The History of Jazz (31 page)

The more traditional styles of New Orleans and Chicago also continued to hold sway with a number of white bands during the Swing Era. Bob Crosby’s orchestra, formed from the remnants of Ben Pollack’s ensemble, offered audiences an appealing big band variant of older styles. Crosby never found much favor with the critics— nor would he ever match the fame of his celebrity brother Bing—but his bands boasted an exceptional crop of soloists, including Eddie Miller, Irving Fazola, Billy Butterfield, Joe Sullivan, Muggsy Spanier, Yank Lawson, Jess Stacy, and Bob Zurke, as well as the inspired and at times unconventional arrangements of Bob Haggart. The Dorsey Brothers also tended toward a more traditional sound during this period, with the lingering influence of Chicago-inflected Dixieland hovering over many of their early efforts. Even in later years, after their abrupt separation, the Dorsey siblings’ increasingly overt swing sounds (which both came to embrace, although Tommy more so than his older brother Jimmy) were usually moderated by a heavy dose of sugary ballads, pop vocals, novelty numbers, and an occasional throwback to the two-beat spirit of their Chicago roots.

Born and reared in a Pennsylvania coal mining town, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey were cut off from the main currents of popular music sweeping the more urbanized areas of America. Music for the Dorseys (much like the Teagardens and Goodmans) was a matter of hearth and home, with the family unit serving as a surrogate center of activity. The elder Mr. Dorsey led a local marching and concert band as well as taught music. Both boys learned multiple instruments, but in time Jimmy gravitated to saxophone and clarinet, while Tommy focused on trombone. The youngsters’ isolation from the broader streams of the jazz world left a lasting mark: on the one hand, neither of the Dorseys developed deep jazz roots as soloists; on the other, the focus on solitary practice and the peculiarly pedagogical atmosphere of their home life no doubt contributed to the accomplished technique they both boasted.

First recording together under their own name in 1928, the Dorsey Brothers soon became regulars of the studios, where their skills and versatility held them in good stead. The quality of these early sides is mixed, but the best of them are first-rate jazz performances—for example, the Dorseys’ 1933 resurrection of Bill Challis’s stirring chart of “Blue Room,” written for Goldkette in the 1920s (but never recorded at the time), which still sounded fresh years later. In 1934, the Dorsey Brothers began performing together in a working band, but tensions between the two exploded onstage the following spring, when a disagreement—ostensibly over the tempo of a song—led the mercurial Tommy to walk off the bandstand. They would remain at odds for many years, with Jimmy taking over leadership of the existing band, while Tommy set up his own competing ensemble.

Opportunities for both blossomed during the remainder of the decade and into the 1940s, with the Tommy Dorsey band achieving particular success in a series of big-selling records: “Marie” (1937), with its novelty vocal-and-chant exchanges and a strong solo contribution from Bunny Berigan; “Song of India” (1937), a RimskyKorsakov adaptation, also featuring Berigan, which was an influential excursion into the realm of jazz exotica; “Boogie Woogie” (1938), with its clever transfer of the faddish piano style to the big band idiom; “Hawaiian War Chant” (1938), echoing Goodman’s “Sing, Sing, Sing” (which had caused a sensation at the Carnegie Hall concert a few months earlier) with its assertion of simple riffs over a throbbing drum foundation; and “I’ll Never Smile Again” (1940) with a young Frank Sinatra providing a dreamy vocal. The last tune spent twelve weeks on top of the
Billboard
chart—one of seventeen number one singles enjoyed by this immensely popular bandleader. Brother Jimmy offered stiff competition, however, with eleven number one hits of his own. These included the Latin-tinged tunes “Amapola”—which topped the chart for ten weeks in 1941—“The Breeze and I” and “Besame Mucho,” but also appealing jazz-pop fare such as “Tangerine” and “Pennies from Heaven,” the latter a collaboration with Bing Crosby that was the biggest-selling record of 1936.

In 1939, at the height of the Swing Era, the jazz credentials of the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra were reinforced with the addition of Sy Oliver, whose arrangements had been so influential in shaping the Lunceford sound. As with Henderson’s infusion of swing into the Goodman band, Oliver helped make this unit into a hotter, harder-swinging ensemble. Over the next few years, Oliver charts such as “Stomp It Off,” “Yes, Indeed!,” “Swing High,” “Well, Get It!,” and “Opus One” provided a more flamboyant and insistent style for Dorsey and made the contrast between his music and that of his more pop-oriented brother all the more noticeable. The move to this hotter style also helped Dorsey secure the services of drummer Buddy Rich, one of the flashiest and most technically accomplished percussionists of the era, and later a prominent bandleader in his own right. Despite a tendency toward bombast, this drummer—born as Bernard Rich in 1917—could fire up the band or, barring that, at least the audience, with a series of celebrated moves: one-hand rolls with either hand, crisscrossing arms-and-drums patterns, whispery passages played at lightning-fast speed, dazzling stick tricks, and other crowd-pleasing trademarks of his craft. Rich had just left Artie Shaw’s band and was reluctant to join Dorsey, but when he encountered Oliver’s swinging scores during a rehearsal, he changed his mind and signed on with the group. Oliver later penned a feature for Rich, the chart “Quiet Please,” a driving piece taken at a breakneck tempo that displays the drummer in top form.

The Dorsey brothers, who had patched up their differences in 1942, increasingly worked in tandem after the end of the big band era. While other jazz stars of the prewar years struggled to hold on to their audience in the 1950s, the Dorseys reinvented themselves as television stars. They even helped usher in the age of rock and roll by featuring Elvis Presley in his first TV appearance—some eight months before the singer’s celebrated performance on
The Ed Sullivan Show
. But Tommy’s death at age fifty-one in 1956 from suffocation in his sleep, and Jimmy’s death from throat cancer the following year at age fifty-three, put an end to the illustrious careers of these Swing Era stars.

The most direct competitor to Goodman during the closing years of the decade was Artie Shaw, a virtuoso clarinetist whose movie star looks and flair (mixed with disdain) for publicity attracted attention and controversy in equal doses. In a shrewd public relations move, Shaw took on the title “the King of the Clarinet,” an obvious challenge to Goodman’s “King of Swing” epithet. To this day, debate over the relative merits of Goodman and Shaw continues to bedevil swing aficionados, with advocates of one quick to denounce the achievements of the other. Pointless polemics. Both of these clarinetists achieved the highest rung—indeed has any later player on the instrument made such a mark or inspired such passion among listeners as either Shaw or Goodman? The reserved Goodman was the master of hot phrasing, a swing stylist with a concert hall technique. Charismatic, a chameleon in both his music and personality, Shaw offered a fluid, less syncopated approach to melody, but leavened with a sweet tone that is still the envy of other clarinetists so many decades later. His improvised lines were varnished with a haughty elegance, submerging the emotional turbulence far below, which made even the most technically accomplished passages sound like child’s play. Compare the two figures, each a puzzling composite: one combined a frigid personality with a hot musical style, while the other evinced a warm-blooded temperament but a sweet and cool approach to the horn. Choosing between them is like discussing the relative merits of ice and fire. Both are forces to contemplate and, as the poet tells us, will suffice.

The distinct odor of public relations permeated more than just Shaw’s music. The ups and downs of the bandleader’s eight marriages (including conjugal stints with cinema leading ladies Ava Gardner and Lana Turner) and his erratic behavior made him a constant subject of gossip and speculation. Even when Shaw decided to bid adieu to the Swing Era and retire into seclusion—as he did, in grand style, late in 1939—his demands for privacy only heightened public interest. Never one to miss a tearful encore, Shaw was back in the recording studio within weeks, having spent the interim in Mexico, jamming with the locals and garnering a new repertoire of Latin songs. This south-of-the-border sojourn led to Shaw’s recording of “Frenesi,” one of the clarinetist’s most memorable hits.

Breaking up the band would become a Shaw trademark, just as much as the broken marriages, with precipitous dismissals curtailing both the 1941 and 1942 editions of the Shaw orchestra. Even a “final retirement” in 1954 proved temporary, when Shaw resurrected his orchestra some thirty years later, although now serving only as conductor and leader, with his clarinet permanently kept in its case. Burned out by the too-rapid ascendancy of his star, Shaw could not match the staying power of Goodman. But the best of his work ranks among the finest jazz of the era: the popular hits, such as “Begin the Beguine”; “Concerto for Clarinet” and various other demonstrations of Shaw’s instinct for grandiloquent gestures; ballad showpieces including “Stardust” and “Deep Purple”; the clarinetist’s efforts with the Gramercy Five, such as “Special Delivery Stomp” and “Summit Ridge Drive”; as well as the stellar late-vintage 1954 combo recordings, many of the tracks unreleased for decades, which serve as proof positive that Shaw laid down his horn while still at the top of his game. And, like Goodman, Shaw played a key role in breaking down the racial barriers that stultified the jazz world. His hiring of Billie Holiday in 1938, Hot Lips Page in 1941, and Roy Eldridge in 1944 gave broader visibility to some of the most deserving African American jazz artists of the day.

Roy Eldridge stands out as one of the enigmas of the Swing Era. Recognized by many of his peers as the greatest trumpeter of his generation, Eldridge never enjoyed much financial success as a leader, nor was he capable of staying for very long as a star soloist with a major band. His stint with Fletcher Henderson in the mid-1930s lasted only a few months. A follow-up attempt to lead an octet with his older brother, saxophonist Joe Eldridge, resulted in a number of classic recordings—“After You’ve Gone,” “Wabash Stomp,” and “Heckler’s Hop” showcase some of the most impressive jazz trumpet work of the late 1930s—but little in the way of sales. For a time, Eldridge’s fortune had sunk so low that he studied to be a radio engineer—this at a point when his technical command of the jazz trumpet was unsurpassed.

Eventually Eldridge returned to the bandstand in 1938 with a ten-piece group. This band also soon folded, but Eldridge’s skills as a soloist kept him in demand. His 1940 recording of “I Can’t Believe That You’re in Love with Me” finds the trumpeter, alongside Benny Carter and Coleman Hawkins in the Chocolate Dandies, contributing one of his finest solos. Through his work with the Gene Krupa band in 1941–43 and the Artie Shaw band in 1944–45, Eldridge helped break down the color barrier in the jazz world. In particular, the trumpeter’s work with Krupa on “Rockin’ Chair” and “Let Me Off Uptown” were as close as Eldridge would come to a hit. After leaving Shaw, Eldridge again attempted to organize a big band of his own, but before long he returned to the small-combo format, where he continued to ply his craft either as leader or in collaboration with many of the marquee names in jazz for another four decades.

The genealogists of jazz often cite Eldridge as a linking figure, whose work represents a halfway point between the styles of Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie. This reputation as a transitional player in the music’s history may ultimately have proven to be more of a curse than a blessing for Eldridge, who soon found himself lost in the shuffle of shifting styles and changing tastes. In particular, the overt modernism of his playing tended to be obscured by the rising star of Gillespie. Although less than seven years older than Dizzy, Eldridge soon came to be seen as part of the older generation, the group of Swing Era veterans whom Gillespie and the other boppers were trying to supplant. In fact, Eldridge had taken part in some of the early bop sessions at Minton’s Playhouse and, had he been so motivated, could have adapted to the new style—his mid-1950s Verve recordings with Gillespie clearly reveal that the older trumpeter was more than up to that challenge. But personal inclination kept him in the swing camp, and his later work found him recording or performing with many of the star soloists of the prewar era, such as Benny Carter, Coleman Hawkins, Art Tatum, and Johnny Hodges.

Despite the growing popularity of other big bands, Goodman took the various challenges to his preeminence in stride. Not only did his band win first place in
Downbeat
’s 1936 reader’s poll, but it scored a landslide victory, receiving almost three times as many votes as its nearest competitor. Other bandleaders might have grown complacent in response to these accolades, but not Goodman. Always on the lookout for prime talent, he kept the band sounding fresh with a constant influx of new blood. The addition of trumpeters Ziggy Elman in late 1936 and, four months later, Harry James, provided Goodman with two world-class soloists, both of whom were also fine section players. The later overt commercialism of James’s work (“Ciribiribin,” “Flight of the Bumblebee,” “Carnival of Venice”) has distracted attention from this trumpeter’s exceptional jazz skills. James’s brash, energetic style, set apart by his stamina and range, can be heard to good measure on “Peckin’, ” “Roll ‘Em,” and “Sugar Foot Stomp” from September of that year, the last in particular revealing the Oliver-Armstrong roots of his trumpet style. Vido Musso, a robust tenor saxophonist in the Hawkins mold, joined the band that same year and contributed impassioned solos on performances such as “Jam Session” (which also includes one of Elman’s better solos from this period) and “I Want to Be Happy” during his tenure with the band. Such talent came at a price. Each of these players eventually went on to front his own band—as Berigan had already done and as Krupa would soon do as well—taking advantage of the tremendous exposure granted to them during their Goodman years. Unlike the Ellington band, which could retain key players for decades, Goodman’s ensemble constantly needed to replenish its ranks; and though the leader’s perfectionist tendencies may have contributed to the turnover—his angry glare at underperforming musicians became so famous, it even got a name: “the Ray”—it is to Goodman’s credit that he rarely faltered in finding fitting replacements for his departing stars.