The Penguin Jazz Guide (17 page)

Though sometimes unfocused, the ideas run together with few seams showing and the controlled strength of his solo on ‘Feeling Drowsy’ is as impressive as the more daring flights on ‘Swing Out’. The beautifully sustained solo on ‘Make A Country Bird Fly Wild’ works through a tricky stop-time passage with some of Pops’s rhythmic risk and nobility of tone but with less predictability and less reliance on telegraphed high notes. Higginbotham is wonderfully characterful, agile but snarlingly expressive, and the vastly underrated Holmes matches the young Johnny Hodges for hard-hitting lyricism. An outstanding band. The CD carries on through the first sessions by the Allen–Hawkins Orchestra. Both were working with Fletcher Henderson and this could have been an explosive combination, but the records were comparatively tame, with pop material and vocals taking up too much space. Classics’ sound is never very exciting, but hardly needs modern hi-fi or 20-bit remastering to appreciate the quality of these timeless recordings.

COLEMAN HAWKINS
^&

Known as ‘Bean’; born 21 November 1904, St Joseph, Missouri; died 19 May 1969, New York City

Tenor saxophone

Coleman Hawkins 1929–1934

Classics 587

Hawkins; Henry ‘Red’ Allen, Jack Purvis (t, v); Russell Smith, Bobby Stark (t); Muggsy Spanier (c); Glenn Miller, J. C. Higginbotham, Claude Jones, Dicky Wells (tb); Russell Procope, Hilton Jefferson, Jimmy Dorsey (cl, as); Pee Wee Russell (cl); Adrian Rollini (bsx); Red McKenzie (comb, v); Frank Froeba, Jack Russin, Horace Henderson, Buck Washington (p); Bernard Addison, Jack Bland, Will Johnson (g); George ‘Pops’ Foster, Al Morgan, John Kirby (b); Gene Krupa, Charles Kegley, Josh Billings, Walter Johnson (d). November 1929–March 1934.

Jazz biographer John Chilton said (1989):
‘Hawkins turned jazz, or more accurately, he turned jazz improvisation into art. He had a deep learning in the popular repertoire, but it was meeting Louis Armstrong in the [Fletcher] Henderson orchestra that allowed him to turn that knowledge into beautifully shaped improvisation.’

Magnificent, monolithic, saturnine, essentially unrepeatable, Hawkins was the Olivier of the tenor saxophone, its most distinguished tragedian who nevertheless didn’t baulk at ‘stooping’ to commercialism or even comedy when the occasion demanded. The working
life of ‘Bean’ – the nickname came from the shape of his head – spanned four decades and it’s worth noting that Hawkins outlived Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Eric Dolphy and John Coltrane, all of whom in some way learned and moved on from his example. His classic solo on ‘Body And Soul’ remains to this day the template for standards improvisation; his unaccompanied ‘Picasso’ an early cue for the explorations of younger players (Anthony Braxton, David Murray, Charles Gayle …).

The first great role-model for all saxophonists began recording in 1922, but compilations of his earlier work usually start with his European sojourn in 1934. This valuable cross-section of the preceding five years shows Hawkins reaching a sudden maturity. He was taking solos with Fletcher Henderson in 1923 and was already recognizably Hawkins, but the big sound and freewheeling rhythmic command weren’t really evident until later. By 1929, he was one of the star soloists in the Henderson band – which he remained faithful to for over ten years – and the blazing improvisation on the first track here, ‘Hello Lola’ by Red McKenzie’s Mound City Blue Blowers, indicates the extent of his confidence. But he still sounds tied to the underlying beat, and it isn’t until the octet session of September 1933 that Hawkins establishes the gliding but muscular manner of his ’30s music. The ensuing Horace Henderson date of October 1933 has a feast of great Hawkins, culminating in the astonishing extended solo on ‘I’ve Got To Sing A Torch Song’, with its baleful low honks and daring manipulation of the time. Three final duets with Buck Washington round out the disc, but an earlier session under the leadership of the trumpeter Jack Purvis must also be mentioned: in a curious line-up including Adrian Rollini and J. C. Higginbotham, Hawkins plays a dark, serious role.

& See also
Coleman Hawkins 1939–1940
(1939–1940; p. 74),
The Stanley Dance Sessions
(1955–1958; p. 172)

THE ’30s

The Wall Street Crash of 1929 had an immediate and deep effect on all aspects of American culture, but arguably not as great an impact as that of a further wave of new technology. The combined result was to shift the emphasis in jazz somewhat – and at this stage only somewhat – away from live performance and towards recording as a key activity. It cannot be over-emphasized enough that for the moment jazz – and swing, which derived from it – were still essentially musics for social dance, but the growing importance of sound film and radio, the latter particularly, meant that there were new outlets for studio-based music. In addition, many clubs and bars replaced a live band with an electric jukebox, creating a market for new recordings.

For the moment, though, the Depression exerted a negative pressure on record sales in America. Those who had confidently predicted that recorded music was a passing fad were comforted by a net market drop of something like 80 per cent in record buying between the Crash and the beginnings of the Roosevelt New Deal, a decline that must at the time have seemed irreversible and terminal.

As ever, though, there were countervailing forces that pointed strongly to a vigorous future revival. The spread of radio through the ’30s and the steady amalgamation of the broadcasting and recording companies into large – one would now say corporate – bodies created an industry of considerable power and authority. Though again primarily targeted for speech use, radio proved to be a potent vehicle for new music and one of the innovations of the decade was the use of what are misleadingly called ‘transcription’ recordings, non-commercial discs manufactured specifically for broadcast purposes and not available to the general public. Creating ‘transcriptions’ provided concentrated studio work for band musicians who were otherwise squeezed out of work by economic slump and the rise of the jukebox.

There were other associated factors. The outsize transcription disc, many of which functioned in a different way to commercial records, favouring the otherwise abandoned inside-outward reading of the spiral groove, were capable of holding up to a quarter of an hour of recorded music. In addition to practical convenience, this also offered new creative opportunities, that were not for the moment taken up: most obviously the ability to create and document music that exceeded in duration the familiar two- to three-minute span of the usual 78rpm recording. Some artists – most notably Duke Ellington – experimented with longer pieces, but these had to be performed across two sides of a 78 record, with a break in the middle, and this restriction discouraged innovation.

The record companies experimented with new speeds, including 331/3 which later became the norm for long-playing records. (Turntable speeds had varied according to company and system for much of the early history of recording.) Also in the early ’30s were the first experiments in stereophonic recording, though for the moment this remained of largely scientific interest, with no direct application to commercial recording.

In stylistic terms, and in keeping with the still definite separation of recorded music into ‘race’ and mainstream categories, there was a steady eclipse of ‘hot’ small-group jazz by a smoother sound that reincorporated elements of ‘sweet’ music, together with a more accessible dance beat. By the end of the decade, and certainly by the time of the famous Benny Goodman Carnegie Hall concert in 1938, the swing style that Jimmie Lunceford’s orchestra had pioneered and popularized had become a mass-market phenomenon. For perhaps the only time in the music’s history, a jazz form
was
the popular music of its day …

JIMMIE LUNCEFORD

Born 6 June 1902, Fulton, Mississippi; died 12 July 1947, Seaside, Oregon

Alto saxophone, bandleader

Jimmie Lunceford 1930–1934

Classics 501

Lunceford; Sy Oliver, Eddie Tompkins, Tommy Stevenson, William ‘Sleepy’ Tomlin (t); Henry Wells (tb, v); Russell Bowles (tb); Willie Smith, Earl Carruthers (cl, as, bs); LaForet Dent (as); Joe Thomas (cl, ts); Edwin Wilcox (p, cel); Al Norris (g); Moses Allen (bb, b); Jimmy Crawford (d, vib). June 1930–November 1934.

Drummer Chico Hamilton said (1993):
‘I heard some young guy recently described as a “mega-star”. Well, sixty years ago, when it wasn’t so easy to get around, Jimmie Lunceford swept this country from coast to coast. He was a professor, a master, and he was known everywhere, with a style that was all its own, this two-beat thing,
ba-boom ba
, with that kick on the bass drum, so it looped right round. He set the whole country dancing …’

Lunceford studied music in Denver and at Fisk University and then taught in Manassas. His band scuffled for four years before playing at the Cotton Club and making a big name for a showy, almost vaudeville act, which toured relentlessly. Disillusion set in and the leader, who’d also taken up flying, died of a heart attack in questionable circumstances, possibly poisoned according to one recent biographer. The very fact he passed away in Oregon, though, was a measure of the Lunceford band’s continent-spanning celebrity.

Lunceford’s orchestra is the great also-ran band of its day. There were no special idiosyncrasies which lifted the Lunceford orchestra away from the consistent excellence to which it aspired. Its principal arrangers – Sy Oliver in particular, but also Edwin Wilcox (in the earlier days) and Willie Smith – created superbly polished, interlocking sections which gave their records a professional élan. Soloists stepped naturally out of and back into this precision machine, and there was never much danger of a Rex Stewart or a Lester Young breaking any rule. Lunceford’s virtues were entirely different from those of the rough-and-ready (early) Basie band, or from Ellington’s unique cast of characters.

This first set in a comprehensive Classics documentation shows the band coming together; there is a single 1930 session, followed by a jump to 1934. The important hit coupling of ‘Jazznocracy’ and ‘White Heat’ is here, as well as the remarkably nonconformist versions of ‘Mood Indigo’ and ‘Sophisticated Lady’; once under way in earnest, Lunceford turned out some fine records. Until a formulaic staleness set in – almost inevitable given the band’s relentless touring in less than ideal circumstances: there was a Depression, after all, and America was still a racist country – there was nothing quite to beat the orchestra for sheer excitement. Sitting on top of Lunceford’s trademark precision, Smith was a rival to Hodges and Carter as one of the great alto stylists of the day, while Joe Thomas and Eddie Tompkins were excellent half-chorus players (contemporary players wouldn’t understand why that was important and would regard it as an insult rather than a term of praise) who compressed enormous experience into just a few bars.

Lunceford’s death isn’t on most people’s list of great American paranoid mysteries, but as a parable of the African-American musical experience, it’s worth pondering.

CAB CALLOWAY

Born 25 December 1907, Rochester, New York; died 18 November 1994, Hockessin, Delaware

Voice

The Early Years 1930–1934

JSP CD 908 4CD

Calloway; R. Q. Dickerson, Lamar Wright, Ruben Reeves, Wendell Culley, Edwin Swayzee, Doc Cheatham (t); De Priest Wheeler, Harry White (tb); Thornton Blue, Arville Harris (cl, as); Eddie Barefield (cl, as, bs); Andrew Brown (bcl, ts); Walter Thomas (as, ts, bs, f); Earres Prince, Benny Payne (p); Morris White (bj); Roy Smeck (g); Al Morgan (b); Jimmy Smith (bb, b); Leroy Maxey (d); Chick Bullock (v). July 1930–September 1934.

Cab Calloway said (1976):
‘Louis Armstrong enthralled me but he didn’t influence me. With Louis, you listened to the man, not the band. I wanted to make the band swing for me. That was the main thing, not what I was doing.’

Cab was the younger brother of Blanche Calloway, who made some excellent recordings of her own but lacked the kid’s staying power. He was a peerless entertainer, who stuck around long enough to win over a younger, pop-reared generation who liked his surreal personality, and even made a cameo appearance in
The Blues Brothers.
Some of his routines are now YouTube hits. He started out training for the law in Baltimore – prompting a surreal fantasy of a white-suited Cab dancing his summing-up to the jury – but showbiz won out. He was with the Alabamian And Missourians before he branched out on his own and had a big hit in 1931 with ‘Minnie The Moocher’, which in turn sparked off a series of ‘Hi-De-Hi, Hi-De-Ho’ routines.

At Calloway’s very first session, in July 1930 with an astonishingly virtuosic vocal on ‘St Louis Blues’, he served notice that a major jazz singer was ready to challenge Armstrong with an entirely different style. It didn’t take Calloway long to sharpen up the band, even though he did it with comparatively few changes in personnel. Unlike the already tested format of a vocal feature within an instrumental record, Calloway’s arrangers varied detail from record to record, Cab appearing throughout some discs, briefly on others, and usually finding space for a fine team of soloists. Some records are eventful to an extraordinary extent: listen, for instance, to the dazzling 1930 ‘Some Of These Days’. The lexicon of reefers, Minnie the Moocher and Smokey Joe, kicking gongs around, and the whole fabulous language of hi-de-ho would soon have become tiresome if it hadn’t been for the leader’s boundless energy and ingenious invention: his vast range, from a convincing bass to a shrieking falsetto, has remained unsurpassed by any male singer and he transforms the emptiest material.