Some Reflections on New Orleans Jazz from Robert Monie

Over on the Clarinet BBoard there was a question recently concerning New Orleans Style, with a debate ensuing as to whether written arrangements would be appropriate for beginners. I vociferously objected, and tried to supply some quick reasons for opposing them. Those comments are there for anyone who cares to read them. After I'd bowed out of the debate, though, Bob Monie, a clarinetist from New Orleans, wrote what I felt to be one of the most moving and insightful understandings of New Orleans Jazz that I've encountered. It was so meaningful that I asked permission to reprint it here, which he has graciously given, and which can be read below:   

"I live around the corner from where the Colored Waif's Home once stood (today 800 Rosedale Dr.) where Louis Armstrong learned to play the cornet. That's just a few yards from the Holt Cemetery and Buddy Bolden Place, where Buddy Bolden is buried. I went to high school 2 blocks from Pete Fountain's high school (Warren Easton), where he was surrounded by classical players who tried to teach him solfeggio and sight reading, but he always preferred not to bother with it. At Fountain's funeral in St. Louis Cathedral, Larry Welk, Lawrence Welk's son, humorously recalled that his father hoped Pete would eventually just "pick up" the art of reading music so he could read the stuff the sax section was playing, but he never did. Pete was a fine jazz tenor sax player himself, but always by played ear. That was his choice and what came natural to him. It served his musical purposes and made him the most famous and sought after jazz clarinetist in the trad jazz/swing idiom for several decades. 

"Even with this background, immersed in New Orleans jazz, I find I know very little about it and always have to make an effort to keep up. A few weeks ago I took a bus tour with local historian John McCuster (author of the well-researched jazz history study, "Creole Trombone: Kid Ory and the Early Years of Jazz" University of Mississippi Press, 2012). McCuster took us to historical jazz sites that the New Orleans Preservation Center is trying to maintain and memorialize with appropriate research, plaques, and monuments. I saw Buddy Bolden's house and learned that clarinetist Larry Shields lived almost next door. Shields used to play clarinet on his front porch for Bolden to critique. But of course, under segregation laws, the two of them could not appear on the same stage as performers because they were black and white. We went to the vacant lot where Sydney Bechet's house once stood and learned that when Kid Ory passed there he heard some wailing clarinet coming from inside and introduced himself to the then bashful Bechet.  

"Born and raised in New Orleans, I still didn't know any of this. In the 60s, I preferred DeFranco, Tony Scott, and local avant guarde player Al Batiste as jazz clarinetists to the more traditional players, including Pete Fountain, that I had heard at home everywhere in the city since a babe. I went through several periods of rediscovering the New Orleans jazz style more than once. going back and forth between the classical styles of Harold Wright, Cahuzac, Mitchell Lurie, Karl Leister, Sabine Meyer, etc. and the jazz styles. Each time, the New Orleans tradition sounded (and sounds) different to me. It is anything but a museum piece to be reconstructed; it is a way of playing that, in players with a mind fresh and young enough to hear, is still creative, warm, and even unpredictable-- potentially more interesting that the nostalgic note-for-note re-creations of Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw one hears every day. 

"Where to hear today's New Orleans jazz? One place, according to McCuster, the jazz tour guide, (and I concur) is on Frenchman street, at the back of the French Quarter in New Orleans. Step into the Spotted Cat Music Club at 627 Frenchman, for instance, and see if the Jazz Vipers, or the Cotton Mouth Kings, or the New Orleans Moonshiners, or Evan Christopher is playing. This is a kind of music that has survived the swing era, be-bop, hard bop, free jazz, rock, hip hop, heavy metal, new age, ticky-tacky, and more. It is based on honest feeling, sometimes even prayerful expression, grief, sadness, and joy, tragedy, and sorrow, the longings of the human heart, the feet laughing to a beat and the ear loving a good song.  

"Steve, visit Frenchman street and listen to New Orleans jazz today. Find out how they do it. Some of the young players there aren't even from the US but they've got the jazz spirit. Doesn't matter if it's written or paper or, in the famous bass clarinetist's words, heard as an "ear spasm"; it's a style you can learn. But you've got to be there when its happening to get it."

There is a lot to learn, and many implications to be followed in the paragraphs above, but particularly moving for me was a line towards the end: "It is based on honest feeling, sometimes even prayerful expression, grief, sadness, and joy, tragedy, and sorrow, the longings of the human heart, the feet laughing to a beat and the ear loving a good song." Thank you, Bob, for expressing this so well in words. I wanted it to be a permanent part of 'the record' here at The Jazz Clarinet.

November 6, 1938 * Sidney Bechet's First Recording Session as a Bandleader

What a Dream
Hold Tight
Jungle Drums
Chant in the Night

Sidney Bechet, soprano sax & clarinet
Ernie Caceres, baritone sax
Dave Bowman,  piano
Leonard Ware, guitar
Henry Turner, bass
Zutty Singleton, drums
Eddie Robinson & Willie Spottswood, vocals

November 6, 1938, New York City


At the spry age of 41, Sidney Bechet finally had the opportunity to record as a band leader. It had been a long six years since his last collaborative session with Tommy Ladnier and their New Orleans Feetwarmers--a session which produced several classic sides. This one would be different in many ways.

Eschewing the standard instrumentation (which is, anyhow, not so standard as some jazz histories would have us believe), the somewhat misleadingly named Sidney Bechet and His Orchestra was actually a sextet consisting of Bechet on clarinet and soprano sax, Ernie Caceres on baritone sax, Dave Bowman on piano, Leonard Ware on guitar, Henry Turner on bass, Zutty Singleton on drums, and a pair of vocalists (Eddie Robinson and Willie Spottswood, 'The Two Fishmongers') featured on "Hold Tight."

The band recorded four tunes that day, all of them originals. Three of them, "What a Dream", "Chant in the Night" and "Jungle Drums", were composed by Bechet. The vocal number "Hold Tight" was composed by Robinson, Spottswood, Ware, Jerry Brandow, and Lenny Kent.

In his biography of Sidney Bechet, John Chilton suggests this session, while bold, is one of Bechet's weaker one, suffering from lack of rehearsal and less than stellar song material (pg 111-112). I couldn't disagree more, and wish this band hand recorded twenty more sides of the same quality. While Caceres isn't balanced, volume-wise in the recording with Bechet (which might just have been an honest difference between the bari player and the muscular sound of Bechet, accurately captured) the timbre and counterpoint the two create is exciting, intriguing, and unique. Chilton wanted a more standard type of climax to the tunes, and perhaps wishes for more melodic content on a number like "Jungle Drums", but here, perhaps, we have the difference between brass criticism and woodwind writing (Chilton himself, who passed away last year, was a trumpet player). A careful review of combo jazz tunes by clarinetists reveals a predisposition for motivic, linear melodies, repetitious in an almost  minimalist fashion. "Seven Come Eleven", "AC/DC Current", "Benny's Bugle" by Benny Goodman; "When the Quail Come Back to San Quentin", "Summit Ridge Drive", "Dr. Livingston, I Presume" by Artie Shaw; and "Jungle Drums" by Sidney Bechet are all cut from a similar cloth.  It's perhaps not a coincidence that John Adams, one of the more revered minimalist composers of the last forty years, was a clarinetist.

That aside "What a Dream" is a beautiful tune, and Bechet's soprano soloing matches it. His clarinet on "Hold Tight" is vintage, excellent, and you can't go wrong with his playing on the other tunes. As with so many of Bechet's early projects (including the first incarnation of The New Orleans Feetwarmers and the Clarence Williams Blue 5), we are left simultaneously wishing we had more, and grateful for what he left us.

Further reading:

Sidney Bechet: The Wizard of Jazz. John Chilton, OUP, NY (1987)

CD Review: The Artistry of Artie Shaw * Hep Records CD 78 * 2004

I can't say how many times I ignored this CD when seeing it in the rack at Half Price Books, walking distance from my house in Cleveland. The cover is bland: it just looked like another budget priced compilation of dubious transfer quality. For some reason though, this afternoon it finally occurred to me not to judge this disc by its cover, and I checked the titles. I was shocked to find the entirety of Modern Music for Clarinet -- the (mostly) classical album Shaw had recorded for Columbia in March of 1949. Prior to this, I'd only heard the rare LP version, which can be very difficult and expensive to obtain.

Modern Music for Clarinet is an interesting album in many ways. It gives us a rare glimpse into Artie's classical aspirations, and what sort of repertoire interested him. Poulenc, Ravel, Gould, Kabalevsky, Milhaud, Shostakovich, Shulman, Gershwin, Porter, and Debussy all make their appearances. But even the most devoted of Shaw fans, if they've got a working knowledge of this repertoire, can't help but admit Shaw sounds a little out of his element on the record. His phrasing can be pretty stiff and tentative, his intonation rougher than usual in spots, and he even has a difficult time finding the tonal nuance to match the musical content of several pieces. This is unlike the Shaw we all know from jazz recordings, where he had layer upon layer of timbral ideas, and it really speaks to the difference between the two disciplines of jazz and classical playing. A helpful contrast is Reginald Kell's "Quiet Music" of light contemporary classics, which were recorded around the same time. Unlike Shaw, Kell is in his comfort zone, and phrases boldly, with surety of style. Another comparison, from decades later, can be heard when Columbia recycled the arrangement of Ravel's Piece En Forme de Habanera for a 1986 album featuring a young Branford Marsalis on soprano saxophone. That album--Romances for Saxophone -- remains one of my favorite of its kind, and on it Marsalis is clearly more at ease with Ravel's lines and style.  

Having said that, one of the most interesting tracks on the album, for me, is a chamber orchestra version of Gershwin's "The Man I Love." Artie's solo here seems a bit self consciously angular and modern, perhaps an attempt to match the modernist theme of the album overall, but I find it intriguing and compelling -- a rare instance of Shaw reaching for something outside of his usual romantic lyricism on a recording. For those of us intrigued with Shaw's musical mind, these pieces, and moments, are invaluable.  

The rest of the CD (both before and after the numbers from Modern Music for Clarinet) is  dedicated some of the more rare recordings by Shaw's last Gramercy 5s, though I'm pretty sure all of these have also been released on Jasmine's box set of the complete Gramercy 5 recordings. 

The transfers themselves, done by John R.T. Davies, Hans Eekhoff, and Bill O'Donnell are very crisp, with little if any added reverb or extraneous sound. Unfortunately, they tend to sound a little shrill, too, and Shaw's clarinet distorts at times in ways that my old LP of Modern Music for Clarinet doesn't. Audiophiles and collectors will probably want to hunt down one of those rare LPs, but for those who have never heard Artie's classical musings before, this CD fills a real, interesting gap. This is highly recommended for anyone seeking to understand the breadth of Shaw's musical interests.

     

Happy Birthday Lillian Hardin Armstrong * February 3, 1898

On this day in 1898 one of the most important figures in jazz history was born in Memphis, Tennessee. Among other things, Lil was responsible for organizing the recording sessions for Louis Armstrong's Hot Fives and Sevens. It's impossible to exaggerate her importance to those sessions: She had the idea for the group, put the band together, arranged for the studio time, and even composed some of the tunes. Without her, the project (clearly among the most important in the history of jazz) simply never would have happened.

Among the tunes she composed was one forever associated with the clarinet of Johnny Dodds, "Lonesome Blues." For many clarinetists and jazz fans, this tune was their first exposure to New Orleans style clarinet, and remains associated permanently with Dodds's style.

She died in 1971, shortly after the death of Louis Armstrong. Though they had divorced decades earlier, she continued following Louis's career, and collapsed while performing at a memorial concert for him seven weeks later. Chicago's Armstrong Park (so named in 2004) isn't named after Louis, but Lil: one of the most influential forces of early jazz.  

For more information, check out All About Jazz's Lil Hardin Armstrong page and her Wikipedia article. 

The Jazz Clarinet Named One of the Web's Top Jazz Blogs

Thank you to the folks at Feedspot, for naming The Jazz Clarinet to their list of the Top 50 Jazz Blogs & Websites for Jazz Musicians, Teachers, and Students! It's gratifying to be recognized alongside so many other writers, united in our love of this great music.

 A special thanks also to all the folks who visit this blog thousands of times each month, and for your continued enthusiasm over the years.  

Keep swinging!

Eric Seddon

Eric Seddon's Hot Club, Live at BLU Jazz + on Mardi Gras (Feb 28th, 8pm)

Join us for our salute to "Mr. Mardi Gras", Pete Fountain!

Mr. Acker Bilk and His Paramount Jazz Band * ACKER * Columbia Record 33 SX 1248 * 1960

White Cliffs of Dover

Snake Rag
2.19 Blues
Fancy Pants
Lazy River
There's a Rainbow 'Round My Shoulder
Original Dixieland Onestep
Good Night, Sweet Prince
Good Woman Blues
Bottom of the Bottle
Milenberg Joys

Personnel [as listed in the album notes]:

Mr. Acker Bilk * clarionet and titular head 
Mr. Ken Sims * trumpet 
Mr. Jonathan Mortimer * trombone
Mr. Roy James * tenor banjo
Mr. Ernest Price * bass
Mr. Ronald McKay * traps and effects

recorded on the 5th, 7th, and 13th days of April, 1960

As with The Seven Ages of Acker and Band of Thieves, I'm sure I like this album way too much for my own good. From the zany liner notes and bowler hat cover to the vocal clarinet and loose but well balanced band, this is exactly what you'd expect from the golden era of Mr. Acker Bilk's Paramount Jazz Band, and it's probably one of their best albums.

The English Trad Jazz scene has historically been a bit of an anomaly to us Americans, though it's so little known in the United States, in a general sense, that to even call it that might be a little strong. Without putting too fine a point on it, the approach to the ambiance of the music, and sometimes to the social meaning of it, tends to be different on either side of the pond. Whereas the American attitude generally ranges anywhere from solemnity to a festive presentation of the music, there almost always seems a zany, Marx-brothers type approach not far in the background of British Trad. This can get annoying for Americans like myself, and it can be prohibitive to enjoyment of some bands, however well the musicians might play. To some very serious traditionalists here in the US, it can seem downright insulting to the music. Why Acker Bilk's Paramount Jazz Band is an exception, despite their use of comedy, is of interest to me, and something I've spent time considering.

My answer is simply that, for all the silliness of the liner notes, striped waistcoats, bowler hats, and hijinx, this is really fine, soulful music making. Bilk's clarinet is immediately identifiable: you can hear right to his heart and soul every time he picks up the horn. He had unique intangibles that were impossible to measure: like how to "lift" an entire performance when he added his voice, and how the band "goes" with him emotionally.

Over the last couple  of years, especially, I've been an advocate for Acker's music here in Cleveland. Many of the musicians I've played with, some of them considerably older than I am, hadn't really heard his playing before I started putting tunes on set lists and scheduling Acker Bilk themed concerts. I'd send bandmates recordings to listen to and we'd talk about them on set breaks or to and from gigs. The response has often been exactly my feelings about the music: that Acker had a unique lyricism, a very touching voice, and the band had an infectious joy about them. The approval hasn't been universal, or without criticism, but many musicians I've talked to have been very impressed. Even the humor that surrounds Bilk's packaging seems specifically good humored, and not just silly.

This album evokes WWII era nostalgia with "White Cliffs of Dover" immediately, then reaches back to early numbers like "Snake Rag" and "2.19 Blues" which originate with King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band and Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bechet, respectively. Immediately after that, though, we get an Acker Bilk original, "Fancy Pants", which might seem just goofy and simple, capitalizing on the caribbean/calypso fad of the late '50s and early '60s. On the surface, there's really nothing to this song: It's just made of a few simple, arpeggiated chords, modulates very obviously, upwards, and is nothing to write home about. But all that aside, it's a great little tune, and it's Acker's joyful sound, as usual, that makes it more than the notes themselves. Most impressively, despite all of the stylistic shifts and eras represented on the album (including another Bilk original "Good Night, Sweet Prince" and the howling howler "Good Woman Blues") the band has a unified concept and approach, making the whole program sound as though the tunes could have been written the day they were recorded.        

This is the real addictive thing about Bilk and his band, especially of this era: They play with such joy and zest, and interpret tunes with such freshness, that all eras seem irrelevant when they're playing. It's just music, and their happiness to be sharing it is obvious. For me, this is vintage Acker Bilk, and even though I've only known of his music for a few years now, it's become an indispensable part of my regular listening (and as a band leader, my set lists).

Promotional poster from our first Acker Bilk tribute concert, back in 2015