AIN’T GOOD, either, navigated with accuracy and hilarious style: she might well be the Peggy Fleming of Swing Singing.
I first heard Alice on Brooks Prumo’s THIS YEAR’S KISSES, and wrote this:
And a few lines, once again, for the miracle of nature known as Alice Spencer, who takes familiar music and makes it fresh, who makes songs associated for decades with Billie Holiday into her own without warping their intent, who can be perky or melancholy with utter conviction. She is full of surprises — many singers telegraph what they are going to do in the next four bars, but she doesn’t — although her surprises always seem like the right thing once they have landed. I won’t compare her to other singers: rather, she has an aura like a great film actress, comfortable in many roles. Think Joan Blondell or Jean Arthur, and you have some idea of her great personal appeal.
It would be unkind and unfair, though, to ignore the Gents of the Ensemble: Clint Baker, trumpet; Loren Schoenberg, tenor saxophone; Kris Torkarski, piano; Bill Reinhart, guitar on MORNING and tech-alchemies; Nick Rossi, guitar on GOOD; Sam Rocha, string bass; Hal Smith, drums, leader, arranger.
Because the two tunes are associated with Fats Waller (whose birthday was yesterday) there is a jaunty bounce, a reassuring rocking motion. Clint gets hot, as is his delightful habit; Kris summons up not only Fats but that Wilson fellow c. 1938; Loren evokes 1941 Pres in the Victor studios; Bill knows his way around lovely chords; Nick provides just the right mix of enthusiasm and accuracy; Sam keeps everyone honest; Hal rocks the church.
Here’s T’AIN’T GOOD:
and the larger question, WHAT WILL I DO IN THE MORNING?:
If you have any acquaintance with the great swing traditions of the Thirties and Forties — those sessions made for the jukebox by Billie, Mildred, Midge, Teddy Grace, Fats, Lee, Maxine, Connee, Red, Wingy, Louis Prima, Bob Howard, Putney, Slim Green, and a dozen others — you will understand why I say a) I could no more watch these videos a single time and move on to something else than I could leave my sandwich half-eaten, and b) that I have received ethereal texts from John Hammond, Jack Kapp, Eli Oberstein, and Bernie Hanighen, fighting for the right to sign this band and Ms. Alice up to a long-term contract (of course for very little money, but that’s show business, as the elephants will tell you). On the more earthly level, I ask, “Where is the bright festival promoter who wants to sign the Overland Swing Express up for a weekend of gigs?” But since I know that some of them read JAZZ LIVES, I have hope.
I heard (to quote Don Redman) that Alice Spencer will be making a new digital album sometime soon. Stay tuned.
Here’s a classic jazz festival / jazz party set (or at least the second part of one): it could have been a completely disconnected group of stars doing their feature numbers, but they are unified by The Groove.
And it helps immensely that Jay McShann, piano; Gene Ramey, string bass; Gus Johnson, drums, were having a little reunion of the original McShann rhythm section. The band is in a Kansas City mood, even though none of them hails from that city: Erskine Hawkins, trumpet; Vic Dickenson, trombone; Buddy Tate, tenor saxophone; Jim Galloway, soprano saxophone; Claude “Fiddler” Williams, violin. (Alabama, Ohio, three from Texas, Scotland, two from Oklahoma, should you wonder.)
This video begins with Hawkins’ hit — recorded almost forty years before to the day, TUXEDO JUNCTION, then the song Vic featured with the Eddie Heywood band and also the band Ed Hall led in Boston, PLEASE DON’T TALK ABOUT ME WHEN I’M GONE, and a slow raunchy BLUES featuring Buddy and McShann.
Erskine didn’t record after 1971, but he had a rewarding steady gig, well-remembered by our friend Hank O’Neal in this lovely portrait of the man and the musician who got people on the floor to dance, wherever he was:
Perhaps this will send people back to hear Erskine’s Bluebird and Victor recordings — entertaining documents of a danceable swinging band. This post, by the way, is for my friends Nick Rossi and Michael Gamble, among others, who know The Groove when it enters the room.
First, it’s not Dudgeon and Dragons. “High dudgeon” is annoyance, anger, resentment. “She left the meeting in high dudgeon.” A witty piece on the etymology by Patricia T. O’Conner and Stewart Kellerman can be found here.
And it’s also the title of a wonderful Joe Sullivan record. I present the four sides he recorded in Los Angeles on April 1, 1945, for Sunset Records. Sunset was the creation of Eddie Laguna, also a concert promoter, who’s proven elusive. But the music isn’t. Encouraged by his friend Zutty Singleton, Joe had moved west in 1943, and the first two sides recorded for Sunset were piano solos.
But these records are by a quintet and a trio: Joe, piano; Archie Rosati, clarinet; Ulysses Livingston, guitar; Artie Shapiro, string bass; Zutty Singleton, drums: NIGHT AND DAY / HIGH DUDGEON / BRUSHIN’ OFF THE BOOGIE / HEAVY LADEN (Joe, Archie, Zutty).
Joe is typecast as a “barrelhouse” “Chicago” pianist, and that he could be, but he loved the great lyrical songs — Coward and Porter as well as the blues. Perhaps this choice was also inspired by another clarinetist named Shaw?
And the very thing:
Hear the crystalline sound of Zutty’s brushes:
and finally a trio performance (the cover of the Nagel-Heyer assemblage is odd at first — although Joe and Bird would have played together without scrapes):
A few small mysteries, without which no blogpost can be said to be complete. One: I have not found a photograph or biography of Eddie Laguna, although he is references endlessly in articles about Nat King Cole (Will Friedwald, inexplicably, even makes fun of his name) Wardell Gray, and others of that time and place.
Two: I am assuming that HIGH DUDGEON is Joe’s title, not Eddie’s, because it is credited to Joe. He went to parochial school in Chicago, although he may have stopped in his teens. I envision a nun saying, “Do that one more time, Joseph, and you will see me in high dudgeon!’ Just as possible is that Joe picked it up from Bing Crosby, who loved elaborate flourishes of language. Joe himself was articulate in speech and prose: see him on JAZZ CASUAL with Ralph J. Gleason; I’ve also seen several of his sophisticated letters to Jeff Atterton, which will turn up on another post.
All I know is that Joe’s music never leaves me annoyed, angry, resentful. Is the opposite of HIGH DUDGEON something like FLOATING JOY? Consider this, but listen to Joe as you do.
If you wanted to visit Joe in his San Francisco period — more or less from 1945 to his death in 1971, here’s where you would find him:
. . . . on the fifth floor:
A nifty postscript. More than one skeptical reader wrote in to dispute the existence of Eddie Laguna, because that name was used as a pseudonym for Nat Cole on a record label. The fine scholar-professor-guitarist Nick Rossi rode to the rescue with Ray Whitten’s photographs of the December 4, 1947 Dial Records date, led by Dexter Gordon at Radio Recorders, supervised by Eddie Laguna. Personnel as follows: Dexter Gordon, Teddy Edwards, tenor saxes; Jimmy Rowles, piano; Red Callender, bass; Roy Porter, drums.
Feast your eyes, friends! Laguna, should you need a clue, holds no instrument.
So you took your pills this morning with your coffee and you don’t feel any different? You walked past the bed and it said, “Come back to me until March 2021,” and you heard its call? A good friend texted you I HAVE GREAT NEWS! and you didn’t read the message? Do you feel like an elderly carrot at the back of the crisper? If you were a quart of milk, would you be lumpy and sour?
Before you call your doctor to see if she can see you today, ask yourself: “Could my Swing levels be low? Have I been neglecting a flowing 4 / 4? Have I been reading the news far too much too early in the day?”
If so, I have the cure for you. No co-pay, no long list of side effects, no waiting room with tape across the chairs. Just sit still and prepare to receive the healing infusions through ears and eyes. Several repeated immersions will be helpful. When you find yourself moving rhythmically in your chair, the treatment will be working.
I saw this video last night on YouTube (my faithful companion) and watched it four times in a row before posting it on Facebook. But I think it’s my moral duty as an upstanding American to share it as widely as possible. Here’s what I wrote:
When it’s good, you know it. And what I am going to share with you is light-years better than good. It’s what Marty Grosz would call “the real breadstick”: BLUE LOU, created by HAL SMITH’S OVERLAND SWING EXPRESS. That’s Hal, drums / leader; Clint Baker, trumpet; Loren Schoenberg, tenor saxophone; Kris Tokarski, piano; Nick Rossi, guitar; Bill Reinhart, string bass. I watched it four times in succession before writing this. Now I have to stop: Jack Kapp and John Hammond are squabbling in the next room over whether the band will sign with Decca or ARC. But judge for yourself:
I’ve written about the wonderful and elusive Fran Kelley here and here. I had hoped that her connections to Charlie Parker and Duke Ellington would have stirred up more research, but little has come to light. (I thank Brian Kane, Nick Rossi, Paolo Alderighi, and CB Datasearch for invaluable finds.)
Let me reintroduce this remarkable person.
You would think that the producer of this concert [advertised in the Los Angeles Times, June 23, 1946] would be as famous as Norman Granz or George Wein:
For those who have forgotten, this was her first concert at UCLA:
These are the beautiful sounds she made possible.
The other side:
The Fran-Tone “waxery” was mentioned in the March 25, 1946 BILLBOARD:
I know that at least four copies of 2004 exist. But I have no evidence that 2005 has ever been issued. It’s clear that Fran-Tone did not thrive as a money-making proposition because Fran sold the eight masters she had recorded to Capitol, and Capitol did nothing with them, as far as I know, which amazes me. Do any readers have access to a comprehensive Capitol discography, and do the Fran-Tone sides appear there?
You would want to hear more about and more from this writer, writing her own condensed autobiography for the liner notes of Jimmy Rowles’ first session as a leader, RARE — BUT WELL DONE, on Liberty Records:
Fran Kelley is strictly from Pisces and New York. Her love and understanding of music just comes naturally, stemming from her father, whose distinguished voice was heard in leading concert centers both here and abroad. Fran’s musical background is varied: as an arranger-composer [one score was accepted by Duke Ellington], as a producer [she worked with Lester Horton and Duke Ellington to stage jazz-ballet], as an impresario [Fran presented the first jazz concert ever held at the University of California at Los Angeles which presented Charlie Parker, Lester Young, Nat “King” Cole and Benny Carter], and as an expert in the field of musical therapy. Fran is currently West Coast Editor and Representative for Metronome Magazine.
Here is evidence (from BILLBOARD, February 24, 1958) of what might have been the start of a new brilliant collaboration:
and
The end of the story is told by Ellington himself, in a few lines in MUSIC IS MY MISTRESS: “And there is one more person–Fran Kelley, musician, poet, songwriter, singer, orchestrator, manager, executive. This great woman with all these talents gave up running a radio station and record company in Los Angeles to pursue her spiritual quests in San Francisco.”
When I first bought Fran-Tone 2004, I was captivated by the music and intrigued by its guiding genius. Surely, I thought, she would have merited an essay if not a biography — multi-talented, one of very few women operating at this high level in the boys’ club of jazz at the time. But no. Because I have friends who graciously do research, the twenty or so clippings that are the basis of this research were offered to me. But Fran seems absent from any book on Bird or Duke. Why?
Thanks to Brian Kane, a lead opened up — an audible one — because four sides recorded by Fran for her label, with arrangements by Tom Talbert, were preserved and issued on Hep 22, “Memphis in June: Boyd Raeburn and his Orchestra.” That’s a vinyl issue; the CD (Hep 95) contains only the two Allyn vocals:
Vince DeRosa, French horn; Lenny Hartman, English horn; Harry Klee, alto saxophone, flute; Sam Sachelle, bass clarinet; Hy Mandel, baritone saxophone; Ray Still, oboe; Erroll Garner, piano; Leonard “Lucky” Enois, Allan Reuss, guitar; Harry Babasin, Red Callender, string bass; Jackie Mills, drums; David Allyn, vocal; Tom Talbert, arranger. AFRS Downbeat, Los Angeles, early 1946
BLACK NIGHT AND FOG (David Allyn vocal) / C JAM BLUES / PLEASE LET ME FORGET (David Allyn vocal) – [also known as PASTEL] / CARAVAN //
Note: Following from “The Most Happy Piano – Errol Garner Discography” by James M. Doran : “According to Jack McKinney, the following personnel are definitely not Raeburn’s, even though these performances were released under his name on Hep (E)22. This studio session was produced by Fran Kelley, probably in conjunction with her Swingposium concert of June 24, 1946, which was to be released on her Fran-tone label. This never happened.”
I’ve obtained a copy of Hep 22, and those four sides are gorgeous. Guess whose name is absent in the detailed notes by Jack McKinney? And, for a chance to compete in the bonus round, guess whose name . . . in the biography of Talbert?
And two nearly irrelevant postscripts. Fran Kelley was married to the trumpeter Clyde Reasinger, who lived until 2018. Reasinger turns up twice in a data-search in the Sixites, two gossip-column entries. In a 1962 entry, “Stripper Titian Dal is will shelve her career in favor of marriage to trumpeter Clyde Reasinger,” and a year later Reasinger is playing trumpet for the show NO STRINGS and is married to Karen, who is not identified as a stripper. I don’t know what that says about the Reasinger-Kelley marriage, but twenty years later, the two parties were apparently living in very different worlds.
As I wrote at the start, no answers. Speculations, yes. I could understand that the secular world has taken little notice of someone who chose to leave it, decisively, perhaps in 1958. And I hope that moving into the spiritual realm gave Fran Kelley the satisfaction that “the music business” did not. Our choices are mysterious to others, and often they are mysterious to us as well. So I cannot offer more evidence about why Fran Kelley seemed to disappear. I can wonder if there was a connection between music therapy and spiritual work, but it is only a speculation. Did she go underground to write poetry in an ashram? Did she become a nun ministering to the wounded in a Catholic hospital?
I was ready to publish this post and end on a somewhat despairing note: “I am baffled by the lack of reportage devoted to her, and even now — can I and my little band of research-friends be the only ones on the planet fascinated by who she was, what she did, and where she went?”
But before ending my quest for information, I posted inquiries on an online jazz-research group I belong to, not expecting much, and then Patricia Willard, long-time jazz scholar and writer, emerged like a blessed apparition, and wrote this, which I reprint with her permission and with gratitude:
Re: Fran Kelley, Duke considered her a genius, in 1958 signed her to a contract specifying that anything she produced–music, poetry, spoken ideas et al would be owned by him in exchange for continuing financial support. They both told me this but I never saw the actual contract or knew the precise terms. Among her talents that Duke found most intriguing was that she always knew what time it was–to the second–but never wore a watch (nor did he). Their collaborations were largely on the West Coast during a time when Strayhorn was East. The last times I heard from her (several years hence) were letters, always written on music ms. paper with a San Francisco hotel return address. She had a daughter whose name I unfortunately cannot recall. I met her in the mid-1980s at the invitation of my L.A. neighbor Benny Carter. The daughter was searching for Fran or any of her work and trying to find out if she were still alive. The daughter remembered that Fran had spoken often about her friend Benny. Benny had no recent knowledge of her activities or whereabouts. Two years ago I asked Hilma Carter, Benny’s widow, if she remembered the daughter’s name, and she didn’t. I only recall that it wasn’t Kelley.
Fran Kelley is a novel, although I am no novelist. But fascinating books are on the horizon. Patricia Willard is completing three of them — one on Ellington, one on Sinatra, and one a memoir. I can’t wait to have them on my coffee table, at this desk, and on my nightstand. I will let you know when they appear.
Chu Berry And His “Little Jazz” Ensemble: Roy Eldridge, trumpet; Chu Berry, tenor saxophone; Clyde Hart, piano; Danny Barker, guitar; Artie Shapiro, string bass; Sidney Catlett, drums. New York, November 10, 1938.
That is a compact way to introduce you (or remind you) to the joyous mastery of Sidney Catlett — Big Sid to many — not only in his dancing solo, but in his subtly powerful propulsion throughout.
That recording is well-documented: “46 West 52” was the address of the Commodore Music Shop at the time, and the improvisation is based on SWEET GEORGIA BROWN.
The eight photographs that I share with you below came to me without equally detailed documentation. Each one is stamped “BY-LINE FEATURES” on the back, and someone had penciled in SID CATLETT. As well, pencil notations may be “cleared 46” and “tkn 45,” but I am not sure. They emerged on eBay over a month or so from a company apparently based in Iceland, and, Reader, I bought them. The company applied numbers to them, which I have followed below, although this sequence may be arbitrary. What I can presume is that a photographer caught Sidney in a solo . . . gorgeously, both his body and his facial expressions making these photographs both intimate and dramatic.
Right now, the question I am enjoying is how to hang them on my wall or walls.
89:
90:
91:
92:
93:
94:
95:
96:
And that’s not all.
In May 1948, Sidney took what I believe was his first overseas trip (Mel Powell recalled that Sid was terrified of flying) to appear at the first Nice Jazz Festival with Louis Armstrong’s All-Stars: Louis, Jack Teagarden, Earl Hines, Arvell Shaw, and Velma Middleton — which resulted in these three pictures, recently shared with the world by Jean Labaye: they come from the archives of the Hot Club of France:
Upon arrival:
The recipient, properly, of flowers:
and onstage:
I presume “Hot-Revue” was a jazz magazine, thus . . .
and
As they say, “this just in,” thanks to my friend, the jazz scholar-guitarist (who is one-third of a new YouTube series with Loren Schoenberg and Hal Smith on the early recordings of the Benny Goodman band) Nick Rossi — from a 1942 DOWN BEAT.
“Tub thumper,” my Aunt Fanny, but it’s a lovely photograph:
Back to the ears again, for a favorite recording. James P. Johnson’s Blue Note Jazzmen: Sidney DeParis, trumpet; Vic Dickenson, trombone; Ben Webster, tenor saxophone; James P. Johnson, piano; Jimmy Shirley, guitar; John Simmons, string bass; Sidney Catlett, drums. New York, March 4, 1944:
and this, from June 22, 1945, with the Modernists of the time, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, at Town Hall in New York City, in concert, with Al Haig, piano; Curley Russell, string bass; Symphony Sid Torin, MC. The crowd doesn’t want to let Sid go:
More than once, I’ve had a non-jazz friend ask me, “What so fascinates you about this man?” I said, “In no order. He led a Dionysiac life and died young — surrounded by friends and he had just told a good story. He made his presence known and was instantly recognizable as himself, but he selflessly made everyone sound better. He is missed.”
Even now, when it seems that everything can be known, some people appear for a moment and then vanish. One such is Fran Kelley, whose work as an imaginative record producer came to me some months ago, as I describe here.
Before I offer more information and speculation — all of the print data excavated by the diligent, generous Professor Brian Kane of Yale University — please hear one of the two sides that Fran made possible. Ethereal music:
A gentle caution: if you come to JAZZ LIVES only for videos, I’ll see you tomorrow or the next day. I think this is a terribly important post, though: my attempt to make sense of a brilliant life from fragments of information. And I can’t promise any melodrama: death from automobile accident or medical crisis: no, Fran Kelley seems to have turned from “the scene” to choose another life.
Here is not only a portrait (a disembodied one, alas) but the most thorough biographical sketch we have, even though it might be based on her answers to a questionnaire, when Fran was West Coast Editor of METRONOME (1953-57):
For the moment, a few additional facts. 1246 Orange Grove Avenue would have been near Spaulding Square, in what is now considered “West Hollywood,” once a residential area of single-family houses and small apartment buildings, but Google turns up no photographs, which leads me to think Fran’s residence was torn down sometime after 1957. Whether the “Met” was the opera or the museum, I could find nothing relevant about her father. Clyde Reasinger, famous for his work with Kenton and for being a section trumpeter on the television performance of MILES AHEAD, was long-lived, 1927-2018. He has a Facebook page (whose administrator did not reply to my inquiry); his spouse has none.
Based on decades of reading, but jazz writing circa 1945-1957 (the years in which we have the most evidence) was primarily if not exclusively done by men, exceptions being Helen Oakley Dance and a few others, so even given the mildly patronizing tone of the sketch, it shows the regard in which Fran was held by her colleagues. (In my previous post, I note the stories / reviews she’d written for Metronome.) I am sure no one asked Bill Coss what he cooked, but that merits only a sigh. By the way, if you think it condescending of me to call her “Fran,” I am writing this post out of fond admiration: “Kelley” seems icy. Please don’t write in to lecture.
She accomplished great things, and I say here to readers, “Fran is now invisible in a landscape of Gene Norman, Norman Granz, George Wein and more, all of whom deserve their fame. Her name is absent from studies of Dizzy, of Bird, of Benny Carter. Had Fran been Francis, would she be so erased?”
She feels so much, at this distance, like Virginia Woolf’s “Shakespeare’s sister.”
Let us follow the paper trail.
DOWN BEAT, 15 November 1945: “Fran Kelly [sic] of Hollywood House of Music will launch her new international label with star jazz headliners.”
The Nebraskan son of an Union Pacific Railway accountant, Glenn Everett Wallichs had been interested in electronics since his childhood — focusing on the design of radio sets and the mechanics of train railroads. A North Hollywood transplant (at 16 years of age, in his family’s company), he started his adult workdays locally, as a radio station technician (at WFWB) and then as the owner of a car-radio repair shop (at Ivar Avenue). Wallichs’ small shop evolved into a radio and electronics store, and that one store brought enough profit to allow for its multiplication into a chain (a total of five stores, all of them in the Hollywood area). In 1938, Wallichs took his business ventures even further. Accompanied by his brother Clyde, he joined forces with former WFWB co-worker Al Jarvis (the pioneering disc jockey, who also happened to be an LA record shop owner) to create Hollywood House of Music, a compound that merged Jarvis’ record shop with the fifth, youngest of Wallichs’ electronics stores. The most noteworthy aspect of the merger was that the latter was no longer just a retail store: it was converted into a small specialty recording studio, whose specialty became custom recordings. Though “normal civilian” requests for recordings of events such as weddings or parties were certainly taken, the studio primarily catered to artists’ requests of airchecks from radio broadcasts. It also chiefly became the place from which Jarvis’ legendary creation, the Make Believe Ballroom show, was broadcast during the late 1930s. Known to have been recorded there in 1938 is a novelty tune that featured Wallichs himself along with Stan Kenton, Paul Weston, Jo Stafford and others (all of them playing instruments, Stafford included, and some of them under pseudonyms). The resulting instrumental number was chucklingly titled “The World’s Worst Record.”
METRONOME Yearbook, 1956, showing the astonishing roster of musicians who performed at the concert Fran organized on April 12, 1946:
My friend Nick Rossi — guitarist, jazz scholar, painter — magically turned up the program for the concert here. Someone’s bought it, but what can be seen here is stunning.
One exception to the contemporary erasure of Fran Kelley is Douglas Daniels’ 2002 biography of Lester Young, LESTER LEAPS IN, where he writes of this concert:
In Los Angeles, [Norman] Granz, Billy Berg, and Fran Kelly [sic] typified a new type of jazz promoter dedicated to racial equality. Kelly, with the aid of Lester Young, Ray Bauduc, Kay Starr, Lucky Thompson, Red Callender, Charlie Parker, Nat Cole, Benny Carter, and other artists, sought to foster racial tolerance by booking UCLA’s Royce Hall for a performance to benefit the scholarship fund of the George Washington Carver Club, named after the famous Tuskegee scientist. A Metronome recap reported that Young and Parker offered ‘‘the best number of the program.’’ All the musicians either donated their services or received a nominal fee, with proceeds going to the scholarship fund. This marked a first for UCLA. . . .
Granz gets top billing; Kell[e]y is unidentified.
DOWN BEAT, 6 May 1946, a very small comment on the concert, compared to the coverage of Les Brown’s “ball team”:
CLEF, June 1946, a concert review which begins with a beautiful quote:
METRONOME, August 1946. More about the concert. Linger, please, over the names of the musicians, and when you are through with time-travel, also note that a new Lester Young record gets a “C+”:
Because online research is part pearl diving and part trash collection, my continued inquiries into the George Washington Carver Club led me to this site, which I avoided as if made of Kryptonite: Twin Towers 911 Video Clips Video De Sexo De Paris Hilton …8.aksuchess.ru › VkjWBA.
We move on.
BAND LEADERS AND RECORD REVIEW, August 1946, notes “Kelly,” “gal platter impresario”:
DOWN BEAT, 6 May 1949, noting that the Fran-Tone masters were sold to Capitol (which Wallichs, Johnny Mercer, and Buddy De Sylva had founded) — my guess is that they did not sell and they were never issued on that label . . . plus a famous Lester interview:
DOWN BEAT, 14 December 1955, a nameless reviewer mocks Fran’s liner notes for a Chico Hamilton record: “Only clinker are the notes on the individual numbers by Fran Kelley, written in her inimitable prose, a cross between science fiction and theosophy.”
DOWN BEAT, 4 April 1956, an approving review of Jimmy Rowles’ first session as a leader, where Fran is called “the only pretty jazz critic”:
And here are the notes for that album, with a tiny portrait of the author:
METRONOME, February 1957, Fran’s imaginative profile of Keely Smith:
DOWN BEAT, 3 April 1958: the last mention of Fran — “poetess,” working for Ellington:
There the trail stops, except for Ellington’s coda in MUSIC IS MY MISTRESS: “And there is one more person–Fran Kelley, musician, poet, songwriter, singer, orchestrator, manager, executive. This great woman with all these talents gave up running a radio station and record company in Los Angeles to pursue her
spiritual quests in San Francisco.”
I have not been able to find out anything about Fran Kelley’s life after 1958. And that may have been the way she wanted it, to turn away from the secular world, “the music business,” to shuck off being called “pretty,” and live another life. If you are born Fran Kelley and you enter a religious order and take the name of Sister Angela, even Google cannot find you. (Consider Boyce Brown, “Brother Matthew.”) And even a rudimentary glance at actuarial tables would suggest that she is no longer living.
But I hope she wasn’t driven away by misogyny. Yes, regarding the past through the lenses of the present can distort, but someone so sensitized might want to abandon the world where music was for sale and one’s best efforts got ignored. A world where Lester Young got a C+.
I feel her absence. A great loss. Her legacy is and should be more than a dozen or so clippings from jazz trade papers.
This post is in memory of Fran Kelley, once remarkable and now unknown, with no biography and no Wikipedia page. And it is also in honor of all the women who create imaginative ideas and art and don’t get heard at the meetings or find their ideas vacuumed up and presented by men, but still keep creating.
Thanks to Katherine Vasile, Brian Kane, and Richard Salvucci: without them, this post would never have happened.
That serious young man and his friends have done it again, healthfully rising the planet’s Swing levels. He’s Nirav Sanghani, leading his flexible band, the Pacific Six, whose new CD I praised just last month here.
Here’s a jazz classic from the recent Bootleggers’ Ball, on Jun 16: the Six plus guests Justin Au, trumpet, and Nick Rossi, electric guitar (wearing tuxedoes). The rest of the band, Virginia Tichenor, piano; Albert Alva, tenor sax; Mikiya Matsuda, bass; Sean Krazit, tenor sax; Clint Baker, drums; Riley Baker, trombone; Nirav Sanghani, rhythm guitar, bandleader. The nice floating videography is by Jessica King, vocalist, percussionist, and cinematographer:
So many things in this life are uncertain. The saying that I’ve chosen for my title is attributed to John Burroughs, Julia Margaret Cameron, and anonymous Zen masters.
LESTER LEAPS IN was most assuredly John Hammond’s title, not Lester’s — for that line on I GOT RHYTHM. But attributions and minutiae matter less than the effect such things — those words, that music, that band — have on our hearts.
I can think of no one (except the Venerable Marty Grosz) who is doing what Jonathan Stoutdoes. But the truly important thing is that he IS doing it, and beautifully. And the evidence is all through his lovely solo CD, PICK IT AND PLAY IT.
The guitar has a long history, and what we call “jazz guitar” does also. Before amplification, guitarists — solo or in ensemble — had the same complicated orchestral responsibilities as pianists: keep a melody line going, play the harmonies (implied or stated), do all this while offering a solid rhythmic pulse. If you couldn’t do all three as easily as breathing, talking, and walking, you didn’t get the gig — whether the gig was playing rocking blues in a Mississippi juke joint or supporting a small hot band in Harlem. The masters of this genre — more than two dozen — did it as a matter of course. Anyone who has ever picked up a guitar can learn in under a minute just how complex and intimidatingly difficult their art is. I write this from experience.
Jonathan has mastered the subtle mystical arts of such swing deities as Allan Reuss and George Van Eps, and PICK IT AND PLAY IT presents fifteen delicious sound-paintings that come from the acoustic past but sound fresh, personal, and lively. More than once, while listening, I found myself thinking, “If Dick McDonough had lived, he might have made a session like this.” If you understand my reference, you either already have this disc or you owe it to yourself to have several copies, in case rationing comes back.
If I remember correctly, Van Eps — whose gracious presence is vividly audible here — called this style of guitar playing “lap piano,” and it balances sharply-realized single lines with an overall orchestral approach. Not only does the listener not miss string bass and drums on this CD, but they would be positively intrusive. Stout doesn’t need them: he is his own resonant orchestra, full of shadings and colors, with a nearly relentless quiet swing.
And unlike many guitarists who are entranced by Django and post-Django, he does not seek to impress us by velocity, endurance, or flash. His approach is stately, leisurely, full of melodic and harmonic subtlety: although these performances have the breath of improvisatory life, they are not “Hey, let’s do four choruses on [familiar tune] and go home.” Rather, Stout has a deep compositional sense, so that I arose from each performance refreshed and fulfilled. The CD is dense with music, but it never gets dull. And the sense one comes away with of both Stout and his approach to the genre is not “Hey, look at me! I spent a thousand hours on this piece!” but “How beautiful the guitar is, and listen to what memorable sounds can come from it.”
This CD offers “fifteen arrangements for solo guitar,” with a repertoire that mixes familiar pop classics with rare compositions for the instrument. The latter are wonderful and I think they will be new to all except the most ardent student of this arcane art: Frank Victor’s PICK IT AND PLAY IT; Roy Smeck’s ITCHING FINGERS; and Allan Reuss’s APARTMENT G and PET SHOP. (Many listeners, if they know Reuss at all, know him as the steady sweet resonant pulse in the Benny Goodman orchestra and later small-group sessions, but his compositions are a revelation. And Reuss is Stout’s model, which says a great deal about Jonathan himself.) Stout’s originals — dedicated to his son, not to Charlie Christian — PICKIN’ FOR CHARLIE and CHARLIE’S LULLABYE — are particularly delightful, the latter tender but never soporific.
To the casual listener, the remaining songs might seem familiar, even too much so (although in this century, the people who have heard, say, PENNIES FROM HEAVEN too often are an increasingly smaller group): STOMPIN’ AT THE SAVOY, MOONGLOW, CHEEK TO CHEEK, IT’S ONLY A PAPER MOON, SUNDAY, GEORGIA ON MY MIND, AIN’T MISBEHAVIN’, SOMEBODY LOVES ME, OVER THE RAINBOW. But this assumption would be completely wrong.
I came to CHEEK TO CHEEK, for one example, with a half-century of associations, expectations, and prized performances in my head. But in the first minute of hearing Stout’s playing, I thought, “Wow, I’ve really never heard that song before.” And it wasn’t that he was being consciously or self-consciously innovative, but his performance had the integrity and wonder that the best musicians bring to even the simplest series of chord changes or melodies.
Two more delights add to the overall pleasure, both provided by people who themselves make splendid music. One is the too-brief but delicious essay by guitarist Nick Rossi: what a pleasure to read uncliched prose that rests on a deep knowledge of the art. The other is the gorgeous recorded sound created by master engineer Bryan Shaw: the guitar sounds like itself, with no “natural flavors” synthesized in the laboratory, with a minimum of string noise that is often distracting on recordings of acoustic guitar.
PICK IT AND PLAY IT is a series of small fulfilling delights — and “small” is not a criticism but a compliment. Even if you’ve never heard of Frank Victor, or perhaps especially if you’ve never heard of Frank Victor, you will be thrilled by Jonathan Stout’s masterful subtle art. Hear and purchase here and here. And Jonathan is also quite a teacher: visit here to learn more — not only about his solo guitar folios and transcriptions, but about his swinging bands.
As my friend Nick Rossi would say, I fell down the rabbit-hole — comfortable, not claustrophic. And I’m grateful to Dustin Wittmannfor pointing out where the entrance was located, by posting this anonymous-but-delightful dance band side on Facebook.
Forty years ago, I wouldn’t have paid much attention to this recording, disdaining the tune as nothing much — not Hart, Rodgers, Porter, Kern — and I would have been waiting for the hot solo and been disappointed that the side wasn’t full of episodes by known players.
Now, I think, “What lovely music! How well-played! How charming this is!” And the tune, with its descending chromatic hook, might not be the high point of twentieth-century composition, but it certainly lingers in the ear:
It must have been a staple of the 1931 dance-band repertoire, I assume in a stock arrangement. And I am posting variant versions of it so that you can muse over how a variety of bands brought their own flavors to it — voicings, tempo, vocal, ensemble work, rhythmic approach, and solos.
Incidentally, it’s hard to clear my mind of the 1931 Tin Pan Alley scenario: Kahn and Fio Rito, in shirtsleeves but with ties and suspenders, perhaps with cigars. “Awright. BLONDE. What the hell can we do with that? POND? FROND? No, none of those tropical songs. Hey! FOND!” And they were off.
I think comparative study like this is so enlightening, but it’s also fun. If there’s a blue-eyed blonde nearby, listening seriously but joyously, so much the better, but it’s the spirit that counts, not the genetics.
Debroy Somers and Dan Donovan, a very bright approach, a clarinet trio, and assertive cymbal work. If you couldn’t move your body to this, something was wrong:
The Phillips version has a slightly more prominent banjo part and a wonderful alto saxophone explosion. One of the things close listeners will also note is how the various sections sound on each recording, and the recording balance itself:
This American version has a slightly looser rhythmic feel, perhaps because the drummer is relying less on his cymbals. The tempo seems a touch slower: a fox-trot more than a one-step? I don’t know. It just sounds good:
and back to the UK for no reason at all except the delight in hearing another approach as well as Sam Browne’s tidy, affectionate vocal. The Blue Lyres were perhaps twelve musicians, but this recording shows off soloists throughout in obbligato as well as improvised passages, as if the leader or arranger had chosen to treat it as rich material for individual players as well as keeping the skeleton of the stock arrangement intact. To me, this recording suggests most clearly how a free-spirited swing / hot dance orchestra might handle this material in 2018. Any takers?:
and, finally, this delight (a Gene Gifford arrangement?) with a new introduction and a stylishly individualistic vocal by Pee Wee Hunt before an unusual transition into the final chorus, where Clarence Hutchenrider takes the bridge. A recording beautifully anchored by tuba, and note the sweetly decelerating ending:
There are several subtexts here, but only one for the moment that deserves a few sentences. It’s about what I’d call JAZZ POLITICS, or “What’s worthy?” Tom Lord, whose work I rely on, lists only the final side in his massive jazz discography. Does that mean the others aren’t jazz? Does that mean they aren’t worth our attention? They sound like beautiful elastic hot music to me. But then again, I could be someone who’s grown out of his earliest rigid adolescent definitions of what’s rewarding to the ears and heart. In this, as always, I owe much to the not-didactic guidance of my mentor, Sammut of Malta.
I started this post on November 21, which is Coleman Hawkins’ birthday — to the sounds of his music played by WKCR-FM in New York City. And then the jazz guitarist- archaeologist Nick Rossi unearthed this photograph on Google: Hawkins in Amsterdam, spring 1938, with Maurice van Kleef, drums; Freddy Johnson, piano — a trio that recorded a dozen sides:
Hawk moved to another neighborhood in 1969, but he certainly hasn’t been forgotten. Here are a group of artists — I think few if any of them were playing in 1969 — paying their own energetic loving tribute at the Cleveland Classic Jazz Party. Dan Barrett, trombone / leader; Howard Alden, guitar; Randy Reinhart, cornet; Scott Robinson, tenor saxophone; Joel Forbes, string bass; Ehud Asherie, piano; Ricky Malichi, drums.
MY BLUE HEAVEN (with an affectionate backwards glance to the Victor All-Star Octet of 1940, featuring, among others, Benny Carter, J. C. Higginbotham, and Walter Johnson):
SOMEDAY SWEETHEART (with thoughts of the 1933 Allen-Hawkins Orchestra, whose first two test recordings — this and SISTER KATE — were not issued at the time but were saved for future generations):
BEAN AND THE BOYS (a line on LOVER, COME BACK TO ME from 1946, the middle of an especially fertile decade for Hawk):
IF I COULD BE WITH YOU (harking back to the cosmically-important 1929 Mound City Blue Blowers session):
Beautiful music. The Cleveland Classic Jazz Party (nee Jazz at Chautauqua) is no more, which is cause for woe — but these artists are still filling the air with beauty, for which I and others bless them.
Paradise, 1940: Count Basie, Freddie Green, Walter Page, Jo Jones, Charlie Christian, Lester Young, Buck Clayton, Benny Goodman at Columbia Records
I am not Miniver Cheevy, nor do I long for pay phones, Donna Reed, and the nickel subway ride. If you offered me time-travel to 1940, I would insist on a round-trip ticket, because I’d miss my friends too much. But this century seems hard, for all its vaunted technological strides. Modern “edginess” and self-absorption make me cringe.
Two examples from the main street in suburban New York on which I live.
One is that as I drive slowly and attentively through congested areas, people with earbuds on, staring into their screens, looking down, walk directly in front of my car. Of course I slow down, I do not roll down my window and shout at them. But I think, in the words of Big Joe Turner, “You so beautiful, but you got to die someday,” or in my own words, “Your arrogance is horrible, and your defiance of common sense is stupid. Will having the iPhone 93 make you immortal, or the fact that you have just had a perfect ‘mani and pedi’ protect you from my very slow-moving car?” Their behavior is the complete expression of “ME, only ME,” and I think it sad.
Yesterday I was walking to the local train station to go to New York City to dine with friends. Ahead of me was a man some years my senior who had an aluminum cane and moved with some difficulty. He, his wife, and I arrived at a section of recently laid cement — like a small rivulet — that we had to step over. His wife went first, then the construction workers looked at him, as he was slightly hesitant, and said, laughing, “JUMP!” Jumping was not in this gentleman’s repertoire, but he managed to extend himself across the cement and make it to the other side, hailed by mocking laughter from the workers. (I got across without disaster.) That’s another kind of ME: “I am in good physical shape, so if you’re not, I have the right or perhaps the obligation to mock you.”
So, self-absorption, selfishness, small cruelties, unkindness, the absence of generosity, the individual held above the community.
What does all this have to do with Count Basie?
I owe these ruminations to my admired friend Nick Rossi, who posted this music on Facebook in honor of Count Basie’s birthday, August 21:
and I, having the two experiences above in my head, wrote this:
I wish this century allowed us to live our lives the way that rhythm section played — joyously, gently, precisely, modestly making room for everyone else, graciously creating beautiful spaces. LIVE THE BASIE WAY is a motto I imagine, although perhaps too much explaining would be needed.
The Basie rhythm section was a loving, spiritually aligned community, where even though Basie got his name on the music stands, he and everyone else knew that he was merely the figurehead who had the deep wisdom to let everyone hear Walter Page, Freddie Green, and Jo Jones. Basie modestly let his “sidemen” shine; although he could have played solo forever and been his own orchestra, he created a little republic of generous interdependence. Kindness and equalities rather than ego and mastery, generosity rather than selfishness. And ease.
Even though 1942 was not an easy year for the world, Basie seemed to know, without making much of it, that we could mesh with the cosmos, keep it afloat and have it keep us afloat, if we picked the right medium-tempo. Thus, love with open arms enacted in swinging 4/4. Brother-and-sisterhood rather than a parade of egos in the spotlight, jostling for attention.
Taking it easy, stepping on no one’s feelings, finding the gracious way, without strain. Cooperation rather than isolation, an unstated understanding that we are all aimed in the same direction and will reach the happy goal only if we help each other get there.
Imagine a world that moved this way, an irresistible perpetual motion machine:
Basie would have been embarrassed or aghast to read this philosophical praise. When Whitney Balliett asked him where his piano style came from, his response was, “Honest truth, I don’t know.” So he might have been very leery of being celebrated as someone whose laconic perfections were a spiritual path to follow. But Basie’s is an honest truth, one we could all live and live by.
And a postscript: as I write this, there is a small jazz group called the New Blue Devils working towards playing the Basie way. You could check them out.
The back covers of the long-playing records of my youth often were adorned with thumbnail photographs of other record covers, and this solicitation, “If you’ve enjoyed this LONG PLAY record, you’ll be sure to enjoy . . . .”
If you savor beautifully recorded chamber jazz, swinging yet leisurely, you’ll be sure to enjoy the new CD by guitarist James Birkett and violinist Emma Fisk, devoted to the music of Joe Venuti and Eddie Lang.
Since Eddie’s death in 1933, there have been many attempts to recreate the magic the two Italian boys from Philadelphia created: Venuti himself always looked for guitarists who could come close to Eddie’s splendors: Dick McDonough, Frank Victor, Tony Romano, Bucky Pizzarelli, Carl Kress, Perry Botkin, Bobby Sherwood, George Barnes, Tony Gottuso, Danny Perri, Barney Kessel, Lino Patruno attempted to fill that role on record dates and more.
As I write this, Nick Rossi, Kris Tokarski, and Glenn Crytzer are involved in similar small group projects, and I know I am leaving someone out. Matt Munisteri does a peerless Lang behind John Gill’s Bing. Martin Wheatley and Spats Langham both understand him deeply.
Venuti was a hard act to follow — I am leaving aside the sometimes cruel practical jokes — but he was often in love with speed and execution, and many violinists have tried to out-Joe Joe, playing his intricate originals faster and faster. (Performance speeds have been inching up for decades: consider the Django-phenomenon.) And for most instrumentalists, not just string players, tone gets sacrificed to speed.
Emma Fisk, a romantic at heart, doesn’t turn Joe into unicorns-and-rainbows on this CD, but she does remind us of Joe’s affectionate side, the part of his character that would linger over long tones and leisurely phrases. She doesn’t slow everything down, but she does change the mood from headlong briskness to a kinder, easier embrace. In this she is partnered splendidly by the elegant guitarist James Birkett, who is lyrical beyond everything else. He is new to me, but he is kind to the ears at every turn, without being overly sentimental. So even the faster numbers on this disc — RAGGIN’ and MY HONEY’S — are sweet saunters instead of being mad sprints. The music breathes comfortably and well.
Here you can witness Emma and James making music — video and audio — through the media of Vimeo, Soundcloud, and YouTube. And here you can celebrate the Spring, reward yourself for good behavior, or warm someone’s heart — by buying one or more of these life-enhancing discs.
A delightfully mournful sample, James’ EDDIE’S LAMENT:
I think what follows is just amazing, and it’s not inflated pride at having been the one who brought the camera and clipped the microphone to Dan’s shirt. The first-hand sources in any field are few and precious. Of course, there are many borrowers and interpreters, capable people who weren’t on the scene but are ready to theorize. “Nay nay,” to quote Louis.
Jazz, so long viewed as “entertainment,” did not get the serious coverage it deserved for its first decades. Thus we could search in vain for an interview with Bubber Miley or A.G. Godley. And few people wrote their memoirs of involvement with Jimmie Blanton or Don Murray or Larry Binyon . . . but we have Dan, who was there and has a good memory. And he has a novelist’s gift for arranging those memories in pleasing and revealing shapes.
When the subject is Charlie Parker, so many recollections of Bird veer between adulation for the musician and a superior attitude towards a man often portrayed as suffering from borderline personality disorder. Thus Dan’s gentle affectionate inquiring attitude is honest and delightful. His memories of Bird go back to the Three Deuces, the Royal Roost, Cafe Society, Bob Reisner’s Open Door, with strings at Birdland with Dizzy’s unsolicited clowning, his “last stand” at Birdland where Bud Powell could not accomplish what was needed, and a “miraculous” one on one encounter late in Bird’s life, balanced by a kind of exploitative incident in which Dan’s friend Nat Lorber was the victim, as well as a sad story of Bird’s late attitude towards life, and a portrait of the Baroness Nica.
Since Dan’s first-hand involvement with Bird was in the latter’s last years, I offer a very early Bird as a counterbalance — the recordings Parker made in Kansas City c. 1943 with the legendary guitarist Efferge Ware and drummer “Little Phil” Phillips, the latter celebrated by Bob Brookmeyer in his memories of K.C. Thanks to Nick Rossi for reminding me of this.
Thank you, Dan. And thank you. Once is insufficient.
I spent some time yesterday morning trying to find in tangible shape what I could hear in my mind’s ear — a complete recording of what was a new song in 1933 — lyrics by E.Y. Harburg and perhaps Billy Rose, music by Harold Arlen — IT’S ONLY A PAPER MOON, sung and played by Cliff Edwards with accompaniment by Dick McDonough, guitar. Yes, it’s on YouTube, but because reissues removed the verse, those video postings are unsatisfying.
Since the Forties, the song has been performed without the verse, as above, and in the most famous recordings by Sinatra / Nat Cole / Ella / Goodman, at a swinging medium-up tempo, which to me undermines its sweet flavor. The version I present here is a tender love ballad, hopeful rather than swaggering.
The Wikipedia entry notes, “It was written originally for an unsuccessful Broadway play called The Great Magoo, set in Coney Island. It was subsequently used in the movie Take a Chance in 1933.” Wikipedia doesn’t add that there seem to have been two films released that year with that title; the other one with James Dunn and Buddy Rogers, the one song in the film by Vincent Youmans. In his book AMERICAN POPULAR SONG, Alec Wilder notes that in its first incarnation it was called IF YOU BELIEVE IN ME, a much less lively title than the one we know.
The composer credits intrigue me: Arlen’s melody, of course, souunds so simple but that simplicity has made it memorable (thus the appeal of the song to instrumentalists). He didn’t write dull songs.
As to the lyrics, I wonder what, if anything, Billy Rose contributed to the song. Did he say to a stagehand, “Don’t drop that! Yeah, it’s only a paper moon, but it costs more than your salary!” Or is it a quiet reference to the wonderful prop in photo studios of the preceding century, where couples could snuggle in the crescent curve, pretending to be miles aloft because of love?
Yip Harburg’s lyrics are a marvel, bridging contemporary and eternal in the most moving yet casual way. Leave aside “bubble” and “rainbow,” which were cliches even then, but savor “a temporary parking place,” “a canvas sky,” — and the entire bridge, which is beautiful, affecting and sharp, ” “Without your love, it’s a honky-tonk parade. Without your love, it’s a melody played in a penny arcade.” Urban folk poetry at the highest level. (Wilder calls the lyrics “innocent,” which is puzzling, but he admires Arlen’s bridge . . . .) In Harburg, I hear his sense of a whole world no more grounded than a series of stage props, created to fool an audience but clearly unreal. His words are Manhattan-tough but the toughness is there only to convey great wistful feeling. You’d have to live in the city to understand the resonance of a temporary parking place; not only might it disappear, but you might be punished by the authorities.
A few sentences about Cliff Edwards, who seems a sculpture with so many surprising facets that when he is looked at from different angles, he is unrecognizable each time.
There’s Jiminy Cricket. There’s the goofily appealing Twenties vocalist, ukulele player, and scat singer — “eefin'” his way through one “novelty” chorus after another, often on dim-sounding Pathe 78s. (I suspect that if Edwards had come to prominence ten years later and had had no ukulele, he would be much better known and regarded today.) A comic film actor. There are the party records: I LOVE MOUNTAIN WOMEN comes to mind, and, yes, you can imagine the lyrics. Later, there’s the unstable older man capering around with the Mouseketeers, and what we know of as the terrible husband and self-destructive alcoholic who dies in poverty.
But what I’ve consciously left off of that ungenerous list is Edwards the truly convincing ballad singer, someone whose wistful voice and sweet delivery stays in my ear. He never got the attention or opportunities to woo audiences, perhaps because he had natural comic talents, but more, I think, because he wasn’t perceived as sufficiently handsome. He could not rival Bing or Russ in erotic power, so in films and on records he was rather a light-hearted comic foil instead of the leading man. Alas, audiences in the Twenties and Thirties — as they do today — tend to listen to singers with their eyes rather than their ears. I suppose that becoming Jiminy Cricket was a great thing for Edwards’ career, but being invisible and an animated insect did not help him as a romantic singing star.
I’ve left the whole ungainly web address visible so that if the link doesn’t work for you, I encourage you to go to the archive.org site for Edwards and hear IT’S ONLY A PAPER MOON and more.
I think this performance is a model of the most endearing singing — he means every word, and it’s not by rote. It’s also the gentle tempo that I hear PAPER MOON at. I haven’t analyzed these records nuance by nuance because they work their way into the heart instantly. Or, if they don’t for you, listen intently, without distractions or preconceptions, from the rubato verse to the hip little ending.
In preparing this post, I shared these two sides with the fine guitarist and scholar Nick Rossi, a solid sender from San Francisco, who admires Dick McDonough as I do, and he wrote, “What a masterclass it is in sensitive guitar accompaniment to a vocal.” And — we might add — in McDonough’s staying out of the way yet never upstaging Cliff’s ukulele.
But I keep coming back to the affectionate hopeful totality of Edwards, Arlen, Harburg, and even Billy Rose, who in these recordings say — no, sing — to us, “Love miraculously transfigures artifice,” which is a wondrous thought. Cherish its power to create new realities.
JAZZ LIVES 