Jelly Roll Morton 1928-29 (featuring Russell Procope, George Baquet, Albert Nicholas, & Barney Bigard) * CD 322 from JSPCD Jazzbox903 * Remastered by John R.T. Davies

When starting this blog over six years ago, I knew it would take a while before addressing recordings like these. The repertoire is important, because many of the tunes are great and the composer/bandleader was a giant of jazz, but the clarinet playing is generally bad and sometimes awful. My goal for this blog was (and remains) to build a substantial body of reviews demonstrating true greatness of clarinetists throughout the various eras. Unfortunately, the overall recorded catalog of music that was created in the 1920s and 30s, which is arguably the most important era for the clarinet, was a bit indiscriminate as to the quality of players. Many of the greatest virtuosi (Jimmie Noone, Benny Goodman) were recorded right alongside some of the worst clarinetists ever documented in the studio. The poor players are almost universally flat, can't handle high notes especially, their tone is overwraught and weak from overblowing,  they break notes, their tonguing his ham fisted, their rhythm is bad, and unfortunately, they are too often copied as "authentic" by amateurs and doubling professionals alike.

While blues grittiness and pitch inflection are an essential part of playing jazz clarinet, an overall flat and flabby tone is not competent playing, no matter who is doing it. Neither Sidney Bechet nor Jimmie Noone played this way--their styles, while far apart in terms of timbre and instrumental approach, are worthy models of imitation. The same can be said of many Johnny Dodds recordings, such as the sides he cut with King Oliver. But Dodds, like many others, struggled at times with his pitch, and we should be honest about those moments. Now a word of caution: we shouldn't take this too far as no one plays spot on in tune, in a mechanical sense, every time. You can find plenty of examples of variable intonation, especially if you're tracking note to note, in any of the great players--including classical virtuosi who work within even more limited intonational parameters. But as a rule, the great players aren't sagging consistently below pitch, or riding a quarter tone sharp either.

This collection demonstrates the big step down in clarinetistry in Jelly Roll Morton's bands after the initial recordings with Omer Simeon and Johnny Dodds. A young Russell Procope (who had improved somewhat by the time he played with Ellington) plays flat on December 6, 1928's "Red Hot Pepper" and his solo on "Deep Creek Blues" is a real disappointment for such a beautiful tune. We can only imagine what a player like Noone or Bechet would have done.

By July 9, 1929, Procope had been replaced by George Baquet, who isn't any better. His clarinet is particularly bad on the out chorus of "Burnin' the Iceberg" and haunts "Courthouse Bump" and "Pretty Lil" from the same date as well. His intonation is so bad it sounds almost like a drunken parody at times. His low level playing continues on the next day's session, flabbing his way through a solo on "Sweet Aneta Mine" and sticking out horribly for his flatness on "New Orleans Bump (Monrovia)."

The torture continues on July 12, 1929, when Baquet rasps, flabs, and squeaks his way through "Down My Way", "Try Me Out", and "Tank Town Bump." I can't stress it enough: This is not 'authentic' jazz clarinet playing; it's just incompetent. Frankly, this sort of playing is unlistenable for any serious clarinetist, revealing that the standards for our very difficult instrument were sometimes poorly maintained on recordings, even by the most important band leaders. The clarinet playing is so bad the recordings would have better without a clarinet--and unfortunately, perhaps in part because of hideous performances like these, many bandleaders started deciding exactly that.

By November 13, 1929, Jelly Roll had replaced his clarinetist again, this time for a Red Hot Peppers session featuring Albert Nicholas, the childhood friend of Sidney Bechet who was to record successfully with him later in life. These recordings are not Nicholas's greatest recorded work by a long shot--he tends to be on the flat side, and his solos aren't great-- but he's at least a step up from the truly abysmal playing of Baquet.

Even Barney Bigard can't rescue this album, though his clarinet playing is better than most on the disc. The final four tunes, recorded on December 17, 1929, feature the Jelly Roll Morton Trio with Bigard on clarinet and Zutty Singleton on drums. Bigard struggles with his high clarion, altissimo intonation, and his attacks. Even though his ideas tend to be decent (he was a far more competent clarinetist at this point than anyone else on the Jelly Roll Morton sessions from these years) that really isn't saying much. His playing is excruciatingly out of tune on tunes like "Turtle Twist" and "My Little Dixie Home." This isn't good Bigard...it's actually embarrassingly bad for someone who was to play better (if inconsistently) in the future.

So why bother writing a review like this? Well, there are a couple of reasons. One of them is to say there have to be professional standards. If  a player can't handle the instrument on a basic level of musicianship, they can do real damage to the estimation of the instrument overall. Players like Buddy DeFranco and Artie Shaw routinely dismissed or disparaged the early New Orleans players, implying or openly saying they weren't important to the history of the instrument in jazz. If all anyone had heard were these Jelly Roll Morton sides, or some of the Hot Fives session where Johnny Dodds struggled with his intonation, this could be understood as an act of professional self preservation as much as anything else. This disc features such bad clarinet playing, it makes you want to go back in time with a saw and savagely adjust their barrels. But to dismiss all of New Orleans clarinet because of this would be terribly wrong. All one has to do (and should do) is listen to some Jimmie Noone as an antidote.

This disc earns a broken reed for clarinetists.

Louis Armstrong * The Hot Fives and Sevens * remastered by John R.T. Davies 1991/2007 * JSP Records * JSP100

[ Louis Armstrong's Hot Fives and Sevens sessions are deservedly considered among the most important jazz cornet and trumpet recordings of all time. Over the course of these recordings, Armstrong revolutionized brass soloing, and study of these four CDs worth of material is not only a pleasure, but everyone interested in jazz history. What follows in this post is not, however, a discussion of Armstrong's contribution so much as a summary of the clarinetists and their contribution to these recordings. ES ]



Before picking up this box set of reissues, meticulously remastered by John R.T. Davies, my CD collection was limited to the Columbia remasters from the late 1980s. Those recordings weren't without their charm, and there is a warmth to the Columbia Masterworks approach that I enjoyed for many years. One of the first things I noticed about Davies's work, though, after its directness of sound, were the key changes of some of the performances. The Columbia Masterworks version of "Lonesome Blues" was in B. This is course highly unlikely, but as it was one of the first solos I'd transposed, I never questioned it until hearing the Davies remasters in the more sensible key of Bb. I haven't gone through these recordings with a fine toothed comb to discover all of the key differences, but would bet Davies's choices turn out to be the more accurate ones.


The Hot Fives 1925-1926 (Disc A)

Despite his work as a bandleader, and many other examples as a distinguished sideman, the original Hot Fives and Hot Sevens sessions are probably the recordings most people associate with Johnny Dodds. This can be a blessing and a curse. On the blessing side, these cuts really do demonstrate his unique tenacity, soul, drive, and creativity. Those are big pluses. On the curse side, for one reason or another, they didn't capture Dodds's often rich, deep sound particularly well, and on some sides (particularly from the first session in 1925) he struggled to keep up to pitch. These recordings have been considered so representative that some writers have even suggested Dodds's vibrato tended to function below the pitch as a rule. I'm not sure this is true, and if we listen to all of his other recordings (especially the sound he produced on the King Oliver sessions in 1923),we hear a fuller, more in tune Dodds. It has been said that Dodds disliked the recording studio and distrusted microphones. Considering how much of an acoustical challenge it is to record a clarinet, and that the focal point of these sessions was Armstrong rather than Dodds, we shouldn't rush to judgement on the subject of his sound. As far as the pitch is concerned,  perhaps at times Dodds was overblowing to compensate for balance against an open cornet rather than the muted recordings of the Oliver band. All caveats aside, however,  Dodds was far greater, in terms of intonation, control, and content, than his immediate successor in the Hot Fives and Sevens, Jimmy Strong ( heard on Disc C).

Throughout all of the Hot Five sessions on Disc A, Dodds's ensemble figurations are solid, as usual. On "Don't Forget to Mess Around" he takes solos on both alto sax and clarinet, moving well between the instruments. Immediately after that,  on "I'm Gonna Gitcha", Dodds flashes his hot tempo soloing style. For those not impressed with Dodds's technique, or who consider him an especially rough player (including many respected modern jazz players), I'd just point out that the types of figurations here (common in his playing) aren't really that easy. His clarinet chorus on "Dropping Shucks" is relaxed, vintage Dodds. "Big Fat Ma and Skinny Pa" show off his bluesy howling, and maybe the top highlight of the first disc is Johnny's heartfelt statement of the melody for "Lonesome Blues," setting the table perfectly for Satch's vocal.

The Hot Sevens and Fives 1927 (Disc B)

The sound quality on this disc is even better than Disc A, and seems more accurate, with less need to imagine what the players might have really sounded like. Having said that,  Dodds's tone is still pretty harsh compared to some recordings before and after these sessions.  May of 1927 was a big month for the band, though, as some of the most enduring numbers they recorded came between the 7th and the 14th. The band is in full, swinging, comfortable sound on "Willie the Weeper" and "Wild Man Blues" with Dodds taking a gritty solo on the latter with plenty of talking quality and double time flashes.

After this is a brief interlude for "Chicago Breakdown" of May 9th, with a large group that included Earl Hines on piano, and Boyd Atkins on clarinet, soprano sax, and alto sax (his solo chorus is on soprano).

The next sessions took place between May 10 and 14, 1927, Johnny Dodds announcing his return to the band with a "rip-your-head-off" blues statement on "Alligator Crawl." He's enthusiastic on all of these numbers, including "Potato Head Blues", "Melancholy Blues", "Weary Blues" (where he gets breaks similar in style to those he played so often with King Oliver), "12th Street Rag" and others. Finally, with the September and December sessions of 1927,  Dodds's sound is more reminiscent of his playing with King Oliver or afterwards as a bandleader--more mellowness and richness added to the raw power--and despite the harshness of the earlier tracks, these recordings from 1927 seem to me the zenith of Dodds's work in Armstrong's band.  


1928-29 (Disc C)

Armstrong's brilliance continues on Disc C, which begins with a reformation of the Hot Five in Chicago in June and July of 1928. Pops's vocabulary continues to grow, but the Johnny Dodds era was over, and he was replaced by Jimmy Strong, whose playing didn't live up to Dodds's. Strong's sound was flabby in comparison, and his playing was flat. His sloppiness on "Fireworks" highlighted the difficulties he had as a clarinetist. Even when outlining arpeggios competently (as on "A Monday Date"), he was uniformly bad sounding and flat in pitch. Oftentimes young players will hear recordings like these, because they happen to be classics of the genre thanks to the brilliance of Armstrong and Earl Hines, and wrongly think that this sort of clarinet playing was considered great in its day as well--that this was the way a jazz clarinetist was supposed to sound. One of the reasons I'm writing this post, though, is to point out, gently,  that it just isn't true. This is just bad clarinet playing, no matter how you cut it. Johnny Dodds (especially on other recordings where he was recorded better), Sidney Bechet,  Jimmie Noone, Leon Roppolo, and others from the era were the standard bearers, and players like Strong ought to be understood as really poor quality in comparison.

Don Redman took over the clarinet duties (as well as alto sax) for a session under the name of Louis Armstrong and His Savoy Ballroom Five, in Chicago on December 5, 1928. His clarinet work is confined to a few long tones underlining the melody in "Save It, Pretty Mama" and some clarion figurations on the final statement of the theme, opting to solo on the alto otherwise.

Redman and Strong combine forces for another weak overall clarinet performance on the December 12th date. Armstrong seemed unwilling to give either of them extended clarinet solos by this point, so only their ensemble playing is left. Even on "St James Infirmary", a good tune for clarinetists, the clarinet is left mostly to pre-arranged parts, with only the occasional strained and out of tune altissimo yelp. The post-Dodds era was, overall, really disappointing for clarinetist
The Fourth disc of this set is a bit beyond the bounds of what was advertised. None of the groups go by the name of Hot Fives or Sevens, and most of the tracks are from the era of Louis Armstrong leading an orchestra of larger size, with a saxophone section patterned after Guy Lombardo's, so there is little specifically for the jazz clarinetist. An era had ended, and the Hot Fives and Sevens were now a part of music history. Johnny Dodds's contribution has remained a lasting legacy and influence because of them, but players who have come to him through these recordings should look for his other recordings with King Oliver, and leading his own band, where they will find even more dimensions to his art.

Johnny Dodds * Indigo Stomp *1929

Johnny Dodds is a foundational figure by any estimation, not only in the history of the clarinet, but for jazz in general. His recordings with King Oliver's Creole Orchestra and the Louis Armstrong Hot Fives and Sevens cemented his place as one of the rare soloists strong enough to play alongside Armstrong without giving up musical ground during his choruses. Most often remembered as part of the early New Orleans clarinet triumvirate along with Sidney Bechet and Jimmie Noone, his unique contribution can sometimes seem obscured by those two giants. Bechet had a explosive soloing creativity and overpowering musical personality: in many ways forming a sort of "primary epic" for the jazz clarinet. By contrast, Jimmie Noone was the first great virtuoso, with a perfectly balanced sound, articulation, and facility: universally admired by clarinetists and so intimidating he was rarely copied, except by the likes of Goodman, whose technique could bear comparison. Dodds is generally considered the gritty, bluesy member of the triumvirate, and while he has his devoted followers, he also had his detractors (among them Barney Bigard, who was sometimes acerbic in his criticism).

Yet Dodds is certainly worthy of his equal place in the triumvirate, for the unique contribution he brought: his range of timbre, power, and blues figurations arranged with precise rhythmic structure and meaning. Benny Goodman called him the clarinetist with the greatest sound in the Chicago of his youth, which is saying a lot, considering Jimmie Noone, Leon Roppolo, Omer Simeon, and many others were active on that scene. We can only imagine what he sounded like in person, especially as he was known to distrust microphones and try to stay away from them in recording studios. Still, the documents he left us over the course of his relatively brief career (like Noone and Irving Fazola, he died in his 40s), shows an unprecedented range of timbre. One moment is he full, rich, smooth in tone, the next he sounds as though the intensity of his core sound will rip the clarinet in half. He commanded the extremes and all points in between. And that's not the sum total of his contribution: his technique was far more polished and fluid than most noticed (and by 'most', I include Artie Shaw, Buddy DeFranco and, somewhat embarrassingly, myself as a young man). His soloing style was baroque, but not mere noodling, and his rhythmic understanding was as influential and subtle as any in jazz history. To listen carefully to Johnny Dodds, and to truly understand what he's doing, is in some ways such a thorough education in the facets of jazz that one will be prepared for almost any future development (up through Monk and Miles). To my more mature ears, it seems that with Dodds, it's all there in embryonic form.

Like Bechet he was a prolific composer of his own tunes, which are idiomatic for our instrument and worthy of study. One great example is Indigo Stomp from 1929...at a time when he was also pioneering the clarinet lead trio. Enjoy.