100 Jazz Tunes Everyone Should Hear (#16) John Coltrane with Duke Ellington

#16 - John Coltrane with Duke Ellington - In a Sentimental Mood

How to play a ballad.

[ This is not a comprehensive list, nor is it representative of the "most important" or "best." Instead, following Duke Ellington's adage that the greatest music and musicians are "beyond category", I'm starting 2020 by sharing 100 jazz tunes I feel everyone should have the chance to hear--really just tunes and performances that I love. ]

100 Jazz Tunes Everyone Should Hear (#1)

This isn't a comprehensive list, nor do I claim these are the "most important" or "best", but following Duke Ellington's adage that the greatest are "beyond category", I'm going to start 2020 by sharing 100 jazz tunes that I love, and feel everyone should have the chance to hear.

Since Duke has been a guiding light to the idea, let's start with his live version of 'Take the A Train' in 1957. Though the studio version is excellent, and a must-listen in itself, this particular live version has such verve and meaning -- I particularly love how Harry Carney's baritone sax comes through, almost like he's leading from the bottom. It also gives a snapshot of the Ellington band on an average night in the late 50s; an era when it was difficult to keep a Big Band on the road or together at all. The commitment of the musicians shines through.  

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.

 

Ten Essential Jazz Clarinet Recordings (4)

4. Sidney Bechet * The Best of Sidney Bechet (Blue Note)



This next selection was a difficult one to make, considering all of the options for Sidney Bechet compilations, but it seemed to me the Blue Note set had a lot to recommend itself.

First and foremost, it has one of the most perfect blues recordings ever made, "Blue Horizon", which is a must for any jazz clarinetist to transcribe and inwardly digest.

Beyond this, there are many other sides here of unique importance. The sessions represented on this disc are largely drawn from the mid-1940s, when recording technology and quality had finally caught up enough to give some real excellent representations of jazz musicians' sound. They give us the opportunity to hear Bechet in many contexts both solo and ensemble, playing opposite Bunk Johnson and Wild Bill Davison on trumpet and cornet.

Perhaps most exciting for the clarinetist is "Old Stack O'Lee Blues" with Albert Nicholas. Here we have two differing New Orleans sound concepts: Bechet with his woody, aggressive ferocity, and Nicholas with his fat, round mellowness--Bechet on Albert system, Nicholas on Boehm--both of them singing, swinging, and booming.

For many in the New Orleans tradition, Bechet's sound is foundational, and for jazz itself, Bechet's solo concept certainly is. Even Gunther Schuller, whose jazz series has a penchant for setting up a rigid and highly subjective hierarchy to jazz history similar to a German Romantic "history of heroes", had to grudgingly admit that Bechet, as "creative melodist, had...a soloist's conception even before [Louis] Armstrong did." [Early Jazz, 198]

Duke Ellington went a great deal further in his praise for Bechet. "I consider Bechet the foundation [of jazz]," he said in 1962. As far as his clarinet sound, Duke had this to say:

He was just a great clarinet player. He had a wonderful clarinet tone--all wood, a sound you don't hear anymore."

But Duke's praise for Bechet doesn't end there. Perhaps this next quote puts things in the starkest relief:

Yes, there were some very good Lester Young imitators. Lester was one of the very potent influences. Charlie Parker had plenty of imitators. Johnny Hodges too. And there was a time when there was hardly a tenor player in the world who didn't try to sound like Coleman Hawkins. But we mustn't leave out the greatest--Bechet! The greatest of all the originators, Bechet, the symbol of jazz!   [Dance, The World of Duke Ellington, 10]

The history of jazz clarinet is a story of critical and scholarly neglect since the 1950s. I can't help but wonder why Duke Ellington, whom scholars have often canonized as the greatest jazz composer in history, shouldn't be consulted more for his opinion! The great foundational saxophonists of the 20th century--Lester, Bird, and Hawk, are all considered in this quote and yet Bechet, the clarinetist, is considered more important to jazz. Though these opinions (and the opinions of critics and scholars) are ultimately mere chatter in the face of the music, they do matter in the big picture, because they shape what is preserved and passed on to further generations. As clarinetists, it's worth remembering that such canons can be reshaped and influenced.

I read constantly of the supremacy of the saxophone to the clarinet in jazz, and when I was a student in college, it was common to hear no less a musician than Jackie McLean suggest that the clarinet might not really be a "jazz instrument." The history behind such statements is often ideological, extra-musical, and culturally disappointing. But we need not accept it, especially when our ears, hearts, and souls tell us otherwise (along with the history itself, and a few powerful quotes from musicians like Duke Ellington).

Keep swinging and wailing, clarinetists!

***

Works cited:

Dance, Stanley. The World of Duke Ellington. Da Capo, 1970.
Schuller, Gunther. Early Jazz. Oxford, 1968.