100 Jazz Tunes Everyone Should Hear (#12) Woody Herman Live with Eddie Condon

#12 - Woody Herman with Eddie Condon - Blues 'Round My Head - Live at City Hall in NY - January 27, 1945


These choruses, sung and played on clarinet by Woody Herman, are barely over two minutes worth of music, but enough to show the brilliance of a man better known for his band leadership than his solo playing. A must listen for anyone.

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

Jazz Clarinet Autobiographies: an Overview

Although most of them are out of print, jazz clarinetist are startlingly well represented by highly informative autobiographies--books that are more than marketing hype, and give a real look into the lives and thoughts of the musicians who wrote (or, more often, co-wrote) them.

In my opinion the most important of these books, and a literary work of art in its own right, is Sidney Bechet's Treat it Gentle.  Bechet's book was compiled from interview recordings and edited by a team of writers, among them Joan Reid, Desmond Flower, and the poet John Ciardi, who is still well known for his masterful translation of Dante's Divine Comedy. The work was so well done that Bechet's voice comes through almost as clearly and profoundly as his playing did. This book, which Nat Hentoff called the "most valuable and moving of all jazz biographies" ought to be required reading somewhere--at the very least among all jazz musicians.

Another brilliant, if uniquely odd and idiosyncratic book, is Artie Shaw's The Trouble with Cinderella. This book is unfortunately out of print--and the Ebay prices are climbing.

Benny Goodman's The Kingdom of Swing, published at the height of his popularity in 1938, would seem by context a fluff piece meant to capitalize on music sales, but it isn't. Instead, Benny's self-portrait reveals a side of him not often mentioned by contemporary commentators. In the beginning, especially, it details his family's struggles through poverty, radiating the warmth of that large family, while always focusing on the music and what it meant to him. Like Benny's sound, it is both warm and hard edged, simultaneously. Benny's book has been out of print for a very long time, and can be quite difficult to find.

In 1972, Pete Fountain published his memoir, A Closer Walk,  which reads like his music sounds: a upbeat party, with some heartfelt blues, to be sure, but a whole lot of brightness. As of this writing, the only copy available on Amazon is selling for about $100.

Two other important autobiographies were published posthumously: Barney Bigard's With Louis and the Duke and Woody Herman's The Woodchopper's Ball. These books, while slim, give invaluable insights to the men and their era.

Finally, Bill Russell's volume, New Orleans Style, deserves mentions, as it includes brief autobiographical sketches of Omer Simeon, Edmond Hall, Raymond Burke, and Lawrence Duhe.

I'll be giving more detailed reviews of these books in the near future--interested readers will want to get copies while they are still available. This is an endangered part of our jazz heritage.

Funny Woody Herman Quote

Woody Herman wasn't the greatest of jazz clarinetists, and he wasn't shy about pointing out his frustrations with the horn from time to time, or the embarassment he sometimes felt when compared to players like Goodman and Shaw. But if Woody was anything, he was a good sport. One particularly funny moment came in an interview with Ralph Gleason, published postumously in Woody Herman: Chronicles of the Herds by William Clancy and Audry Kenton (Schirmer Books, 1995). Here is an excerpt from pages 210-211:


R.G.: Which instrument has been the most fun to play?
 
Woody: It seems, if I have any natural ability, it comes out on the saxophone, because I can pick up a baritone, or a tenor, or an alto or even a soprano and get a pretty decent sound out of it. Any yet I've fought for years and years to get a really nice clarinet sound and it still escapes me. [...]
 
R.G.: Would you rather play the clarinet, then? 
 
Woody: Well, it's a challenge, 'cause I can't make what I want to make on it, whereas with alto, in most instances the only thing is that my thoughts jazzwise on alto are pretty nothing. In other words, you will find that in most cases, it will be a melodic line that I attempt and nothing more.
 
R.G.: What do you want to do with the clarinet?
 
Woody: Break it in half! What else?
 
R.G.: I can see that I am not going to get you in a serious discussion of that.
 
Woody: No.

Big Band Jazz Clarinet: Essential Performances (5)

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 



CD Review: Illustrious Clarinetists of Jazz

This compilation, released on the Jazz Legends label in 2004, and apparently compiled by Scott Yanow who also contributes excellent liner notes, is a must for anyone interested in jazz clarinet. It's by no means comprehensive, but Yanow and crew managed to fit 21 different jazz clarinetists onto one disc. For many, this disc will undoubtedly serve as an introduction to important players such as Jimmy Noone, Omer Simeon, and Edmond Hall.

It's hard to argue with the selections, as variety of clarinetists has rightly taken precedence over demonstrations of artistic range. I was happy to see Woody Herman's 'Chip's Boogie Woogie', Artie Shaw's classic 'Smoke Gets in Your Eyes' and the foundational 'After You've Gone' recorded by Benny Goodman in July of 1935. But the real treats for me were the ones I hadn't heard before, especially Buster Bailey's wild novelty number 'Man With A Horn Goes Berserk' from 1938. 'Berserk' is 2 minutes 29 seconds of virtuosic frenzy--and as some of the phrases seem to have worked their way into Artie Shaw's later 'Concerto for Clarinet', there is some musicological interest here as well.

I was delighted to hear such players as Tony Scott, Joe Marsala, and the all but forgotten Swedish bop player, Stan Hasselgard. Really, this a remarkable set.

My one negative criticism is the cover photo of Sidney Bechet, playing a soprano sax, and as though this isn't bad enough, they repeat the image three times--one time reversing the photo!

Still, this is a compilation not to be missed.