The Penguin Jazz Guide (16 page)

EARL HINES
^&

Known as ‘Fatha’; born 28 December 1903, Duquesne, Pennsylvania; died 22 April 1983, Oakland, California

Piano

Earl Hines Collection: Piano Solos 1928–1940

Collectors Classics COCD 11

Hines (p solo). December 1928–February 1940.

Earl Hines said (1977):
‘First off, I tried to play trumpet, but it hurt my ears. Then I found Louis Armstrong was playing exact things I wanted to play. So I think that’s where my “trumpet style” on piano, if you want to call it that, comes from.’

Earl Hines had already played on some of the greatest of all jazz records – with Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five – before he made any sessions under his own name. The piano solos he made in Long Island and Chicago, one day apart in December 1928, are collected on this Classics CD – a youthful display of brilliance that has seldom been surpassed. His ambidexterity, enabling him to finger runs and break up and supplant rhythms at will, is still breathtaking, and his range of pianistic devices is equalled only by Tatum and Taylor. But these dozen pieces were a preamble to a career which, in the ’30s, was concerned primarily with bandleading. The intuitive brilliance one heard on the ‘Weather Bird’ duet with Armstrong carried forward into his bandleading as well, where every component has its proper place in the mix, but one can readily hear Hines playing keyboard almost orchestrally, even at this early date.

& See also
Earl Hines Plays Duke Ellington
(1971–1975; p. 390)

JIMMIE NOONE

Born 23 April 1895, Stanton Plantation, Cut Off (Algiers), Louisiana; died 19 April 1944, Los Angeles, California

Clarinet

Jimmie Noone 1928–1929

Classics 611

Noone; George Mitchell (c); Fayette Williams (tb); Lawson Buford, Bill Newton (tba); Joe Poston (cl, as); Eddie Pollack (as, bs); Zinky Cohn, Alex Hill, Earl Hines (p); Junie Cobb, Wilbur Gorham, Bud Scott (bj, g); Johnny Wells (d). 1928–1929.

Jimmy Giuffre said (1987):
‘Of the older fellows on clarinet, I’m drawn to Noone rather than Dodds. He had that soft-edged sound that seemed to flow over the rhythm rather than bounce off it.’

Noone studied with his contemporary Sidney Bechet before joining King Oliver in 1918. He was a Chicago star during the ’20s, but never made much impact in New York. A fondness for eating shortened his life and nowadays he’s largely forgotten. What’s needed is a good sampler of Noone’s earlier material. There are examples of the great musician he could be, but they’re scattered. The ballad playing on ‘Sweet Lorraine’ and ‘Blues My Naughty Sweetie Gives To Me’ is of a very high order and investigates a rare, cool vein in the Chicago jazz of the period. ‘Oh, Sister! Ain’t That Hot?’, ‘El Rado Scuffle’, ‘It’s Tight Like That’ and ‘Chicago Rhythm’ are further isolated successes, but the rest is rather discouraging.

Much of Noone’s output was spoiled by weak material, unsuitable arrangements, poor sidemen or a sentimental streak which eventually came to dominate the playing.

These are all familiar characteristics of the period, but Noone seemed oblivious to the excessive sweetness which overpowered so many of the records with his Apex Club band, named after his resident gig in Chicago. It was an interesting line-up with Noone out front and Joe Poston playing melody behind him. Jimmie had a mellifluous, rather sad-sounding tone and preferred his solos to be insinuating rather than fierce. Where Johnny Dodds, the other great New Orleans player of the day, was comparatively harsh, Noone sought to caress melodies. But the plunking rhythm sections, still dominated by banjos even in 1928–9, and the unsuitable front-line partners failed to give Noone the kind of sympathetic settings which would have made his romantic approach more feasible. Poston tarnishes many of the tunes, and his replacement, Pollack, is even worse; even Earl Hines, who plays on 18 tracks, can provide only flashes of inspiration.

All the same, it’s honest music and Noone points forward, albeit distantly, to some of the quieter jazz of a later age.

JABBO SMITH

Born Cladys Smith, 24 December 1908, Pembroke, Georgia; died 16 January 1991, New York City

Trumpet

Jabbo Smith 1929–1938

Classics 669

Smith; Omer Simeon, Willard Brown (cl, as); Leslie Johnakins, Ben Smith (as); Sam Simmons (ts); Millard Robins (bsx); Cassino Simpson, Kenneth Anderson, Alex Hill, William Barbee, James Reynolds (p); Ikey Robinson (bj); Connie Wainwright (g); Hayes Alvis, Lawson Buford (tba); Elmer James (b); Alfred Taylor (d). January 1929–February 1938.

Trumpeter Freddie Hubbard said (1982):
‘You keep hearing about what’s new in jazz, what’s “revolutionary” and so on. A while back I heard a cat out of Milwaukee: old recordings from the 1920s, but, I swear, he sounded like Fats Navarro, and bebop wasn’t meant to begin for another fifteen-some years. So either he was ahead of it all or there really is nothing new.’

Smith may have cut a dashing figure in late-’20s Chicago but he was cut down to size by drink and a poor attendance record and pretty much retired to Milwaukee. By 1940, he was barely visible, subsequently taking jobs outside music. He came back in the ’60s and ’70s and was in
One Mo’ Time
on Broadway in New York in the ’80s, reformed and intact, though understandably not the player he had been.

Until his rediscovery he was legendary as Armstrong’s most significant rival – that was the basis on which Brunswick signed him – in the ’20s, a dashing reputation that was won and lost before he reached his mid-20s. Like Pops, he’d learned to play in an orphanage. He had already made a name for himself with Charlie Johnson’s orchestra, but it was the 20 sides he cut with his Rhythm Aces that have endured as Smith’s contribution to jazz.

This Classics CD includes all of them, together with four tracks from a single 1938 session by Smith’s then eight-strong group. Smith’s style is like a thinner, wilder variation on Armstrong’s. He takes even more risks in his solos – or, at least, makes it seem that way, since he’s less assured at pulling them off than Louis was. Some passages he seems to play entirely in his highest register; others are composed of handfuls of notes, phrased in such a scattershot way that he seems to have snatched them out of the air. If it makes the music something of a mess, it’s a consistently exciting one. Organized round Smith’s own stop-time solos and dialogue with the rhythm, with the occasional vocal – a quizzical mix of Armstrong and Don Redman – thrown in too, the records seem like a conscious attempt at duplicating the Hot Five sessions, although in the event they sold poorly. Simeon is curiously reticent, much as Dodds was on the Hot Fives, and alto-players Brown and Smith do no more than behave themselves. The livewire foil is, instead, the extraordinary Robinson, whose tireless strumming and rare, knockout solo (as on ‘Michigander Blues’) keep everything simmering. Shrill and half-focused, these are still lively and brilliant reminders of a poorly documented talent.

BENNIE MOTEN

Born 13 November 1894, Kansas City, Missouri; died 2 April 1935, Kansas City, Missouri

Piano, bandleader

Band Box Shuffle 1929–1932

Hep 1070/2 2CD

Moten; Ed Lewis, Hot Lips Page, Joe Keyes, Dee Stewart, Paul Webster, Booker Washington (c); Thamon Haye, Dan Minor (tb, v); Eddie Durham (tb, g); Woody Walder, Eddie Barefield, Ben Webster (reeds); Harlan Leonard (cl, ss, as); Woody Walder (cl, ts); Jack Washington (cl, as, bs); LaForest Dent (as, bs, bj); Buster Moten (p, acc); Count Basie (p); Leroy Berry (bj, g); Vernon Page (tba); Willie McWashington (d); James Taylor, Bob Clemmons, Jimmy Rushing (v). 1929–1932.

Pianist Mary Lou Williams said (1976):
‘Kansas City in those days,
everyone
played music and with everyone else. You’d see guys who didn’t have a ride walking over from the Kansas side with a double bass on their back, just to play in a jam, and then walk back home again, and do it all over again the next night.’

Moten was bandleading in Kansas City by 1920 and he built the most powerful outfit in the region for a decade. Moten’s band progressed rather slowly, handicapped by an absence of both truly outstanding soloists and an arranger of real talent. The surprisingly static personnel did the best they could with the material, but most of the tunes work from a heavy off-beat. Walder has barely improved, and the arrival of Bennie’s brother, Buster, with his dreaded piano-accordion, was enough to root the band in novelty status. There are some excellent moments – in such as ‘The New Tulsa Blues’ or ‘Kansas City Breakdown’ – but sugary saxes and pedestrian charts spoil many promising moments. Matters take an immediate upward turn with the joint arrival of Basie and Durham in 1929. ‘Jones Law Blues’, ‘Band Box Shuffle’ and ‘Small Black’ all show the band with fresh ideas under Basie’s inspirational leadership (and soloing – here with his Earl Hines influence still intact). ‘Sweetheart Of Yesterday’ even softens the two-beat rhythm.

Under Basie’s effective leadership, the Moten orchestra finally took wing, and its final sessions were memorable. There were still problems, such as the presence of Buster Moten, the reliance on a tuba prior to the arrival of Page, and a general feeling of transition between old and new; but, by the magnificent session of December 1932, when the band created at least four masterpieces in ‘Toby’, ‘Prince Of Wails’, ‘Milenberg Joys’ and ‘Moten Swing’, it was a unit that could have taken on the best of American bands. Page, Rushing, Webster,
Durham and especially Basie himself all have key solo and ensemble roles, and the sound of the band on ‘Prince Of Wails’ and ‘Toby’ is pile-driving. Ironically, this modernism cost Moten much of his local audience, which he was only recovering at the time of his death in 1935.

LUIS RUSSELL

Born 6 August 1902, Careening Clay, Panama; died 11 December 1963, New York City

Bandleader, piano

The Luis Russell Story

Retrieval RTR 79023 2CD

Russell; Louis Metcalf, Henry ‘Red’ Allen, Bill Coleman, Otis Johnson, George Mitchell, Leonard Davis, Gus Aiken (t); Bob Shoffner (c); Kid Ory, J. C. Higginbotham, Vic Dickenson, Preston Jackson, Dicky Wells, Nathaniel Story, Jimmy Archey (tb); Albert Nicholas (cl, ss, as); Charlie Holmes (ss, as); Darnell Howard, Henry Jones (cl, as); Bingie Madison (cl, ts); Barney Bigard, Teddy Hill, Greely Walton (ts); Will Johnson (g, bj); Lee Blair (g); Johnny St Cyr (bj); Bass Moore (tba); George ‘Pops’ Foster (b); Paul Barbarin (d); Walter Pichon, Sonny Woods, Chick Bullock, Palmer Brothers (v). January 1929–August 1934.

Drummer Roy Haynes worked with Russell from 1945. He said (2005):
‘Russell was a great piano-player and a great leader. He ran things, but he let you express yourself and they said after I left to go with Lester Young that I changed the sound of that band. We used to play the Savoy Ballroom, the “Home of Happy Feet”. The place just jumped.’

Russell worked in New Orleans in the early ’20s, but the break came as resident bandleader at the Saratoga Club in New York in 1928. Between 1935 and 1940, when it was sacked, the group was with Louis Armstrong full-time. At the time of his death he was driving cars and teaching piano.

He led one of the great orchestras of its period, having originally put it together in New Orleans in 1927, with such young local stars as Allen, Nicholas and Barbarin in attendance. Their 18 essential sides from seven remarkable sessions in New York are available on this Retrieval CD, and are also to be found, along with some useful small-group sessions – with a Mortonesque sound – from 1926 on Classics. By the time of the first recordings, the band had secured a prime Harlem residency at the Saratoga Club. This was a sophisticated outfit, first because of its soloists – with Higginbotham dominating the earlier sides and Allen, Nicholas and Holmes adding their own variations to the later ones – and second because of its increasing stature as an ensemble. ‘Louisiana Swing’, ‘High Tension’, ‘Panama’ and ‘Case On Dawn’ all show the orchestra swinging through the more advanced new ideas of counterpoint and unison variation while still offering chances for Allen and the others to shine as soloists.

HENRY ‘RED’ ALLEN

Born 7 January 1908, New Orleans, Louisiana; died 17 April 1967, New York City

Trumpet, voice

Henry ‘Red’ Allen & His Orchestra 1929–1933

Classics 540

Allen; Otis Johnson (t); J. C. Higginbotham, Jimmy Archey, Dicky Wells, Benny Morton (tb); Charlie Holmes (cl, ss, as); Russell Procope, Edward Inge, Albert Nicholas, William Blue (cl, as); Hilton Jefferson (as); Teddy Hill (cl, ts); Coleman Hawkins, Greely Walton (ts); Luis Russell (p, cel); Don Kirkpatrick, Horace Henderson (p); Will Johnson (bj, g, v); Bernard Addison (g); Bob Ysaguirre, George ‘Pops’ Foster (bb, b); Ernest ‘Bass’ Hill (bb); Walter Johnson, Manzie Johnson, Paul Barbarin (d); Victoria Spivey, The Four Wanderers (v). July 1929–November 1933.

Trumpeter Digby Fairweather says:
‘His early recordings might once have been (mistakenly) dismissed as a good working alternative to Louis Armstrong, but his unique style – full of smears, whispers, aggravated grumbles and shouting declamations – remains one of the miracles of jazz trumpet.’

Once described as ‘the last great trumpet soloist to come out of New Orleans’, but that, of course, was before Wynton Marsalis came along, ‘Red’ Allen – so called because he flushed while playing high-note solos – was certainly the last Crescent City native to make a mark in the ’20s, recording his astonishing debut sessions for Victor in the summer of 1929. ‘It Should Be You’, ‘Biff’ly Blues’, ‘Feeling Drowsy’ and ‘Swing Out’ are magnificently conceived and executed, with the whole band (by day the Luis Russell Orchestra) playing with outstanding power and finesse, while Allen’s own improvisations outplay anyone aside from Armstrong.