Pete Fountain * New Orleans at Midnight * Coral Records (CRL 757429 Stereo / CRL 57429 Mono) * 1963

Side One

1. Creole Love Call (*)
2. I Want To Be Happy
3. Brahms' Lullaby (+)
4. Ballin' The Jack
5. Moonglow (++)
6. Rockin' Chair (*)

Side Two

1. Midnight Pete (+)
2. Bourbon Street Parade
3. Swing Low
4. Makin' Whoopee
5. Battle Hymn Of The Republic
6. Midnight Boogie (++)

Pete Fountain, clarinet
Bobby Gibbons, guitar 
Godfrey Hirsch, vibes
Stan Wrightsman, piano 
Morty Corb, bass
Jack Sperling, drums 
(*) Nick Fatool, drums
(+) John Propst, piano
(++)Ray Sherman, piano 



1963 was a remarkable year for Pete Fountain, and for jazz clarinet in general. Pete's contributions include no fewer than four albums: Plenty of Pete, Music from Dixie, Mr. New Orleans, and the subject of this review, New Orleans at Midnight. The year also featured a ground breaking opus of the Buddy DeFranco/Tommy Gumina Quartet entitled pol*y*tones (a very important album desperately in need of reissue), and the classic Benny Goodman Quartet reunited for their last studio recording, Together Again.  

Compared with the other albums from this year, New Orleans at Midnight is a real 'sound'-focused album: Pete's crooning side is on full display. The arrangements are tight and well thought out, and like its name, this album gives the vibe of an 'after hours' set, less focused on hot soloing. One exception, and a high point of the album that has been reissued on various "Best of" compilations, is Pete's rendition of 'Bourbon Street Parade', which is among his finest recordings and my personal favorite by a clarinetist of this classic Paul Barbarin tune. 

It's also with gratitude that I find the 'Battle Hymn of the Republic' on this album, played with depth and reverence. This makes a nice contrast with Pete's spirited version of 'Dixie' from his earlier French Quarter album, perhaps handling respectfully and symbolically some of the difficulties of American history that were still turbulent in the 1960s, and resonate even today.

When dealing with New Orleans jazz, or jazz in general, there is no way of avoiding America's trouble history with race and racism. I might as well say here that I'm always a bit on edge when I hear a jazz band play 'Dixie.' I know that for white southerners of Pete's generation it might have meant something different, but there are too many disturbing stories such as those related in Tom Sancton's book Song for My Fathers  (a must read for anyone interested in the history of New Orleans jazz, particularly in the 1960s) detailing humiliating circumstances of black bands being forced to play the tune under racist circumstances. Like so many of our symbols, which get necessarily reevaluated as time progresses, this tune has its baggage that cannot be ignored. Let me try to be clear on a subject that is anything but easy: I think 'Dixie' is a great tune, musically. But symbolically it is problematic for me in the context of the 1960s, especially. This would be a very troubled thing for me if we didn't have Pete's clear pronouncement on race and jazz, along with his own homage and gratitude to George Lewis and other great black musicians, in his autobiography:

I used to go down to St. Bernard Street and sit in with a lot of the black bands. I must have been one of the only white musicians doing that because the union frowned on it. But I wasn't a member of the union, and I felt too that if they were nice enough to let me sit in, I was going to give them the best I had. I've never been at all concerned about the way a musician looks. I listen to what comes out of his horn, and judge only that. And jazz and blues are black music first; some of the sounds I was hearing were mighty good. 

I sat in with George Lewis and Papa Celestin and some of the greatest black bands in jazz. George Lewis particularly fascinated me. He played a fine clarinet, and I would always watch him closely; then I would get up and add my own piece to what he was playing. We had a great time, and I learned a great deal from these sessions. [from A Closer Walk: The Pete Fountain Story. The Henry Regnery Company, Chicago (1972) pg 38-39] 

This sort of acknowledgement, and the sort of risk taking Pete Fountain, George Lewis, and others engaged in for the sake of sharing and making music, is very powerful. One can make an argument (and I often do!) that in mid-century, the two most important New Orleans jazz musicians were Lewis and Fountain. Lewis lead the charge of the New Orleans revival from the late 1940s through the 60s, and was responsible for much of the global Trad Jazz explosion during those years, while Pete took the music to new levels of virtuosity, fusing it with other forms in the process. This quiet, after hours version of the 'Battle Hymn', so unusual for a white southerner to play in that era, seems to me an beautiful and eloquent statement.

All the other tunes on this remarkably mixed bag of an album are well performed and satisfying. It might not be the greatest of Pete's golden era Coral records, but it is a worthy entry, with a touch of important symbolism.

Pete Fountain Mardi Gras Beads (Eric Seddon Collection)

Pete Fountain * Plenty of Pete * Coral Records (CRL 757424) * 1963

Side One

After You've Gone

Medley: a. Stardust b. Is It True What They Say About Dixie 

c. When The Saints Go Marching In d. Dixie

Don't Be That Way

On The Sunny Side Of The Street

Side Two

Just One Of Those Things

Stranger On The Shore

Jazz Me Blues

Blue Skies

Pete Fountain, clarinet

Jack Sperling, drums

Morty Corb, bass 

Godfrey Hirsch, vibes

Bobbie Gibbons, guitar 

John Propst, piano


Rigid traditionalists (perhaps more than a little intimidated by Pete's virtuosity) dismiss Pete Fountain as tainted by styles beyond the borders of the Crescent City. Conversely, modernists (perhaps jealous of his emotional connection with audiences) dismiss him as too traditional. Albums like this, however, reveal Fountain for what he was: a jazzman very much of his day and age, fusing the old seamlessly with the new; respecting the traditions of his native city while moving them forward.

Plenty of Pete is first and foremost one of those clear, crisp nightclub sets he was so adept at shaping, and perfectly in the line of his earlier small combo albums for Coral. Listeners familiar with Pete Fountain's New Orleans,  At the Bateau Lounge, Pete Fountain's French Quarter, and Pete Fountain's Music from Dixie will find themselves once again at Pete Fountain's French Quarter Inn on Bourbon Street, sipping a drink in the cool air conditioning. It's also one of Pete's more outward looking albums of that era, paying homage to Benny Goodman in particular by featuring a number of tunes directly associated with the King of Swing, beginning with 'After You've Gone.'

'After You've Gone' is one of those tunes that was lodged permanently in the jazz clarinet canon by Jimmie Noone and his Apex Club Orchestra, from there influencing a young Benny Goodman, who went global with it, using the tune as a small group show piece from the mid-1930s throughout the rest of his career. Fountain's version is based substantially on Goodman's, but the execution, tempo, and head arrangement are uniquely Fountain-esque, with lilt, drive, and virtuosity all his own.

After a medley that includes 'Stardust' and a couple of standard New Orleans tunes ('Is It True What They Say About Dixie?" and 'The Saints') we're back in Benny's territory with a smooth version of 'Don't Be That Way.' Side One wraps up with a cool, subtle, take 'On the Sunny Side of the Street', Godfrey Hirsh's vibes setting the table perfectly each time for Pete's main course. 

Side Two opens with 'Just One of Those Things', the band moving very much like other modern jazz ensembles of the early '60s, then taking on Acker Bilk's smash hit 'Stranger on the Shore.' I'm not sure if this is the first example of an American clarinetist covering a British clarinetist's tune (there had of course been plenty of trans-atlantic influences among other song writers earlier than this), but it's certainly a very successful one. Pete and the boys give their own Gulf Coast take, adding some walking up-tempo choruses after the theme, in nice contrast to the original.

The album closes out with satisfying versions of 'Jazz Me Blues' and 'Blue Skies', demonstrating the permanent value of both numbers in the repertoire.

As I continue to survey these classic albums (this is my seventeenth Pete Fountain album reviewed on The Jazz Clarinet to date)  I'm astonished by the lack of reissues. To my knowledge, other than tracks which have been reissued on compilation albums, Plenty of Pete remains available only on the original vinyl, if a collector can procure a copy. I firmly believe that the jazz Pete and his groups produced--especially in the early 1960's--was as good as any recorded. In some ways, his work even exceeds the more critically touted modernists. If the public was given the chance to hear this beautiful music again in its original context, who knows what renaissance might be spurred? C.S. Lewis once mused that his age might be one day remembered as that of Tolkien and Wodehouse, rather than Lawrence and Joyce. As time progressed, he turned out to be more prophetic than the scoffers imagined. What if the '60s, someday, are similarly remembered as much for Fountain as Miles? They'd have to be re-released, of course, but the amount of beauty and joy to be found here ought to be enough to inspire such a project. Is there really so much beauty and joy in the world that we can afford to leave any of it behind?


    

Pete Fountain Mardi Gras Medallion
(Eric Seddon Collection)

Pete Fountain's Music from Dixie * Coral Records (CRL 757401) * 1963

Bye Bye Bill Bailey
I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate
High Society
(When It's) Darkness on the Delta
Song of the Wanderer (Where Shall I Go?)
Dixie Jubilee

Struttin' With Some Barbeque
Shine
Chlo-e (Song of the Swamp)
Milenberg Joys
When You're Smiling (The Whole World Smiles With You)
Hallelujah 

Pete Fountain * Clarinet
Charles Teagarden * Trumpet
Eddie Miller * Tenor Saxophone
Moe Schneider * Trombone
Bobby Gibbons * Guitar
Stan Wrightsman * Piano
Morty Corb * Bass
Jack Sperling * Drums


As a general rule, any album from the early 1960s that says "Coral" and "Pete Fountain" on the cover is worth listening to, over and over again. Pete Fountain's Music from Dixie is no exception, proof of which is that several cuts from this album have been re-released many times on 'Greatest Hits' albums.

From the opening 'Bye Bye Bill Bailey' we know it's going to be a swinging time--the band sounds relaxed, comfortable, and ready to play. Fans of the raw energy of the old Pete Fountain/Al Hirt sides of the mid-1950s might wish this set wasn't mellower in comparison, but these twelve standards give us a different feel--instead of that youthful exuberance, we get the more polished, professional work the band was doing nightly at Pete Fountain's French Quarter Inn.

Charles Teagarden (brother of the more famous, trombone playing Jack) plays an excellent New Orleans style lead trumpet when called upon (as in 'High Society') but we've certainly moved to the model Pete was use for most of his career: a less boisterous trumpet, allowing his clarinet to take center stage. The same approach was used by Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, and Edmond Hall in their small groups--trumpeters, even when they had the lead, were kept more mellow--often playing lead lines muted, or underlining melodies played by the clarinetists. Truth be told, Pete stayed closer to the earlier New Orleans model than most of the others--he really gives Charley the lead, without mute, while weaving his harmonies and countermelodies in true polyphonic style. In many ways Pete was unparalleled in this quintessentially New Orleans function of clarinetistry--his lines, whether closely harmonizing or in soaring obligato, were some of the finest and most diverse ever captured on recording. Because Pete has this extended band (a full New Orleans contingent), this album can alternate between intimate ballad material to uptempo street beats and swing--sometimes shifting back and forth between those poles in the same tunes.

'Darkness on the Delta' from this album is one of my favorite renditions for the beautiful interplay between Fountain and Stan Wrightsman's piano comping. Also for smaller combo, Pete's version of 'Shine' is a real treat, for the reason that so many of his Goodman quartet inspired covers are: he makes the tune his own, resisting the temptation of playing at break neck speed. Here, and many other places, Pete demonstrates a principle of importance to any jazz clarinetist: more phrasing, more character, and more attention to groove will yield a far better result than turning a tune into 'Jazz Kroepsch' with a polka beat (we've all heard that, haven't we?) Pete was sometimes criticized by clarinetist's with less competent technique for being 'too flashy' during his career, but reengaging his actual work shows otherwise -- he rarely took extreme tempos, more frequently crafting beautiful vibrant up tempo choruses.

Pete's version of 'Chlo-e' is of very different character than Goodman's lilting big band chart. The Fountain ensemble takes a full verse before the chorus, and plays in a deep, relaxed ballad manner. Really the diversity of moods on the album us exceptional, and an indication of why his nightclub shows were so successful.

'Struttin' with some Barbeque' for the full band is another highlight--one of Pete's earlier recordings of the classic Armstrong tune. 'Milenberg Joys' shows how well old standards can be updated--a listener would be forgiven for thinking it was a relatively new tune for 1963, and it sounds pretty well timeless even now. The whole album comes to a satisfying conclusion with 'Hallelujah', which is exactly what I want to say now that this music is available once again, in downloadable reissue.

Music from Dixie captures the mature Fountain ensemble and concept--a format he would maintain for a significant portion of his career. Some of the earlier Coral albums are notable for their sheer excitement and freshness. This one is more measured, but it's a solid, professional outing of interest that never lets the listener down.


 

Pete Fountain * Mr. New Orleans * Decca (DL7-5377) * 1963

Side A

South Rampart Street Parade
Put On Your Old Grey Bonnet
The Second Line
Basin Street Blues
The Darktown Strutters' Ball
Marching 'round The Mountain


Side B

Over The Waves
Careless Love
Walking Through New Orleans
Sugar Bowl Parade
Farewell Blues
Washington And Lee Swing



Pete Fountain * Clarinet

Godfrey Hirsch * Marching Drum
Jack Sperling * Snare, Cymbal, Foot Drum
Nick Fatool * Field Drum
Paul Barbarin * Vertical Bass Drum with Brass Rim Cymbal
Jackie Coon * Trumpet
Moe Schneider, Lou McCreary, Bill Schaefer, Dick Nash, Dick Noel * Trombones
George Roberts * Bass Trombone
Bobby Gibbons * Banjo
Phil Stephens * Tuba
Morty Corb * Bass

Directed by Bud Dant

This is an unusual album, but also quite enjoyable if the listener is open-minded. It seems an experiment in tone painting--an interpretation of New Orleans street beats and parade music by a fictional marching band. That might sound odd...and, well, the music is a bit odd in a way, but that's part of its interest and charm.

First and foremost, the orchestration is innovative. Fountain and Dant employed four drummers, who play simultaneously, on this record, including Godfrey Hirsch on a marching drum, though he was usually Pete's vibraphonist! Along with Hirsch are three more legendary drummers, all playing street beats together--Jack Sperling, Nick Fatool (who played with Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw before Pete), and New Orleans legend Paul Barbarin (whose credentials included stints with King Oliver, Sidney Bechet, Freddie Keppard, and Jimmie Noone!) The four of them create a fictional marching drum corps, generating grooves for the entire album--and while the parade that aurally suggests itself is fictional enough, the groove isn't! What these masters did with marching and field drums was pure soul.

The band is trombone heavy with arrangements tending to script the low brass, giving Pete's clarinet and Jackie Coon's trumpet room to work. Those expecting real polyphonic improvisation, like Pete's earlier recording of South Rampart Street Parade with the Village Scramblers, might be initially disappointed by the opening of this album. When I first heard this record as a teenager some thirty years ago, I had a hard time getting past the counted off feeling and block arrangement that shocked my system at the beginning. My advice, though? Please stick with it. This album has a ton of very interesting and evocative playing and writing. You just have to understand the concept, which is unique. I've said that Pete's 1959 album The Blues is symphonic in its pacing and musical material, carrying the listener through. Similarly, Mr. New Orleans is like a tone poem--part orchestrated, part improvised--to evoke a clarinetist's view of a Mardi Gras Parade.

These arrangements probably wouldn't work very easily in actual parade circumstances--the balance would be difficult. The clarinetist would have to be mic'd and probably on a float, and who knows how acoustics would be properly achieved. But they hang together as though almost through-composed, with a unity typical of Fountain/Dant projects from this era. It's worth pointing out the diversity arrangers and arrangements:

Don Bagley arranged 'South Rampart Street Parade.'

'Grey Bonnet' and 'Careless Love' were good old fashioned head arrangements. According to Leonard Feather's liner notes, 'Farewell Blues' was virtually a head arrangement, too, with a little prodding from Bud Dant, who also wrote the playbook for Godfrey Hirsch's original 'Sugar Bowl Parade', 'Walking Through New Orleans', and 'Marching Round the Mountain.'

Matty Matlock had the honor of arranging Barbarin's original 'The Second Line' (with Barbarin in the drum corps!), while also contributing charts for 'Washington and Lee Swing.'

Heinie Beau arranged 'Basin Street Blues', 'The Darktown Strutter's Ball', and 'Over the Waves'.

Pete's playing is excellent throughout. His sound is particularly mellow and full. Either the sound engineers or his set-up avoided most of the reediness that comes through on his more aggressive live album soloing of the same time period, so if you like the Pete Fountain sound that is smoothest and most mellow, this is an album you'll want to hear, even if it's also pretty loud and raucous from beginning to end. While every jazz studio recording tends to balance clarinet somewhat synthetically, this one does so more extremely in a sense--enabling Pete to play in a very relaxed manner over four pounding drummers and blazing trombones, while still being easily heard. 

Jackie Coon's trumpet playing is a real treat on this LP, especially on the beautiful classic 'Put on Your Old Grey Bonnet.' Coon evokes all the sweetness and love of the old couple in the song, celebrating their 50th Wedding Anniversary and taking a ride through the fields to revisit the place they first said their vows. His nuance and sound are a perfect match for Pete's, leaving us to wish we had more examples on record of the two collaborating.

For Pete Fountain fans, of great interest is to hear how he navigates these arrangements of standards, propelled by street beats rather than a drum set with a ride cymbal. I think they'll be happy with the results. He even manages to salvage a tune like 'Over the Waves' which has been played so badly by so many--Pete imbues it with charm and jauntiness, rather than saccharine vibrato.

Fountain and Dant were to collaborate on many concept albums as the years progressed--some of them truly great, some less successful. To me, this is one of the most successful, worthy of repeated listening as the years go by.

Pete Fountain Half/Fast Walking Club Mardi Gras Doubloon
(Eric Seddon Collection)

Buddy DeFranco & Tommy Gumina* (pol*y*tones) * Mercury (MG 20833) * 1963

• Side A
• 
  
• The Monkey
• My Ship
• Gravy Waltz
• My Man's Gone Now
• I Remember Bird

Side B

Bus Driver in the Sky

Spring Will Be Late This Year

Nica's Dream

When I Fall In Love

• 
  
• 
  
• Buddy DeFranco, clarinet
• Tommy Gumina, accordion
• John Doling, bass
• John Guerin, drums/perussion

For sheer jaw dropping virtuosity, chances are the Buddy DeFranco/Tommy Gumina quartet of the early 1960s is the greatest jazz group you've never heard. Other than a set of standards, Pacific Standard (Swingin') Time, their collected work has been left to languish, out of print. To my knowledge, the only way to hear the other four albums is to get a hold of the old vinyl--which I heartily recommend. 

The group was formed when DeFranco was on a west coast trip in 1959 and found himself without a pianist. When Tommy Gumina, an accordion player, was suggested, DeFranco was inclined to dismiss the idea out of hand--until he heard the virtuosic polychordal approach Gumina was developing. Marc Myers, over at JazzWax, interviewed Buddy back in 2011 about the founding of the quartet. In it, Myers delves into the attraction of polytonal and polychordal music to DeFranco, documenting the group's under-reported and under-appreciated contribution to jazz development in a tonal and harmonic sense.

Rarely mentioned and long out of print, 1963's (pol*y*tones) represents, according to DeFranco himself in the interview, the zenith of the Buddy DeFranco/Tommy Gumina Quartet. On the album, Gumina uses an accordio-organ, a sort of hybrid between a Hammond organ sound and accordion. He described it in the liner notes to the album:

The instrument is appropriately named, says Tommy, because you can play organ on it, accordion, or both. It reproduces the same 16 ft., 8 ft., and 4 ft. sounds that you get on a regular organ. The organ effects were developed with 200 transistors; the accordion sounds are produced with three sets of reeds for the right hand and six for the left.

"There's a foot pedal for volume, several degrees of vibrato and three different degrees of sustaining. But it looks just like a regular accordion."

The feats Gumina accomplished on the instrument were so extraordinary that Leonard Feather felt it necessary to mention the album was made without overdubs.

There nine tunes on the album are a mix of standards, originals, and then-contemporary tunes.

The Monkey (DeFranco/Gumina)
My Ship (Weill and Gershwin)
Gravy Waltz (Brown and Allen)
My Man's Gone Now (Gershwin and Heyward)
I Remember Bird (Feather)
Bus Driver in the Sky (DeFranco)
Spring Will Be A Little Late This Year (Loesser)
Nica's Dream (Silver)
When I Fall In Love (Heyman and Young)

Highlights for me are the Gershwin's "My Man's Gone Now" and, for sheer intensity and flash, DeFranco's own "Bus Driver in the Sky." These tunes are remarkably compact, many under three minutes, and none longer than four and a half, yet almost like an aural illusion, they seem rather vast is scope.

These albums, if neglected since, undoubtedly made a significant impact upon contemporaneous jazz musicians. It's hard not to hear, in Gumina's angular brilliance, a significant keyboard forerunner to the synthesizer virtuosi of the next thirty years. Buddy doesn't seem to have worried about taking a more mellow role on the album--for a man who celebrated his role as a developer of technique, he often fills out the sound broadly, allowing his co-leader to take the spotlight. There are a tremendous number of brilliant time changes, and the rhythm section filled out by John Doling on bass and John Guerin on drums, are more than solid: they are often almost imperceptibly remarkable.

As with so many masterpieces of jazz clarinet history, this album really ought to be reissued. As DeFranco's favorite of the era, and as revolutionary as the group was, it is important to the history of jazz as a whole, rather than just as a curiosity for those who place clarinet or accordion. These gentlemen, up against a wall of zeitgeist that saw little place for their music at the time, created something permanent and timeless.

I had hoped to get this review written long ago, before the passing of Mr. Gumina in October of 2013--may he rest in peace, and perhaps even get to ride that bus in the sky.

Mr. DeFranco, if you are reading this post, thank you for the tremendous music you have made.