CD Review: Frank Teschemacher * Jazz Me Blues * 1927-1930

Frank Teschemacher (1906-1932) was the central figure of the famed 'Austin High Gang'  whose membership and influence extended through the 1920s to such players as Bud Freeman, Jimmy McPartland, Gene Krupa, Benny Goodman, Dave Tough, and Jess Stacy.

Tesch was remembered by Benny Goodman as "a fine musician and perhaps the most inventive it has been my privilege to hear." Gunther Schuller called him "the Ornette Coleman of the twenties, a lone original who, killed in an auto accident on leap-year day in 1932 at age twenty-five, never had the chance to fully develop his curious art"(The Swing Era, 11).

Artie Shaw remembered a session with Tesch at the Grand Terrace Ballroom in Chicago one night in 1930:

[On] this same session was the clarinet player...Frank Teschemacher. I sat next to him and watched him while he played. We were all slightly drunk on bad bootleg gin, but it didn't seem to affect his playing any. He...had this odd style of playing (...). Even while he'd be reaching out for something in his deliberately fumbling way, some phrase you couldn't quite see the beginning or end of (or for that matter, the reason for in the first place), there was an assurance about everything he did that made you see that he himself knew where he was going all the time; and by the time he got there you began to see it yourself, for in its own grotesque way it made a kind of musical sense, but something extremely personal and intimate to himself, something so subtle that it could never possibly have had great communicative meaning to anyone but another musician and even then only to a jazz musician who happened to be pretty damn hep to what was going on. [ The Trouble with Cinderella, pp198-199]   

It can be difficult to find recordings of Tesch--one of the only compilations available these days is this 2011 CD with 26 tracks, from Retrospective Records in the UK. Though not as comprehensive as some of the earlier LP sets, this CD is an excellent collection of recordings from 1927-30, featuring Tesch's work in groups such as the Chicago Rhythm Kings, Wingy Manone and his Club Royale Orchestra, and even playing "Jazz Me Blues" under his own name. Also featured on these cuts are some early performances of Gene Krupa, Eddie Condon, Muggsy Spanier, Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey, Jack Teagarden, and others.

For those who have heard a wide variety of jazz clarinet recordings, the legendary wildness and roughness of Teschmacher's style might seem to have been exaggerated a bit by history--perhaps as much as Benny's "refinement" of sound has been exaggerated (the two seem to have been treated at times as poles of jazz clarinetistry, in a way that does neither of them justice). My dominant first impression on hearing Tesch was not how contrasting he was to Goodman, but how similar Tesch's altissimo approach was to Benny's mature, 1930s style. More than any other clarinetist before him, Tesch had a clear, strong, commanding altissimo with tongue attacks that jumped. To my ear, Benny's altissimo articulation resembles Tesch's more than Roppolo, Noone, Dodds, Lewis, or any other jazz clarinetist of the era. Likewise, the astonishing solo formulations of Tesch seem less shocking than they must have during the pre-swing era.

Having granted these things, this CD is an important document of a trailblazing jazz clarinetist, who like Stan Hasselgård a generation later, died tragically in a car accident before his full artistic stature could be realized. His playing gives us a better picture of the clarinet milieu of the 1920s, particularly the supremely important Chicago scene that produced Goodman. Three Good Reeds.

CD Review: Artie Shaw and His Orchestra * Hollywood Palladium * 1941

It's been said of Lord Byron's Don Juan, "No matter where you are in it, you've already read the best part." Most jazz careers read similarly, and because of this, Artie Shaw's is an anomaly--no matter where you jump into his discography, so long as you're not listening to the very last recording sessions, there's usually something even better ahead. This is far more rare than it might initially seem. The idea of a constantly developing and evolving jazz artist is really more myth than fact. Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bechet, for instance, never developed beyond styles that were fully formed by the 1920s, and Benny Goodman, when he tried, learned very quickly that to stray from his late-30s bread and butter was a bad idea. The list of artists who resist the trend of solidifying one basic style and re-asserting it in various guises is exceedingly short, and debatable.

Shaw is one who stands out. Up until 1954 he seemed to actually embody the myth of the continuously developing jazz musician. It's difficult to say which of his ensembles were the finest. For its day, the 1939 band might have been the best. Then again, the 1949 band, while largely ignored by fans and critics alike, can be argued for, in a musical sense. After the orchestras, there are the chamber groups, especially the last Gramercy 5. Few would assert, as most readily do regarding Goodman's 1937 band, that Shaw ever had a single ensemble or era that served as the epitome of his art. Yet even with all of this in mind, the orchestra of 1940, assembled by Shaw after his self-imposed Mexican exile, stands out in critical and popular memory. This is the group which recorded "Frenesi"--a tune Artie had heard in cantinas south of the border--and "Stardust", giving the latter a solo so impressive that this group has been known as the "Stardust Band" ever since.

The subject of this review features this band, as reproduced on a CD issued in 1997 by HEP records, also available as a download, entitled: Artie Shaw and His Orchestra: Hollywood Palladium 1941. The title is a bit misleading, suggesting a single gig or series of gigs at the Palladium. As the liner notes detail, though, most of the dates represented on the disc are from 1940, and were broadcast from NBC's Hollywood studio. This technicality doesn't really matter--the content is exceptional, and give us some of the best live renditions currently available for tunes like "Frenesi." Three live performances of it are here, all of them well performed by an expanded orchestra (including strings), with contrasting improvised solos by Shaw.

An abbreviated version of his "Concerto for Clarinet" is also presented, from an August 1940 broadcast. This version is particularly interesting for the comparison it suggests between the Concerto and Shaw's December 1938 performance of "The Blues" with Paul Whiteman at Carnegie Hall. In this live performance, as in the Whiteman concert performance, the klezmer roots of the piece are highlighted, setting it apart from both the movie and studio versions recorded months later. We'll never know how wide the stylistic scope of the Concerto's improvised sections--Shaw used it as a closing number for a tremendous number of gigs that went unrecorded. But this early version suggests the improvised sections had considerable flexibility and stylistic diversity--making the propensity of contemporary classical players to rigidly stick to the studio solo transcription all the more disappointing (along with the Mickey Mouse swing, prim conservatory tone, and pinched altissimo we're usually tortured with during such performances).

This disc is loaded with great and rare performances. Shaw's arrangement of "Sweet Sue (Just You)", his original composition "Prelude in C Sharp", and a live version of "Blues in the Night" featuring the vocal and trumpet of Oran 'Hot Lips' Page are highlights. Others are Shaw's brilliant solo on "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen" and an extended chorus on a live version of "Dr. Livingstone, I Presume" while restating, almost identically, the klezmer-tinged coda from the studio version.

The audio quality is often less than perfect--it can give a "bubble" sound similar to that of old tape, and the fuzz is noticeable in spots. But the chance to hear the Shaw band in top form, with real gig situations impacting the performance, is great. One example: members of the crowd were rowdy enough to knock 'Lips' Page off the lyric to Blues in the Night at the Palladium gig on January 22, 1941. It's priceless to hear him sing:

Now, the rain is falling,
Hear the train are calling hoo-wee!
(my mama done told me)

....he-yeeeah der roomin' foolin'
....haaaallin' dullin' fooling hoo-wee!
(my mama done told me)

The band and Page soldier on perfectly, and the crowd eats it up.

As with so many others, Shaw was to disband this group almost as quickly as he'd assembled it; this time to enlist in the U.S. Navy, where he would serve in the South Pacific during World War II. Like the live recordings of the 1939 band from the Cafe Rouge, then, this disc is a document of a particular high point in Shaw's career as an orchestra leader, with some significant historical recordings that help us better understand his musical mind.

Three Good Reeds.