King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band * The Complete 1923 Recordings * Off the Record * OTR-MM6-C2 (2006)

Disc One

Just Gone 

Canal Street Blues 

Mandy Lee Blues

I'm Going Away to Wear You Off My Mind 

Chimes Blues 

Weather Bird Rag 

Dipper Mouth Blues 

Froggie Moore 

Snake Rag 

Snake Rag 

Sweet Lovin' Man 

High Society Rag 

Sobbin' Blues 

Where Did You Stay Last Night 

Dipper Mouth Blues 

Jazzin' Babies Blues

Disc Two

Alligator Hop

Zulu's Ball

Workingman Blues

Krooked Blues

Chattanooga Stomp

London (Cafe) Blues

Camp Meeting Blues

New Orleans Stomp

Buddy's Habit

Tears

I Ain't Gonna Tell Nobody

Room Rent Blues

Riverside Blues

Sweet Baby Doll

Working Man Blues

Mabel's Dream

Mabel's Dream (take 1)

Mabel's Dream (take 2)

The Southern Stomps (take 1)

The Southern Stomps (take 2)

Riverside Blues

On April 5, 1923, jazz history was made in Richmond, Indiana, when Joe "King" Oliver and his Creole Jazz Band laid down the first five of thirty seven recordings they were to ultimately cut that year in various studios. These first were for Gennett, but the band would also record in Okeh's, Columbia's, and Marsh Laboratories's Chicago studios. All of the recordings are important for their historical value, and a good number of the tunes became permanent in the jazz repertoire, among them "Canal Street Blues", "Weather Bird Rag", "Snake Rag", "Sobbin' Blues", and "Dippermouth Blues (Sugarfoot Stomp)".

King Oliver's band is best known for introducing Louis Armstrong to the world outside of New Orleans. Satchmo was known to have said he wouldn't have left his successful playing career in the Crescent City for any other outfit than Joe's. The way the two cornet players worked together is the stuff of legend now, with their special means of communicating which harmonized riffs to dazzle the audience with during solo breaks, their rapport, and the overall brilliance of performance that helped form Armstrong into one of the most potent and important figures in the history of music. The rest of the band was notable as well, though, comprised of some of the most significant early jazz musicians on record, including Lil Hardin on piano, Baby Dodds on drums, Honore Dutrey on trombone, Johnny St. Cyr on banjo, and most importantly for readers of The Jazz Clarinet, Johnny Dodds, Jimmie Noone, and Buster Bailey on clarinet.

Approaching these recordings without preconceptions, especially the historical weight of who Louis Armstrong was to become, the cornetist's perspective seems a bit exaggerated, actually. The soloing star of the show, to my ear (admittedly biased) is Johnny Dodds. Because the twin cornets of Oliver and Armstrong are muted, and because the clarinet seems to have been balanced or focused on properly in relation to the microphone (which was not always the case in Dodds's career), these remain some of the finest examples of Dodds's playing, and New Orleans style clarinet, on record.

His tone is full and rich, and when he reaches for that special piercing quality he had, it never loses strength and body. His solo breaks are confident and directed; his accompanying arpeggios so strong that one could be forgiven for thinking these tunes were movements of a concerto written for him. Taken as a whole they show the strength and depth of Dodds's playing at this point in his career. The contrast between his richness of tone and the lighter playing style of Leon Roppolo of the New Orleans Rhythm Kings or Jimmie Noone (on "Chattanooga Stomp", the one tune credited to him with King Oliver's band) is striking, and serves to really show us why Benny Goodman would have singled him out as having one of the best tones of the clarinetists in Chicago of the 1920s. The October 16, 1923 session at Columbia Studios in Chicago are the only multiple recordings by another clarinetist with the Creole Jazz Band,  this time Buster Bailey.  Bailey is impressively similar to Dodds in approach, with a substantial, rich sound, but the overall mastery of style and comfort with the ensembles isn't quite at Dodds's level.

In the years that followed, Dodds was to gain perhaps even greater fame as a member of Louis Armstrong's Hot Five and Sevens. On those records he impresses as being a soloist who could follow or precede Armstrong without musical quality being lost. But on these earlier recordings with King Oliver, it is Dodds who strikes me as the great soloist in the band.  We can hear why Lil Hardin, once she became Lil Armstrong, would hire Johnny Dodds for her husband's most important recording dates as a bandleader.  

This particular reissue from Off the Record in 2006 was an attempt to transfer, without noise reduction from original discs. They took great pride in their work, and the booklet has extensive technical information about the exact speed of transfer, styluses used, and grade of original source record. All of that will be of interest to audiophiles and recording engineers who have an interest in future transfer work. In the notes, it's clear that they hoped to get as clean and original a sound as they could, without adding reverb or cutting out too much sound. The results are quite good.

Five good reeds, of course.    

Mr. Acker Bilk and His Paramount Jazz Band * The Seven Ages of Acker * 1959

In a Persian Market (Ketelby)
I'm Going Home (Bilk)
Ory's Creole Trombone (Ory)
Summer Set (Bilk)
The Light from the Lighthouse (Traditional)
The Gay Hussar (Lincke)
Tiger Ray (LaRocca/DeCoste/Shields)
Lucky Rock (Rainey)
Cushion Foot Stomp (Williams)
Run Come See Jerusalem (Blake)
Old Comrades March (Teike)

Columbia - 33SX 1205

Mr. Acker Bilk * clarinet, vocals
Mr. J. Mortimer * trombone
Mr. K. Sims * trumpet
Mr. R. McKay * traps, background vocal on "The Light from the Lighthouse"
Mr. E. Price * double bass
Mr. R. James * tenor banjo
Mr. D. Collett * piano on "Summer Set"


Technological advance, methodical and relentless use of resources, constant innovation understood as a virtue, commercialism as a way of life, gratuitous competition as a means of marketing: these are aspects of the American psyche which tend to spill over from economics and industry into the rest of our culture as well. Jazz history has been no exception. Sometimes this mindset has produced explosively creative results; at other times the inability of the American mind to cease its restless, insatiable consumerism seems to get ahead of itself and leave little ground unscorched before it could be properly developed.

Comparing jazz history to European concert music history reveals this compression--whereas Functional Tonality took centuries to develop, and stylistic epochs in classical music history stretched sometimes for multiple generations, Jazz went from polyphony to an early 'gallant' style to high romanticism to full fledged modernism in about four decades. Some of this was simply a result of the interaction of jazz with modern European music, but certainly much of it had to do with the restless, voracious, and nervous American muse. Because of this, we've often depended upon other cultures to maintain, value, and support styles invented here and abandoned before they've even reached full fruition. France, England, and Japan have often, since the mid-20th century, been more supportive of American jazz musicians than their native country. Because of this, the spread of jazz has not necessarily followed the trajectory abroad that it has at home -- "Trad Jazz" is not only celebrated on other continents, but it has produced heirs from other cultures who have added their particular voice and ethnic flavor to the music.

One of the strongest of these Trad Jazz currents flowed through Great Britain in the 1950s and '60s, and a major focal point was the fascinating and soulful music of clarinetist Acker Bilk. Bilk's contribution is beyond that of being a curator of New Orleans style tunes abroad--he actually advanced the art of jazz in ways that have yet to be fully appreciated on this side of the pond.

First, perhaps, a discussion of his sound is necessary. It's an interesting coincidence of history that the traditionally broad, mellow, full sound of English clarinetists has more in common with early New Orleans style clarinet than the 'American School' of classical clarinetistry. As such there was a natural sympathy between Bilk and New Orleans players such as George Lewis, Albert Nicholas, and Raymond Burke. It would be a mistake to think of Bilk as an English copy of New Orleans sound, though--there were many differences. His chalumeau, while strong and expressive, didn't have the typical New Orleans richness, and while his clarion register could hold with the best of the NOLA crowd, it's his altissimo that is so striking: Bilk's altissimo was actually much stronger than most Crescent City traditionalists, making him able to sustain lines with strength and clarity in unique ways. His intonation was also quite good--and while he always honored George Lewis and other foundational New Orleans players, he didn't fall into the trap of playing too flat so often (which seems to plague many NOLA style traditionalists). All in all, he took the style and brought strength, clarity, and a certain amount of virtuosity (though never descending into mere flashiness).

The Seven Ages of Acker likewise takes New Orleans style as a point of departure, applying it broadly, not only by playing standards (such as Tiger Rag and Ory's Creole Trombone), but in terms of repertoire. In it, Bilk expanded the base of traditional jazz, integrating light music that was popular with British audiences in the early 20th century such as Ketebey's "In a Persian Market," and Lincke's "The Gay Hussar." Significantly, this music was the direct precursor of British Invasion rock (several Brit Rock bands and players of the following decade cut their teeth in trad-jazz groups of the '50s). Like those bands' backbeats, which were based upon American Rhythm & Blues, but didn't really sound or feel like it, there is a distinctive English quality to the way Acker Bilk's Paramount Jazz Band swings--a quality that Americans ought to take more seriously, because to dismiss it is only to lose the creativity and subtle innovative quality that this music offers. The more you listen to English Trad Jazz, the more you hear the long history of the British brass band and light music blending into the New Orleans style. That it is such a good fit is both fascinating and enjoyable. As with so much English music, there's always an admirable emphasis on soul and real emotion rather than mere technique. That's wasn't always the case with American jazz since the bop era, and can serve as quite an antidote to self-conscious modernism.

It's noteworthy that a Bilk original from this album, "Summer Set", was a top ten hit on the UK charts, setting the stage for his biggest: 1961's "Stranger on the Shore"-- the first British tune to hit number one on the American Billboard charts (predating Beatlemania). "Summer Set" is a very simple tune, but the bright sincerity of it serves as foreshadowing to the lighter, optimistic hits of Paul McCartney during his Beatle days.

This band, and this album, is one of the most intriguing of the Trad Jazz contributions from the British heyday of the '50s and '60s. They didn't just serve as a cover band, but as a creative, innovative group in their own genuine and humorous way. There is still much to be learned from what those English traddies did, and for those who haven't yet delved into it, this album is highly recommended.

The Seven Ages of Acker gets The Jazz Clarinet's highest rating: Five Good Reeds, for the command Bilk shows on clarinet (especially his masterful altissimo) while expanding and moving the music forward. While Americans had by 1959 largely abandoned the New Orleans model, Bilk & Co added to it, showing there was still much work to do, and that the style can be developed continuously.

CD Review: "Chicago Rhythm-Apex Blues" * The Recordings of Jimmie Noone 1923-1943 * JSP926

Perhaps no virtuoso has been more obscured over the decades since his death than the great Jimmie Noone (1895-1944), whose achievement as a jazz clarinetist is unique and in many ways unparalleled. As a player of the Albert system clarinet, his technique was unmatched--none of the 'second generation' New Orleans clarinetists could complete with his executive skills. Sidney Bechet, Johnny Dodds, Leon Roppolo--all of these men were important and foundational to the history of jazz--but none of them could match Noone's mastery, which went beyond the realm of jazz men from that era, surpassing many classically trained 'virtuosi' in the process. It wasn't until a younger crew of jazz clarinetists--Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, and Buster Bailey--all undoubtedly influenced by Noone, would play in such a way that might even admit comparison to this master's chops.

Like Goodman and Bailey, Noone studied clarinet technique with Franz Schoepp in Chicago. Yet unlike those younger players, he was already an established professional. It is a mark of his seriousness and humility that he would take the highly unusual step (in that day) of bothering with lessons. From the recordings we have of Noone, it's obvious he could have matched up with any clarinetist of his day without them. Some deeper musical reason must have compelled him to press forward and master the instrument further, and because of this he catapulted the art of jazz clarinet.

Noone's facility over the the 'breaks' of the instrument remains one of the marvels of his playing. He was so fleet and flawless that the most difficult of his figurations can sound simple and straightforward, when in fact they are nearly impossible for lesser players to accomplish. I've often wondered if this hasn't hindered appreciation--had he made his passages sound more strained, his virtuosity might be paradoxically praised (this has certainly been true of other, lesser 'virtuosos', whose playing has pulled the wool over the ears of more than one critic). Ultimately, this isn't important, though--what is important is finally recognizing how much we have to gain from a proper look in this master's playing career, and that's what this remarkable box set of CDs put out by JSP Records affords us.

The first disc begins with Noone's earliest recordings as a sideman in little remembered groups such as Ollie Powers' Harmony Syncopators and Cook's Dreamland Orchestra, though quickly enough the set is distinguished by recordings from Noone's seminal Apex Club Orchestra, which twenty years later was compared to Thelonious Monk's early groups at Minton's--"That band at Minton's made an era of it's own," wrote critic Paul Bacon, "much as Jimmy Noone's did at the Apex Club." [The Record Changer, Nov. 1949]. This group's recordings are extremely important to the history of jazz, as they form an impressive body of work by a band leading clarinetist--demonstrating the strength of the instrument as a lead voice, and breaking with the already traditional New Orleans lineup of cornet dominated melody lines. For the next decade and a half at least, the clarinet was to prove the equal or superior of the trumpet/cornet as a lead instrument--from the Apex Club through the Casa Loma Orchestra to the zenith represented by the Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw Orchestras, the sound of jazz clarinet was to lead the way to the mass popularity of jazz in American culture. It is significant that, if Goodman and Shaw presided over the era in which jazz was America's popular music, Noone's revolutionary approach with the Apex Club Orchestra provided the initial proof that it could be done.

This box is dominated by great Apex Club sides, which fill roughly two and half discs of the set. Over the course of those cuts, a significant portion of the jazz clarinet canon was established, with Noone laying down the first important interpretations of such tunes as "I Know That You Know", "Sweet Sue", Four or Five Times", "Sweet Lorraine", "She's Funny That Way", "I Can't Give You Anything But Love", "After You've Gone", "Blues My Naughty Sweetie Gave to Me", "Am I Blue", and "Ain't Misbehavin'." Anyone familiar with the work of Benny Goodman, Edmond Hall, Pete Fountain and countless lesser known players can immediately tell how influential Noone's choices were. Speaking personally, as a gigging jazz clarinetist in Cleveland, it is a rare week indeed when I don't play at least one or two of these tunes on a job. Audiences still love them, and they are perfectly suited to our instrument. Over 80 years later, Noone's leadership and soloing at the Apex Club on the South Side of Chicago echoes wherever clarinet is swung.

Having said this, the Apex Club recordings are generally well known to fans of early jazz, and have been available in other collections long before now. More rare, and extremely gratifying are the recordings collected on the last disc, especially the live date of the Jimmie Noone Quartet recorded at Chicago's Yes Yes Club on July 17, 1941. Seven tracks of unsurpassed brilliance await anyone who listens, including essential versions of "A Porter's Love Song", "Body and Soul", "Lady Be Good", "Memories of You" and "Honeysuckle Rose." So many of these tunes had been given unbeatable performances by Benny Goodman that it can seem daunting for a clarinetist to attempt them differently. Noone, of all the clarinetist contemporary with Goodman, was perhaps the only one who could take on the very same tunes and reveal equally compelling, yet entirely different interpretations.

Jimmie Noone's rich chalumeau, which never sacrificed intonation for depth, his clarion and altissimo registers which were never overblown or distorted, while still retaining extreme levels of subtlety and power, was unmatched in his day. He paved the way for Goodman and Shaw, especially, whose music was to unite, for one brief era, jazz with mainstream popularity. This four disc set finally does justice to his work.

Five good reeds.

The Edmond Hall Sextet * Rompin in '44 * The Complete Session * Circle Records

Few windplayers had as immediately identifiable a sound as Edmond Hall. Gritty, warm, earthy, by turns biting and tender, he was a stellar sideman--perhaps best remembered today for his tenure with Louis Armstrong's All-Stars. He'd be even better remembered today had he taken Duke Ellington's offer to replace Barney Bigard in the early '40s. Instead, he stayed with Teddy Wilson's group at New York's Café Society. This was, for Hall, an artistic decision, and ultimately one we can all be glad he made. According to Frank Driggs, who wrote the liner notes to the album reviewed here, Hall considered playing with Wilson the zenith of his career. He wasn't the only jazz clarinetist to feel strongly about Wilson's playing, though, and when Benny Goodman managed to convince Teddy to return to his band for another stint, Hall was left to lead his own group.

A New Orleans native, Hall maintained the traditional front line of trumpet, trombone, and clarinet, but with a twist: instead of playing NOLA style polyphony, with the trumpet taking the vocal lead, he tended to mute the trumpet for color, as Artie Shaw had done with his Gramercy 5, and work from the type of head arrangements that both the Gramercy 5 and the Benny Goodman Sextet favored. The end result is something rare and exceptional: Hall's New Orleans "talking" quality fused with streamlined swing.  The group played the Café Society and, brilliant as they were, struggled to record. Ultimately, they landed only one date: December 4, 1944. Hall didn't waste his opportunity: during that session he laid down no less than three classics of the jazz clarinet canon--"Caravan," "Besame Mucho," and "The Man I Love." While many other clarinetists have successfully recorded these numbers, none have surpassed Hall's depth of soul and originality.

The session took place in New York City, under the supervision of Milt Gabler of World Broadcasting Systems. Hall's band at the time was comprised of Irving Randolph on trumpet, Henderson Chambers on Trombone, Ellis Larkins on piano, Johnny Williams on bass, and Art Trappier on drums. They had from 3 to 6 p.m. During that time, they recorded the following numbers:


Opus 15
The Sheik of Araby (four takes)
Night and Day (two takes)
I Want To Be Happy
The Man I Love (a false start and two takes)
Rompin' in '44 (a false start and three takes)
Caravan (three takes)
Besame Mucho (a false start and one brilliant take)
Face


For some unknown, blessed reason, in 1983 Circle Records released the entire recording session on LP [CLP-52], though it has not, to my knowledge, been rereleased.  This was perhaps the most important session of Hall's career as a leader. He was surrounded by sympathetic musicians of a high caliber, especially the brilliant Ellis Larkins on piano. The Circle disc contains all incomplete takes, false starts, and unissued takes--giving us a window into Hall's creative approach (his opening improvisation on "The Sheik of Araby" for instance, was carefully worked out before the session. As Duke Ellington once pointed out, the emphasis on coming up with solos on the spot is perhaps exaggerated--whether one comes up with a solo a day before or a second before, the important thing is to have come up with it).

This recording has been long out of print, and is very difficult to obtain.

For historic value and brilliance of material, this gets a top rating of Five Good Reeds.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia

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.

CD review: The Benny Goodman Sextet * 1939-41 * Featuring Charlie Christian

On October 2, 1939, exactly 74 years ago today, one of the great combos in the history of jazz went into the studio to record for the first time: The Benny Goodman Sextet. In the wake of exits by Teddy Wilson and Gene Krupa, and at the behest of John Hammond, Benny hired a new star for his rhythm section: guitarist Charlie Christian, whose contributions to the group would revolutionize the history of jazz guitar, beginning with the very first recording, "Flying Home."

Nick Fatool would replace Krupa on most of these cuts. Fletcher Henderson initially took over for Wilson, though he would be replaced rather quickly by Johnny Guarnieri. It's fascinating to note that, less than a year later, both Fatool and Guarnieri would be founding members of Artie Shaw's Gramercy 5--another combo of importance to jazz history.

The Sextet was to become Goodman's chosen small combo vehicle, albeit with varying personnel, for the next two decades. Often the group would expand to a septet, under which circumstances it would be promoted as "Benny Goodman and his Sextet" rather than "The Benny Goodman Sextet." Goodman must have realized that "Sextet Sells" however, as he would even use the term when the group was expanded to eight members!  

In the liner notes to the 1989 CD release of these tracks, Leonard Feather comments on how non-dated the material still sounded in the late '80s, and marveled at how much musical material was presented in such short tracks. "Who today can say in ten minutes what these men could in three?" he marveled. This is indeed a unique group, and for me the greatest of all lineups of the Goodman Sextet. There is a relaxed, expansive, and balanced quality to the group that has rarely been matched. With two other brilliant soloists in Hampton and Christian, there is a triangulation regarding the leadership and timbre. Benny regularly sits back in the head arrangements as "one of the guys", leading sometimes from an easy chair (or so it seems). More than any other Goodman group this really sounds like six guys lounging around and sounding brilliant just for each other.

These recordings also serve as an important lesson regarding Benny's style. For those who think Goodman used an essentially "straight" classical tone, without much pitch bend or jazz inflexion (as I have seen erroneously asserted, both on the internet and elsewhere), these recordings are among the best refutations. Players can listen to "Stardust", (from the first session), "Memories of You", and "These Foolish Things" for a clinic on portamento, tone shading, and jazz inflexion. Just because the pitch bend or gliding between notes isn't obtuse, vulgar, or obvious doesn't mean it's not happening. For me, Goodman set the standard for tasteful, subtle shading. His use of these approaches is so nuanced and complex that it is often missed altogether by ears unaccustomed to listening carefully.

Goodman's playing on these recordings is a study in relaxed perfection. His solos and statements of the melodies tend to be more laid back than the earlier Quartet and Trio recordings. Despite the virtuosi in the group, this Sextet wasn't a virtuoso vehicle, but an exercise in ensemble.

Two cuts ("On the Alamo" and "Gone With What Draft") feature a rare appearance by Count Basie. Other notables among the rotating members are Cootie Williams and Georgie Auld. And despite the triangulation of voices, it is Goodman's (even when whispering) that holds all together conceptually, shaping the direction and mood of each number--not by force, but by depth and musical sympathy.

Five Good Reeds.

CD Review: Buddy DeFranco * Mr. Clarinet * Verve * 1953

As with many recordings from the early 1950s, the tunes collected on Buddy DeFranco's Mr. Clarinet album were released in many packages, on several Norman Granz created labels, including Clef, Norgran, and Verve. The advantage of Mr. Clarinet is simply that it is still commercially available and that it contains all the tunes from the January and April 15, 1953 recording sessions of the Buddy DeFranco Quartet.

If a man can be known by the company he keeps, there is little to say beyond listing the sidemen for these dates: Kenny Drew, Milt Hinton, and Art Blakey should be enough to convince anyone to check this album out.

Among the most important recordings in jazz clarinet history are a few sides cut by the Buddy DeFranco Sextet in 1949 for Capitol (available on Buddy DeFranco/Lennie Tristano Crosscurrents). Tunes like "Extrovert" and "Good for Nothing Joe" were the beginning of something big: in many ways they are the fulfillment of what Stan Hasselgard hinted at when he began applying bop ideas to the clarinet around the same time. Buddy did more than hint: those Capitol sessions contain bop clarinet that stands up well over half a century later. Instead of pursuing this sextet concept, however, DeFranco was to keep plugging away at the Big Band business for a a few more years. He was late quoted dismissing the early sextet as too much like the George Shearing Quintet "with a clarinet."

A couple of points ought to be made here. First, the timbres essential to the early DeFranco quintet, while influenced in musical execution by Shearing, were developed by Goodman and Shaw a decade earlier: in an orchestrational sense, the Shearing Quintet was the Benny Goodman Sextet without clarinet. Five years after DeFranco's breakthrough session, Artie Shaw's last Gramercy 5 was also derided by certain critics as "Shearing with clarinet", but these critics only betrayed their ignorance: Shearing himself told Shaw that his quintet was modeled after the mid-40s Gramercy 5. (See Tom Nolan's Artie Shaw: King of the Clarinet, Norton 2010, page 280). So much for "Shearing with a clarinet" then: the model orchestration of clarinet, vibes, guitar, piano, bass, drums was developed by clarinetists and is as uniquely effective a line-up as the old New Orleans combo or the standard bop quintet.

This aside, Buddy was probably thinking in terms of financial viability rather than artistic provenance when he abandoned the early sextet project. By 1953, however, he was back in the small group business. Because it is so stripped down, and focuses so clearly on Buddy's horn, it's my pick for the the perfect introduction to Buddy's playing.

The album opens up with "Buddy's Blues", representing an entirely different approach to clarinet blues than one might hear with Goodman, Shaw, or Fountain. DeFranco was by this point a fully formed bop musician, and his soloing is unique among clarinetists to this point. Listen carefully to his finger technique: he has a 'hard' approach to fingers that is reminiscent of Leon Russianoff's classical method, but put to distinctly jazz usage in his "falls" at the ends of blues phrases. Because Buddy opted for a more locked-in tone, without as much use of scoops and pitch bend, he found different ways of expanding jazz timbral vocabulary with his finger technique--the blues "falls" are one example.

Buddy's precision is well known, as are his Hanon exercises transcribed for clarinet. But too often overlooked is the fact that all of this technique and precision was consciously developed to serve a distinctly musical purpose. Listening carefully to his lines on every tune of Mr. Clarinet  I'm particularly impressed with the naturally nuanced quality of it all--that each line seems to contribute towards the organic flow of a greater whole.

Also unique, though not without precedent, is his use of that reedy, almost classical sound with a distinctively tasteful vibrato. Johnny Mince, too often neglected in jazz clarinet histories, was an acknowledged influence on Buddy, and it shows well here, transformed though the influence be in Buddy's own voice.

Buddy DeFranco remains one of the few truly great masters of the jazz clarinet--one who had both a unique and comprehensive approach to the horn, developing it to mastery. Mr. Clarinet is a great starting point for anyone wanting to check out his art.

Five Good Reeds.

Review: Pete Fountain * I Love Paris * Coral Records (CRL 757378) * 1963

Side A

I Love Paris
Comme Ci, Comme Ca
Frere Jazz
Autumn Leaves (Les Feuilles Mortes)
La Vie en Rose
April in Paris

Side B

C'est Magnifique
Two Loves Have I (J'ai Deux Amours)
C'est Si Bon (It's So Good)
The Song from Moulin Rouge (Where Is Your Heart)
Tout de Suite
My Man (Mon Homme)

Pete Fountain, Clarinet
with Charles 'Bud' Dant and His Orchestra

Can a real jazz musician record an "easy listening" album? Louis Armstrong did, so the answer must be yes. With this irrelevant question out of the way, once and for all, let's get on with the music.

There are quite a few high quality easy listening clarinet albums out there, not all of them from jazz musicians. Both Reginald Kell and Artie Shaw dabbled in the "light classical" genre beginning in the 1940s. The best results of these can be found on Reginal Kell and his Quiet Music, fortunately still available on CD, and Modern Music for Clarinet, a rare Columbia LP of Shaw's. The Shaw disc tends to sell for rather high prices these days, owing to both its rarity and the rumor that the cover art might be an example of early Warhol. It's also one of the more interesting in the genre, for its blending of both jazz and classical repertoire.

Yet even with these efforts in mind, my favorite in the Jazz Clarinet Easy Listening category is Pete Fountain's I Love Paris. This is music with absolutely no pretense: no throwing in Debussy's "Petite Piece" to "legitimize" the album, no busting out a virtuosic Django Reinhardt number to save face... this is straight up "turn-on-the-A/C-and-mix-your-martini-after-a-hard-day-at-the-office-to-unwind-with-the-missus" bourgeois relaxation. This is Rob and Laura Petrie chilling to some "jazz." This is suburban America trying to unwind (and that's no easy task--trust me, suburban America can be a bizarro world of reality denial).

The arrangements by Bud Dant are brilliant--lush strings, but spare in their lines, uncluttered. So many jazz "with strings" albums are ruined by arrangers bent on proving they can make a Hoagy Carmichael tune sound like Schoenberg. Bud Dant is much better than that.

Pete's playing is great--probably better than on any of his many Easy Listening projects. His tone takes over and he sells every tune well. I'm not a big fan of tunes like "La Vie en Rose" or "Autumn Leaves", but Pete's playing of them, his use of subtone, and his spare but tasteful solos transform them. He has a lightness of touch and intimacy that keeps these songs from slobbering over-emotion.

If you ask me in the winter time how many reeds I rate this, I'll probably answer "three." But as soon as the A/C has to be turned on, and summer heat rolls in, this album is Five Good Reeds. It's just the best in the genre for me.

If you're lucky enough to get an LP in good condition, be sure to check the right hand corner of the cover: just above the blue I LOVE PARIS lettering, it should be marked STEREO in white block letters. If it's unmarked, it's likely one of the mono versions. I highly recommend the STEREO version: one of the great joys of this album is to hear the ride cymbal and trombones on the left channel answered by the accordion and bongos [sic] on the right! So don't gyp yourself! Turn that A/C on full blast, in stereo!

Autographed Portrait of Pete (Eric Seddon Collection)

   

Pete Fountain's French Quarter * Coral Records (CRL 757359) * 1961

Side A

Summertime
Dear Old Southland
Oh, Didn't He Ramble
Bye Bye Blackbird
Lazy Bones
Someday, Sweetheart

Side B

Is It True What They Say About Dixie?
Shrimp Boats
That Da Da Strain
Theme from the French Quarter
Dixie
Birth of the Blues

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


Rumor has it that the clarinet was an important early jazz instrument which rose to dominance in the Swing Era and has been in decline ever since the late 1940s. Without putting too fine a point on it, the more one knows about jazz history, the more bogus this rumor becomes. In actuality, the clarinet's fortunes in jazz have remained far more healthy than most instruments, both in a serious artistic sense and in a broader sense of cultural impact.

Consider for a moment the accomplishment of clarinetists on the scene during the 1950s and 60s (the era that supposedly witnessed the loss of the clarinet's stature). Though they are hardly remembered now, four LPs of Artie Shaw's final Gramercy 5 recordings were released on Clef Records in the 1950s. That they went virtually unnoticed by critics, dropped out of print, and weren't recognized as masterpieces until the early 1990s is not Artie's fault. Like William Butler Yeats, Shaw proved himself to be that rarest of artists: the romantic who could translate his art seamlessly into a modernist romanticism, without losing his essence or pandering to mere stylistic trends.

Shaw's accomplishment was enough to prove the clarinet an exceptional vehicle for modern jazz expression, but if any doubt remained, Buddy DeFranco's virtuosic bop should have erased it. In addition to these, Bill Smith's and Tony Scott's work from the period seems to evade historical surveys, yet remains there for anyone to listen to.

A healthy culture depends upon more than innovators, however: it needs a firm foundation to stand on. During the '50s and '60s there were many other excellent jazz clarinetists keeping earlier playing styles alive: Benny Goodman, Barney Bigard, Jimmy Hamilton, and Edmond Hall were still performing regularly. In terms of traditional New Orleans jazz, Albert Nicolas, George Lewis, Willie Humphrey, and Raymond Burke were active. In retrospect, there are few instruments in the jazz of the era which could boast such a list of players.

To this milieu we should add another very important figure who emerged in the late 1950s: Pete Fountain. Not only did he demonstrate, on a nightly basis, a rare command of the clarinet, Pete was for decades one of the most visible and prominent symbols of jazz to the larger American public. More importantly than this, and of considerable frustration to the collector of great jazz clarinet recordings, he also might be the record holder for having the largest number of excellent jazz clarinet albums to have fallen out of print. One of them, released in 1961 by Coral Records, is the subject of this review.

Pete Fountain's French Quarter was made shortly after Pete moved from the Bateau Lounge to his own club: "Pete Fountain's French Quarter Inn" on Bourbon Street. The instrumentation for the album takes it's cue from the classic Goodman quartet of the 30s and the last Gramercy 5: the sidemen are Godfrey Hirsch on vibes, Stan Wrightsman on piano, Morty Corb on bass, and Jack Sperling on drums.

From the outset, this album grips and never lets go. Gershwin's "Summertime" is the lead number: a war horse among standards, but rarely done well enough to be considered a permanent part of the song's legacy, as it is here. Even considering Sidney Bechet's version on soprano sax and the Artie Shaw Orchestra's reading of Eddie Sauter's arrangement, Pete's remains my favorite jazz rendition of the tune. That it was recorded in 1961 adds to the historical significance, setting up a useful comparison with John Coltrane's version, released the same year on  his classic My Favorite Things album. Trane's art was reaching it's zenith around this time, and the string of albums before and after 1961 are deservedly famous. But of the two versions of "Summertime", Pete's is arguably more profound.

The poetic heart of "Summertime" is paradoxical: it's a lullaby sung to a baby, filled with reassurance and love, but surrounded in it's original operatic context by poverty and violence. Redemptive suffering is inherent to the tune, and any good interpretation of it has to touch, on some level, this spiritual aspect--it comforts and unsettles, simultaneously.

Trane uses the song as a howling modal cry--an obvious, confrontationally ironic reading akin to dramatically yelling at a baby--a lullaby sung by an angry madman. This reading isn't to be flippantly rejected, as it does say something disturbingly important. There is a sad truth to Trane's symbolism in our cultural history: monumental decisions were made in that era to legally devalue babies and their human right to live. Yet even with this firmly considered, there is always a musical price to pay for such confrontational, repurposed interpretation, and Trane's execution of the tune sounds more of an extra-musical "statement" than an investigation of inherent musical depth.

The original operatic version of "Summertime" features many emotional subtleties difficult to explain, or to translate into other orchestrations. For example, how can the effect of the "cold" violin counterpoint to the vocal line be reproduced except by playing it as Gershwin scored it? This is where Pete Fountain's version meets the challenge. Pete opens the album with Jack Sperling's bitter drum hits, which are like firm punches to the gut--ringing harbingers of danger. Sperling uses sticks (rare on jazz clarinet albums before this) and the simmering tension threatens to boil over at any moment. When Pete comes in, his tone is cool: he states the melody plainly, almost without adornment, drawing and maintaining a struggle between his mood and Sperling's dire portents. It's a real lullaby, and has real hope, but takes note of the danger. Pete's solo, seemingly simple, almost sounds like a parental attempt to ward off that danger. This is the very paradox the original tune sets up lyrically, and the tension of swing itself as hinted at when Artie Shaw suggested "maybe what we're talking about is life verses death."

The star of the first tune is undoubtedly Sperling--his rhythmic variations continue relentlessly as Fountain holds the lyrical line. Simple in conceptual brilliance, executed to perfection, this lead number grips the listener and delivers the promised result. What follows is assuredly less intense, and more conducive to a great nightclub act, but the basic mood, emphasizing the serious jazz nature of the disc, has been set. Tune after tune of balanced, relaxed fusing of cool west coast jazz with an earlier New Orleans style inherited from Irving Fazola rounds out the album. Classic interpretations are offered of "Dear Old Southland," "Oh, Didn't He Ramble," "Shrimp Boats" and others.

I find it both difficult and frustrating to think this masterpiece of jazz clarinet has been out of print for decades. There are still some LPs available for purchase on the web, and I recommend those interested in jazz clarinet get their hands on a copy. Many of Pete Fountain's serious jazz albums have suffered the fate of Pete Fountain's French Quarter. Hopefully this situation is temporary, and they will all be made available for download soon. This album gets an obvious Five Good Reeds.

Autograph from a copy of Pete Fountain's Autobiography
(Eric Seddon Collection)

Bill Smith with the Dave Brubeck Quartet * The Riddle * Columbia (CL 1454) * 1960

Side A

Hey, Ho, Nobody at Home
The Twig
Blue Ground
Offshoot

Side B

Swingin' Round
Quiet Mood
The Riddle
Yet We Shall Be Merry

Bill Smith, clarinet
Dave Brubeck, piano
Gene Wright, bass
Joe Morello, drums



What constitutes successful long form jazz? The answer might mean anything from a suite of tunes related by extra-musical titles, to a highly integrated work that stretches for an hour or more, with interdependent thematic, harmonic, and metric schemes. Over the course of jazz history, the elusive concept of a self-consistent long form has proven an irresistible challenge, enticing musicians as varied as Artie Shaw, Duke Ellington, Woody Herman, Eddie Sauter, Sonny Rollins, Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis, Wynton Marsalis, Chick Corea, Pat Metheny, and many others. The results have sometimes been hailed as masterpieces, other times derided as hubris.

Initially the Big Bands took the decisive lead in producing meaningful long form jazz. Jimmy Mundy's 1937 arrangement of "Sing Sing Sing" for the Benny Goodman Band still stands as a model of success. In it, whether deliberately or not, Mundy gave solutions for two great quandaries: how to integrate solos into the form in a meaningful sense beyond mere variations, while hinting as to the type of thematic material needed to sustain the form.  Thematically, Mundy used two highly motivic tunes--interpolating "Christopher Columbus" into the original, to expand and sustain interest, while the solos functioned dynamically within the form.

The shift to more motivic melodic material was to become important, proving pivotal in allowing smaller groups to take the lead. Rather than sprawling melodies, demanding intricate pre-written arrangements to be expanded well, such as Ralph Burns's Summer Sequence (recorded by Woody Herman), small groups could create loosely understood head arrangements, using highly flexible motives as the building blocks for longer, integrated "movements." The beginnings of this are seen in Sonny Rollins's Freedom Suite. John Coltrane's A Love Supreme, which can be heard as a fusion of Dave Brubeck's "Calcutta Blues" with the Freedom Suite, showed further possibilities for this motivic style. Miles Davis's In a Silent Way shifted the emphasis again, demonstrating how groove itself could play a larger formal role. Two decades later found Wynton Marsalis experimenting with the suite style of Duke Ellington, refining and expanding it until In This House, On This Morning, which, while a septet piece, is symphonic in scope, with all thematic materials related to the opening. All of these ideas, modified through various developments in the jazz and classical avant garde, combined in Pat Metheny's The Way Up.

The current of history isn't a straight line, however--no brief timeline or "history of heroes" can adequately outline the true means by which an art as complex and multifaceted as jazz is developed. Sometimes there are highly significant advances made which are overlooked for decades. Bill Smith's The Riddle, the first of three studio albums devoted to his tunes, recorded in rapid succession with Dave Brubeck, represents just such a moment.

Bill Smith has lead a double life, musically, since the outset of his career. Straddling, with exceptional success, the worlds of classical and jazz music, he has substantially contributed to both artforms without gimmickry. His investigations of clarinet multiphonics in the 1950s, for example, have proven a permanent addition to our knowledge of the instrument, while his jazz has provided not just a path forward for clarinetists, but of formal compositional significance to all jazz musicians regardless of instrument.1960's The Riddle is exceptional in this regard.

Smith's goals with the album were clear from the outset:

My main interest in the album was to make 3/4s of an hour of well integrated jazz, unified by relating each tune to the English folk song, "Heigh, Ho, Anybody Home." [sic] In some of the tunes, the relationship is quite apparent as in "Hey, ho, Nobody at Home" or "Blue Ground, Swingin' 'Round" where it is used in the bass or where it is treated as a round. The relationship to the original in the others is more subtle (like a cousin whose only family resemblance is the eyes or a dimple or some other detail). "The Twig" is an out-growth of the last two measures of the original. "Offshoot" uses the tune in major considerably altered and expanded. "Quiet Mood" takes the second two-measure segment of the original and uses it as a point of departure. "The Riddle" [title tune] contains the original melodic shape but is played in shorted note values, while in "Yet We Shall Be Merry," the main tones of the original are lengthened and combined with a new thematic idea. [From the original album liner notes.]

The Riddle is poetically unique in both an aural and verbal sense. Aurally speaking, the original folk song "Hey Ho Nobody's Home" is usually sung as a round, with a melody bearing strong resemblance (call it a distant cousin) to the opening of "Sing Sing Sing". Whether Smith intended to highlight this connection to Benny (his boyhood hero), enjoyed it coincidentally, or couldn't have cared less is perhaps an added riddle. For me, this melodic similarity serves the overall aural poetic of jazz clarinet history, tying Smith to Goodman subtly. 

The lyrics to the original folk song, only partially referenced through the title of the last track--"Yet We Shall Be Merry"-- are poetically linked to the project as well:

Hey, Ho, Nobody at home,  

Meat nor drink nor money have I none,  

Yet we shall be merry, very merry,  

Hey, Ho, Nobody at home!

The lyric is a paradoxical knot, suggesting joy in either poverty or a bit of musical thievery, or both. This poetic is applied musically by Smith, taking this sparse communal round and making it the basis for a jazz album of original compositions.

Taken as a whole, Smith has given a blueprint for extended form jazz. The English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (also known for pinching folk songs) quietly revolutionized the symphony in a similar manner. Taking his cue from modal English folk song and fantasia, he developed a symphonic style that eschewed the obvious development of sonata form, in favor of a new style wherein thematic cells were used in different ways, blossoming throughout works in expanding, original manner (the best example, perhaps, being his Pastoral Symphony of 1922). By 1959, when the individual tunes for The Riddle were being written, modal jazz was in vogue, yet successful long form usage of it was still to come. Just as Vaughan Williams's accomplishment has been often overlooked for it's subtlety, so has Smith's.

In the liner notes, Dave Brubeck added some thoughts:

The idea of unity in an LP should intrigue jazzmen, and Bill has given us one solution to the problem by relating all the themes. This is the first riddle of the album: to discover the thematic relationship of each of the tunes. The second riddle is to detect which parts of the music are written, and which are improvised. Almost everyone who has heard this album (including Joe [Morello] and Gene [Wright], our own rhythm section) has had difficulty separating the composed from the improvised sections. I take this as a real compliment, because good jazz composition sounds as though it were really improvised and good improvisation should sound as though it was as well thought out as a composition.

Since The Riddle, thematic integration has become common and essential elements in long form jazz--Trane, Miles, Wynton, and Pat's albums all bear witness to this--but few have matched the unity, and continuously fresh feeling still evident in this album from 1960. There remains much to be said about Smith's unique and important mastery of the clarinet, along with his jazz application of that mastery. Those will certainly be discussed more fully in future reviews.

For the present, though it's ridiculous to rate anything this great, this album obviously gets The Jazz Clarinet's top rating of Five Good Reeds. The most frustrating riddle left is why this album hasn't been reissued, and why jazz history has neglected it for so long. Whatever the irrelevant answers to that quandary, those of us who have finally stumbled upon it will undoubtedly say "Yet We Shall Be Merry"!

CD Review: Benny Goodman 10-Disc Box * "I Had To Do It" * Membran

There are many box sets of Benny Goodman's recordings from the 1930s, and nearly all of them are worthwhile. The 3-Disc Complete RCA Victor Small Groups recordings, reviewed here last week, are among the essentials for any jazz clarinet enthusiast, as are many sets of live recordings which give us the chance to hear the band and small groups at their absolute best. Few offer anything approaching the scope of this box, though, with its 200 studio recordings of the Benny Goodman Orchestra dating from as early as 1934, through its years of peak popularity and artistry in 1935-38, to the first three recording sessions of 1939.

Like the 10-Disc set of Artie Shaw also offered by Membran, this box is admirably comprehensive for the era it covers, and with only one or two very minor and irrelevant slips, sets the recordings in clear chronological order. Also like the Shaw set, the presentation is minimal: 10 cardboard sleeves in a glossy cardboard wallet, without anything but titles listed.

This said, the selection of materials seems uniquely thoughtful and cognizant of history. As Connor & Hicks point out in B.G. on the Record: a Bio-Discography of Benny Goodman (Arlington House, 1978), there is a tendency to think of the April 4, 1945 recording session for Victor as the start of Benny's recording career, so linked is it to the Let's Dance program and the beginning of the Swing Era. Overlooked are the eight years of recordings made by Benny prior to the Victor recordings. This, say Connor & Hicks, is a shame, elaborating thus:

[If] the authors may suggest a general guidepost to excellence in pre-1935 Goodman recordings, it is this: Pay attention to those on which Benny and Jack Teagarden both play. There was a musical rapport, a physiochemical reaction almost, between those two, a philosopher's stone that often turned banal dross into musical gold. [p.135]

Whoever compiled this set for Membran seems to have taken this suggestion to heart. There are no less than 28 titles predating the Victor recording session here, focusing on the dates featuring Jack Teagarden. Equally thoughtful is the completion of the set, which runs all the way through Harry James's tenure as lead trumpet for the Goodman band. The last eight tracks on CD 10 seem to be there simply to include "And the Angels Sing" and to provide contrast as the band, and Goodman's zenith, came to a close.

The transfers are of generally excellent quality, and there are few sets out there to challenge them. Those who prefer brighter quality and alternate takes of the 1935-36 band will want to own RCA's 3-Disc reissue entitled "The Birth of Swing." Some inner parts are more audible on this RCA set, but to my ear the sound gets distortedly bright--almost like an attempt at "updating" to the sound quality of Capitol's BG in Hi-Fi of the 1950s. By contrast, these Membran transfers are more subdued, which can lead to "sax section mumbling", but the overall tone quality of the band sounds better to my ear--especially Goodman's clarinet.

A tremendous amount of material that is rarely or never issued on "best of" discs is here. Some highlights, for me, were to finally hear some neglected Martha Tilton numbers--a vocalist who, if she didn't exhibit the genius of an Ella Fitzgerald or Helen Forrest, had a charm and character to her sound that was as inimitable as Goodman's own. Many of these cuts demonstrate what a perfect fit she was for this orchestra at its height. There is a sincerity and lightness to her approach that balanced the band and arrangements perfectly. Rather than judging her by an imposed history of jazz singers, her art is best appreciated in the context of the band itself. When we consider the blending of personalities and sounds--Goodman, Harry James, Ziggy Elman, and Jess Stacy--Martha Tilton's sound was as big a part of the band as any of the instrumental soloists--and her concept arguably fit the band better than any vocalist before of afterwards.

The Goodman band was never as creative as Duke Ellington's or Artie Shaw's, and despite his commanding place in Swing histories--largely due to the Let's Dance Broadcast success, the Carnegie Hall concert, and his brilliance as a soloist--it can be surprising to learn that Goodman didn't score as many top hits as several other bands did. The Fletcher Henderson and Jimmy Mundy charts are usually exceptionally clear and straight forward; vehicles for the rhythm section propelled by Gene Krupa, the trumpet section, and Benny's clarinet to gain prominence--but many aren't particularly exciting in an innovative sense. The studio recordings are clear and always well executed, with a precision that was virtually matchless--but they are not generally the finest versions the band produced. Goodman's ultimate achievement was in live performance. His bands from 1937-38, in particular, seemed to feed off crowds like no other, and were the epitome of the era's hardest swinging "killer-diller" style ensembles. For that to be a success demanded charts, rehearsals, and talent such as Goodman insisted on and achieved. The studio recordings, contrasted to live sets, can seem subdued and less than spectacular.

Because of this, I toyed with the idea of giving this box a rating of Four Good Reeds, just shy of The Jazz Clarinet's top rating. But then I thought "Get a hold of yourself, man! This is nearly all of the Benny Goodman band's studio recordings from 1934-1939!" Five Reeds it is, then, for the comprehensive nature of the set, the transfers, and the affordable price. Only one caveat remains: there are even better performances available of many numbers--the live recordings from the era are perhaps even more essential.

    

CD Review: Benny Goodman * The Complete RCA Victor Small Group Recordings

The Benny Goodman Quartet of the late 1930's is no stranger to The Jazz Clarinet. The importance of the group socially, and the uncanny sense, from the start, that these musicians had been born to play together, has been discussed and will no doubt serve as important recurring thematic material for many posts to come. The influence of the group, the reunion and tribute gigs that it has inspired, and the silver screen depiction of its now mythic beginnings can obscure the retrospectively surprising fact that the Quartet itself, comprised of Goodman, Gene Krupa, Teddy Wilson, and Lionel Hampton, was only together for a total of nine recording sessions beginning on August 21, 1936, and concluding on December 29, 1937. Twenty-six tunes (not counting alternate versions) are its entire studio legacy. In one of the truly blessed coincidences that does not often grace the history of recorded jazz, they were all made by RCA Victor,  and can be heard on what is arguably, along with Artie Shaw's Gramercy 5 Sessions, the most important set of jazz clarinet recordings ever made. Even more fortunate for those of us wanting a complete picture of this ensemble, much more than the Quartet is captured on this three disc box: from the first sessions Benny did with Teddy Wilson in 1935, to the dissolution of the group in 1939, the entire journey is captured.

A fortuitous meeting between Goodman and Wilson at a party hosted by Red Norvo resulted in a recording date the next morning, July 13, 1935, which yielded "Body & Soul", "After You've Gone", "Who?" and "Someday, Sweetheart" (Collier, pp 138-39). The uptempo numbers were impressive in their day, demonstrating what Gunther Schuller identified as Goodman's "unprecedented virtuosity as a jazz clarinetist" ( Schuller, p.11). "After You've Gone", especially, was to be revived and recorded repeatedly by Goodman, becoming a showpiece for his trademark arpeggio-driven style. But the more important contributions to the session were the slower numbers. "Body & Soul" was to become a calling card for Goodman and Wilson: the sincerity and lack of pretentiousness with which they continuously delivered this tune belies the network of subtle techniques employed by both men. It is impossible to think of two other musicians delivering a convincing imitation of this performance, though countless players have tried. "Someday, Sweetheart" is generally overlooked, but a perfect example of what Schuller astutely pointed out when he identified Goodman as the first major "cool" player in jazz history (p.11).

The cool aspect of Goodman's style is often obscured by his technical dominance, but remains the key to understanding his enduring appeal and permanent value to jazz history. The ballads recorded by the Small Groups have rarely been equalled. Ultimately, we can't answer this most basic of questions: What is the mysterious quality that enabled Goodman to play "Moonglow", "Body & Soul", "Where or When", "The Man I Love", and "More Than You Know", almost entirely without embellishment, yet with inimitable depth and emotion? The answer to this riddle can't be found in the notes of a transcription, nor in melodic or harmonic analysis. Like Miles Davis two decades later, Goodman had a musical presence, a true sound, that enabled him to play even a single note with great meaning and emphasis. Of all aspects of Goodman's playing, this is to me the most important, and it is this quality which, in my opinion, sets him apart from all others.

Personally speaking, this aspect of Goodman's playing has been with me for as long as I have played the clarinet. As a boy, I began by transcribing Goodman ballads--years before I'd ever seen a Rose Etude or the Klose book, I was playing "Moonglow" and "Memories of You." At age thirteen I even played "Memories of You" over WNEW, accompanied by Steve Allen on piano (it didn't dawn on me until years later how unique an experience it would be--playing Benny's part with the man who had also played Benny). Since then, I've studied many other musicians' ballad styles, and remain especially drawn to Artie Shaw, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane. While all of those musicians, and many others, are rightfully considered masters of the ballad form, none of them, in my estimation, are as difficult to copy as Benny Goodman. And no recordings of Benny are more important than these sides by Victor.

Beyond the ballads and the up tempo numbers, there is a third category represented here that Benny deserves to be remembered for: the Blues. Thanks to Lionel Hampton, we are treated with three absolutely essential blues cuts: "Vibraphone Blues", "The Blues in Your Flat" and "The Blues in My Flat." On these Benny gives a clinic--he is alternately biting, mellow, brooding, supportive, assertive, immense, piercing, and conciliatory. He resists the temptation for technical display, opting for pure, unpretentious soul, and leaves the listener paradoxically satisfied and wanting more, simultaneously.

Finally, these discs contain an important moment of klezmer/swing fusion with a double-sided release of "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen", complete with Martha Tilton vocal and Ziggy Elman trumpet solo. Like Shaw's last Gramercy 5 sessions, the full scope of Goodman's jazz genius is on display on this set. Originally remastered and released on CD in 1997, these are now available for download. The CDs are getting scarce, which is a shame, considering the exceptionally good liner notes by Loren Schoenberg, who gives historical background for each of the recording sessions.

Benny Goodman: The Complete RCA Victor Small Group Recordings receives The Jazz Clarinet's highest rating of Five Good Reeds, only because a hundred reeds would clutter the page.

*

References:

Collier, James Lincoln. Benny Goodman and the Swing Era. Oxford University Press, 1989.
Schuller, Gunther. The Swing Era. Oxford University Press, 1989.