The Penguin Jazz Guide (40 page)

Often dismissed as pretentious, the Kenton orchestra with its vast body of recordings – still growing year on year, as more material is dusted off – has an enormous following. Kenton was raised in California, learned piano and toured with bands as a teenager. He formed his own band in 1940 and, with a yen to experiment, he tried to create a ‘progressive jazz’. It was an instinct that never left him. He ran the 40-strong Innovations Orchestra in the early ’50s, with strings, but gradually reverted to more conventional big-band music, with a couple of exceptions. Another of his experiments was the use of mellophoniums in the brass, and it makes an interesting noise. He did also bring forward singer June Christy, which is a star in his crown, whether you’re pro or anti the rest.

There ought to be a Dantean warning at the threshold to the Kenton discography. Anyone venturing within should abandon all hope of getting out again knowing more than a fraction of it. Two recordings should suffice for most casual listeners. Sceptics will be satisfied and then back off. Enthusiasts will spiral down into the quite literally scores of currently available Kenton discs.

Kenton had been impressed by Bob Graettinger’s writing. The 16 pieces arranged by Bob Graettinger which make up the first of these CDs number among the most exacting works Kenton was ever responsible for. Graettinger’s two major pieces, ‘City Of Glass’ and ‘This Modern World’, are extraordinary works – Ellingtonian in their concentration on individuals within the band, yet using the bigger resources of the orchestra to create its own sound-world. All of his 14 originals create their own kind of jazz, atonal, dense and dark, and its suitability to Kenton’s orchestra might almost be likened to Strayhorn’s music for Ellington – except Graettinger was a more original thinker. Max Harrison’s typically elegant sleeve-note supplies the fine context.

These recordings overlap in so many ways as well as showing Kenton’s evolution over time that it makes sense to lump them together. The second disc is all of the LPs
Innovations In Modern Music
and
Stan Kenton Presents
, along with 14 extra tracks, offering a detailed look at Kenton’s fine 1950–51 orchestra. With the swing era gone, and bebop acclimatizing jazz to more oblique areas of expression, there was no need for Kenton to be shy about the kind of scores he offered here; sifted with strings, ‘Mirage’, ‘Conflict’, ‘Solitaire’ and ‘Soliloquy’ are intriguing little tone-poems which, for all their occasionally arch details and overreaching style, work well enough to survive the years. There are one of Christy’s finest vocals in ‘Lonesome Road’; smart scores by Shorty Rogers like ‘Jolly Rogers’ and ‘Round Robin’; Bob Graettinger’s eerie ‘House Of Strings’; skilful features for Manne, Pepper, Rogers and Ferguson; Bill Russo’s lovely ‘Ennui’, one of four live tracks used to round off the second disc; and the feel of a very considerable orchestra entering its most challenging period, with soloists befitting an important band. Along with
City Of Glass
, this is surely Kenton’s most valuable CD entry.

CHICO O’FARRILL

Born Arturo O’Farrill, 28 October 1921, Havana, Cuba; died 27 June 2001, New York City

Bandleader, arranger

Cuban Blues: The Chico O’Farrill Sessions

Verve 533256-2 2CD

O’Farrill; Mario Bauza, Paquito Davilla, Harry ‘Sweets’ Edison, Roy Eldridge, Bernie Glow, Carlton McBeath, Doug Mettome, Jimmy Nottingham, Al Porcino, Dick Sherman, Al Stewart, Nick Travis, Bobby Woodlan (t); Eddie Bert, Carl Elmer, Vern Friley, Bill Harris, Bart Varsalona, Ollie Wilson, Fred Zito (tb); Vince De Rosa (frhn); Danny Bank, George Berg, Lenny Hambro, Ben Harrod, Leslie Johnakins, Gene Johnson, Charlie Kennedy, Jose Madera, Pete Mondello, Charlie Parker, Flip Phillips, Sol Rabinowitz, Wilbur Schwartz, Fred Skerritt, Howard Terry, Eddie Wasserman, Warren Webb, James Williamson (reeds); Ralph Burns, Gene DiNovi, Rene Hernandez, Fred Otis (p); Billy Bauer (g); Irma Clow (hp); Don Bagley, Ray Brown, Clyde Lombardi, Roberto Rodriguez (b); Jo Jones, Don Lamond, Buddy Rich (d); Candido Camero, Machito, José Mangual, Modesto Martinez, Luis Miranda, Ubaldo Nieto, Chano Pozo, Carlos Vidal (perc); Bobby Escoto (v). December 1950–April 1954.

Arturo O’Farrill Jr remembered (2002):
‘I remember being very impressed with how seriously my father took listening to music. Same time every day, he’d mix a drink and really concentrate. It could be jazz or classical music, anything from Brahms or Chopin to Messiaen. He’d no interest in categories, just music.’

The ideal background source for this attractive compilation is the atmospheric novel
The Mambo Kings Play Songs Of Love
, whose author, Oscar Hijuelos, provides the liner-note. O’Farrill studied composition in Havana before going to the USA in his later 20s, where he had considerable success writing charts for Benny Goodman, Stan Kenton, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. On the strength of a powerful vogue for African-Cuban music, he built an orchestra of his own round Machito’s rhythm section and recorded a series of 10-inch LPs for Norman Granz’s Verve and Norgran labels. Technically the material stands up better than it does artistically. The recordings are wonderfully present and alive, and the remastering offers extra breadth without distorting the syrupy warmth of the originals. At more than 150 minutes, these two discs are a treat for the Latin-jazz enthusiast. All but the very committed, though, might find the diet a tad unrelieved and the pace a little relentless. The two
Afro-Cuban Jazz Suites
, one recorded under Machito’s leadership in December 1950, the other under O’Farrill’s own name two years later, are relatively ambitious in scope and content, but O’Farrill was not a man to overlook a successful formula, and the harmonic spectrum is otherwise kept comfortably narrow, with a substantial emphasis on danceable rhythms. One can readily imagine the brothers in
The Mambo Kings
moping through charts like ‘Flamingo’ while keeping an eye on the girls at the bar. This is music that requires some other sensory attraction.

LOUIS ARMSTRONG
^&

Born 4 August 1901, New Orleans, Louisiana; died 6 July 1971, New York City

Trumpet, cornet

California Concerts

GRP 050613 4CD

Armstrong; Jack Teagarden, Trummy Young (tb, v); Barney Bigard (cl, v); Earl Hines, Billy Kyle (p); Arvell Shaw (b); Barrett Deems, Cozy Cole (d); Velma Middleton (v). January 1951–January 1955.

Trumpeter Digby Fairweather says:
‘Bereft of his dutiful big band, and now surrounded by sextets of worthy and gifted contemporaries, Armstrong’s essential “California Concerts” were recorded at the formidable heights of his mature powers; his musical sculptures honed to perfection yet presented with undiminished verve and joy.’

The All Stars period has often been treated unfairly. While there are many indifferent, lo-fi concert recordings of dubious provenance and quality, Pops is in almost invariable good form, and though the vaudevillian aspects of the group often come to the fore, there is always some piece of magic from the leader, either with the trumpet or vocally. One becomes conscious over time of more and more set phrases and a lot of material played for
effect rather than for the music, but Armstrong alchemizes even the most hackneyed idea, and while nothing on these sets has any of the high-wire magic of the Hot Fives and Sevens, there is an unstaunchable invention in the solos. Fairweather is absolutely correct. Instead of starbursts, these are sculptures, solos of such robust construction that they seem like three-dimensional objects. Armstrong never really had peers, but these men around him were alert to his needs and they never let him down.

& See also
Complete Hot Five And Hot Seven Recordings
(1926–1928; p. 21),
Louis Armstrong 1947
(1947; p. 112)
Complete New York Town Hall And Boston Symphony Hall Concerts
(1947; p. 112)

CHARLES MINGUS
^&

Born 22 April 1922, Nogales, Arizona; died 5 January 1979, Cuernavaca, Mexico

Double bass, piano

The Complete Debut Recordings

Debut 12DCD 4402 12CD

Mingus; Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Mucci, Thad Jones, Clarence Shaw (t); Eddie Bert, Willie Dennis, Bennie Green, J. J. Johnson, Jimmy Knepper, Kai Winding, Britt Woodman (tb); Julius Watkins (frhn); Charlie Parker, Lee Konitz, Joe Maini (as); Paige Brook, Eddie Caine (as, f); George Barrow, Phil Urso (ts); Frank Wess, Shafi Hadi, Teo Macero (ts, f); Danny Bank, Pepper Adams (bs); John LaPorta, Julius Baker (woodwinds); Spaulding Givens, Hank Jones, Wynton Kelly, Wade Legge, John Lewis, John Mehegan, Phyllis Pinkerton, Bill Triglia, Mal Waldron, Hazel Scott (p); Teddy Charles (vib); George Koutzen, Jackson Wiley (clo); Fred Zimmerman (b); Elvin Jones, Kenny Clarke, Al Levitt, Joe Morello, Dannie Richmond, Max Roach, Art Taylor (d); Phineas Newborn Jr, Horace Parlan (perc); Bob Benton, George Gordon, George Gordon Jr, Honey Gordon, Richard Gordon, Jackie Paris (v). April 1951–September 1957.

Max Roach said (1991):
‘There was nothing in Charles’s music that America couldn’t forgive. This is a country that can absorb anything and take the sting out of it. What they couldn’t forgive was that a black man should want to take control of the means of production, even of his own production.’

With a complex ethnic mix in his veins – with African, Hispanic and Native American components; Mingus may be a corruption of the Scots ‘Menzies’ – this modern jazz giant grew up in the Watts district of Los Angeles. After learning cello and trombone, he took to double bass and started to write a workbook of compositions and develop a workshop approach that would continue through his life. He established a playing career, working with vibist Red Norvo, and then became involved in bebop, ultimately as part of Charlie Parker’s most remarkable quintet, which performed at Massey Hall in 1953. A turbulent and difficult man, he none the less proselytized tirelessly for ‘jazz’ (he disliked the term) and for his own large-scale work, founding Debut Records and the Jazz Artists Guild in opposition to commercialization. In addition to pioneering modern bass-playing, Mingus is responsible for some of the greatest large-scale compositions in modern jazz. Mingus also transformed the conception of collective improvisation, restoring the energies and occasionally the sound of early jazz to an identifiably modern idiom. He pioneered overdubbing and editing, thereby paving the way for Miles Davis and Teo Macero.

This weighty box can really only be mined for pointers to more impressive work later. It and four subsequent volumes of ‘Rarities’ show the kind of musical environment in which Mingus moved and operated. The personnel list is probably as informative as any comment on the music inside could hope to be. Needless to say, Debut was not so very long for this world, though the lessons Mingus drew from running his own label were to last him for the
remainder of his career, colouring his relationship with corporate labels ever after. These, if you will, are the grand pre-texts to the career of a great American composer.

& See also
Pithecanthropus Erectus
(1956; p. 175),
Mingus Dynasty
(1959; p. 247),
Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus
(1960; p. 259),
The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady
(1963; p. 291)

KID THOMAS (VALENTINE)

Born Thomas Valentine, 3 February 1896, Reserve, Louisiana; died 16 June 1987, New Orleans, Louisiana

Trumpet

Kid Thomas And His Algiers Stompers

American Music AMCD-10

Valentine; Bob Thomas, Harrison Barnes (tb); Emil Barnes (cl); George Guesnon (g, bj); Joseph Phillips (b); George Henderson (d). September 1951.

Trumpeter Ken Colyer said (1982):
‘Kid Thomas must be the closest we can still get to the primitive jazz players who were working in New Orleans before the war. And he wasn’t even there then. He didn’t come into town until later, which is significant, I think.’

Although originally from elsewhere in Louisiana, and arrived in the city rather late, in 1922, Valentine became one of New Orleans’s most characteristic trumpeters, leading his Algiers Stompers from 1926, working extensively with George Lewis, then playing at home and on tour for the rest of a very long and busy life.

By the time he made his first records, almost 30 years later, he had led bands all over Louisiana but remained based in the city, where he continued to play for a further 35 years. He approached this awesome career with a Zen-like simplicity, reducing the New Orleans sound to its essentials and creating a lifetime’s work from them. A fascinating lead-trumpeter, whose methods – including a severe observance of the melody, a blunt, jabbing attack and a vibrato that sounds like an angry trill – manage to create high drama and lyrical depth alike, and though he seldom took solos he was such a strong lead voice that he tended to dominate every band he played in.

He made a lot of records during his long life. The first (1951) sessions have survived in excellent sound and find Valentine and Barnes in their first prime. There are two trombonists, since Bob Thomas had to leave after three numbers, and the changed balance of the front line tells much about the sensitivity of the New Orleans ensemble. There isn’t much to say specifically about Valentine’s playing, beyond what’s said more generally above, but it’s effective and deeply affecting traditional jazz. Alden Ashforth’s excellent notes chronicle the whole session in detail.