Austin Wylie & His Golden Pheasant Orchestra (1926)

In 1926, at age sixteen, Artie Shaw left New Haven for Joe Cantor's Far East Orchestra, a band which played at a Chinese Restaurant in Cleveland, Ohio. Shortly afterwards, he left Cantor's band for Austin Wylie's Orchestra at the Golden Pheasant, which was the top band in Cleveland at the time. Shaw thrived in the Golden Pheasant Orchestra, not only playing but serving as an arranger and director. When he left, Wylie came with him--this time as Shaw's road manager.

While in Cleveland, his roommate was none other than Claude Thornhill. I've always thought there was a musical kinship between Shaw and Thornhill that lasted beyond their Cleveland days. Thornhill was to ultimately create a unique type of big band jazz that served as a precursor and influence upon Miles Davis's Birth of the Cool, while Shaw was to repeatedly return to the development of what he termed "chamber jazz"--a concept that would come to final fruition in his "pellucid" Gramercy 5 recordings of 1954. This crystalline quality, found in Thornhill's "Snowfall" and Shaw's last recordings, are to me direct outgrowths of their formative years in Cleveland, where the musical life has so long fostered that same clear quality.

Fortunately, there still exist some recordings of Austin Wylie's Golden Pheasant Orchestra. When I stumbled across a few of them the other day on YouTube, they were a rare thrill to hear. This band, recorded shortly before Shaw's arrival, was certainly as good as the other major bands of the 1920s. They swing, play tightly in tune, and are in general as good or superior to many of the more famous groups associated with that era.

Many years later, Shaw was to wonder if he hadn't made a mistake leaving Cleveland. Listening to this recording helps us understand both the influences and the draw of the Cleveland Jazz scene upon Artie Shaw at an important stage of his development.


[ Reposted 4/11/13--ES]

 

Big Band Jazz Clarinet: Essential Performances (10)

10. Artie Shaw as Composer/Arranger

No introduction to Big Band Clarinet would be complete without mentioning Artie Shaw's role as both composer and arranger. From his days with Austin Wylie in Cleveland, Shaw had worked as an arranger, and that continued for the duration of his musical career. One of his first compositions, Interlude in B-Flat, for strings, pianoless rhythm section, and clarinet, had a role in launching Shaw's career as a leader in 1936. It's worth noting that George Gershwin attended that 1936 performance, and reportedly told Shaw afterwards that the Interlude was "the first innovation in jazz he had heard in his career." (Though Shaw was quick to point out that "George wasn't exactly a jazz expert" the quote is still impressive). (Lees, 15)

While he hired many excellent arrangers for the duration of his career, men such as Jerry Gray, Eddie Sauter, and William Grant Still often served as collaborators or orchestrators of Shaw's arrangement ideas, and unlike most bandleaders of the era, Shaw had a direct hand in almost all of his bands' "book" (Simosko, 232). 

Of Shaw's total recordings, 15% were his own compositions. Perhaps most impressively, of the eight singles for Victor that sold over a million copies, four were his own and all were arranged by him. (Simosko, 231). Among these were his theme song, "Nightmare"  (a forerunner to the modal jazz which would become popular twenty years later), "Traffic Jam", and the early "Back Bay Shuffle" (written as a musical description of the band's rush to catch the last train out of Boston after a late gig).

Oftentimes fans will buy compilation albums with these tunes on them, and many others, without composer credits. I grew up, for example, listening to many of these songs without knowing until twenty years later that Shaw had composed them. It changes our perspective to realize that Shaw was not just a front man or soloist for his band, but the dominant creative and musical mind for the entire ensemble, not unlike the role Duke Ellington played in his.




Further reading:

Lees, Gene. Program Notes to Artie Shaw: A Legacy . 4LP boxed set, Book-of-the-Month Club, 1984.

Simosko, Vladimir. Artie Shaw: A Musical Biography and Discography. The Scarecrow Press, 2000.

Big Band Jazz Clarinet: Essential Performances (8)

8. Clarence Hutchenrider & the Casa Loma Orchestra * Smoke Rings * 1937


Born in Waco, Texas in 1908, Clarence Hutchenrider kicked around various regional bands as a young man before ending up in Austin Wylie's Golden Pheasant Orchestra: that important Cleveland training ground which produced such esteemed alumni as trumpeter Billy Butterfield, pianist Claude Thornhill and, most importantly, clarinetist Artie Shaw. When Shaw left Wylie's band for the New York studios, Hutchenrider was his replacement.

But Hutchenrider's days on Prospect Avenue in Cleveland were numbered. He would soon jump from Cleveland's top band to New York's: the Casa Loma Orchestra. In doing so he would temporarily pole vault, career wise, over Shaw himself.

The Casa Loma Orchestra was a unique ensemble. It functioned as a corporation, where the players all owned a share in the business. There were strict rules for remaining a member, and if those rules were broken, the band could buy the offender out and hire someone else. The resulting ensemble was a highly motivated, professional, and loyal group who had a direct stake in their own future--a group which stayed relatively intact for a couple of decades, and dominated the Big Band scene of the early 1930s.

Originally from Detroit, the band was called the "Orange Blossoms" before landing a gig at the Casa Loma in Toronto--a nightclub which, paradoxically, never opened, though the band kept the name. In 1929, when the stock market crashed, work dried up in the Detroit area, so the band relocated to New York.  [see George Simon's The Big Bands] Two years later, Austin Wylie's clarinetist joined the band and became the Casa Loma Orchestra's premiere jazz soloist.

Clarence Hutchenrider's sound tended towards Artie Shaw's: round, warm, velvety. Also like Shaw, his soloing style had the essential starting point of romantic lyricism. I've often wondered if the apprenticeship in Cleveland wasn't a dominant influence on the sound concept of both men. And though it is almost certainly historical coincidence more than anything else, considering also the sound concept of Franklin Cohen (who plays in Cleveland's most successful Orchestra these days, and who has done much to champion the playing of Shaw) I tend to think of this approach to the horn as the "Cleveland Clarinet Sound." There seems to be an emphasis towards fullness, roundness, and above all lyricism--a working within the sound itself--without the more nasal or harsh edges found in other styles of playing.

Thanks in part to Hutchenrider's gorgeous soloing, the Casa Loma Orchestra was the top band of the early 1930s, and set the stage for much of the Big Band Era proper, which most historians agree was launched by Benny Goodman in 1935. Casa Loma was among the first bands to fully tap the potential of playing for college dances, for mastering many styles, and for working in a truly professional manner. Coleman Hawkins, then of the Fletcher Henderson band, would refer to them as his "favorite band" deserving of serious attention (Sudhalter, 347), and Buddy Rich would call them "the most together band ever." (Sudhalter, 351)

Of the top clarinetists of the Big Band era, Clarence Hutchenrider of the Casa Loma Orchestra drifted into the most needless obscurity, and is therefore certainly the most deserving of a renaissance. While other jazz clarinetist's contributions have been unfairly devalued by historians, which is tragic enough, his has been nearly lost.

 

 

 

Further Reading:

 

Simon, George T. The Big Bands. Schirmer Books, 1982.

 

Sudhalter, Richard M. Lost Chords. Oxford University Press, 1999.