Pete Fountain * The Blues * Coral Records (CRL 757284) * 1959

Side A

St. Louis Blues
Blue Fountain 
Columbus Stockade Blues
Aunt Hagar's Blues
Lonesome Road
The Memphis Blues

Side B

My Inspiration
Wang Wang Blues
Beale Street Blues
Wabash Blues
Five Point Blues
Bayou Blues 

Pete Fountain * Clarinet
Stan Wrightsman * Piano
Morty Corb * Bass
Jack Sperling * Drums

Reeds: Babe Russin, Chuck Gentry, Eddie Miller, Jack Dumont, Matty Matlock, Russ Cheever, Wilbur Schwartz, William Ulyate
Trombones: Harold Diner, Moe Schneider, Peter Lofthouse, William Schaefer
Trumpets: Art Depew, Conrad Gozzo, Jackie Coon, John Best, Mannie Klein, Ray Linn,  Shorty Sherock


Charles Bud Dant * Director

Arrangements by Bud Dant, Frank Scott, Stan Wrightsman, Art Depew and Morty Corb


The Blues was the second of four albums Pete Fountain cut for Coral Records in 1959 immediately after his departure from the Lawrence Welk Show. This remarkable sequence of records seems to have been carefully considered to document Pete's many strengths. Pete Fountain's New Orleans, for instance, is a pristine, beautifully executed Los Angeles studio album of his quartet. At the Bateau Lounge showcases another of Pete's quartets (retaining Jack Sperling on drums for both dates) in a small New Orleans club. Contrasting that atmosphere considerably, Pete Fountain Day demonstrates the quintet's power in New Orleans Municipal Auditorium (proving, among other things, that before there was Arena Rock, there was exceptionally effective Arena Jazz). Municipal Auditorium is quite a space compared to a French Quarter lounge, holding nearly eight thousand people at capacity. And unlike any of the others, The Blues -- recorded in Los Angeles almost immediately after Pete Fountain's New Orleans -- demonstrates how compellingly Pete could front a Big Band.

That a jazz clarinetist will automatically succeed as a Big Band soloist is decidedly not a given. Polyphonic New Orleans jazz (whether it's called 'Dixieland' 'Ragtime' or 'Trad')  is in many ways a different discipline than Big Band approach, and not everyone can make the adjustments necessary. Sidney Bechet, for instance, over the course of his years recording with Noble Sissle's Orchestra in the 1930s, never seemed the right fit (though in fairness, it would have been interesting had Bechet put down the soprano sax in favor of the extended range of a clarinet for those recordings).

In order for the pairing of clarinet and band to work, a few things need to come into place. Most importantly, the player needs a commanding sound, especially in the altissimo, and the arrangements must work to the advantage of hearing the clarinet shine in all registers. Those elements are evident on this LP, which is perhaps the most enjoyable of all Pete's Big Band albums.

The arrangements by Bud Dant, Frank Scott, Stan Wrightsman, Art Depew and Morty Corb, while not typical of swing era writing, are certainly in the wheelhouse of late '50s, early '60s West Coast sound--direct precursors to the sort of clear, strong arrangements of Tommy Newsom and others, which would come to dominate the Tonight Show Band under Doc Severinsen for decades to come. They're extroverted at times and subdued at others, with large, sweeping gestures, leaving perfect room for Pete's rich chalumeau when necessary, and providing plenty of raucous volume for his altissimo to clear the band like a pole vaulter clears the bar at other moments.

The band itself was comprised of jazz veterans of the top ensembles of the swing era, many of whom had settled into the Los Angeles studio scene after the 1940s. There's a maturity and commitment to their playing not easily matched. 'St Louis Blues' sets the tone perfectly with hot playing from the band and dynamic altissimo of Pete at the climax. The rest of the album unfolds with the natural flow typical of Dant's skill as an arranger and producer. In fact, the remarkable flow of the various blues numbers chosen, along with their contrasting elements, gives the listener a sense of unity and diversity similar to a great symphony, with Five Points Blues on Side B functioning as a finale, and Bayou Blues (written by Pete's bass player, Morty Corb) as an epilogue or coda.

In between, however,  are plenty of numbers fans of Pete Fountain will want to hear regularly. 'Blue Fountain'--a moody, blues-noir number-- seems to have been written specifically for this album, by fellow Welk alum Frank Scott and the album's pianist Stan Wrightsman, and is a creative vehicle for Pete's singing lyricism. The other numbers show the remarkable range, formally and contentwise, of the Blues as a genre. There are marches, spirituals such as 'The Lonesome Road,' which Pete famously recorded in small combo settings as well, and ballads.  Side B leads off with 'My Inspiration,' a decided nod towards Pete's childhood hero, Irving Fazola, foreshadowing another Big Band album Pete was to record with Dant a year later--Pete Fountain Salutes the Great Clarinetists.

In terms of balance, soloing, and especially the engaging way this record pulls the listener through from beginning to end, this is a classic era Pete Fountain/Bud Dant collaboration. Highly recommended, essential listening, and a pure delight.

Pete Fountain 2015 Mardi Gras Doubloon (Eric Seddon Collection) 

    

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 (9)

9. Barney Bigard & the Duke Ellington Orchestra * Mood Indigo * 1931


Barney Bigard (1906-1980) was an unusual figure in the history of jazz clarinet. From New Orleans, he was taught by the legendary Lorenzo Tio, Jr., instructor of nearly every great NOLA player we remember from that era--including Sidney Bechet, Jimmie Noone, Johnny Dodds, Omer Simeon, and Albert Nicholas. Yet of them all, Bigard was the only one who spent significant time, both touring and recording, with a prominent Big Band. That it was Duke Ellington's, arguably the most creative Big Band of them all, is a decided bonus.

Ellington had a love for the clarinet, fostered by his early experience hearing Sidney Bechet, who he referred to as "the foundation" and "symbol" of all jazz. (Dance, p10) For a time early in his career, Duke was able to get Bechet in the band, though Bechet never stayed with one group for very long, and was notoriously in and out of the music business for various reasons. Perhaps it was Ellington's love of the New Orleans Albert-system sound that made Bigard such a perfect fit. It remains one of Duke's great achievements that the New Orleans sound could be so well integrated into such a large ensemble.

The clarinetists of the Ellington band have been sometimes neglected by critics, sometimes over praised. Bigard himself was remarkably outspoken and shrewd in his opinions of the clarinetists inside and outside the band. For those of us distant from the era, it's helpful to read the words of an accomplished player from that era:

What [ Artie ] Shaw did to begin with was to make the clarinet sound unusually beautiful in the upper register. He wasn't a low-register guy, but he was more creative than Benny Goodman. Benny did all the popular tunes and standards, but Shaw made up his own and played them so well. The guy could execute like mad. Benny could also execute, and had much more drive than Artie, but I like Artie for the things that are almost impossible to do on the clarinet.
 

I thought Buster Bailey was one of the fastest clarinetists there ever was. He had his own style, and I could always tell his playing. He was a good musician with good execution, but he didn't have the jazz drive or the soul in there like Goodman and some other guys. In other words it didn't have the oomph to it. Where Buster was great was in a studio or a show. That's the same way I figure with [ fellow Ellingtonian] Jimmy Hamilton. He's a terrific clarinetist, but he doesn't have that soul to go with what he's doing. He should have been in classical music. He's got that studio tone to begin with, and he plays straight and fluent, but it's not jazz.

Omer Simeon was a fine musician, an unsung hero, and a great clarinet player. 

[from Stanley Dance's The World of Duke Ellington. pgs88-89]

To those of us who have read some rather strange scholarship on jazz clarinet, these words are a refreshingly clear headed assessment of the era, and worth remembering.

 

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.

Big Band Jazz Clarinet: Essential Performances (7)

7. Artie Shaw * August 19, 1939 * Live at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Roof, Boston

As one who came up primarily as a jazz clarinetist before college, it always bothered me to hear the occasional live classical clarinet performance, where the soloist might come out of the orchestra to play tight, terrified music, a quarter tone or more sharp, sounding like a different player in every register, only to have the whole thing hailed as a classic interpretation. Back when I was young and foolish enough to point out the above concerns to colleagues, there would come the inevitable laundry list of excuses: the soloist wasn't used to the concert hall, perhaps their reeds weren't very good for both soloing and part playing, the conductor might have told them to play a certain way against their better judgement, and most importantly of all: you just can't judge a live performance by the same standards you might an air-brushed studio recording! 

These excuses are reminiscent of an old story well known in orchestral circles: There was once a famous piano soloist, listening to the studio playback with the conductor. The edits had all been made, so the work sounded perfect. "Don't you wish you could play like that?" the conductor quipped.

The excuses are potentially true, of course, but I'd grown up listening to big band soloists who made their daily living by live solo performance. These orchestra leaders regularly performed over the airwaves, often in new venues. They were not only in charge of their own playing but the band as well (hiring, firing, rehearsing, repertoire choosing, etc), and on top of it they had to improvise their solos! No one in the audience cared if their reed wasn't perfect, or if they'd never played the room before that night. And night in, night out, masters like Shaw and Goodman managed to not only equal, but exceed the artistry of their studio recordings.

We're lucky these live sets were recorded: had they occurred even ten or twenty years earlier, we'd have no documentation of their brilliance. One such performance is of Artie Shaw at the Ritz-Carlton in Boston, almost exactly 73 years ago. Available now on Hindsight records' "Artie Shaw: King of the Clarinet", the set represented is a brilliant example of the night in, night out work these players did.

Big Band Jazz Clarinet: Essential Performances (6)

6. Pete Fountain * The Blues * 1959

In 1959, Pete Fountain came to his famous realization that "Champagne and Bourbon don't mix", decided that Hollywood just wasn't for him, and packed his family for the return trip to New Orleans. But before he left, he cut two very important albums. The first, Pete Fountain's New Orleans, seamlessly blended Pete's New Orleans style clarinet with a cool, West Coast rhythm section. It went on to become one of Fountain's best selling records, and is still available for download over sixty years later. The second, equally impressive despite having sadly slipped into obscurity, is Pete's first collaboration with the large ensemble scoring of Charles 'Bud' Dant, entitled The Blues.

These arrangements are streamlined, '50s-chic Big Band Charts, demonstrating the polish musicians brought to them in that day. The band was comprised of the top musicians in L.A. at the time, many of them veterans of the Big Band era.

Some of these tracks, especially the impressive lead-off 'St Louis Blues' have been reissued in compilation albums, but many (such as 'Blue Fountain') have been oddly neglected over the six decades since it was recorded. They capture Pete's playing at a moment of particular brilliance. His legendary fat, liquidy sound is all there, from the bottom to the top of the horn. Few clarinetists have ever matched the timbral beauty throughout the horn's range that Pete has.

There are still a few vinyl discs of this great album floating around. Get a stereo copy if you can (they were pressed in both stereo and mono--the stereo versions have a blue "Coral Stereo" strip at the top). Hopefully this great album will be made available for download soon.

[For a more thorough review of this album, click here.]



Big Band Jazz Clarinet: Essential Performances (5)

5. Woody Herman & The Herd * Live at Carnegie Hall * 1946

 

Woody Herman was neither the virtuoso nor the perfectionist-taskmaster of his two rivals, Shaw and Goodman, but his band was one of the most musically adventurous and emotionally effective of the Big Band Era.

Known for his uncanny ability to hone arrangements in rehearsal, Woody Herman ran a hard swinging, lyrical, tight ensemble, unafraid to cross unusual musical boundaries. Carnegie Hall has been featured prominently on this list already, with both Goodman and Shaw. It was only natural that arguably the most exciting band of the 1940s would also make a run at that legendary venue.  

This concert features many remarkable moments. A number of the charts were to become favorites, performed for decades by Herman's successive Herds, including 'Blowin' Up a Storm' and 'Hallelujah'. But the highlights of this concert are the extremely adventurous inclusion of Ralph Burns' landmark Summer Sequence (a piece I firmly believe every American Conservatory student should be required to study) and the World Premiere of Igor Stravinsky's Ebony Concerto.

Bridging the classical and jazz worlds has been a major preoccupation for many jazz clarinetists, and there is little wonder why: our instrument had a major solo repertoire prior to the jazz era, and an abundance of virtuosi of both styles. Artie Shaw had worked toward a "chamber jazz" concept beginning at least as early as 1936, and Benny Goodman's efforts in both realms are well known. Indeed, Goodman's recording of the Ebony Concerto has sometimes obscured the fact the Herman Herd was both the inspiration for and first performer of the work.

This musical bridge building will become even more important as we consider clarinetists closer to our own day, but the Woody Herman Carnegie Hall Concert marked a huge leap forward on the quest for such unity. It also highlights the state of the Big Band in the very important year of 1946, which has been cited as the end of the Big Band Era. As George Simon wrote in The Big Bands:

...in December, 1946, almost a dozen years after Benny Goodman had blown the first signs of life into the big band bubble, that bubble burst with a concerted bang. Inside just a few weeks, eight of the nation's top bandleaders called it quits---some temporarily, some permanently: Benny Goodman, Woody Herman, Harry James, Tommy Dorsey, Les Brown, Jack Teagarden, Benny Carter, and Ina Ray Hutton.

The German Romantic Period had lasted nearly a century, but America's was crammed into a dozen years. With the disbanding of the Herman Herd, High Summer for American music was indeed over, and the country moved into colder modernism. This juncture didn't end the contributions of clarinetists to the genre, nor of many bands from doing some of their best work (Duke Ellington's work in the '50s and '60s comes to mind), but the high point was past, and Americans would never again support the Big Bands or our unique style of romanticism with the same enthusiasm.

The recording available to us is, unfortunately, incomplete. Only the third movement of the Stravinsky remains, and only ten minutes of the Summer Sequence, but it is nevertheless an important document. Stravinsky had coached the Herd himself, and it shows: there is a 'rightness' to the articulations, especially in the brass, unlike most other recordings of the work.

There is also the landmark 1946 studio recording of Woody Herman & the Herd performing Ebony Concerto, with the composer conducting. It lacks the live feel and resonance of Carnegie Hall, and Woody's clarinet playing is nowhere near Benny's later recording, but it is nevertheless an important document.

 



Big Band Jazz Clarinet: Essential Performances (4)

4. Artie Shaw * St. James Infirmary * 1941

In November of 1941, Artie Shaw went into the studio with his Orchestra and featured vocalist/trumpeter 'Hot Lips' Page on what amounts to a tone poem of the old standard "St James Infirmary." Using both sides of a 78 disc, the song stretches over six minutes, unusual for the recordings of the day (Benny Goodman's 'Sing Sing Sing' and 'Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen' were similar exceptions to the one side rule).

On this recording, the tune begins in G minor, rather than the more traditional F minor, enabling Shaw to utilize the full range of the clarinet to dramatic effect.

Shaw plays three major solos on the tune. The first comes as the primary exposition of the song, reaching up to Double C emphatically, for musical rather than virtuosic reasons. The second 'solo' is behind Page's vocal, and one of the very finest background solos of the era. The third comes in Part II of the tune, on the 'flipside', where Shaw screams a blues of perfect economy and intensity, hammering the altissimo of the clarinet with a repeated figure to Double C--yet once again the result is soulful rather than showy.

If all else had been lost, and this was the only recording we possessed of Artie Shaw, we would be forced to conclude from it alone that he was one of the finest clarinetists to record, one of the most soulful blues musicians of the 20th century, and one of the greatest background soloists of any era. Talk about essential...

Big Band Jazz Clarinet: Essential Performances (3)

3. Artie Shaw with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra * The Blues * Carnegie Hall (1938)


It's astonishing to think that Shaw's performance with Whiteman in 1938, arguably the most impressive jazz clarinet on record (in a technical sense) and certainly one of the most important recordings in American musical history, might be out of print.

The piece, which can be understood as a sketch for Shaw's later Concerto for Clarinet (1940), is perhaps even more important than the final product--at least as a cultural document--for here the influences stand out more boldly. Entitled simply "The Blues", it's a sort of tone poem for clarinet and orchestra combining 'St. Louis Blues' with klezmer--uniting them as convincingly as Gershwin's earlier Rhapsody in Blue had united European concert music with Tin Pan Alley (not coincidentally for an earlier Paul Whiteman extravaganza).

There is something strange and sad about an American culture that takes such little interest in its own positive accomplishments. This particular piece represents a nearly seamless uniting of two strains of human experience, and could not have been accomplished without Shaw's unique background, which was not only Jewish, but steeped in African-American Blues. Had something of this calibre, even just in terms of technique, been written by Carl Maria von Weber for Heinrich Baermann a hundred years earlier, it would be considered a classic of music history. But it isn't even taught in our conservatories here. Classical faculties ignore it (perhaps because most classical clarinetists can't even approximate the techniques needed to perform it) and jazz faculties ignore it, too, as the rush to an increasingly limited understanding of the term "jazz", fueled by ideological rather than musical concerns, dominates.

So this work is buried, mentioned by no one. Perhaps our social tensions, and the desire to maintain them for political purposes, make music such as this an embarrassing reminder that good really can come when barriers are removed and ignored. And perhaps some very powerful people, who profit by our divisions and anger, don't want us to know this. For those who are tired of being treated as pawns, however, this music serves as a type of antidote.

As mentioned in the Introduction to this series, I intend to stretch the boundaries of "Big Band" a bit, if only because the groups under that name were so diverse. Shaw's band, for instance, often included string sections and even harp, and there is a decided blur between what we now accept as a more or less "standard" instrumentation, and what reality was for the groups (usually called "Orchestras") in the "Big Band Era."


[Note: There is a retrospectively chilling moment of 'humor' in the beginning of the performance, where the MC refers to Paul Whiteman as the "Fuhrer" of the orchestra on stage. Little did they know at the time what Hitler thought of Jews, Blacks, and jazz music, and how singularly unfunny such a quip would seem to the entire world only a few months later.]

Big Band Jazz Clarinet: Essential Performances (2)

2. Benny Goodman & His Orchestra * Live from the Congress Hotel, 1935-36


There are many early performances of Benny Goodman's that might deserve placement on this list, and many by Artie Shaw that might lay claim to the number two spot. Goodman's stint on the Let's Dance  program, and his wild success at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles in 1935 have both been cited as the beginning of the "Swing Era" and therefore have enough historical merit to garner consideration. Artie's recordings from the Cafe Rouge and the Blue Room are of such a high level of playing that they, on pure musical merit, could warrant this spot as well.

But these NBC broadcasts from 1935-36, from Goodman's time in Chicago immediately after the Los Angeles success, are important to both players, and therefore unique in the history of jazz clarinet.

By 1935, Artie Shaw had given up on the music business (not for the last time) and retired, at the ripe old age of 25, to become a novelist. He was in a marriage that was falling apart (also not for the last time), and living the life of a bohemian writer in a Pennsylvania farmhouse. One night as he was driving home, he was blown away by who he heard on the radio: an old rival who had challenged him for alto sax parts in the New York studios only a year or so before: Benny Goodman.

Shaw's farm was so remote, it didn't have electricity--so when he got home, he took his radio outside and hooked it up to the car battery. He was so impressed by what he heard that he wrote Goodman a letter praising him for his success.

Goodman's response probably did more to motivate Shaw than anything else could have. Instead of thanking him graciously, Goodman jabbed back "I'm gonna blackmail you [ with that letter.]" (Nolan pg 56). A fire was lit under Shaw to return to playing--Goodman was not going to let him go away from music quietly. I believe Benny responded that way because he knew how much talent Shaw possessed, and how good it would be for the entire music scene to have him back--including a rivalry that might add to their drawing power. Shaw claimed later to have loathed the rivalry, and even tried to suggest he didn't recognize it as such, but the signs were undeniable, and the influence of Goodman--the spur and challenge he presented--undoubtedly pushed Shaw to some of his greatest musical achievements.

Apart from the importance to the Goodman/Shaw rivalry, the Congress Hotel broadcasts represent another milestone in Benny's career. Swing was officially 'dance' music--it was supposed to exist for that specific purpose. But at the Congress Hotel in Chicago, a new thing happened. Music fans showed up--and they didn't want to dance. They wanted to listen--many of them simply standing on the dance floor with their eyes and ears attentively on the band. And when some tried to dance, they were booed off the floor. [Collier pg 170 f] Perhaps it was here that Benny first started to get a notion of the importance of swing as concert music--a notion that would eventually lead to Carnegie Hall, and change the public perception of jazz forever.

 

Works cited:

Artie Shaw: King of the Clarinet by Tom Nolan
Benny Goodman and the Swing Era by James Lincoln Collier.

Big Band Jazz Clarinet: Essential Performances (1)

1. Benny Goodman & His Orchestra * Live at Carnegie Hall * 1938


Let's not kid ourselves: Benny Goodman's 1938 Carnegie Hall concert was clearly the most important single event in the history of Big Band Clarinet. It marked the first time an all-jazz program was offered at the nation's most revered venue for classical performance, and had it flopped, the resulting clatter would have resounded throughout Goodman's career and altered the critical trajectory of jazz.

Goodman was the right man for the job in many ways. For one thing, he had already emphasized the history of the artform on his Camel Caravan radio show. This rare penchant for educating a popular audience probably paid dividends for his Carnegie Hall presentation, which featured a brief review of jazz history. This section emphasized the contributions of many artists, including Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, Duke Ellington, and Count Basie (some of Duke's men even performed in the sequence, and the Count himself performed). Some of the performances are more convincing than others, and the extended on-stage jam session on 'Honeysuckle Rose' might be considered a miscalculation. But even if this is concluded, there remains Goodman's unassailable intent, which was to help a subscription audience, who might have little understanding of what they were hearing, learn on the spot.

Over 80 years later, the recording still grips. Like the opening chords of Beethoven's 'Eroica', it is always bracing, and repeated listening never blunts the impact. The tension is palpable, and the soloing of Goodman, Harry James, Ziggy Elman, and Gene Krupa especially, are electrifying.

The concert contained an amazing breadth of material. There were standards like Gershwin's 'The Man I Love' and 'I Got Rhythm'; Irving Berlin's 'Blue Skies'; originals like 'Don't Be That Way' and 'Swingtime in the Rockies'; and ethnic numbers ranging from the Scottish 'Loch Lomond' to the Yiddish 'Bei Mir Bist du Schoen'. The concert confidently and unselfconsciously demonstrated that jazz was America's artistic voice--like Whitman's poetry and the nation itself, containing multitudes and belonging to all.

The performance of Jimmy Mundy's famous arrangement of 'Sing Sing Sing' has been written about at length in many other places. Suffice it to say here that the clarinet solos, with their poignant sense of loneliness and probing, alternating between commanding and pleading, and ending in a prayer-like ascent to double C, are among the most important ever played. Much has been made, rightly, of Jess Stacy's inspired solo which followed. Rarely noticed is that Stacy's solo would have been impossible had not Benny (and Harry James before him) set the musical mood perfectly.

Too often, swing era music is caricatured as 'fun', 'lighthearted', merely diverting music, as though the musicians involved were just having one big, carefree party while playing. But a tune like 'Sing Sing Sing' was hardly fun, nor did it express anything carefree or merely entertaining. Harry James said later:

I don't think I ever told anybody this, but I was going through a real mental thing and it was all built around 'Sing Sing Sing'. [...] [It] happened the first time time I was supposed to get up and play my chorus on 'Sing Sing Sing'. I just couldn't make it. I fell back in my chair. Ziggy [Elman] said to me, 'Get up!' but I couldn't; so when he saw what was happening, he got up and played my solo. I was completely out of my mind. It happened again another time, too, and so every time the band played 'Sing Sing Sing' I'd get bugged and scared it would start all over again. You know, that Stravinsky-type thing that the trombones and then the trumpets play just before the chorus? Well, that would really set me off. I tried to explain it to Benny, and I'd even ask him to play 'Sing Sing Sing' early in the evening, so I could relax the rest of the night. But of course, that was his big number and I couldn't blame him for wanting to hold off. So finally I just left the band. I couldn't trust myself anymore.

[quoted in James Lincoln Collier's Benny Goodman and the Swing Era, Oxford, 1989. Pg 222]

Whatever his fears, however this music might have rattled him, James gave a solo for the ages on that cold night in 1938.

If we listen to it with fresh ears, 'Sing Sing Sing' is driving, intense, and sometimes disturbing music. It wasn't nostalgic to the men who first performed it, and it needn't be now. I consider the Goodman Carnegie Hall performance of Mundy's arrangement to have been every bit as profound a statement as Vaughan Williams's sixth symphony. This is part of the reason that Carnegie Hall concert was such a success: the music equalled or surpassed the depth of what was usually played there.