I didn’t see this one coming, and am delighted that it will soon be on my shelf: a new Mosaic Records 10-CD set devoted to the 1950-57 Jazz at the Philarmonic recordings for Norman Granz’s labels.
Before you read one more word, here‘s a link to the site where you can pre-order the set (at a $20 discount through January 8, 2023) and hear some fine audio evidence (complete performances!) from Gene Krupa, Ben Webster, Flip Phillips, Benny Carter, Oscar Peterson, Buddy DeFranco, Lionel Hampton, Herb Ellis, Ray Brown, Buddy Rich, Stan Getz, J. J. Johnson, Percy Heath, Connie Kay.
Others starring in this set are Roy Eldridge, Dizzy Gillespie, Lester Young, Bill Harris, Hank Jones, Harry Edison, Jo Jones, Sonny Stitt, Coleman Hawkins, J.C. Heard, Charlie Shavers, Willie Smith, Illinois Jacquet, Louie Bellson, and of course Miss Ella Fitzgerald. For collectors, there are five unissued performances — and since Granz’s documentation was occasionally improvised, there is scholarship to untangle mysteries.
When I began collecting records, the Verve microgroove issues of JATP concerts were easy to find in the cutout bins. Stunned by the profusion of famous names on the covers, I bought them without hesitation, yet at that point in my listening, I found them uneven. There was wild applause and sometimes histrionic display: trumpet and drum battles that were clearly thrilling in person required a certain sensibility to appreciate when coming out of a record player’s cloth speaker grille. But I did remind myself that there were gems from almost every musician in a JATP concert, and when things got too raucous, I could move the needle ahead. (Perhaps my sensibilities were — and are — too delicate. I won’t deny it.)
But I’ve come to appreciate both Granz — as a pioneer in integration AND in keeping my heroes well-paid and well-recorded (imagine a world without Verve, Clef, and Norgran, if you can). And, most importantly to my ears, every JATP concert featured a lengthy ballad medley.
I am sure that the fifteen-minute versions of INDIANA, HONEYSUCKLE ROSE, various BLUES, FLYIN’ HOME and the like will be full of marvels to me in my more mature state, but what I am really looking forward to it close to fifty ballad performances — many of them one well-chosen chorus — by masters of that art, especially Ben Webster, Lester Young, Roy Eldridge, and Coleman Hawkins.
And so you know that JAZZ LIVES has an ethical platform, I’ve pre-ordered a copy before publishing this post. I hope you’ll join me — especially if you are a jazz enthusiast whose family says, “What in the name of all that’s holy will we get for _____ this year?” Show them the Mosaic site and relax. Better than socks. And I like socks.
Some years before I met the reedman Sammy Margolis in New York City (at the Half Note, 1971, sitting in with his friend Ruby Braff) I had heard and admired him on record: a floating player, thoughtful, incorporating Bud Freeman, Lester Young, and Pee Wee Russell into his own gentle conception. He was never loud or forceful, but a sonic watercolorist.
In the next few years, I had the good fortune to hear and record him in several gigs: at Brew’s, at the New School, on an afternoon gig in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, at the Root Cellar in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, along with Vic Dickenson, Jack Fine, Marshall Brown, Doc Cheatham, Mike Burgevin, Dick Wellstood, Dill Jones, and others. I was a shy college student, reluctant to impose myself in conversation with my heroes, although from what I know of Sam, he would have made me welcome.
This was my first aural introduction to Sammy, serene in Ruby Braff’s energized wake, thoughtfully creating songs of his own:
and Sammy’s beautiful interlude in the company of George Wein:
About a year ago, I made friends (thanks to Facebook) with his multi-talented daughter Carla, who generously shared her memories of her father. I offer her extended loving portrait to you now, with thanks.
Sammy and Louis: photograph by Jack Bradley, courtesy of the Louis Armstrong House Museum
My dad had a fraternal twin brother who was also musically talented. He played piano by ear and whenever they went to the movies as kids, his brother would come home and play themes the pianist played during the showings, having somehow retained all of that musical information in his head. My Uncle Carl (for who I am named) tragically died young (I think from glomular neuphritis) after having returned home from WWII.
His father was a housepainter who died from a burst appendix when my dad was eight. His 12 year old (?) brother Mortie had to go to work as did his mother. He had two sisters as well.
I’m not even sure how he and Ruby came to be friends. As my dad often loved to say, “Oh, yes, I’ve been friends with Ruby many times.” My mother actually dated Ruby first. I don’t know what happened there, but then my mother started dating my dad.
Sammy and Ruby Braff, photograph by Jack Bradley, courtesy of the Louis Armstrong House Museum
The recordings that you sent me, around 1974, I was surprised that Ruby was on there. I heard so much about Ruby, but I never met him until I was a teenager. I was under the impression that they were on the outs, and I thought maybe it was because of the relationship with my mother, but I don’t know. They both were Boston people who came to New York, but they were really not the same people, my father and Ruby.
On records, he was the sideman for Ruby most of the time. But he was on a Martin Mull recording that Ruby wasn’t on. I didn’t know that he was on fifteen recordings! He talked about how much he hated doing studio work, that it made him very anxious. He didn’t like recording. And I didn’t find out until maybe two and a half years ago that he was on so many recordings.
Ruby and my dad loved Bud Freeman and Lester Young, but he had considered jumping the fence into be-bop. He strongly considered that, because that was what was coming, what was current. He claimed that Ruby had talked him out of it, so they both stayed on that side of the fence. I don’t know if he was happy about that decision or not, I don’t know how that went. He didn’t have a great opinion about bop — I went to Indiana University and I was a jazz studies major, and he was kind of unenthusiastic about it, but then he started listening to it more . . .
I do remember going to Brew’s and the Red Blazer with him. I remember going to Doylestown, Pennsylvania with him, the club that had the big murals at the back of the stage, Mike Burgevin’s THE ROOT CELLAR. He took me to the hotel once, and I remember telling him that I wouldn’t go to bed until he played SATIN DOLL. I was about nine.
Kenny Davern, Mike Burgevin, and Sammy at Brew’s, New York City: courtesy Chuck Slate
When I was in my teens, he had me sitting in a lot, singing, when he was playing at Jimmy Ryan’s with Max Kaminsky, who was the leader. Ernie Hackett, Bobby Hackett’s son, was playing drums. The trombonist might have been Bobby Pratt. One night I sat in and Roy Eldridge was in the audience, my dad introduced me to him, and I was “Yeah, okay, I don’t know who that is.” I’m really glad I didn’t know who Roy was when I was singing! I remember going to Eddie Condon’s with him, and he played a lot in the basement of the Empire State Building, at a restaurant called the Riverboat.
Back row: Sammy, Ruby, Vic Dickenson, Jackie Williams, Al Hall; front: Wayne Wright, Jimmy Andrews. Brew’s, New York City. Photograph by Mike Burgevin, courtesy Chuck Slate.
A musical interlude, 1974, part one:
and part two:
He was really making a living doing these gigs. He wasn’t doing anything else. In the summers he would play in the Catskills, all summer. The Italian Catskills, not the Jewish Catskills. I went with him one time; I usually spent my summers with him because my mom and dad weren’t together. From the time I was about eight I spent summers with him in New York. My mother sang a little bit but I wouldn’t call her a singer although she liked to sing. She was an actor and dancer who sang. She came to New York for that, and my dad was impressed with her dancing but he never saw her act, which I find astonishing, because that’s what her big aspirations were, and that’s what she did, mostly. She was a dancer at the Copacabana, and I don’t know where else. And she studied at the Herbert Berghoff Studio. But she later became a lawyer. Because of them, I grew up with a lot of exposure to musical theater and to jazz.
My father was really sweet and affectionate. He read a lot of Krishnamurti. He was very much into health foods and supplements, always reading up on those things. He was into ayurvedic medicine. He ate other things, but he wanted me to be very healthy. He was, although culturally, ethnically and gastronomically Jewish, an atheist, but interested in Eastern philosophy. Despite his avid interest in health foods, supplements, etc., he did enjoy the occasional hamburger and jelly doughnut and Sanka with Sweet and Low. When I asked him about that he responded “Years of bad habits.”
He was also a really good athlete, very athletic, forever, up until right before he died. He played golf and tennis. I remember he and Ruby had done a date in Hawaii with Tony Bennett, and when they came back he and Tony played tennis often. Once when they were playing tennis, some guy from the club asked Tony if he would play with him after he got done playing with his instructor (meaning my dad)…my mom loved telling that story.
I remember we went to Tony’s apartment one time and had lunch. Tony had artwork there and I thought that was really cool, because my dad was also a really lovely artist as well. He did a lot of watercolors. I don’t know what happened to his art, whether he got rid of it when he moved to Florida in 1990 or 1991, but it disappeared and I wanted to have some of it.
Portrait of the singer Connie Greco by Sammy Margolis
In NYC, he lived in Hell’s Kitchen on 44th and 10th Avenue. At that time, one had to be rather paranoid to stay safe from crime. Of course he was diligent about locking his car and his apartment. Once he moved to Deerfield Beach, Florida, he refused to live in fear and refused to lock his apartment or his car. Whenever I visited him in Florida, he would not allow me to lock anything either, which I found hilarious. I lived in NYC at the time, and understood completely.
He had had rheumatic fever as a child, and later that caused a leaky heart valve, so some time in the late Eighties he had surgery to replace the heart valve – several surgeries, because there was an artificial heart valve that his body rejected, then there was a pig valve which worked, but he had to be very careful. I’m not sure if he knew that he had prostate cancer before he moved to Florida. He moved down there to relax, to be a “snowbird” with family who spent winters in Palm Springs. There were a lot of musician friends who had retired to Florida, so he did do some gigs there – but he was basically retired when he went down there. He was very worried that the heart problem was going to do him in, but it was the prostate cancer, and they couldn’t do surgery because of the heart problem.
When I took my son down to Florida as a baby (I think that was the last time my dad saw him), I had to go to the laundry room in his complex, leaving him alone with my son (who could stand up but wasn’t yet talking). He played clarinet for my son to keep him amused. I only caught the tail end of it when I returned. It was so cute, my son was enthralled.
He was very funny, very outgoing, and he had hilarious stories. He was a very good storyteller, and I loved that. There was a story about a tiger in Bermuda, but I don’t remember how it went. He spent some time on cruise ships going to Bermuda, and he used to bring back gifts for me and art. There’s one statue of a woman which I have in my house now that he always had on the mantel in his living room.
He loved taking me to museums, to art museums, oh my gosh. He would talk to me about composition, and he loved Matisse and vibrant colors. Did you know he studied at the Art Students’ League? I mean, he felt it was really kind of a curse to be really good at a lot of things, but not just art. He was an intellectual, and some things he didn’t really have to try to be good at. Cooking and art and more. He was a thinker, and that may have been hard for him later. He loved Nature, and we’d go to Central Park, and he’d set up some watercolors and we’d draw, but he didn’t interfere with what I was doing, he would just let me do my thing.
Whenever we were walking down the street in New York, and we did a lot of walking together, and he was always singing or humming. All the time! – when we were talking or even when we were. He was a man full of music. There was never ever a second when it wasn’t turned on. I should record THE MORE I SEE YOU for him, because he always wanted me to do that song. I don’t know why it was that particular one, but he did. And he used to sing ON THE SUNNY SIDE OF THE STREET all the time.
He loved having me sing, whenever I was with him in a club. Once I started that, he loved it. And he would give me really, really helpful feedback. Truly helpful. He was not overly critical of my singing at all. No, he was lavishing praise, But when I wanted to be a music major in college – I started out as a French major –which was actually useless to me (what was I going to do with that?) when I was at Indiana University. But I had friends who were musicians, I interacted with them, and they were super-surprised that I was not a music major. “You should be a music major!” they told me. I was terrified that I would not get in to the program. I went and did an unofficial audition for David Baker first, and he sent me to this classical vocal teacher, then, with their blessing, I officially auditioned for the music school there. I got it, but I didn’t tell anybody at all that I had auditioned.
Then I called my dad to tell him I had gotten in, and he was tickled, he was beside himself with joy. He hung up the phone, and thirty seconds later he called me back. “Are you sure you don’t want to get a different major as a backup? Why don’t you stick with the French?” And I looked at the phone, and I was like, “French??? French is more useless than music. I don’t know what the hell I would do with French. Go somewhere and translate?” I had no vision how that would work into my life. It cracked me up that he was so overjoyed and then called me back and was “Wait, wait, wait . . . . “ It was the mentality he grew up with; my dad was born in 1923. I mean, when I moved back to New York as an adult, I saw him every week, at least once a week, we had our official dinner once a week. I had a day gig at a Japanese insurance company, because I could type. And he would tell me, “You know, my dream for you, my goal for you, my life-dream is for you to marry some businessman you meet around there.” “Wow. Really? Your dream for me?” It didn’t work out that way. Maybe he was right, I don’t know. He was worried that if I became a singer I would become an alcoholic. He was sure those two things went together. It did not happen, but he was very, very worried about that.
He also helped me be prepared when dealing with musicians, even on pick-up dates, sitting in, or being a leader. He really told me, “You know, musicians are going to hate you because you’re a singer. You really have to be super prepared so that they respect you.” I thought that was the best piece of advice anybody could give me. I was incredibly spoiled by all the musicians I met even when I was a little girl. But when I was little even though I played a little piano, I didn’t know what keys I sang in. I’d just start to sing, they would find the key, and it would be fine. I was spoiled by that. But things change.
I remember meeting Vic Dickenson and Doc Cheatham, Marshall Brown, Mike Burgevin, Kenny Davern, and of course Max Kaminsky. Oh, there’s a sad thing. I was supposed to meet Louis Armstrong, my dad really wanted to introduce me to him, but I was in Michigan and Louis died before I got back to New York, but later I did meet Lucille Armstrong. Dill Jones was the first pianist to play for me in public. My mom and dad were both really good friends with Jack Bradley. My sister said – I wasn’t old enough to understand this – that Jack facilitated it so that my mother bought Louis’ cream-colored Cadillac from Louis for five hundred dollars. I remember that car very well and I know there was some connection to Jack Bradley and Louis.
That same evening. Photograph by Mike Burgevin.
In the Seventies, when I was in New York with him, he would go off and do gigs at night, and I wasn’t going out at night so I would stay at the apartment watching TV, but I got hold of his fakebook, and I was going through it, listening to jazz recordings that he had, and jazz radio – he listened to WNEW – teaching myself songs from that fakebook. Even though I couldn’t really read music yet, I would listen to people singing the songs and I would follow along. I learned a lot of tunes that way. I wouldn’t have learned them with him around, or my mother around: that was solo contemplation.
And on those recordings you sent, you said there were people talking at the start, and I thought, “Oh, I hope I get to hear his voice!” and he wasn’t talking, but he was in the background warming up his saxophone, and that’s why he wasn’t talking, he was on the stand already.
There’s a story my dad liked to tell, and in my recollection I cannot do it justice because I cannot give you his facial expressions or inflections. He was at his friend’s apartment in upper Manhattan (I don’t remember whose apartment, possibly Lou Levy’s?). Dave Lambert was at the party. Jazz records were being played (of course). Someone knocked on the door and the host asked my dad to answer. He opened the door and Duke Ellington was standing there. My dad was so surprised to see one of his idols standing there. After he let him in, the host asked my dad to pick the next record for everyone to listen to. My dad was so nervous because he couldn’t believe he was picking music for Ellington to listen to. I wish I could remember what he chose. But evidently it was something Ellington liked.
Here is Ruby Braff’s elegy for his friend, Ruby’s liner note to the 1996 BEING WITH YOU (Arbors):
This album, this salute to Louis, is as much about Sam Margolis as it is about Pops!
So much of my musical thinking was formed and inspired by the musical dedication and artistic humility of Sam, my old friend and teacher. No one ever did or could pay more homage to the genius and influence that Louis had on every aspect of American music. In that sense, Sam was a great champ and winner.
On March 23, 1996 tragedy struck out group of friends and many others! Our Sammy lost his fight with cancer. To the end he went with great courage and gallantry! My thoughts were about him as we made this recording a scant few weeks later.
Every one who knew him will miss this enormously talented person of profound influence. Jack Bradley’s great picture of Sam and Pops is the way I think he’d like to be remembered.
May God grant him the eternal peace his great soul deserves.
We will never forget you, Sam . . .
I would add to those grieving words my own perception that Sammy Margolis, up close or at a distance, was a joyous individual, a remarkable man: gentle, funny, modest, multi-talented. I regret now that my shyness got in the way of a real conversation, because I feel that Sammy would have engaged my young self with kindness.
There will be more music to celebrate Sammy, and perhaps JAZZ LIVES’ readers have their own tales. He deserves to be well-remembered. And my deep thanks to Carla Margolis for her memories above.
Californian Mark Cantor is the finest jazz-film scholar around, a careful devoted researcher for decades. He loves the marriage of music and film and is fierce in his pursuit of the correct answers, when they can be found. And, not incidentally, a gracious witty down-to-earth fellow, eager to share knowledge.
A home Panoram machine (courtesy Mark Cantor)
Mark has a book in the works, and I asked him to write something about it for us:
Today it is not unusual to hear people say, “My nose is running, I need a kleenex.” Or, “I need to xerox the document.” Of course, “Kleenex” and “Xerox” are corporate product names that have taken on a generic meaning. The same is true of “soundie” – note the lower case spelling – which is used to refer to any short musical clip, regardless of origin. In reality, the term “Soundie” – not beginning with a capital letter – refers quite specifically to a three-minute film short distributed by the Soundies Distributing Corporation of America (a subsidiary of the Mills Novelty Company) for use on a Mills’ audiovisual projection devise, the Panoram. Between January 1941 and March 1947 more than 1,880 Soundies, films emanating from many sources, were released to those who owned or leased a Panoram machine.
The actual musical content of the Soundies output was democratic to the extreme, meant to appeal to all segments of American society. Today many of us value most the jazz and big band performances, but there were Irish ballads, Hawaiian tunes, country-western music (and Western Swing), novelty performances and “korn,” dance of all styles, vaudeville routines, and just plain “popular music” among the releases.
The history of these films, and a listing of releases, was released by two good friends, Ted Okuda and Scott MacGillivray, some years ago. They are still the foundations of all Soundies research. But I am proud to announce that a follow up work, one tentatively titled The Soundies: A History and Catalogue of Jukebox Shorts of the 1940s, will be published next year. A more than a million words, it will cover the development and collapse of the industry, and will also include an extensive listing for each Soundie. For the first time, a researcher or fan will be able to discover such information as recording and sideline dates, recording and on-screen personnels, arrangers, soloists, vocalists and a lot more.
To promote the book, but also the films for those who might not need this book in their library, I have set up a Facebook page called “The World of Soundies.” You are all cordially invited to click on the page and join the musical adventure. I generally post one Soundie each week, along with an full background and description of the film in question. Here‘s the link.
Any further questions? I am always around andavailable at markcantor@aol.com.
It would not be a JAZZ LIVES post without music — and in this case, two Soundies . . .
and a less familiar one, but with Dorothy Dandridge:
Having read Mark’s research for years, I can wholly recommend this book — and it’s not just going to be for collectors of arcane film: there’s musical treasure and otherwise-unknown social and cultural history. Mark has found out what the third altoist had for breakfast, but the fascinating details never interfere with the greater stories. And there are photographs! (Easier than trying to find films and a home Panoram, I am sure.)
There is a good deal of history within and around the live performance you are about to hear. However, the sound is not ideal — which I will explain — so sonically-delicate listeners may want to come back tomorrow.
It might be difficult for younger readers to imagine the excitement that I and my jazz friends greeted the Newport Jazz Festival in New York in 1972. It was the Arabian Nights — a cornucopia of concerts where we could see and hear musicians who, for the most part, had been sounds coming out of a cloth-covered speaker grille or posed on the cover of a long-playing record. My friends and I, specifically Stu Zimny, bought tickets to the concerts we could afford — we were college students — and I brought my cassette recorder with the more exotic Shure microphone attached. I don’t remember the ticket prices at Radio City Music Hall, but for people of our class, it was general seating which required climbing flights of stairs. I looked it up today and the hall seats just over 6000.
I think we might have scored seats in the front of the highest mezzanine. Our neighbors were two exuberant women from Texas, younger than I am now, understandably ready for a good time. They’d brought Scotch, offered us some, which we declined, and they politely declined our offer of Cadbury chocolate. I kept silent because I had a cassette recorder in my lap; the Texas contingent gave out with appropriate exultations. The audience in general was excited and excitable, although they paid attention to the solos. (One of the women, commenting on the applause, can be heard to say, “You like something, you tell ’em about it,” and who would disagree?)
The players were a constellation of heroes: Gene Krupa, drums; Larry Ridley, string bass; Teddy WIlson, piano; Jim Hall, guitar; Red Norvo, vibraphone; Bud Freeman, tenor saxophone; Benny Carter, alto saxophone; Vic Dickenson, trombone; Bobby Hackett, cornet; Roy Eldridge, trumpet.
The first set offered four long songs, and HONEYSUCKLE ROSE / JUMPIN’ WITH SYMPHONY SID were the closing pair, with Gene, whose health was not good, playing only those two, taking over for the younger Bobby Rosengarden. (Gene would die fifteen months later.) There is some distortion; my microphone was not ready for 6000 people; the engineers seemed only partially aware of how acoustic instruments might sound in such a huge hall. The ensembles are not always clear, and the applause can drown out part of a solo, although this excitable audience is tame when compared to some recorded at JATP concerts. Even in substandard sound, the music comes through, the individual voices of the soloists, and their pleasure at being on this stage together. Our pleasure you will have to imagine, but it was substantial then, perhaps more so now.
Consider for yourself, with or without Scotch or chocolate:
The Festival concerts were reviewed regularly in the New York Times. Here are the opening paragraphs of Don Heckman’s review, “MIDNIGHT JAM SESSION AT MUSIC HALL,” in the New York Times, July 5, 1972:
The jam session, that most venerable of institutions, is still at the very heart of the jazz experience. Rare though it may be in these days of musical eclecticism, it continues to be a kind of proving ground for musicians, in which they can test and measure themselves against their contemporaries.
The Newport Jazz Festival had the first of two scheduled Midnight Jam Sessions at Radio City Music Hall Monday at midnight. The first group of the session, a mainstream‐oriented ensemble, included Bud Freeman, Gene Krupa, Bobby Rosengarden, Jim Hall, Larry Ridley, Vic Dickenson, Benny Carter, Roy Eldridge, Teddy Wilson and Bobby Hackett. They bounced happily through a passel of swing standards, with Carter, Eldridge and Freeman sounding particularly energetic.
Then the old gladiator of the swing drums, Gene Krupa, was announced and the proceedings went rapidly down hill. Krupa dashed buoyantly on stage and proceeded to hammer away in a style that would have been more appropriate for a Blaze Starr strip show than for the backing of some of the finest jazz players in the world. Yet his reputation and his flair for showmanship sustained him, and every tasteless clang of the cymbal was met with shouts of approval from the overflow audience.
I know Mr. Heckman (born 1932) is widely-published, has a musical background, and is well-respected. Several of my readers may know him; others may find nothing extraordinary in his prose. After all, “Aren’t we all entitled to our opinions, Michael?” But I am amazed at what he heard — balanced against what readers in 2021 can hear even on my murky tape — and by his positioning himself above the artists and above the audience. His three sentences read as contempt for Krupa — a hammering gladiator who would have been more appropriate playing for a stripper — and for an audience too foolish to know, as did Mr. Heckman, that they should have sat silent in disapproval.
That kind of self-aggrandizing disapproval makes good copy, but it is to me a repellent attitude towards the art one is supposed to depict and evaluate. I know that if I had been able to ask Gene his reaction, he might have sighed and said, “Chappie, these fellows do it to sell papers. I don’t take them seriously,” and he told Harriet Choice that the wild applause was because the young audience perceived him as an icon of marijuana culture — which I think says more about his deep modesty than anything else.
At this late date, I am offended by Heckman’s paragraph, for the sake of this holy art. Sneering is not art criticism.
It was and is a blessing to be in the same room with these players.
Billie Holiday and Sidney Catlett at the Metropolitan Opera House, January 18, 1944
Here’s an extraordinarily fulfilling eighteen minutes, as if — in the name of humanity and enlightenment — a New York radio station was able to gather everyone of note into its studios to uplift listeners: Billie Holiday, vocal; Roy Eldridge, Charlie Shavers; trumpet; Vic Dickenson, Bennie Morton, trombone; Ed Hall, clarinet; Ben Webster, tenor saxophone; Art Tatum, piano; Al Casey, guitar; Slam Stewart, string bass; Arthur Trappier, drums; Josh White, vocal and guitar.
“NEW WORLD A-COMING: THE STORY OF NEGRO MUSIC,” Broadcast on WMCA, June 25, 1944, based on the book by Roi Ottlei, narrated by Canada Lee. Theme by Duke Ellington. Introduction / I GOT A HEAD LIKE A ROCK Josh White / FINE AND MELLOW Billie / ROYAL GARDEN BLUES / ALL OF ME Billie / I GOT RHYTHM // Hall Johnson Choir announced but edited out of this recording.
The music is timeless; the commentary may seem less so: I was struck by “from cabin to cabaret,” and sensitized listeners might find other archaisms. But the music!
P.S. “Jazz can be hot or languid.” You knew that, of course.
P.P.S., based on fifteen minutes of online curiosity: WMCA was a rock-and-pop AM station in the Sixties, home of the “Good Guys.” Started in 1925, it had a wide range of popular music programming, with programs aimed at an African-American audience. In 1989, it became a Christian radio station and continues today.
Few words. This song has been going through my head since November. It’s appropriate today.
Here’s an uplifting performance by Paolo Alderighi, piano; Dan Barrett, trombone; Jeff Hamilton, drums; Phil Flanigan, string bass, recorded on March 8, 2014, at the Jazz Bash by the Bay in Monterey, California:
And a 1958 recording by Ruby Braff, with Roy Eldridge, Hank Jones, Mundell Lowe, Leonard Gaskin, and Don Lamond — one of the shortest performances of the post-78 era, but completely satisfying:
Bobby, listening to Vic Dickenson at Childs Paramount, October 1952
Bobby Hackett remains one of my musical heroes, and I cherish his recordings, the few times I saw him in person, and the sound of his horn in my memory, a sound I can call up at will. In case you need a reminder of Bobby’s delicate mastery, here is his 1975 performance of SWEET LORRAINE at the Grande Parade du Jazz in July 1975.
Bobby’s son Ernie — swinging drummer and vivid individualist — has fascinated me since I encountered him on Facebook years ago. Outspoken, tender, kind, hilarious, a man of deep perceptions and deep emotions, he’s been a remarkable presence to me. Recently, thanks to our mutual friend Clyde Groves — who appearshereand here(Clyde is Billy Butterfield’s son-in-law) — Ernie and I had a delightful long phone conversation about the people we both love, a few noted in my title, which it is my honor to share with you here.
Now . . . here’s what Ernie told me, just before Christmas 2020 — a big present for all of us.
Simplicity was Dad’s art. He loved the melody, and he knew how to play around with the melody, but he never got out of control. He didn’t like the spotlight, the glamour, and he rarely took the first chorus. What always hit me in the family, blessed as I was, was his wonderful sense of humor, his dry, witty sense of humor. He was going through Customs once, and the agent looked at the cornet case and said, “Is that a musical instrument?” Dad’s one-word reply was, “Occasionally.” Little things like that: all my life I was familiar with those little things.
He was one of nine children, in Providence, and he dropped out of school at a very early age, because he started playing gigs, I believe on violin, then ukulele in the beginning. He didn’t play horn until he was in his teens. I didn’t know many of my aunts and uncles, except Aunt Dottie was very very close with Dad, and she had the same type of humor. She and her husband used to visit us, after the family relocated to Cape Cod, because they were coming in from Providence. There’s something about a dry sense of humor with musicians to begin with. I can’t say why, but I’m sure you’ve spotted it. Dad’s favorite phrase, if anybody asked him about politics, was “When the President tells me how to play the horn, then I’ll tell him how to run the country.” Plain and simple, to the point.
When he was home, he constantly practiced in the living room. In his boxer shorts. He never played a tune in his practicing, nothing but scales. Modulating scales, up and down, that’s all he ever practiced. And if people were coming over, he might put his robe on, or a t-shirt. That’s how Billy Butterfield was also. I knew Billy to some degree, because when Dad and Billy happened to be in New York at the same time, and Billy was passing through, he would always stay with us at our house in Jackson Heights. And I’ll always remember, Billy, first thing in the morning, coming down in his shorts – at least he had a t-shirt on – hair all messed up, saying good morning to everybody. He was like a shorter, stubbier Dad.
[I’d asked Ernie about Bobby’s generous nature, which sometimes led him to be taken advantage of, and his reaction.] I’d say he shrugged his shoulders, and always moved forward. The one thing that comes to mind would be the Jackie Gleason records. He never berated Jackie Gleason for that. My mother blamed Jack Philbin, his manager at the time, who I just recently learned was Regis Philbin’s father. It was Dad’s decision. He took the ten thousand dollars, because he wanted to buy a house for the family, for us, not knowing what was going to happen in the future. He wasn’t bitter about it. Nobody in the family ever begrudged him for making that decision. He did it for us.
He got along with just about everybody.
Mom was from Fall River, Mass., and Dad was from Providence. I don’t know exactly how they met, but I do know they married on Nantucket, and I think he was with the Casa Loma band at the time. Of course, this is way before my time, so it’s all hearsay and articles that I’m remembering. [Ernie asked his niece, Michelle, and she added this wonderful story: “Grandpa had a two week gig at a posh resort on Nantucket, with full accommodations. He asked Grandma to go with him, but she said she couldn’t travel with him as a single lady. So he suggested that they get married the first day they were there, then they had a two week (all paid) honeymoon on Nantucket.”]
They were wonderful friends. It was a rocky marriage at times: we’ve all been through that. I’m sure you know that Dad was an alcoholic. We’ve always been realistic about that. It was out in the open. Dad’s loving term to refer to Mom was “The Warden.” I’m not going to say he never drank at home: he slipped a couple of times. It became ugly when that happened. My sister and I used to spend nights crying at the top of the stairs with Mom and Dad going at it, arguing. A day or two, they’d get over it and Dad would straighten up again.
Incidentally, contrary to popular belief of “Ernie Caceres” – I was named after my Mom’s older brother named Ernest – who died at an early age in a freak bus accident.
Eddie Condon was my Godfather! I always figured that my parents thought if anything should ever happen to them that Eddie would be sure to teach me how to handle alcohol!
When I was about seventeen, I dropped out of high school. I was still playing drums. From what I understand, George Wettling showed me how to hold a pair of drumsticks when I was about five years old, though I don’t remember that. I’d spent a couple of years playing electric guitar in a high school rock and roll band, but I still had a set of drums.
If I hadn’t become a jazz drummer, I probably would have become a rock drummer. Actually my first choice of music was always rock! What sort of pushed me towards jazz was my association with all the guys that worked with Dad!
Dad had a detached garage that he converted into a sound studio, outside the house. I was in there one night and Dad knocked on the door, came in, and said, “How’d you like to come out on the road with me and learn how to play drums?” I was flabbergasted – I was seventeen — and the first thing that came to my mind was “You don’t dare say no to that.” What an experience. And that’s what proceeded to happen over the next couple of years.
The first thing I realized was that when Dad was on the road, he was off the wagon. My first professional gig with Dad was in Allentown, Pennsylvania. It was about a two or three-week stint, and Dave McKenna was with us. And I learned how to drive because it was very rare that Dad and Dave were on the road and could drink together, because Dad had to drive back to the hotel every night. However, they learned quickly that if the kid drove them back home at night, they could have fun during the gig. And that’s how I got my license. It could be sad at times: Dad’s playing suffered quite a bit when he drank, and it was obvious. He was always apologetic to me the next day. He was embarrassed that I saw him like that. But we muddled through it.
I really learned on the job. It was a good education. One of my fortes as a drummer was keeping very good time, not dragging or rushing. And the reason I got that way was because in the beginning, if I started to drag the slightest shade, Dad would stomp his foot, on stage, to the right beat. And, boy, I probably turned beet red. That’s embarrassing! If I started rushing, he would slow me right down. He would correct me immediately. But it paid off. I talk a lot about going into parochial schooling and then into the army, and all the discipline I went through, but when you look back at it as an adult, you’re thankful for it. It taught you. Things were done the right way.
[I asked Ernie about Bobby’s dear friend and colleague (and my hero) Vic Dickenson.] Oh, boy. My uncle. He and Dad had a brotherly relationship. The thing that hit me the most is that after Dad passed, Mom and I relocated to New York City from Cape Cod. That’s when I started hanging around Eddie Condon’s and Jimmy Ryan’s, and getting ready to make my move in that direction, and Vic just took me under his wing like you wouldn’t believe. I’ll talk about the risqué parts – the many, many breaks we spent in his Oldsmobile 98, “The Office,” for our smoke breaks.
His sense of humor was astonishing also. Subtle, so subtle. One night at Condon’s, we came out from being in his car on one of the breaks. I remember standing there – he always had the best stuff in the world – I remember getting up on the stage and saying, “How the heck am I going to get through this? My God.” Usually getting high didn’t affect my playing, at least I didn’t think so, anyway, because I was high. So, we started playing, and it was during the first chorus. Now Vic, at Eddie Condon’s, always sat right in front of the mounted tom-tom. And Connie Kay, God bless him, always left his drums for me. So we were playing, and Vic turned around to me with a big smile, and he tapped the tom-tom, and said, “Whaddaya think?” And I said, “Whoa!” and his reply was, “Wait another minute or two. Just wait.”
What a wonderful soul he was, a loving person. You could easily see the love affair between him and Dad. In fact, I was just watching the JUST JAZZ program, where they were doing JITTERBUG WALTZ. You could just see the love between the two of them. It was just amazing. It was a wonderful show. They had such mutual respect for one another – not only as musicians, but as people. It was really quite a friendship. Vic was family. There was no other way around it. We all loved Uncle Vic, and he was just a sweetheart to all of us. And he never acted drunk. He’d drink Cutty Sark all night long, a straight shot in a glass, and a back of water, but he never lost his cool, ever, no matter how much of it he drank. God bless him. He knew himself – very much so.
I have to tell you about Vic and his joints. When Vic rolled a joint, it was the most perfect joint, and the trick was you’d have to roll it quite loose, and leave some room at the end to tuck that end in with the blunt end of a wooden match. So that way the grass wouldn’t fall out of it. And it was perfectly shaped, like an English Oval cigarette. So I taught myself how to do it, so I could roll a joint just like Uncle Vic. So one night we were in his car, hanging out, and I said, “Here, Vic. Do my stick here,” and he said, “All right, OK,” and I lit it up and handed it to him, and he looked at me and said, “Did I give you this?” And I just had the biggest smile, and I said, “Nope. I made that.” He said, “Get outta here!” I said, “No, I taught myself how to roll like you!” and he just got the biggest kick out of that. What an honor!
Dad had a clique of musician friends who came to the house. I’m told that Louis would occasionally visit our house in Jackson Heights! But I was too young to even remember. There was Ruby Braff, and I think Sam Margolis a couple of times. He was another sweetheart. Sam subbed from time to time at Condon’s, but we also worked together with Max Kaminsky, after Max’s regular drummer, Freddie Moore, a funny gentleman, really nice guy, wanted to retire, and Max asked me if I wanted to be in the band.
I could go on about Max: we had a love-hate relationship. Max could be pretty nasty when he wanted to be. There was one gig he got for us in North Carolina, a wedding at a golf resort. It turned out to be a pain in the neck: Sam was on it with us. We had to fly down, and the gig happened, and then the next day we were supposed to play in the garden for the reception, and it became obvious that we weren’t going to get paid at the end of the gig, but at the month, like a club date, he would have our money. Well, I was living completely hand to mouth at that time, struggling to keep my studio apartment on Central Park West, and I got so mad at him, really mad. We were returning, and we were at the airport in North Carolina, at a long gateway, and I saw Max walking down from the opposite direction. I was just staring at him, because he knew I wanted my money. But sometimes you’d have to love Max, too. He took me off to the side, and he looked really nervous. He gave me a hundred-dollar bill, maybe half of what I was supposed to get, and he said, “I can’t give you the whole thing now, Ernie, but take this, I hope it helps you. Please don’t tell any of the other guys.” So I shook his hand and I kept his secret. We used to get mad at each other a lot, but we forgot about it the next day and hugged each other.
Tony Bennett wasn’t a frequent visitor to the house, but from time to time he’d pop in. Whenever Dad had these visits, everybody disappeared into the garage – are you familiar with the air freshener / deodorizer Ozium? They used to use that to cover up the marijuana.
On that subject: a few years later, before I was going in to the service, I was doing a four-week gig with Dad in New Orleans, my first opportunity to be in New Orleans, and we were at Al Hirt’s nightclub. At the time Dad had a pseudo-manager named Leo Kappos, a Greek gentleman, short little guy, likeable. Mom hated him, because she knew that he was Dad’s enabler. The funny thing was, that at that time, I’ll be honest with you, I was already a pothead. Dad used to try to smoke grass to stay away from alcohol, but it never really worked for him. So one night, I was going downstairs to the gig, in a tux, and I got in the elevator, and Leo was in there too, just Leo and me. And Leo started laughing, and he said, “Listen, I gotta get you and your Dad together, because the two of you are smoking pot all the time and not letting each other know about it. You gotta get to know each other!” I never forgot that.
Dad would try it from time to time, but his high of choice was beer. He had a very low tolerance, because he had a very slight frame, he always suffered with diabetes, which didn’t make drinking any easier. Half a Heineken and he’d almost be on the floor. It was difficult. He had quite a battle to stay away from that.
I’ll slide that around to another story that involves me introducing myself to Frank Sinatra. [Here you can enjoy Frank and Bobby.]
Dad and I were playing at the Riverboat in New York, in the basement of the Empire State Building, 1966 or 1967. It had to be around July 4. Dad was featured, and I guess a six or seven-piece band. And one night, I noticed Tony [Bennett] came in, and he was only there for ten or fifteen minutes. He and Dad kind of disappeared. And at the next break, Dad came over to me, and said, “Listen. Tony told me that Frank’s going to be at Jilly’s tonight. He’s having a party. We’re all welcome to stop in there and join him.” My sister idolized Frank Sinatra all her life, so Dad said to me, “Call Barbara, and have her and her boyfriend meet us at Jilly’s, around 12:30 or 1 AM,” which I did. Dad and I got in a cab – I wasn’t quite driving at that time – up to Jilly’s, on 55th Street, I think it was, and we went in.
The party was in a private room at the back, and people were throwing firecrackers around the bar. It was Frank’s crew, because it was the Fourth of July and he felt like throwing firecrackers around. We went in the back room, Dad and I, and Dad started to drink, had a Heineken. My sister and her boyfriend showed up, and that was it for the family, the four of us, we’re at a table. Off to my left was a long Last Supper-type of table with Mr. Sinatra in the middle of it, with his back against the wall, and he was entertaining the people at the table. So all of a sudden, Dad said, “Ernie, I want you to go over and introduce yourself to Mr. Sinatra.” My legs almost crumpled out from under me, I almost fainted. When Dad was drinking, you didn’t dare say no. So I had to toughen up for this.
I walked behind the back of the table, and I came up right behind – I don’t like calling him Frank, he was Mr. Sinatra to me. He was in the middle of a story, a joke, whatever, and the two goons on either side of him, with their hands in their laps, were staring at me, like, “What are you doing here?” Nothing was said, but they would not take their eyes off me. I was waiting for Mr. Sinatra to end the story so I could quickly tap him on the shoulder and say, “Hi, I’m Ernie Hackett. My Dad said I had to say hi to you,” which is what happened. When I went to tap him on the shoulder, the two goons went to stand up, so right away, I blurted out, “Mr. Sinatra, I’m Ernie Hackett, Bobby Hackett’s son. He told me to come over, I should say hi.” And he was very gracious, stood up, shook my hand, gave me a big smile, said, “Thank you so much, Ernie. Very nice to meet you,” and that was that.
Now we fast-forward ten to fifteen years. Now I was playing at Eddie Condon’s. Dad had passed. Wild Bill Davison was in town, which is going to lead me into another story. I don’t know if you remember at Condon’s, the big table was the round one right in front of the bandstand, and that’s where the celebrities would sit. Sinatra came in with his wife Barbara, and a priest who always traveled with him – I think that was in case he needed the last rites – and three or four other people at the table, to enjoy Wild Bill. After the set ended, and remember, at Eddie Condon’s, the stage was about two or three feet off the ground, I got down from the drums onto the floor, and there was a table right there, and someone started chatting with me, I don’t know, about Dad or something, two or three minutes. All of a sudden I feel a tap on my shoulder, I turn around, and it’s Frank Sinatra. I couldn’t believe it. He shook my hand, and all he said was, “I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed your playing, Ernie. It was just fantastic.” I didn’t know what to say! I just thanked him. I often wonder, with my sense of humor, if I had pulled a Don Rickles on him and said, “Hey, Frank. I’m just talking to people here. Can you wait a minute? I’ll be right with you!” but thank God I didn’t do that. He might have shot me: I don’t know.
But I always liked Frank Sinatra as a person. He was a wonderful, wonderful man, very gracious. He donated – I don’t remember the amount of money – the New Jersey Jazz Society had a benefit for Mom, and I think he donated two or three thousand dollars, which at that time was like ten thousand dollars. And he was at Condon’s one night, waiting for the rest of his entourage to come up from the rest room, and he was under the portrait at the end of the bar, just standing there, staring off into the distance. He wasn’t a very tall gentleman, if you recall. I went up to him and said, “Frank, I’m Ernie Hackett. I don’t know if you remember me,” and he just nodded his head. “I just want to thank you so much for the donation you made for Dad’s benefit,” and all he did was nod his head in acceptance. He wouldn’t talk about anything nice that he did. That was very private to him.
But the punchline is this. And I always wondered, and I would almost guarantee that he came up and tapped me on the shoulder because he remembered that’s how I introduced myself to him. I’ll bet you anything, he said to himself, “I remember that kid. He’s Bobby Hackett’s son. He tapped me on the shoulder once.”
Here’s the side story about Wild Bill. You must know about him and his background. He wasn’t the quietest of souls. Cliff Leeman, of course, was his favorite drummer. And Wild Bill would come in to Condon’s, maybe two or three times a year, for a two-week stint. He always insisted on Cliff being there. This time around, Cliff was starting to fail, and he wasn’t feeling well any longer. So he told Ed Polcer and [Red] Balaban, who ran the place, that he couldn’t make it this time around. Well, Ed and Red decided to give me a shot at it, which I was very thankful for. I get to replace Cliff? Good enough that I’m replacing Connie Kay every night!
So, Monday came, and I’m coming in again with my snare and my stick bag, because Connie always left his drums there for me. I walked in to the club, and I saw that Wild Bill and his wife Anne were sitting all the way in the back, having coffee or something. We had never met. I walked in to the club, deposited my snare drum and bag on the stage, and came up, introduced myself. I said, “Hey, Wild Bill, a pleasure to meet you. I’m Ernie Hackett and I’ll be playing drums with you for the next couple of weeks.” He stood up and shouted, “WHERE THE FUCK IS CLIFF?” Well, that’s a fine how-d’you-do! How do you get over that one? Well, the ending of it was a sweet story. After the first set, Wild Bill came up to me and said, “I like the way you play.” And then he insisted, going forward, that if Cliff couldn’t make it, I had to be his replacement. So I had another medal on my chest. My head got a little bit bigger at that time. But I’ll never forget WHERE THE FUCK IS CLIFF? That was typical Bill.
Another one was Papa Jo Jones. You know how cantankerous he could be. He took me under his wing, and I used to love hanging with him at the bar after the gig, with the two of us getting drunk, or high, whatever, and he would go on a real rant, a tirade about anything! And then he’d turn around with a sly little smile, and wink at me, like “What kind of reaction did I get from that one?” He was letting me in on his game. He was very much an actor. God, what a talent. He used to sit in at the drums sometimes, after the gig, and just go up there with the brushes and play the drums. And my jaw would be on the floor. Then, the honor of letting me sit next to him at the bar, in his court.
One time, Ruby Braff and I had a falling-out. I joined the club! I interrupted him, one night when he was telling a joke. Oh my God. He stopped talking to me. I tried calling him, and he wouldn’t pick up the phone. Well, he’d pick up the phone (we didn’t have Caller ID back then) and hang up on me. We parted ways. We stayed away from each other a good amount of time, maybe six-seven-eight months. And then, all of a sudden, one night the Magic White Powder parade was marching downstairs and Ruby looked at me and said, “Come on. Come with us.” We both did that. And we came downstairs, we looked at each other, and started laughing, and he gave me a hug and said, “OK. The hatchet’s buried.” I said, “Thank you. It took you long enough,” and we were fine after that.
I loved Jimmy Andrews. Jimmy and I were the closest of friends. He was very quiet, but what a sense of humor, and a gentleman. I loved Mike Burgevin. Jimmy and Mike, they were like brothers. And Mike, a quiet guy but a real gentleman of a person.
My splash on the scene was after Dad passed, and I’m kind of happy it worked like that. It allowed me to be more of myself.
So when Dad passed, we were living up on Cape Cod there, and I was doing a lot of odd gigs there – Mom had the house. Mom wanted to sell the house and move back to New York, which is what we ended up doing, and I got married to my second wife at the time. We went back from Cape Cod to New York and got an apartment there. I thought, I have my drums here, I have a car, I’ve got to start getting into the scene. I’d drive into Manhattan and start hanging out at Condon’s and Ryan’s, three-four times a week, just to hang out, and eventually to sit in, which kind of broke the ice for me, because these guys got to hear what the Hackett kid could do.
And all the Black people had such respect for Dad and everyone took me under their wing. Do you know Jackie Williams? I understand he’s still going — another wonderful friend of the family, a funny, funny guy. I played with Roy Eldridge quite a bit, a wonderful guy, but I don’t think he enjoyed my style of playing as much as Condon’s did. But that didn’t get me. I don’t expect everyone in the world to love my style of drumming. But Roy was a wonderful guy. I loved him, and he always treated me with the utmost respect. I loved Jimmy McPartland too, a great character. And his wife! We weren’t that close as friends because he wasn’t as much a hanger-outer. I think he was curbing his drinking. Marian was very polite and demure, such a lady, and a fantastic musician. The two of them took me up to Salem, Massachusetts for a one-week gig with Frank Tate – he and I were great buddies, through Dad – and we had a great time.
The hangouts after the gig were the cream of the crop at Condon’s. The gigs were great, but I had to stay sober until the end of it, so I used to ration one Heineken at a break. But then, after the last set, I started mixing shots of Johnnie Black with it, and that’s when the party would begin. It was such an honor to be exposed to all that, to get to know all these guys.
There’s a thirty-minute video on YouTube of a night at Eddie Condon’s. That’s me on drums. I’ll never forget that night. It was, I believe, a Monday night, and I was subbing for Connie. I came in and was setting up my snare drum, and a couple of college-looking kids were setting up very professional video equipment, right in front of the bandstand. And I was always a rabble-rouser. I’m not proud of it all the time, but if there was trouble to be started it was started by me. I got done setting up the drums and rearranging the stands, and then I came down the stairs and the one guy who seemed to be more in charge – as it turned out, it was Red Balaban’s cousin – I politely asked him, “What are you going to be filming this for?” “Oh, it’s just a college project. It’s nothing more than that.” But there were two very professional-looking cameras. I said, “Oh, really. Is the club planning to pay the band scale for this, for the videotaping?” And he said, “No, we’re just a couple of college students.” I said, “Oh. I have to talk to Eddie Polcer about this,” and that’s how I left it. I think I told one of the college kids, “If the red light goes on, and we’re not getting paid scale, I’m not playing,” and evidently the kid went back to Eddie and told him.
So Eddie came in, and it was getting closer to hit time, maybe 8:30, and we were supposed to be going on in ten or fifteen minutes. I went outside to have a cigarette, and Polcer always bummed cigarettes off of me – that’s another story. Eddie came outside, and said, “So, you’re not going to play if the red light goes on?” I said, “Yeah, exactly. Eddie, you know how this works. You’re going to make a video, you’ve got to pay the musicians.” We were going back and forth. He didn’t want to give in. Finally, he said to me, “Do you know how much scale is?” “No,” I said, “but we can both find out in the morning with a call to Local 802.” This is what really got under his skin. He said, “If I pay you scale, will you play?” My reply was, “If you pay the whole band scale, yes,” and he just looked at me like he wanted to kill me, and he gave in at that point, “All right. You got it. They’ll all get scale.”
Years later, he was at the Atlanta Jazz Party, and my wife and I, when she was still here, God bless her, we used to go every year and visit with the guys from New York, and Eddie and I remained close friends. We’d hug each other and reminisce. And he told me, years later, “Red Balaban went to his death never knowing that you did that, that night. If I’d ever told him, he would have banned you from the club completely.” I said, “Thank you.” I was always on the ins and the outs with Eddie Condon’s. They finally stopped using me. If you go back and look at that video, Jimmy Andrews and I were the only two they didn’t interview – because we were the rough guys!
The good old days. Just an honor! And as Vic would say, “Ding ding!”
“Just an honor!” sums it up for me. Bless Ernie, and all our heroes above.
Is the world going a little too fast for you? Is this your internal soundtrack?
Do you feel like a character in a Fleischer cartoon where everything’s too speedy to be brought under control? (I mean no disrespect to the 1936 Henderson band — with spectacular playing on this fast blues, appropriately called JANGLED NERVES — from Chu Berry, Roy Eldridge, Sidney Catlett, Fernando Arbello, and Buster Bailey.)
I believe the following interlude will calm and enliven your nerves at the same time. It happened here, in a vanished but remembered past — the third weekend in September 2009 at Jazz at Chautauqua, Joe Boughton’s creation, at the Athenaeum Hotel in Chautauqua, New York.
Joe loved to begin and end his weekend programs with ballad medleys, and here is a segment of one of them, featuring Duke Heitger, trumpet; Andy Schumm, cornet; Dan Barrett, trombone; Scott Robinson, tenor saxophone; Bob Reitmeier, clarinet; Ehud Asherie, piano; Marty Grosz, guitar; Frank Tate, string bass;, Pete Siers, drums. The bill of fare is MEMORIES OF YOU (Duke), STARDUST (Bob), PRELUDE TO A KISS (Scott), OLD FOLKS (Andy), IF I HAD YOU (Dan, with the ensemble joining in):
Let’s see how you’re feeling tomorrow. Leave a message with Mary Ann.
I have never been involved in sports as participant or spectator. But when I was not yet ten, at recess, there were intense discussions, often arguments, among my male classmates about the merits of baseball stars Mickey Mantle or Roger Maris, competing to break Babe Ruth’s home run record. I tried to join in, because I wanted to belong, and it would have been foolish to say, “Who cares?” Looking back at least in this situation, we had statistical evidence: hits, runs, RBI’s and the like. But this hierarchical squabbling struck me as silly then, and seems even sillier now when applied to art and creativity.
I should preface what follows by writing that jazz is a holy art to me, to quote Schubert. And if what follows sounds irritable, you can say, “Michael’s gotten crabby in semi-quarantine, I see,” and I wouldn’t argue the point. But the reason for this post is that it disturbs me when I see people who believe themselves experts and advocates about the music debasing it by their reactions.
A day or so ago I made the mistake of entering into a Facebook discussion on a wonderful page devoted to Lester Young, where someone with fine taste posted Lester’s 1942 version of BODY AND SOUL (Nat Cole and Red Callender). The first response that caught my eye? I quote, “Sorry, but coleman hawkins owns this song.” Various people chimed in to proclaim the superiority of their favorite player, and I, rather than leaving the keyboard, wrote, “Art is not a competitive sport,” which also met with a variety of responses, which I won’t go into here.
On another page, someone posted that a revered drummer was the “GOAT,” or “Greatest of All Time,” not an omnivorous animal. You can imagine the discussions that ensued, the rimshots and ride-cymbal crashes.
I found it odd that fans were so much more vehement about presumed superiority than most musicians were and are.
I don’t deny that some musicians were competitive by nature, wanting to show their powers, their mastery. Some of the greatest lived to “battle,” among them Roy Eldridge, and “cutting contests” have a long history. Norman Granz, knowing his audience, made these tests of strength and audience appeal the center of Jazz at the Philharmonic with “the drum battle” between Buddy Rich and Gene Krupa, or gladiatorial exercises between Illinois Jacquet and Flip Phillips, between Roy and Dizzy GIllespie. However, when the concert was over, these musicians were friends who rode the band bus in harmony. Artists with even a small amount of self-awareness respect each other, because they know how hard it is to play or to sing well, how it requires great skill and constant devotion to the art and the craft.
So these discussions of WHO’S THE BEST? are driven by audiences who want to see their team win. They are also fueled by journalism and press-agentry. Jazz has been weighed and measured by people who gave recordings and concerts stars and letter grades, in magazines that encouraged readers to vote for their favorites. People would then buy the next issue to see how their votes counted. All of this seems inexplicable now, that in 1956 a new record that we think a classic was given two stars in Down Beat when it appeared. Or that X placed forty-seventh in the Critics’ Poll for that year. Polls and year-end lists of the Ten Best CDs of the Year still go on, the latter energized by people of good character, but I think of them as marketing tools, not much else. These competitions were good business for winners: if you won the poll, your price would increase.
We continue to live in a culture that greatly values the subjective opinion of the audience member(s). I bought kitchen knives recently, and the company invited me to “submit my review.” I was happy to, because the knives are exceedingly sharp. But my review was a way of their getting free copywriting. What I wrote might motivate someone to buy a knife, but it would have no effect on the knife’s quality. It remains that way in art. If you say that Tatum is your favorite pianist, does his work get any better: if you say he is too ornate, does he falter? I am also reminded of someone who ran a jazz club, who told me that the way they knew if a band was good was the number of people in the room. To me, the symphony means more than the volume of applause.
In print and in person, there were and are the jazz ideologues offering verdicts. M “is the greatest jazz singer,” where P “is just a pop vocalist.” C is “ground-breaking,” “harmonically adventurous,” “innovative,” “cutting-edge,” “genre-bending.” Reading this, I must assume that everyone else is sitting in the dirt, looking sadly at their dinner, a half-done potato covered with ash.
Art does not lend itself to the collection of evidence that baseball does. If a singer has a larger range, is she a “better” artist? If a drummer has a more dazzling technique, is he the King? Is the superior musician the one who has more gigs, more fame, more money, more recognition?
I understand that there are artists who have been justifiably elevated to the pantheon (which, to me, is different than anyone’s “Hall of Fame”) but this also speaks to the Star System in Jazz, where there must be only one supernova in the galaxy. For you, it’s Miles or Trane, for you Bird or Rollins, for you, Duke, for you, Louis. The Star System is evident in what passes for “jazz criticism,” but perhaps most forcefully in Jazz Studies textbooks, where the Stars whiz by at blurry speed. Louis-Roy-Dizzy-Miles. James P.-Earl-Teddy-Tatum-Monk-Cecil. And so on. No room for Tony Fruscella or Buster Bailey because the publisher’s budget only allows for 650 pages and this price point.
Mind you, not only have I no objection to a rainbow of personal tastes, because I am a walking collection of them, and I revel in this. If the music that makes you most happy is on an Impulse CD or a Dial 78 or an American Music one, who would I be to say that your feelings should be challenged?
But let us give up pretending that preference is empirical judgment. Let us not treat individual reaction as law for everyone. To write that someone is “the best,” or “better than,” is an attempt to say, “I like this. Therefore it is good, because my judgment is always valid,” and then, “Why do you assert that something else that I do not champion is better? Are you attacking my discernment? I must defend my family’s honor! Pistols at dawn!”
We are thus back at recess, a bunch of quarrelsome fourth-grade boys. Art deserves reverence. And the most reverent response may be rapt silence.
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.
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.”
My phone rang on July 3. This in itself would not be unusual. But that the caller ID panel read “Ephraim Resnick” was a surprise. I had been on a quest to find the wonderful and elusive trombonist (now pianist) Ephie Resnick for a few years, and had enlisted my dear friend — also a fine trombonist — Dick Dreiwitz in the search.
I knew Ephie first as a beautiful soulful viruoso heard on live recordings from George Wein’s Storyville in 1952 — alongside Pee Wee Russell and Ruby Braff; later, I’d seen him with the New York Jazz Repertory Company in their 1972 tribute to Louis Armstrong, some of which was released on Atlantic, and then Bob Greene’s Jelly Roll Morton show in 1974, issued on RCA Victor. Perhaps eight years ago I had heard him playing piano at Arthur’s Tavern with the Grove Street Stompers. He asked me to refrain from videoing him, but he was friendly and I did buy his two recent CDs, NEW YORK SURVIVOR and THE STRUGGLE. Still more recently, a musical friend of his, Inigo Kilborn, had asked me if Ephie was still on the planet. He is. At 92, he’s a clear speaker and thinker, although his memory is “sometimes OK, sometimes not too good.”
Ephie and I made a date to talk on the morning of Monday, July 6. He doesn’t have a computer. “I live in the last century,” and when I asked if he wanted me to transcribe the interview and send it to him for corrections, he said no. So this is what he told me of his life, with my minimal editing to tie loose ends together. It’s not only the usual story of early training, gigs played, musicians encountered, but a deeper human story. If you’d never heard Ephie play, you’d think he wasn’t all that competent, given his protestations. I wonder at the gap between the way we perceive ourselves and the way the world does.
With musical examples, I present our conversation to you here.
I began with the most obvious question, “When you were a kid, did you want to be a musician?” and Ephie began his tale.
I come from a family of anger and bitterness and humiliation, and all that stuff, so I was in confusion most of the time. When I was in first grade, and this is really important, I was born left-handed, and they made me right-handed, so it really did away with my focus. I got asthma, and I started stuttering soon after that. So my life was a turmoil.
And when I was about sixteen, I guess, I hadn’t any idea of doing anything. I didn’t think I’d be able to do anything. And I heard a Louis Armstrong recording, and that really made me crazy. It showed me a way out, the way out of my turmoil. So when I went to school, they gave me a trombone. Because the guy said, “I want somebody to play the trombone,” and he pointed at me. At that point, it was difficult to breathe, it was difficult to talk, and I couldn’t get a sound out of the horn. And I didn’t understand it until just recently, when I moved to Brooklyn, after I was finished, finally. I wasn’t breathing. I couldn’t breathe.
I took the trombone home from school, I tried to play it, and really couldn’t play it much. But I listened to a lot of records. I listened to a lot of Louis Armstrong then. I got as much as I could out of him. And then I started, for some reason, to go out playing. In little clubs and things. I don’t know how I could play — I didn’t practice. But I played, mostly with black people at the beginning. And there were two places, especially, where I could play. A guy named Bob Maltz had a place downtown, all the way downtown. And across the street a guy named Jack Crystal — there’s a comedian, Billy Crystal, and Jack was his father. [The Stuyvesant Casino and the Central Plaza.] Both of these guys hired mostly black musicians from the Thirties, and I started out just sitting in, and then I started getting paid. And that was the beginning of my jazz playing.
And then I made a record [in 1947]. Irv Kratka, the guy who started Music Minus One, was in our little group. I went into — I forget what it’s called now — it was on Broadway and they had studios and rehearsal studios. I walked into one and there was Bob Wilber and his little group with Denny Strong on drums. The trumpet player turned out to be the Local 802 president years after that [John Glasel] but they gave me the names of some guys, and I got together a little group and made a record. I was just around 17 or 18, I was just playing about a year. It was OK, it was sort of nice.
Here’s Ephie with Knocky Parker, piano; Irv Kratka, drums, May 1, 1949:
I turned 18, and my mother wanted me to go to a college. And I thought, I could never do that. I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t learn anything. Whatever I knew, I knew from having read myself or having heard, or something, so I got good marks in English and history. But anything I had to study and learn something, I couldn’t do it: language or science or something like that. So with all this, she wanted me to go to a college. So I applied to Juilliard, and they gave me a date for an audition. I picked a piece, and I couldn’t play it. I couldn’t play it at all. It sat there on my music stand, and once in a while I tried, but I couldn’t do it.
I should have called them up and told them I couldn’t make the audition, but I went there anyway. I played the piece perfectly. That was my life. Sometimes I played really good, sometimes I played terrible. Sometimes I played mediocre, but this time I played really good and they clapped me on the back and said, “You’ll go far, young man.” My teacher was there, Ernest Clarke, Herbert Clarke’s brother. Herbert Clarke was a trumpet virtuoso. Ernest Clarke was some sort of a name, I don’t know what he did, but he was well-known there. He was 83 then. And he opened up his book when I took my first lesson. The first page was a row of B-flats. B-flat with a hold on it, more B-flats and more B-flats. And I couldn’t play it. I couldn’t play the note. He would walk back and forth, his hands behind his back, he couldn’t figure it out. So I did that for a couple of weeks, I showed up once a week, and then after a while he turned to the second page. And there were F’s, a little higher but medium-low. And I couldn’t play that note either. And then he retired. I always say that he retired because of me.
Anyway, whatever it was, while this was happening, I was playing outside. I was sitting in and playing, going to clubs and stuff. I played a lot at the beginning with Sol Yaged. He was a clarinet player who played in the clubs where they used to have jazz and now they had strippers. So I played for the strippers with Sol Yaged. I still couldn’t get a sound on my own. When I was in the house, I couldn’t practice. I couldn’t play a scale, I couldn’t do anything. I fell apart. And I went to a lot of teachers. Nobody gave me anything. And when I moved to Brooklyn, I quit playing the trombone when I was here. I started to figure out, what it was was so simple — I guess I wasn’t breathing. I was tight. I never could find an embouchure, except once in a while it happened. It came in by itself, and when it happened, I could really play well. But I wasn’t practicing, I couldn’t play a scale, I couldn’t play anything like regular trombone players could. But I knew that.
My first year at Juilliard I got a straight A because all they did was ear stuff — ear training — and I was good at that. And piano playing, and I could do the piano. And that was it. The second year, I started getting academic subjects: science, languages and stuff, and I couldn’t do it. So I stopped going to school. And years ago, before they fixed up Forty-Second Street, it was a mess, but there was one movie theatre called The Laugh Theatre, and they had, once in a while, regular movies, but usually short subjects, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and all that stuff. So I was there, and I was laughing. My life was awful, but I was laughing. I did that for the rest of my school year, and then I got out of Juilliard. Finally. And years later I figured out that, you know, going to school would have depressed me and made me feel really awful, but being away from the school I was laughing. I felt OK. Laughing is very good for you.
Anyway, I don’t know how it was, but I got out of school, and I started working. I still couldn’t play, I still didn’t practice. So my first job was with Eddie Heywood. He was a piano player. It was an all-black band, at Cafe Society Downtown. There was also a club, Cafe Society Uptown. I was there six weeks or so, and then somebody recommended me — I don’t know how it happened — to Buddy Rich. It’s hard for me to believe. I played six weeks with Buddy Rich: Zoot Sims and Harry Edison were in the band, I forget the bass player and the piano player. So I did that, and then I came out, and that was the end of the big band era. So then I went out, maybe two or three weeks, maybe a weekend, with big bands, but they were beginning to close down. I played with a lot of them, but the only ones I could remember were Buddy Morrow, Ray McKinley, and Charlie Barnet. And with these bands, I was the jazz player.
With Charlie Barnet I also played lead, but I had one solo — that was the audition. There were about eight trombone players who auditioned for Charlie Barnet, and later on he told me that when he saw me he figured I would be the last guy to get it. But the audition was a song — I forget the name of it — [Ephie hums ESTRELLITA] — a Spanish song. It had a trombone solo, there was a high E in the middle or someplace, and I really smacked that thing. I took a chance, you know, I got it, and I was great. The other guys played that E, but they played it hesitantly, so I got the job. And that was great. I had that one solo, and I played lead, which was great for me, because I learned how to do that.
Here’s Ephie with Marty Grosz, guitar; Dick Wellstood, piano; Pops Foster, string bass; Tommy Benford, drums; Hugh McKay, cornet; John Dengler, baritone saxophone; Frank Chace, clarinet. June 6, 1951: comparative listening thanks to “Davey Tough”:
And then I started to work with small bands. I don’t know how I got this work either. Dixieland bands. Wild Bill Davison, who was at Condon’s for I guess twelve years, lost that job — they closed down or something — he went on the road and I went with him, and we made a record. Then I played with Buddy Morrow, and I was the jazz player in that band. He was a great, great trombone player, but a little stiff for my taste. Then Ray McKinley, and I was the jazz player in that band. And Bill Davison, we made a record with that. And then I went with Pee Wee Russell, Ruby Braff was in that, and I forget who else. And we made a record with him. So, so far, I made a lot of records. I got a little bit of a fan club in England because of those records. And Pee Wee — those records were in Boston, and they recorded a whole night, and they put out four ten-inchers. And then they made an lp out of it, or two lps. I don’t imagine any of these things are available now. That Pee Wee thing, it sold well, I don’t understand how, exactly. Can’t figure out those things.)
Here’s Ephie in 1952, with Pee Wee Russell, Ruby Braff, Red Richards, John Field, Kenny John — the second part of this presentation (the first offers Johnny Windhurst, Ed Hall, Vic Dickenson, George Wein, John Field, and Jo Jones). For the impatient among us, Ephie’s portion begins at 16:00:
While I was working, I was still struggling. I wanted to finally learn how to play. Since I was working, I might as well learn how to play. I still couldn’t play a scale without falling apart. But in context, I could play, somehow. I saved enough money for a couple of years and went to Philadelphia and studied with a guy named Donald Reinhardt who had a system. His system was really good, but you had to figure out the system. He couldn’t, by himself, help you.
Art DePew, a marvelous trumpet player who played lead with Harry James and a few other bands, went to him and got fixed up. Kai Winding used to run there once in a while. He had problems. His mouthpiece would slip down. Sometimes he could get it back up, sometimes he couldn’t.
Reinhardt didn’t teach me anything. He couldn’t tell you what you were doing wrong or what you should be doing. He had a book and a system. He had a lot of people, and they could look at what he had to say and do it. I couldn’t do that. I had to be told what I was doing wrong. And nobody told me I wasn’t breathing. Lots of times I couldn’t get a sound out. I had no control over it. When I played well, it had nothing to do with me. It just happened. When I played badly, there was no way for me to fix it.
I spent a couple of years there in Philadelphia, and I met my wife. She was a singer, a wonderful oratorio singer. And there was a jazz club over there, and I was playing once a week. I was playing piano in strip clubs with another guy, a very strange man. He wore a toupee, but never bought one. He wore other people’s old toupees; everybody gave him their old toupee. So he just dropped them on top of his head. I spent four years there, learned nothing, and still couldn’t figure out what was happening.
I had to come back to New York, because we got married, and she had a six-and-a half-year old son. We became friends, and that was really good. I did various things, and then a contractor called me. In those days, there was a lot of money around, money flowing freely. In music, there was a shortage of musicians, and I came in at that point.
I’ve been lucky all my life, actually.
I got a job playing in various theatres around the city, short things. There was a theatre on Sixth Avenue and Forty-Eighth Street, I believe, the contractor liked me, and he had some shows coming to New York. He said I could pick one, and one of them was HELLO, DOLLY! I did that for seven years. Playing a show, especially if you’re a jazz player, is terrible. You’re doing the same thing all the time. But I took off a lot. You could take off as long as you got somebody good, and I always got somebody better than me.
I worked with Lester Lanin and played all around the world — Ireland, France, Paris, the Philippines. The guy whose wife had all those shoes [Imelda Marcos], I played their thirtieth anniversary. We went to Hawaii, to Hong Kong, and then I came back, was home for a couple of weeks. They started a group in New York, playing different types of music, so I was in that group, and then they had a small group out of that. I was picked out of that, and we went to Russia — a jazz group. We traveled all over the country, and that was really interesting. That was during the Khruschev era. When I came back, I continued to do club dates, but I couldn’t really progress, I couldn’t learn anything. When I was forty, I still couldn’t play a scale. I was making my living as a trombone player, and I couldn’t play a scale once up and down without falling apart.
Somebody introduced me to marijuana. I tried that, and it was wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. It saved my life. The first thing I started to do after I started to smoke was to go downstairs to the basement every morning. We had small radios, and I hung the radio up, right next to my ear, as loud as I could. Not music, but talking. I started to play scales, and it sounded awful, because I couldn’t really hear it. I did that for a couple of years, and finally I got rid of the radio. I began a regular practice, for the first time in my life, when I was about forty.
But by that time I was sort of on the way down, in a way. And then I did a job with Lester Lanin in London, and I met a guy there — I knew him was I was nineteen or twenty. He became rich: his father died. Max, his father, was not too smart, and he couldn’t come to a decision: he didn’t know how to make a decision. So his father, who was a lawyer but a Mob lawyer, he was powerful with a lot of connections those days, so he put Max on the Supreme Court. He couldn’t make a decision. That was his life’s work. So I met this guy, and stayed at his house for a while, and then I stayed in London and made a record there. I have two left, of those records. The other stuff I don’t have any copies of.
Then I had an accident. I’m not sure of the timeline now. I was hit by a car, and broke both my legs and my pelvis. My ankles were messed up. I was in the hospital for about three months. When I came out, I couldn’t really move around, so I didn’t work for a couple of years. But I was lucky, again, because they just had passed a law in Albany, and if you had an accident, they called it “no fault insurance,” and gave you fifty thousand dollars and services. So I was in the hospital, and they would send me a check once a month to live on. So I didn’t work for a couple of years, but I was taken care of.
I came out, and I wasn’t working very much at all, so I called Marty Grosz. I knew him from years ago. We had worked together, in a bar someplace. Not in New York, someplace else. I forget where it was. And I called him, and we made a record. [THE END OF INNOCENCE.] And it got a great review from John S. Wilson, the Times music reviewer. He wrote a really good review of it, not in the paper, but in an international magazine. So I sold about a thousand records. People wrote in. One guy sent it back to me because he didn’t like it. So I sent him back his ten dollars. [I complimented Ephie on the record.] Well, thank you. But I hadn’t worked for three years before that. Again, I was lucky it came out OK. [I reminded Ephie that he and Marty had recorded before, in 1951.] Oh, those records! Those records were nice! Those were really good. I was really happy with those records. I’d forgotten about that. I don’t have any of that stuff, but somehow they turned out to be really good. Frank Chace was nice. Yes, I liked the way he played. Years before, Marty and I had a summer job together. He was just learning how to play and I was learning also. And I never paid him for that record, THE END OF INNOCENCE. He did it for nothing.
I will offer THE END OF INNOCENCE — a glorious duet — in a future posting.
I was in England for ten years, and I did a record there. [Two: NEW YORK SURVIVOR and THE STRUGGLE.] Well, that was close to the end of my career. After my accident, I didn’t do too much. I hung around for a while, and everything got slowed down to nothing. My wife got sick, she got Parkinson’s. So I got a job — I was lucky again — working for Catholic Charities, playing piano for Alzheimers people, various venues, different bosses, for almost twelve years. They just closed down, in March, because of the virus. So I was lucky, I was working all this time, until right now.
So now I’m in one room, I’m hiding out, and I’ve got an electronic piano. I guess you’d say I’m an old-fashioned piano player. Pretty much old-fashioned, with a couple of things thrown in, contemporary. And a couple of months ago, in February, before the virus became widely known, I made a record with a trombone player from England, Malcolm Earle Smith. I hadn’t played in a while. My playing was — I don’t know how to describe it. Except on the last two pieces, there I kind of relaxed. I was careful — I was too careful, so I don’t know about that record. I have a couple of copies. Some people liked them, and some people I sent them to didn’t like it at all.
Ephie at the piano, briefly but evocatively:
[I also mentioned Inigo Kilborn, one of Ephie’s musical colleagues, to him.] Inigo heard me playing in a club in England, and wanted me to come down. He was living in Spain then, he went from London to Spain, he was retired. He wanted me to play in clubs, and I wasn’t working much, I still didn’t have an embouchure, and I still didn’t know how to play. I put him off and finally he gave up.
One of the people I sent the record to was a guy in Sweden. He sent me a letter, that he loved the record, and he wanted me to play all over Europe, he had contacts in clubs all over Europe. And I couldn’t do it. I knew I wouldn’t be able to do it. Maybe I could play one day or two days, but I’d fall apart. I fell apart, here and there, when I was playing. So I didn’t answer him, and he came to New York and then he called me. He wrote me another letter, and he called me and called me, but I didn’t answer the phone. That was the end of that. I couldn’t have done it. It would have been wonderful for my future, my present, but I couldn’t do it. So that was that.
Then, little by little, I faded away, until I got this job. This job saved my life, this piano job. That’s it.
So that’s my story up till now. And here I am. I’m practicing every day, trying to play a little more contemporary, make the chords closer together. Not so old-fashioned. So I’m working on that a little bit, but I’m not working at all now.
I’m just old. And that’s my story.
Ephie at the piano, Malcolm Earle Smith, trombone:
[Ephie had delivered almost all of what you read above in a diligent narrative, and I had not wanted to interrupt him, to distract him. But now, after forty minutes, I thought I could ask some — perhaps idle — questions. I told Ephie I’d seen him onstage, at Alice Tully Hall in 1974, with Bob Greene’s “The World of Jelly Roll Morton.”]
Oh! I forgot about that. That was great. He played like Jelly Roll Morton, and he started a band, a Jelly Roll Morton band. We played all those songs, and I could really do that. I was good at that. I could really blast out. The record doesn’t show that, but we traveled all around the country, and we had standing ovations on every job except one. I don’t know exactly why that one. But that was easy for me, easy and natural. It paid well, and it was fun. Those were happy moments in my life.
I was with Kai Winding — four trombones. It was a tour. We started out someplace — I can’t remember where it was but it was a restaurant. We were above the eaters, so we couldn’t play too loud, and we were close together. And for some reason I played just great — just wonderful, all the way along. and he was talking about making a tour with just the two of us. The job ended, and we had a three-day layoff, and then went into the Little Mirror, a place in Washington. There was an echo, we were spread out, it was loud, I lost what I had in that previous gig, I never found it. I looked for that embouchure for years and years and never got it back. We made a record with Kai Winding. I made a lot of records with different people, but that one was OK. That turned out nice.
[I asked Ephie if he could tell me about people — heroes of mine — he’d encountered, from the Stuyvesant Casino and Central Plaza, on.] There was one guy, Jerry Blumberg[a Bunk Johnson protege on cornet and a pianist]. He was wonderful. He got one job someplace, and hired that famous pianist from the Thirties, James P. Johnson. I played one night with him. That was interesting. He was old, but he still played OK. I never worked with Sid Catlett, but I saw him play. I played with Frankie Newton a couple of times. He was fun to play with. Very easy to play with.
When I was in Boston, I was with Pee Wee Russell. He had his own pianist. It wasn’t Wein, and Red Richards came later. There was another guy [Teddy Roy] who I didn’t know, but had played with Pee Wee for years and years. And he had a book, with all the chords in it, which he didn’t need. Every tune that was called, he’d open up the book. He never looked at the book, but the chords were there. He was sort of tied to that.
Ruby Braff was a fantastic player. Nobody ever played like him. He didn’t play like anybody else. He had phenomenal technique, and he used it in very personal ways. A wonderful player. He had his personal problems, like we all do. Sometimes, we were playing someplace, and he didn’t feel he was playing right, or he wasn’t doing justice to what he was doing, someone would come up to him and say, “Ruby, you sounded wonderful,” he would say, “Aaahhh, what do you know?” and dismiss it, insult the guy who liked him. He felt vulnerable all the time, but a great player. And later on, he played with Benny Goodman. He couldn’t read, but Benny would put him at the end of the line of trumpets, and once in a while call upon him to play. He did that for a while.
Did you know Johnny Windhurst? I did one job with him and Ed Hubble on trombone, and I played piano, and Ed Phyfe on drums. He was a wonderful player also.
I didn’t hang out with anybody in Boston. I wasn’t a hanger-on. I went right home after the last tune we played. And I don’t want to hear any of my old stuff. The only records I have are the ones I made in England, THE STRUGGLE and NEW YORK SURVIVOR. THE STRUGGLE is a terrible record, but the other one turned out good.
I played for six-eight months with Roy Eldridge at Jimmy Ryan’s. He was playing trumpet then — with the mute, not ebullient, but great. Those records with Dizzy are really wonderful. At one point, I was on staff with ABC for three years, subbing for one of the jazz guys. Dick Dreiwitz is such a sweet man, and his wife Barbara, who plays tuba. For a while I was playing ball games with them — they had a Dixieland band. Between innings, we’d walk up and down the aisles and play. People used to throw stuff in the tuba — peanuts, papers, everything — so the tuba players put a pillowcase over the bell. People aren’t naturally nice, you know. Some are, some aren’t.
I’m 92, and I hope I don’t have too many years left. So far, I’m OK.
At that point, we thanked each other, and I assured Ephie he was safe from me. But in the next few days, the phone rang again, as Ephie remembered some other stories:
Ephie played about six weeks at the Cinderella Club with pianist Bross Townsend and a bassist, not Peck Morrison, whose name he didn’t remember. He thought that cornetist Hugh McKay played really well on the 1951 Marty Grosz records and wondered what happened to him. [Does anyone know?] He saw Vic Dickenson once at some uptown Manhattan gig and thought he was wonderful. When working in San Francisco with Wild Bill Davison, he found out that Jack Teagarden was playing in Los Angeles and took the bus to see him. But this was when Jack had quit drinking and Ephie thought he sounded dull.
Another postscript: an extended list of Ephie’s performance credits, which are staggering:
Cab Calloway, Pearl Bailey, Eddie Condon, Roy Eldridge, Bud Freeman, Stan Getz, Woody Herman, Gene Krupa, Buddy Rich, Zoot Sims, Lennie Tristano, Teddy Wilson, Kai Winding and Willie the Lion Smith. He has also played with a variety of rock and pop bands including The Bee Gees, The Four Tops and Englebert Humperdink, and has worked for Danny Kaye, Jack Benny, Woody Allen and Norman Mailer.
Ephie spent much of the 1990s working in London, during a period in his life when he felt trapped in New York. During that stay he met and played with a number of British musicians as well as becoming something of a mentor for many of them. He also played at a number of society parties with the world renowned orchestra headed by veteran bandleader Lester Lanin. The musicians included: Dick Morrissey, Alex Dankworth, Huw Warren, Tim Whitehead, Martin Speake, Mike Pickering, Steve Watts, Julian Siegel, Chris Gibbons, Andrew Jones, Carl Dewhurst, Dave Whitford and Jean-Victor de Boer. He recorded two albums whilst in the UK: New York Survivor and The Struggle (both released on Basho Records)
Although he stopped playing trombone in 2010, Ephie continues to lead an active musical life in back in New York, playing piano in care homes. Still an inspiration to his friends and colleagues, his passion for music is still as strong as it was decades ago.
Taken and adapted from Ephie’s profile page at Jazzcds.co.uk
Blessings and thanks to Ephie, to Dick Dreiwitz, to Inigo Kilborn, to Malcolm Earle Smith, who made this informal memoir of a fascinating man and musician possible.
Less than a week ago, I published a post here, marveling at the riches made available in an eBay auction by “jgautographs” which have been all bought up now, including this glorious relic.
and this:
I don’t know how much Lester’s signature fetched at the end of the bidding, but Mr. Page’s (with the telltale apostrophe, another mark of authenticity) sold for $147.50, which says there is an enlightened and eager audience out there. That auction offered more than 200 items, and I would have thought the coffers were empty.
Now, the gracious folks as “jgautographs” have offered another seventy items for bid. I can say “gracious with certainty,” because I’ve had a conversation with the head benefactor.
Thisis the eBay link, for those who want to get in line early. The new listing has only one item held over from the past sale, and it is full of riches (including blues luminaries). I’ll mention only a portion: Ellington, Brubeck, Armstrong, Cootie Williams, Paul Gonsalves, Johnny Hodges, Horace Silver, Stan Getz, Cannonball Adderley, Paul Desmond, Don Byas, Dizzy Gillespie, Cat Anderson, Alberta Hunter, Little Brother Montgomery, Coleman Hawkins, Sippie Wallace, Rex Stewart, Ruby Braff, Lee Konitz, Zoot Sims, Jay McShann, Flip Phillips, Billy Butterfield, Phil Woods, Buck Clayton, Buddy Tate, Benny Carter, Bud Freeman, Thad Jones, Charlie Ventura, Teddy Wilson, Eubie Blake, Roy Eldridge, Sweets Edison, Erroll Garner, Tommy Flanagan, Kenny Dorham, Sonny Rollins — you can explore these delights for yourself, and if you have disposable income and wall space, some treasure might be yours. Those whose aesthetic scope is larger than mine will also see signatures of Chick Corea, Archie Shepp, and Keith Jarrett among others . . .
For now, I will offer only five Ellingtonians. And as David Weiner pointed out to me years ago, a sloppy signature is more likely to be authentic, since musicians don’t have desks to sit at after gigs.
Cootie:
Rex:
Cat:
Paul:
Johnny:
Incidentally, “jgautographs” has an astounding website — not just jazz and not just their eBay store: spend a few hours at www.jgautographs.com.
Another highly elevating conversation with Dan Morgenstern at his Upper West Side apartment — the most recent in a series of encounters that began in March 2017.
But first, several relevant musical interludes: VIPER MAD, with Sidney Bechet, sung by O’Neil Spencer:
YOU’SE A VIPER, Stuff Smith and his Onyx Club Boys, vocal by Jonah Jones:
Cab Calloway’s 1932 THE MAN FROM HARLEM:
and Louis’ WAS I TO BLAME (For Falling in Love With You):
Dan talks about the magical herb, with comments on the music of Louis Armstrong, Lester Young in the military, Zoot Sims, Gil Evans, and more:
Tales of Ralph Burns, Buster Bailey, Condon’s club, Vic Dickenson, and more:
The magical tale of Louis and Coleman Hawkins at Newport, Hawk, Benny Carter, Zutty and Marge Singleton, and more:
Under the influence with heroes, including Hot Lips Page, Roy Eldridge, seeing Sweets Edison gracefully handle things, and an early venture into LSD:
To close, I hope you’ll hum this playful exhortation from Buster Bailey in the days to come. “Let’s all get mellow!”:
Since jazz fans seem — note I say seem — to be overwhelmingly male, it’s lovely to find this collection of jazz autographs collected by the young jazz fan Audrey Arbuckle, between 1954-56 in Chicago. My guess is that “Buckles,” born July 19, 1931, is no longer collecting autographs and may no longer be with us, but I can’t prove it.
Here’s the seller’s description:
Here is a unique and amazing collection of famous jazz musician autographs on matchbooks, tickets and table cards put together during 1954-1956 by a young college student nicknamed “Buckles” who went to jazz clubs like the original Blue Note in Chicago and the Basin Street East.
Eventually Buckles had the autographs she collected laminated between a clear plastic sheet.
On one side, are the autographs of jazz legends Lester Young, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Dave Brubeck, Coleman Hawkins, Illinois Jacquet, Chet Baker, Carmen McRae, Sonny Stitt, Paul Quinichette (“Vice-Prez” to Lester’s “Prez”), Roy Eldridge, Jeri Southern and Paul Desmond. There is even the team of Kai Winding and J. J. Johnson whose combined autographs together, on the same page, from the same club date, is very hard to find.
On the other side of the laminated sheet is: Count Basie, the tragic, talented jazz singer Beverly Kenney, Bob Bates, drummer Candido, singer Chris Connor and the great Paul Gonslaves who signed his name on part of a Duke Ellington ticket. Gonsalves famously blew 27 insane bars during his sax solo on “Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue” that sent the crowd at the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival into a frenzy and put Duke Ellington’s band, which had been going through a popularity slump, back in its rightful place. Also a picture of “Buckles” who got the autographs.
The laminated page — which no doubt preserved those sixty-five year old scraps of paper, although oddly — is up for bid at $850 or “best offer,” and here is the link.
And the photographic evidence: some of these signatures (Beverly Kenney!) are incredibly rare — but to think of this young woman who saw and heard so much, it’s astonishing. The front side of the page, which takes some careful viewing:
and the reverse:
and some close-ups, the first, Dave Brubeck:
then, the two trombone team of Jay and Kai:
Paul Gonsalves, who played tenor saxophone:
then, Coleman Hawkins and Illinois Jacquet:
and Chet Baker:
Louis, Velma, Arvell, and Barrett Deems:
The Maestro:
and what is the prize of the collection (second place goes to Beverly Kenney’s neat handwriting) a Lester Young autograph. Even though it looks as though it was written on a piece of Scotch tape, such deity-sightings are rare:
and, a little music, lest we forget the point of these exalted scribbles:
Wherever you are now, Buckles, whatever names you took later in life, know that we cherish you and your devotion. Did you graduate college, have a career, get married and have a family? The laminated page says to me that these signatures and experiences were precious. But what happened to you? I wish I knew.
This just in, thanks to Detective Richard Salvucci, formerly of the Philadelphia police force, and one of this blog’s dearest readers: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/113718218 — which suggests that Audrey Ellen Arbuckle was born in 1934 and died in 2009, buried in an Erie, Pennsylvania cemetery. I wish she were here to read this, but I am sure her spirit still swings.
I know it’s not true of other art worlds (say, literature and painting) where a proliferation of deities is not only allowed but encouraged, but jazz seems to want a very small number of Stars. Singers? Billie and Ella. Trumpet players? Miles and Louis. Saxophonists? Trane and Bird. And so on. This reductionist tendency makes me sigh, especially when it comes to pianists, because there are so many more to celebrate than (let us say) Fats, Monk, Tatum. You don’t want to get me started, from Clarence Profit to Sam Nowlin to Alex Hill to Frank Melrose to Nat Jaffee, and so on up to the present day.
Someone who deserves more attention is the expert and rollicking Johnny Guarnieri, whose recording and performance career covers forty-five years, from 1939 to 1984. When I think of Johnny, I think of irresistible swing, lightness of touch, beautifully perceptive ensemble playing, amazing technique both in and out of the stride idiom, and (perhaps not an asset) stunning mimicry of any pianist or style you’d want. I heard him live once, at Newport in New York, and even given the hall’s terrible acoustics and amplification, he was dazzling: it was clear why Eubie Blake called Johnny the greatest pianist he had heard.
And on any Guarnieri recording — with Goodman, Lester, the Keynote aggregations, Ziggy Elman, Artie Shaw, both the big band and the Gramercy Five, Cootie Williams, Ben, Hawk, Rex Steart, Benny Morton, Louis, Lips, Bobby, Don Byas, Slam Stewart, Red Allen, Ruby Braff, Joe Venuti, Buddy Tate, Vic Dickenson, Stephane Grappelly, solos and small bands on his own — he is instantly recognizable and enlivening: he turns on the light switch in a dim room.
Yes, he sounds like Fats in the opening chorus of SHOULD I — but his comping behind the soloists is immaculate, displaying a strong terse simplicity, propelling Joe Thomas and Don Byas along. If you have him in your band, it’s a given that the performance will swing.
Guarnieri’s life and music are documented beautifully (typically so) in a new book — an bio-discography, SUPERSTRIDE (Jazzology Press) by the fine writer and careful researcher Derek Coller. The compact book — around 260 pages — is full of new information, first-hand reminiscence, splendid source materials including photographs. Best, not only is it a satisfying five-course dinner of fact and information, but it presents Guarnieri as one of those undramatic people who behaved well to others, was a professional, and didn’t demand attention to himself through narcissism or self-destructive tendencies. He comes off as someone I regret not meeting, generous, gracious, an old-fashioned gentleman and craftsman. (Read the story of his generosity to then unknown actor Jack Lemmon, who was himself quite a pianist; read the recollections of Johnny’s “boys,” who learned from him.) He had one vice: he smoked a pipe; one physical problem, seriously poor eyesight, which kept him out of the military during the war.
Because Johnny led a quiet life, his biography is more brief than the record of high dramas and crises other musicians present. Coller’s chronological overview is detailed although not overly so, and it moves very quickly for just over a hundred pages. I remember saying to myself, “Wait! We’re in 1947 already?” But the speed and the lightness of the narrative — Coller is an old-fashioned plain writer who wants the light to shine on his subject, not on his linguistic capers — make it delightful and a quiet reproach to other writers whose ego is the true subject. The book slows down a bit, a pleasant change, when we get to the longtime residency Johnny had at the Tail of the Cock in Los Angeles, but it is much more a narrative of a professional taking whatever jobs came his way rather than psychobiography or pathobiography. I’ve left out the fascinating exploration into his family — both his father and mother and the information his daughter provides — and his interest in playing, with such elan, in 5/4.
Also . . . there are pages of musical analysis of Johnny’s style by someone who knows how the piano can be played, Dick Hyman; reminiscences and reviews by musicians and journalists; a very thorough discography and a listing of Johnny’s compositions . . . and more, including fascinating photographs and newspaper clippings.
The book is to the point, as was its subject, and in its own way, it swings along superbly. Anyone who’s thrilled to the playful brilliance of a Guarnieri chorus will enjoy it. And it sends us back to the recordings, a lovely side-effect. Here’s a later solo performance, so tender:
The Jazzology website is slightly out of date, but I am sure that the book can be purchased directly from them, and it is worth the extra effort to have a copy.
The seller describes the holy relic thusly: An original 1930’s album containing 88 autograph signatures of jazz musicians, sporting figures and other personalities. The musicians represented include Coleman Hawkins, Johnny Desmond, Gene Krupa, Bid Sid Catlett, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, “Hot Lips” Page, Cab Calloway, Anita O’Day, Roy Eldridge, Woody Herman, Les Brown, and many more. The album with a two-ring binding, with some signatures signed directly onto the album leaves and others clipped and mounted, some on larger folded sheets. 31 pages of autographs, with further blank pages in the middle; on the last several pages, all the grades from the owner’s report cards from 1930 to 1943 are meticulously recorded! An inscription to the owner on the verso of the title page dates the album to 1931. Light toning and edge wear; overall in fine condition. 6.25 x 4.5 inches (15.8 x 11.7 cm).
Hereis the link, and the price is $750 plus $20 shipping. I don’t need it, but I certainly covet it: pieces of paper touched by people I have revered for half a century. (And, of course, imagine having heard, seen, and spoken to them!)
Before we get to the treasures within, I can only speculate that someone listing report cards from 1930 to 1943 was born, let us say, in 1925, and so might no longer be on the planet. But he or she was an avid Hot Lips Page acolyte, so we are certainly related spiritually.
The only name unfamiliar to me in this rich collection was Mart Kenney, whom I learned was a well-known Canadian jazz musician and bandleader (his “Western Gentlemen”) and long-lived, 1910-2006. Did our autograph collector visit Canada?
In general, the signatures collected here suggest a wealth of bands seen and heard in 1941: Lips, Dave Tough, and Max Kaminsky with Artie Shaw; Mel Powell with Goodman; Anita O’Day and Roy Eldridge with Krupa.
Here’s a peek.
Artie Shaw, with two Lips Page signatures!
Benny Goodman, with Mel Powell, Billy Butterfield, and John Simmons!
My favorite page. And Page (with equal time for Walter)!
I wonder how many of these pages Gene signed in his life.
Others in Gene’s band, including Sam Musiker and Roy Eldridge.
Anita O’Day and Joe Springer.
Hi-De-Ho, on a tiny label.
Woody Herman.
Bob Higgins and Les Brown.
Mart Kenney and musicians.
And I presume more members of the Western Gentlemen.
For once, this seems like a bargain: 88 signatures plus thirteen years of the owner’s report cards. Who could resist?
Just because no JAZZ LIVES post should be completely silent, here (thanks to Loren Schoenberg) is a 1941 airshot from the Steel Pier of Artie Shaw’s band featuring Hot Lips Page, Dave Tough, and George Auld on THERE’LL BE SOME CHANGES MADE:
Thanks to Loren Schoenberg for sharing this gem with us. If, like me, you grew up after the Swing Era had ended, the great creators were still in evidence: Benny, Teddy, Lionel, Gene, Harry, Basie, Duke, Benny Carter, Jo Jones, Milt Hinton, and half a hundred others. But sometimes they seemed more venerable than lively, and that was to be expected: routine, age, and aging audiences had had their effect. But it is lovely to be thrust back into late 1938, with fiercely beautiful evidence of just why they were seen as Masters.
Here, in under three minutes, Benny Goodman, Teddy Wilson, and Lionel Hampton — the last on drums — play a fiery but delicate I KNOW THAT YOU KNOW, at top speed, never smudging a note or resorting to cliché.
They were young: Hampton, the eldest of the three (one never thinks of him as such) had turned thirty only six months earlier: Goodman and Wilson were still in the latter half of their twenties. (Gene Krupa had left Goodman and formed his own band earlier in 1938.)
I invite JAZZ LIVES listeners to do the nearly-impossible, that is, to clear their minds and ears of associations with these artists, their reputations, our expectations, and simply listen. And thus admire: the precision, the near-audacity of improvisations at such speed, the intensity and the clarity with which the details are offered to us. The unflagging swing, and the compact art: seven choruses in slightly less than three minutes. The architecture of this performance, balancing solo and ensemble, giving each of the players the spotlight in turn. And the fact that it was live — no second takes or studio magic. One can admire this as a chamber-music performance thoroughly animated by the impulses that made “hot jazz” hot:
It’s easy to hear this in historical context: ten years earlier, Jimmie Noone and his Apex Club Orchestra had fashioned their own variations (Cliff Edwards, a dozen years earlier, had sung it with his Hot Combination) and Goodman had played it as an orchestral piece from 1935 on — with special mention to the Martin Block jam session of early 1938 where Benny, Teddy, Lester Young, Roy Eldridge, Jo Jones, Benny Heller, and Sid Weiss had jammed on the Vincent Youmans song. And it comes out of a larger musical world: I hear late-Twenties and early-Thirties Louis and Benny Carter, Coleman Hawkins, Art Tatum, and Zutty Singleton standing behind this trio.
But I can also imagine the radio audience of 1938 — not only the children and adolescents who nagged their parents for drum sets, clarinets, pianos and piano lessons (some signing up for the Teddy Wilson School for Pianists) but also the youthful Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, and Max Roach hearing and studying, thinking of ways to emulate and then outdo. It would have been considered “popular music” or “entertainment,” but now we can value it as it deserves.
It’s a magnificent performance, with details that glisten all the more on subsequent listenings. Thanks to Benny, Teddy, Lionel, Loren, and the noble Sammut of Malta for art and insights into the art.
I am so fortunate in many ways, some of them not evident on this site. But JAZZ LIVES readers will understand that my being able to interview Dan Morgenstern at his home from March 2017 on — at irregular intervals — is a gift I would not have dreamed possible when I was only A Wee Boy reading his liner notes and DOWN BEAT articles.
Dan is an unaffected master of small revealing insights that show character: in some ways, he is a great short-story writer even though he is working with factual narrative. Watching these interviews, you’ll go away with Artie Shaw pacing the room and talking, Willis Conover’s ashtrays, Cootie Williams reverently carrying Louis’ horn back to the latter’s hotel, and more.
About ten days ago, we spent another ninety minutes where Dan told affectionate tales of Jaki Byard, Ulysses Kay, Randy Weston, Kenny Dorham, and more. Those videos will come to light in time. But we had a marathon session last June, with stories of Louis, Cozy Cole, Milt Hinton, Coltrane, Roy, Teddy, Basie, Joe Wilder, Ed Berger, Perry Como and others — which you can savor here. And, although it sounds immodest, you should. (I also have videos of a July session with Dan: stay tuned, as they used to say.)
Here are more delightful stories from the June session.
Dan remembers Symphony Sid Torin, with sidebars about John Hammond, Nat Lorber, Rudi Blesh, Stan Kenton at Carnegie Hall, Roy Eldridge, and jazz radio in general:
Dan’s affectionate portrait of another man with a mission concerning jazz — the Voice of America’s Willis Conover:
and some afterthoughts about Willis:
and, to conclude, another leisurely portrait, early and late, of Artie Shaw:
with Artie as a “champion talker,” and a gig at Bop City, and sidelights about Benny Goodman and Cootie Williams, the latter reverent of Louis:
Thank you, Dan, for so generously making these people, scenes, and sounds come so alive.
I woke up yesterday morning with the melody of SHE DIDN’T SAY YES in my head — as performed in 1946 by Joe Thomas and his Orchestra for Keynote Records — and that performance insisted that I share it and write a few words in its honor. The song comes from the 1931 Jerome Kern – Otto Harbach musical comedy THE CAT AND THE FIDDLE, and it is limited in its ambitions (words and music) but it is also irresistible. The steplike melody is difficult to get rid of once one hears it, and the coy naughtiness of the lyric — raising the question of being “bad” when badness seems so delightful, but tossing the moral question back at the listener — combine in a kind of musical miniature cupcake.
Here is a video clip from the 1934 film version of the play — Jeanette MacDonald, looking lovely, sings SHE DIDN’T after a large clump of cinematic foolishness, including post-Code dancing, has concluded. (My contemporary perspective makes this scene slightly painful to watch, as Jeanette is bullied by the crowd into declaring a love that she seems to feel only in part.)
The song was recorded a number of times in the early Thirties (by Leo Reisman and Chick Bullock, among others) but may have surfaced again with the 1946 film biography of Kern, who had died suddenly the year before, TILL THE CLOUDS ROLL BY. However, since its performance in the film by the Wilde Twins goes by quickly, I think other reasons may have led to its being chosen for this Keynote Records date. Did Harry Lim hear something in its melody — those repeated notes that Alec Wilder deplored — or did Joe Thomas like to play it? We’ll never know, but it is a recording both memorable and forgotten.
The band was “Joe Thomas And His Orchestra,” itself a rare occurrence. Lim had used Joe on many sessions for Keynote (the Forties were a particular period of prominence on records for him, thankfully — where he recorded alongside Art Tatum, Coleman Hawkins, Jack Teagarden, Roy Eldridge, Don Byas, Teddy Wilson, Sidney Catlett, Ed Hall, Barney Bigard, and other luminaries). The band was Joe Thomas, trumpet; Tyree Glenn, trombone; Hilton Jefferson, alto saxophone; Jerry Jerome, tenor saxophone; Bernie Leighton, piano; Hy White, guitar; Billy Taylor, Sr., string bass; Lee Abrams, drums, and it was done in New York on August 16, 1946. I don’t know who did the backgrounds and introduction, but the recording is a small marvel of originalities. I listen first for the soloists and their distinctive sounds and then consider the performance as an example of what one could do with texture and small orchestral touches with only an octet.
I first heard this record coming out of my radio speaker when Ed Beach did a show devoted to Joe Thomas — perhaps in 1969 — and then I got to see Joe both on the stage of Carnegie and Avery Fisher Halls (with Benny Carter and Eddie Condon, consider that!) and at much closer range in 1972-74, thanks to the kindness of my dear Mike Burgevin.
I don’t want to subject this recording to chorus-by-chorus explication, but I would ask listeners to hear the individual sounds and tones these players had: Joe, Tyree, Hilton, Jerry — each man singing his own distinctively recognizable song — and the perky unflagging rhythm section, with Leighton beautifully doing Basie-Wilson-Guarnieri, and the lovely support of Billy Taylor, Sr., who had kept the Ellington band swinging.
“We had faces then!” to borrow from SUNSET BOULEVARD.
I keep coming back to the gleaming warm sound of Joe Thomas — in the first chorus, outlining the melody as if nothing in the world were more important; in the closing chorus, flavoring and shading it as only he could. And the rest of the band. As a friend said to me recently, “They were pros. They really knew how to do it.” And bless Harry Lim: without him, we would know such things happened but they would now be silent and legendary rather than tangible and glowing.
Dan Morgenstern, now 89, is so full of wonderful stories — sharply-realized, hilarious, sad — that my job as a visitor with a camera has usually been to set up the video equipment, do a sound check, ask a leading question, and sit back in bliss. Here’s the first half of my June 2018 visit to Dan’s nest. Beautiful narratives are all nicely set out for us.
I’d already posted the first one — a total surprise, a heroic reaction to injustice — but I would like more people to hear and see it:
More about Cozy Cole and friends, including Milt Hinton, Cab Calloway, and a hungry Benny Carter:
More about Milt Hinton, with wonderful anecdotes about Louis and Joe Glaser, Dizzy Gillespie, Cozy Cole, and Mel Lewis:
And some beautiful stories about Count Basie — including Dan’s attendance at a Town Hall concert with Basie, Roy Eldridge, and John Coltrane:
Finally (for this posting — there will be a continuation) memories of Joe Wilder, Ed Berger, with a comment about Roy Eldridge:
That we have Dan Morgenstern with us to tell such tales is a wonderful thing. As Louis said to the King, “This one’s for you, Rex!”
Like many of us, I’ve been the recipient of Hank O’Neal‘s wise active generosities for decades. I greeted each new offering of Chiaroscuro Records (this would have been starting around 1972) with hungry avidity; I went to concerts he produced at The New School; I devoured his prose and delighted in the enterprises he made happen, such as the book EDDIE CONDON’S SCRAPBOOK OF JAZZ. The very energetic and kind Maggie Condon brought us together in this century, and I came to Hank’s office to chat and then have lunch. And then Hank agreed to sit for my video camera to talk about a fascinating subject: George Wettling as painter and photographer. Here are the videos and some artwork from our October 2017 session. You will notice immediately that Hank, soft-voiced and at his ease, is a splendid raconteur, a storyteller who speaks in full sentences and always knows where he’s going.
I returned this June to ask Hank about his life in the record business — specifically, those Chiaroscuro records and compact discs I treasure, featuring Earl Hines, Teddy Wilson, Dick Wellstood, Kenny Davern, Bobby Hackett, Vic Dickenson, Roy Eldridge, Buck Clayton, Bob Wilber, Willie “the Lion” Smith, Wild Bill Davison, Eddie Condon, Buddy Tate, Don Ewell, Flip Phillips, Joe Venuti, and many others.
If — unthinkable to me — you’ve never heard of Chiaroscuro Records, do us both a favor and visit here — free, streaming twenty-four hours a day. And how bad can a website be when a photograph shows Bennie Morton and Vic Dickenson in conversation?
Part One, with stories about Zutty Singleton, Earl Hines, E. Howard Hunt, Earl Hines, John Hammond, and others:
Part Two, which touches on Don Ewell, Richard M. Nixon and Spiro Agnew, Eddie Condon, Bobby Hackett, Marian McPartland, Willie “the Lion” Smith and other luminaries:
Part Three, which begins with money matters, then touches on Ruby Braff, Teddy Wilson, Dave McKenna, Buddy Tate, Dicky Wells, and Wild Bill Davison:
Hank shared forty-five minutes more of stories, which will appear in a later post.
JAZZ LIVES 