The Penguin Jazz Guide (22 page)

Columbia’s massive
Lady Day
edition offers the entire catalogue, 230 tracks including alternatives, airshots and a few V-Discs. The basic sequence starts with six and a half discs of the studio sessions in chronological order, then meanders through numerous alternative takes and a small amount of broadcast material for the remainder. There are also numerous essays and photos, as well as track-by-track analysis: all the familiar paraphernalia of the boxed-set age. The standard of these records – particularly considering how many tracks were made – is finally very high, and the best of them are as poised and finely crafted as any small-group jazz of the period. One of Holiday’s innovations was to suggest a role for the singer which blended in with the rest of the musicians, improvising a line and taking a ‘solo’ which was as integrated as anything else on the record. On her earlier sides with Wilson as leader, she was still credited as responsible for the ‘vocal refrain’, but the later titles feature ‘Billie Holiday And Her Orchestra’. She starts some records and slips into the middle of others, but always there’s a feeling of a musician at ease with the rest of the band and aware of the importance of fitting into the performance as a whole.

Her tone, on the earliest sides, is still a little raw and unformed, and the trademark rasp at the edge of her voice – which she uses to canny effect on the later titles – is used less pointedly; but the unaffected styling is already present, and there are indications of her mastery of time even at the very beginning. While the most obvious characteristic of her singing is the lagging behind the beat, she seldom sounds tired or slow to respond, and
the deeper impression is of a vocalist who knows exactly how much time she can take. She never scats, rarely drifts far from the melody, and respects structure and lyrical nuance, even where the material is less than blue-chip. But her best singing invests the words with shades of meaning which vocalists until that point had barely looked at: she creates an ambiguity between what the words say and what she might be thinking which is very hard to distil. And that is the core of Holiday’s mystique. Coupled with the foggy, baleful, sombre quality of her tone, it creates a vocal jazz which is as absorbing as it is enduring.

Whatever one may think about the later albums, these sessions surrender nothing in gravitas and communicate a good humour which is all their own. The session producers – John Hammond or Bernie Hanighen – encouraged an atmosphere of mutual creativity which the singer seldom fails to respond to, and even on the less than immortal songs Holiday makes something of the situation: there is no sense of her fighting against the material, as there often is with Armstrong or Waller in the same period. On the many upbeat songs, she’s irresistible. The informality starts to fade, though, and she becomes more like a singer with accompanists, but the blitheness of her youthful voice persists.

& See also
Lady In Autumn
(1926–1959; p. 134)

JIMMY DORSEY

Born 29 February 1904, Shenandoah, Pennsylvania; died 12 June 1957, New York City

Alto and baritone saxophones, clarinet, trumpet

Amapola

ASV AJA 5287

Dorsey; W. C. Clark, Shorty Sherock, Ralph Muzillo, Nate Kazebier, Johnny Napton, Shorty Solomon, Jimmy Campbell, Ray Anthony, Paul McCoy, Bob Alexy, Ray Linn, Marky Markowitz, Phil Napoleon, George Thow, Toots Camarata, Joe Meyer (t); Sonny Lee, Jerry Rosa, Al Jordan, Phil Washburne, Andy Russo, Nick Di Mai, Bobby Byrne, Joe Yukl, Bruce Squires (tb); Don Mattison (tb, v); Noni Bernard, Dave Matthews, Sam Rubinowich, Milt Yaner, Frank Langone, Bill Covey, Jack Stacey, Lem Whitney (as); Fud Livingston (as, ts); Leonard Whitner, Herbie Haymer, Don Hammond, Babe Russin, Skeets Hurfurt, Charles Frazier (ts); Chuck Gentry, Bob Lawson (bs); Freddy Slack, Joe Lippman, Johnny Guarnieri, Dave Mann, Bobby Van Eps, Freddy Slack (p), Guy Smith, Allan Reuss, Tommy Kay (g); Roc Hillman (g, v); Jack Ryan, Bill Mille, Slim Taft, Jack Ryan (b); Buddy Schutz (d); Ray McKinley (d, v); Bing Crosby, The Andrews Sisters, Frances Langford, Helen O’Connell, Kitty Kallen (v). July 1936–October 1943.

Dorsey brothers collector Dr Ray Stevens says:
‘It was on May 30th, 1935. Jimmy and Tommy were rehearsing “Never Say Never Again Again” and they got into a fight over the tempo, as only brothers can. Tommy walked out, saying he’d form an even better band. More successful, certainly, but not better!’

The elder, reed-playing Dorsey brother worked with his sibling on the NY session scene of the ’20s before co-leading a band which he eventually took over after a quarrel with Tommy. A superb technician, admired by Charlie Parker, and his music matched his mild-mannered demeanour. He was reconciled with his brother, and their final venture as co-leaders ended with Tommy’s death, followed by Jimmy’s passing only months later.

Amapola
collects 24 of the biggest hits by Dorsey’s band over a seven-year period. The emphasis here is on the ballad and vocal feature side of Dorsey’s discography, and if this is what you want, it’s an ideal record – from the title-track, Helen O’Connell’s signature rendition of ‘Green Eyes’ and Kitty Kallen’s ‘Besame Mucho’ to the somewhat more swinging ‘I Fall In Love With You Every Day’ and the novelty ‘Six Lessons From Madame La Zonga’, these are the memories which Dorsey’s amen corner will probably remember best. The odd soloist pops up here and there to remind us that it was basically a good band but the emphasis is on formation playing rather than improvisations, which both the Dorseys distrusted.

TEDDY WILSON

Born 24 November 1912, Austin, Texas; died 31 July 1986, New Britain, Connecticut

Piano

Teddy Wilson: Volume 1 – Too Hot For Words

Hep 1012

Wilson; Roy Eldridge, Dick Clark (t); Benny Morton (tb); Tom Macey, Benny Goodman, Cecil Scott (cl); Hilton Jefferson, Johnny Hodges (as); Chu Berry, Ben Webster (ts); John Trueheart, Lawrence Lucie, Dave Barbour (g); John Kirby, Grachan Moncur (b); Cozy Cole (d); Billie Holiday (v). January–October 1935.

Teddy Wilson said (1979):
‘I’m sometimes asked if I plan to retire, but that would be like admitting I never wanted to play in the first place. All I ever wanted to do was play. You could have put a keyboard on the back of a railroad train and I would have played it.’

Few jazz records have endured quite as well as Teddy Wilson’s ’30s music. He visited Chicago in 1928, fell in love with jazz there, and formed a duo with Art Tatum in 1931. After that, he was in New York with Benny Carter. His studio small-group work included classic sessions with Billie Holiday and Lester Young, and he then joined Benny Goodman. A brief spell with his own big band in 1939 preceded more small-group work, along with a staff job at CBS and teaching at Juilliard. He remained to the last the most gracious and poised of performers.

Wilson arrived in New York as an enthusiastic young stride pianist, already under the spell of Earl Hines and of Art Tatum, with whom he worked as a two-man piano team. But even here there are the signs of an individual whose meticulous, dapper delivery and subtle reading of harmony would be hugely influential. Amazingly, everything is in place by the time of the first band session in July 1935: the initial line-up includes Eldridge, Goodman and Webster, and the singer is Billie Holiday, who would feature as vocalist on most of Wilson’s pre-war records. Two classics were made immediately – ‘What A Little Moonlight Can Do’ and ‘Miss Brown To You’ – and the style was set: a band chorus, a vocal, and another chorus for the band, with solos and obbligatos in perfect accord with every other note and accent. All the others seem to take their cue from the leader’s own poise, and even potentially unruly spirits such as Eldridge and Webster behave.

The reissue of this series has been complicated by Holiday’s presence, for all her tracks with Wilson are now also available on discs under her own name. Collectors will have to follow their own tastes, but we would opine that, of all the various transfers of this material, the Hep discs have the most truthful sound.

EDMOND HALL

Born 15 May 1901, Reserve, Louisiana; died 11 February 1967, Boston, Massachusetts

Clarinet

Edmond Hall 1936–1944

Classics 830

Hall; Billy Hicks (t, v); Sidney De Paris, Emmett Berry (t); Vic Dickenson, Fernando Arbello (tb); Meade ‘Lux’ Lewis (cel); Cyril Haynes, Teddy Wilson, Eddie Heywood, James P. Johnson (p); Red Norvo (vib); Leroy Jones, Jimmy Shirley, Al Casey, Carl Kress (g); Al Hall, Israel Crosby, Billy Taylor, Johnny Williams (b); Arnold Boling, Big Sid Catlett (d); Henry Nemo (v). June 1937–January 1944.

Wild Bill Davison said (1983):
‘Edmond played and lived … generously. He wasn’t one of those perfectionists who fuss over a single detail all day, but if he wasn’t happy or you weren’t happy, he’d just give more and more and more until you both were.’

A New Orleans man, often unfairly eclipsed by lesser players. His three brothers all played clarinet too, but Ed spent several years with Claude Hopkins in the ’30s and then freelanced for the rest of his life. Manfred Selchow’s biographical researches are a model of their kind, as exhaustive and perfectionist as their subject.

Hall was one of the most popular musicians in the Eddie Condon circle, but his experience – with big bands in the ’20s and ’30s and with Louis Armstrong’s All Stars – was much wider than that. He played in a driving manner that married the character of his New Orleans background with the more fleet methods of the swing clarinettists. This compilation starts off with an obscure session by Billy Hicks and his Sizzlin’ Six, with Hall as a sideman (hence the oddity of dates), but the meat of it is in Hall’s first three sessions for Blue Note (also available in a set as
Profoundly Blue
but in oddly poor sound) and a stray Commodore date. This is outstandingly fine midstream swing, with superb contributions from De Paris, Berry, the incomparably refined Wilson, Lewis, James P. Johnson and, above all, the magnificent Dickenson, whose solos on the blues are masterful statements of jazz trombone. And there is Hall himself. Though the final Blue Note date is a bit scruffy, sound is mainly excellent.

COUNT BASIE
^&

Born 21 August 1904, Red Bank, New Jersey; died 26 April 1984, Hollywood, Florida

Piano, bandleader

The Original American Decca Recordings

MCA GRP 36112

Basie; Buck Clayton, Joe Keyes, Carl Smith, Ed Lewis, Bobby Moore, Karl George, Harry ‘Sweets’ Edison, Shad Collins (t); Eddie Durham (tb, g); George Hunt, Dan Minor, Benny Morton, Dicky Wells (tb); Jack Washington (as, bs); Caughey Roberts, Earl Warren (as); Lester Young, Herschel Evans (cl, ts); Chu Berry (ts); Claude Williams, Freddie Green (g); Walter Page (b); Jo Jones (d); Jimmy Rushing, Helen Humes (v). January 1937–February 1939.

Saxophonist Gerry Mulligan said (1990):
‘What strikes me about those pre-war Basie sides is how
light
it sounds. That rhythm section just dances around like they’re carrying nothing heavier than feathers, but there’s this great weight of horns coming in behind. There’s never been anything quite like that band.’

‘Count Basic’ still turns up as a misprint now and again, and it makes a wry point, because few great jazz musicians have ever attained such high status by playing so few notes or by writing out less material. And yet, the sound of the Basie band is absolutely distinctive: functional, coach-built jazz that relied on solos in a different way to the Ellington orchestra – where Duke’s men created rich efflorescences, Basie’s tended to highlight one aspect of the machine for a moment before slipping back into place, a cutaway approach that is equally exciting and equally creative.

Basie grew up in a musical family and took his first lessons from his mother. After experience in clubs and vaudeville he settled in Kansas City, joined the Bennie Moten band in 1929 and took over its leadership in 1935, moving to New York the following year. The orchestra became the most eminent of its day, with many important soloists and a uniquely swinging rhythm section characterized by Basie’s own minimalist piano style. He also ran small groups within the band and cut back to an octet (1950–51) when the big band proved too expensive to run. European tours in the ’50s and ’60s restored his popularity, even after he had to lead the band from a wheelchair.

The arrival of the Basie band – on an East Coast scene dominated by Ellington, Lunceford and Henderson – set up a new force in the swing era and these records are still enthralling.
Basie’s Kansas City band was a rough-and-ready outfit compared with Lunceford’s immaculate drive or Ellington’s urbane mastery, but rhythmically it may have been the most swinging band of its time, based not only on the perfectly interlocking team of Basie, Green, Page and Jones, but also on the freedom of soloists such as Lester Young, Buck Clayton and Herschel Evans, on the intuitive momentum created within the sections (famously, Basie had relatively few arrangements written out) and on the best singing team of all the big bands. There are paradoxical elements – the minimalism of the leader’s piano solos that is as invigorating as any chunk of fast stride piano, Green’s invisible yet indispensable chording, the deceptive drift of the band – but all go to make up an orchestra unique in jazz.

& See also
The Jubilee Alternatives
(1943–1944; p. 90),
The Complete Atomic Mr Basie
(1957; p. 216)