Sweetie Dear (Jordan/Cook)
I Want You Tonight (Bechet/Maxey)
I've Found a New Baby (Williams/Palmer)
Lay Your Racket (Bechet/Maxey)
Maple Lead Rag (Joplin)
Shag (Bechet)
Sidney Bechet * clarinet, soprano saxophone
Tommy Ladnier * trumpet
Teddy Nixon * trombone
Hank Duncan * piano
Wilson Myers * bass, vocals on "I Want You Tonight" and "Shag"
Morris Morand * drums
Billy Maxey * vocal on "Lay Your Racket"
In 1932, Sidney Bechet and Tommy Ladnier declared fleeting independence from commercial music, broke free from Noble Sissle's orchestra, and on September 15, recorded six of the finest sides of their careers. The New Orleans reed man and Louisiana trumpet player had met, oddly enough, in Moscow in 1926 while touring through the Soviet Union, and had recorded with Sissle's group just prior to their own small combo formation. They named the group the New Orleans Feetwarmers, and though the vogue for small ensemble hot jazz was quickly fading, these sides shout like a cry of freedom, remaining among Bechet's crowning achievements.
The New Orleans Feetwarmers weren't just a studio organization, but a gigging band, playing around White Plains, NY, and in Jersey City while they built up repertoire. The night before these historic recordings were made, the sextet opened New York's Savoy Ballroom, billed as "Ladnier and Bechet's New Orleans Feetwarmers."
Bechet gets composition credits on half the numbers. His clarinet soloing is unusual and aggressive on "Sweetie Dear"--a study in his shocking brilliance. He's soulfully bluesy on "I Want You Tonight", but nothing can prepare anyone for his soprano sax tour de force on "I've Found a New Baby." From his masterful use of delay, seemingly stepping in and out of time over the barlines, to his fast triplet figures, jazz just doesn't get better than this. He pivots from lyrical and dazzling within split seconds, diving and soaring at will. Anyone who believes New Orleans style jazz is somehow less advanced than more self-consciously intellectual and modernist styles needs to check this out. The Soprano Sax virtuosity continues on his own "Lay Your Racket" and, especially "Maple Leaf Rag", which is up there with "I've Found a New Baby" as an unsurpassably brilliant interpretation of the tune. Throughout these recordings, his use of trills on both clarinet and soprano sax is exciting and unique, worthy of study for all musicians hoping to expand their ideas.
For as brilliant as they sounded, the New Orleans Feetwarmers weren't long for this world. The tastes in New York had already shifted, and Hot Jazz was becoming increasingly unfashionable as the sweet music crooners began taking over the gigging scene. The great depression was taking it's toll and most nightclubs couldn't afford hiring a five or six piece band on a regular basis, opting instead for a pianist alone (Chilton 90). It would be another couple of years before Benny Goodman's band could bring back a hotter style, albeit primarily in the form of a big band.
If the Feetwarmers had overarching societal problems contributing to their demise, there were also internal problems. Bechet and Ladnier quarrelled over leadership and billing, and at one point after a gig, drummer Morris Morand got into a fight with Bechet, even threatening to kill him (Chilton, 95). Bechet, as usual, moved on quickly to join Willie "The Lion" Smith at Pod's and Jerry's Club, and the Feetwarmers were no more. In the end, they left us one brilliant session, consisting of six tunes, among which are two or three that will never be topped. For that we can all be grateful.
Recommended reading:
Chilton, John. Sidney Bechet: The Wizard of Jazz. OUP (New York). 1987
Showing posts with label New Orleans Triumvirate. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New Orleans Triumvirate. Show all posts
Monday, January 23, 2017
Thursday, January 19, 2017
Jimmie Noone with Kid Ory * 1944 * Essential Media Group CD (not numbered) * 2011 reissue
Last year, I stumbled across YouTube recordings of some of the very last performances of Jimmie Noone, from just weeks before he died in 1944, after joining Kid Ory's band on the Orson Welles Radio Show. Today, I'm happy to report that this CD reissue, with no liner notes or mention of the historical importance of the contents, appears to be a remastered collection of air checks dating from the last days of Jimmie Noone.
Jimmie's unique staccato technique and soaring altissimo are immediately identifiable on "High Society", though as I mentioned last spring, his playing of the 'test solo' suggests he might have been having trouble breathing at the time.
Though the cover says this is Noone with Kid Ory, I don't believe for a second that all of the tracks feature Jimmie on clarinet. The second track, "Sugar Foot Stomp" features a clarinetist who can only be considered incompetent compared to a master like Noone. The mystery clarinetist has a rough tone, plays out of tune, and is rhythmically far sloppier than Noone.
Tracks 3, 4, and 5 feature Noone again on "Muskrat Ramble", "That's A Plenty" and "Panama Rag"--the only recordings of Noone on these standards, so far as I know. The lilting staccato, lightness of touch and velvety roundness of tone without sacrificing power are all there--that unique inimitable quality of Noone's distinctive Creole style. He doesn't take a 'solo chorus' on any of these, Ory opting for the band to remain with a polyphonic approach throughout. True lovers of this style will recognize that Jimmie is actually soloing the entire time, and while the rest of the band has its roughness (the lead trumpet is at times pretty poor), Jimmie is uniformly brilliant--showing an entirely different approach to this music than we often hear.
Track 6 is entitled "Jimmy's Blues" and is actually a version of "Tin Roof Blues. Noone isn't the clarinetist. Whoever it is, he was nowhere near the virtuoso of Noone. His tone is rougher, has none of the distinctive Noone style, and he plays flat. This is likely the clarinetist from "Sugar Foot Stomp." My guess is this was played as an homage to Noone after his passing.
Yet another clarinetist seems to be present on "Savoy Blues." The clarinetist's tone has more of that velvety quality we associate with Creole clarinet, including his altissimo and high clarion notes, but his technical figurations sound less like standard Jimmie Noone and in fact very much like Barney Bigard. Likewise with "Weary Blues." The soloing is very good, but if this is Noone, the soloing style is very different than any other recordings of his.
With "C'est L'Autre Can Can", we're perhaps back in the hands of a mystery clarinetist, but I wouldn't try to guess who. "Blues" sounds like it might indeed be Noone again...but perhaps not.
The transfers on this disc aren't the best quality, and the lack of notes and/or clarity about the personnel make this it bit frustrating, but to have several of the very last performances of Jimmie Noone commercially available at all makes up for most of the frustrations. The search for an audiophile level remaster of these (and more if they exist), with good historical information on the performances remains, but until those are available, Jimmie Noone fans will definitely want this disc.
Jimmie's unique staccato technique and soaring altissimo are immediately identifiable on "High Society", though as I mentioned last spring, his playing of the 'test solo' suggests he might have been having trouble breathing at the time.
Though the cover says this is Noone with Kid Ory, I don't believe for a second that all of the tracks feature Jimmie on clarinet. The second track, "Sugar Foot Stomp" features a clarinetist who can only be considered incompetent compared to a master like Noone. The mystery clarinetist has a rough tone, plays out of tune, and is rhythmically far sloppier than Noone.
Tracks 3, 4, and 5 feature Noone again on "Muskrat Ramble", "That's A Plenty" and "Panama Rag"--the only recordings of Noone on these standards, so far as I know. The lilting staccato, lightness of touch and velvety roundness of tone without sacrificing power are all there--that unique inimitable quality of Noone's distinctive Creole style. He doesn't take a 'solo chorus' on any of these, Ory opting for the band to remain with a polyphonic approach throughout. True lovers of this style will recognize that Jimmie is actually soloing the entire time, and while the rest of the band has its roughness (the lead trumpet is at times pretty poor), Jimmie is uniformly brilliant--showing an entirely different approach to this music than we often hear.
Track 6 is entitled "Jimmy's Blues" and is actually a version of "Tin Roof Blues. Noone isn't the clarinetist. Whoever it is, he was nowhere near the virtuoso of Noone. His tone is rougher, has none of the distinctive Noone style, and he plays flat. This is likely the clarinetist from "Sugar Foot Stomp." My guess is this was played as an homage to Noone after his passing.
Yet another clarinetist seems to be present on "Savoy Blues." The clarinetist's tone has more of that velvety quality we associate with Creole clarinet, including his altissimo and high clarion notes, but his technical figurations sound less like standard Jimmie Noone and in fact very much like Barney Bigard. Likewise with "Weary Blues." The soloing is very good, but if this is Noone, the soloing style is very different than any other recordings of his.
With "C'est L'Autre Can Can", we're perhaps back in the hands of a mystery clarinetist, but I wouldn't try to guess who. "Blues" sounds like it might indeed be Noone again...but perhaps not.
The transfers on this disc aren't the best quality, and the lack of notes and/or clarity about the personnel make this it bit frustrating, but to have several of the very last performances of Jimmie Noone commercially available at all makes up for most of the frustrations. The search for an audiophile level remaster of these (and more if they exist), with good historical information on the performances remains, but until those are available, Jimmie Noone fans will definitely want this disc.
Wednesday, January 18, 2017
Johnny Dodds by G.E. Lambert * A.S. Barnes & Co. * 1961
That this slim paperback volume, only 88 pages total, put out as part of Barnes & Co's Perpetua "Kings of Jazz" series in 1961, is the only book length study we have of Johnny Dodds, might seem monumentally depressing if not for a couple of facts: First, sad as it might be to say, it's more than we have for Jimmie Noone. Second, while its brevity is disappointing, the content is solid and interesting.
Chapter One give a brief seventeen page outline of Dodds's life and career. Lambert discusses the racial divide in the New Orleans of Dodds's youth, with two distinct musical styles developing: one Uptown, where the black [ or "Negro"] community developed a more blues-based music, the other Downtown which favored more refined Creole orchestras. [pg 4]. Dodds operated between the two communities. As Lambert put it "Dodds himself was a Negro...but by this time a degree of mixing was standard in New Orleans bands. For example, when Johnny took his first full time professional engagement, it was with Kid Ory's band; Ory is [sic] a Creole from La Place, a small town ear New Orleans, who first brought his band into the city in 1913."
In 1920, Dodds replaced Jimmie Noone in King Oliver's Creole Orchestra in Chicago, where he entered the most noted part of his career. The roaring '20s were to be the decade in which Johnny made his mark, recording classics with King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, and Jelly Roll Morton. And while some of his work from the 1930s, when he was leading bands himself, might feature even more definitive solos for clarinetists to study, it's his work from the '20s that will undoubtedly remain the most famous.
Dodds remained in Chicago even after the center of gravity for jazz shifted to New York in the 1930s, and like so many of his generation of New Orleans style players, his contribution was too quickly neglected. Unlike some of his contemporaries, such as Sidney Bechet, Edmond Hall, Louis Armstrong, and Barney Bigard, he didn't live long enough to get a second wind with the New Orleans revival starting in the 1940s. As Lambert puts it:
"The biography of Johnny Dodds is a tragic one, rising through his quick success in New Orleans, on to the triumphant years in Chicago with the Oliver band, and the many fine recordings he made while leading his own group at Kelly's Stables, only to fade suddenly into the twilight obscurity of the last ten years of his life. He was admired by all the musicians who heard him in the early days--even Benny Goodman, a musicians far removed in style and temperament, has said that he never heard anyone get a finer tone out of the clarinet than Johnny Dodds--while the majority of his 1920 recordings are numbered among the ageless classics of jazz." [pg 16]
Lambert's analysis of Dodds's playing is keen and sensitive to fluxuations and changes throughout Chapter Two, which deals with the recordings.
In the third and final Chapter, the author offers his assessment of Dodds's contribution to jazz, and some of the points he makes are so profound, it's surprising and gratifying that anyone was publishing them in 1961. For example, when discussing the solo breaks Dodds made on the King Oliver recordings, Lambert points out:
"Almost any of the breaks by Oliver or by Dodds on these records are as perfected rhythmically as anything in later jazz, but the emphasis and the style were different, and unless we realize this we cannot help but fall into the error of constantly undervaluing the work of the New Orleans musicians. They were not simply pioneers whose place in jazz history was to pave the way for Louis Armstrong and his successors, but men with a fully developed and valid way of playing. It is true that an approach to this sort of jazz can be made neither with the techniques of the European academy, nor if one wishes to find in jazz a pleasant appendage to European culture." [pg 66-67]
These observations are no less relevant today then when they were first published. Although it is a very slim volume, it's filled with such insights, pointing towards a reconsideration of this remarkable musician and his playing.
Fortunately for us, it will continue to be available for the foreseeable future, as Amazon now offers it in Kindle format.
Chapter One give a brief seventeen page outline of Dodds's life and career. Lambert discusses the racial divide in the New Orleans of Dodds's youth, with two distinct musical styles developing: one Uptown, where the black [ or "Negro"] community developed a more blues-based music, the other Downtown which favored more refined Creole orchestras. [pg 4]. Dodds operated between the two communities. As Lambert put it "Dodds himself was a Negro...but by this time a degree of mixing was standard in New Orleans bands. For example, when Johnny took his first full time professional engagement, it was with Kid Ory's band; Ory is [sic] a Creole from La Place, a small town ear New Orleans, who first brought his band into the city in 1913."
In 1920, Dodds replaced Jimmie Noone in King Oliver's Creole Orchestra in Chicago, where he entered the most noted part of his career. The roaring '20s were to be the decade in which Johnny made his mark, recording classics with King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, and Jelly Roll Morton. And while some of his work from the 1930s, when he was leading bands himself, might feature even more definitive solos for clarinetists to study, it's his work from the '20s that will undoubtedly remain the most famous.
Dodds remained in Chicago even after the center of gravity for jazz shifted to New York in the 1930s, and like so many of his generation of New Orleans style players, his contribution was too quickly neglected. Unlike some of his contemporaries, such as Sidney Bechet, Edmond Hall, Louis Armstrong, and Barney Bigard, he didn't live long enough to get a second wind with the New Orleans revival starting in the 1940s. As Lambert puts it:
"The biography of Johnny Dodds is a tragic one, rising through his quick success in New Orleans, on to the triumphant years in Chicago with the Oliver band, and the many fine recordings he made while leading his own group at Kelly's Stables, only to fade suddenly into the twilight obscurity of the last ten years of his life. He was admired by all the musicians who heard him in the early days--even Benny Goodman, a musicians far removed in style and temperament, has said that he never heard anyone get a finer tone out of the clarinet than Johnny Dodds--while the majority of his 1920 recordings are numbered among the ageless classics of jazz." [pg 16]
Lambert's analysis of Dodds's playing is keen and sensitive to fluxuations and changes throughout Chapter Two, which deals with the recordings.
In the third and final Chapter, the author offers his assessment of Dodds's contribution to jazz, and some of the points he makes are so profound, it's surprising and gratifying that anyone was publishing them in 1961. For example, when discussing the solo breaks Dodds made on the King Oliver recordings, Lambert points out:
"Almost any of the breaks by Oliver or by Dodds on these records are as perfected rhythmically as anything in later jazz, but the emphasis and the style were different, and unless we realize this we cannot help but fall into the error of constantly undervaluing the work of the New Orleans musicians. They were not simply pioneers whose place in jazz history was to pave the way for Louis Armstrong and his successors, but men with a fully developed and valid way of playing. It is true that an approach to this sort of jazz can be made neither with the techniques of the European academy, nor if one wishes to find in jazz a pleasant appendage to European culture." [pg 66-67]
These observations are no less relevant today then when they were first published. Although it is a very slim volume, it's filled with such insights, pointing towards a reconsideration of this remarkable musician and his playing.
Fortunately for us, it will continue to be available for the foreseeable future, as Amazon now offers it in Kindle format.
Tuesday, December 13, 2016
Johnny Dodds * Indigo Stomp *1929
Johnny Dodds is a foundational figure by any estimation, not only in the history of the clarinet, but for jazz in general. His recordings with King Oliver's Creole Orchestra and the Louis Armstrong Hot Fives and Sevens cemented his place as one of the rare soloists strong enough to play alongside Armstrong without giving up musical ground during his choruses. Most often remembered as part of the early New Orleans clarinet triumvirate along with Sidney Bechet and Jimmie Noone, his unique contribution can sometimes seem obscured by those two giants. Bechet had a explosive soloing creativity and overpowering musical personality: in many ways forming a sort of "primary epic" for the jazz clarinet. By contrast, Jimmie Noone was the first great virtuoso, with a perfectly balanced sound, articulation, and facility: universally admired by clarinetists and so intimidating he was rarely copied, except by the likes of Goodman, whose technique could bear comparison. Dodds is generally considered the gritty, bluesy member of the triumvirate, and while he has his devoted followers, he also had his detractors (among them Barney Bigard, who was sometimes acerbic in his criticism).
Yet Dodds is certainly worthy of his equal place in the triumvirate, for the unique contribution he brought: his range of timbre, power, and blues figurations arranged with precise rhythmic structure and meaning. Benny Goodman called him the clarinetist with the greatest sound in the Chicago of his youth, which is saying a lot, considering Jimmie Noone, Leon Roppolo, Omer Simeon, and many others were active on that scene. We can only imagine what he sounded like in person, especially as he was known to distrust microphones and try to stay away from them in recording studios. Still, the documents he left us over the course of his relatively brief career (like Noone and Irving Fazola, he died in his 40s), shows an unprecedented range of timbre. One moment is he full, rich, smooth in tone, the next he sounds as though the intensity of his core sound will rip the clarinet in half. He commanded the extremes and all points in between. And that's not the sum total of his contribution: his technique was far more polished and fluid than most noticed (and by 'most', I include Artie Shaw, Buddy DeFranco and, somewhat embarrassingly, myself as a young man). His soloing style was baroque, but not mere noodling, and his rhythmic understanding was as influential and subtle as any in jazz history. To listen carefully to Johnny Dodds, and to truly understand what he's doing, is in some ways such a thorough education in the facets of jazz that one will be prepared for almost any future development (up through Monk and Miles). To my more mature ears, it seems that with Dodds, it's all there in embryonic form.
Like Bechet he was a prolific composer of his own tunes, which are idiomatic for our instrument and worthy of study. One great example is Indigo Stomp from 1929...at a time when he was also pioneering the clarinet lead trio. Enjoy.
Yet Dodds is certainly worthy of his equal place in the triumvirate, for the unique contribution he brought: his range of timbre, power, and blues figurations arranged with precise rhythmic structure and meaning. Benny Goodman called him the clarinetist with the greatest sound in the Chicago of his youth, which is saying a lot, considering Jimmie Noone, Leon Roppolo, Omer Simeon, and many others were active on that scene. We can only imagine what he sounded like in person, especially as he was known to distrust microphones and try to stay away from them in recording studios. Still, the documents he left us over the course of his relatively brief career (like Noone and Irving Fazola, he died in his 40s), shows an unprecedented range of timbre. One moment is he full, rich, smooth in tone, the next he sounds as though the intensity of his core sound will rip the clarinet in half. He commanded the extremes and all points in between. And that's not the sum total of his contribution: his technique was far more polished and fluid than most noticed (and by 'most', I include Artie Shaw, Buddy DeFranco and, somewhat embarrassingly, myself as a young man). His soloing style was baroque, but not mere noodling, and his rhythmic understanding was as influential and subtle as any in jazz history. To listen carefully to Johnny Dodds, and to truly understand what he's doing, is in some ways such a thorough education in the facets of jazz that one will be prepared for almost any future development (up through Monk and Miles). To my more mature ears, it seems that with Dodds, it's all there in embryonic form.
Like Bechet he was a prolific composer of his own tunes, which are idiomatic for our instrument and worthy of study. One great example is Indigo Stomp from 1929...at a time when he was also pioneering the clarinet lead trio. Enjoy.
Monday, January 16, 2012
Featured Recording: Sidney Bechet * Blue Horizon * December 20, 1944
Sidney Bechet * Blue Horizon
Sidney Bechet, clarinet
Sidney de Paris, trumpet
Vic Dickenson, trombone
Art Hodes, piano
George 'Pops' Foster, bass
Manzie Johnson, drums
December 20, 1944, NYC
Here is a recording every clarinetist should know and understand--even if at first the approach to the instrument is different from anything they've heard.
Sidney Bechet was called the greatest jazz musician of all by none other than Duke Ellington, and he has been credited with a fully formed jazz solo concept predating even Louis Armstrong. Because of his enigmatic career, and his sometimes intense personality (he once got deported from France for a gunfight at rush hour in the Paris metro) he is certainly less well known to the general public. Despite this, his music is of such profound value that I consider him a kind of American Muhlfeld. Rich, deep, intense, bursting with joy or sorrow, Bechet poured his soul through the horn, and the crackle he got from the wood was inimitable.
Bechet grew up in New Orleans, that garden of exotic clarinet sounds which quickly spread over the rest of the country, but never gained institutional acceptance in music schools. It was (and is) a "talking style" of playing, reminiscent of the way some historians have suggested early clarinetists in Europe played as well. Clinical and sterilized sounds are not considered a virtue in this style of playing, and every timbre from the sweet to the rough, the sublime to the piercing, is expected, exploited, and extended.
Part of the mission of The Jazz Clarinet is to reacquaint or introduce clarinetists to a variety of approaches, sound concepts, and styles which are often frowned upon or banned from the American conservatory establishment. Several of the recordings I've already shared fall into this category, the present being no exception.
"Blue Horizon" is one of the finest blues played on any instrument. I encourage every clarinetist, regardless of background or aspirations, to transcribe this solo--it will only make you a better, more flexible, and more emotional player.
Sidney Bechet, clarinet
Sidney de Paris, trumpet
Vic Dickenson, trombone
Art Hodes, piano
George 'Pops' Foster, bass
Manzie Johnson, drums
December 20, 1944, NYC
Here is a recording every clarinetist should know and understand--even if at first the approach to the instrument is different from anything they've heard.
Sidney Bechet was called the greatest jazz musician of all by none other than Duke Ellington, and he has been credited with a fully formed jazz solo concept predating even Louis Armstrong. Because of his enigmatic career, and his sometimes intense personality (he once got deported from France for a gunfight at rush hour in the Paris metro) he is certainly less well known to the general public. Despite this, his music is of such profound value that I consider him a kind of American Muhlfeld. Rich, deep, intense, bursting with joy or sorrow, Bechet poured his soul through the horn, and the crackle he got from the wood was inimitable.
Bechet grew up in New Orleans, that garden of exotic clarinet sounds which quickly spread over the rest of the country, but never gained institutional acceptance in music schools. It was (and is) a "talking style" of playing, reminiscent of the way some historians have suggested early clarinetists in Europe played as well. Clinical and sterilized sounds are not considered a virtue in this style of playing, and every timbre from the sweet to the rough, the sublime to the piercing, is expected, exploited, and extended.
Part of the mission of The Jazz Clarinet is to reacquaint or introduce clarinetists to a variety of approaches, sound concepts, and styles which are often frowned upon or banned from the American conservatory establishment. Several of the recordings I've already shared fall into this category, the present being no exception.
"Blue Horizon" is one of the finest blues played on any instrument. I encourage every clarinetist, regardless of background or aspirations, to transcribe this solo--it will only make you a better, more flexible, and more emotional player.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)