W.C. Handy

 

(From Wikipedia)

 

 

W. C. Handy
In July 1941, by Carl Van Vechten
Background information
Birth name	William Christopher Handy
Also known as	The Father of Blues
Born	November 16, 1873 Florence, Alabama, U.S.
Origin	Memphis, Tennessee, U.S.
Died	March 28, 1958 (aged 84) New York City, New York, U.S.
Genres	Blues, Jazz
Occupations	Composer, songwriter, musician,bandleader, author
Instruments	Piano, cornet, trumpet, guitar,vocals
Years active	1893–1948

William Christopher Handy (November 16, 1873 – March 28, 1958) was a blues composer and musician. He was widely known as the “Father of the Blues”.

Handy remains among the most influential of American songwriters. Though he was one of many musicians who played the distinctively American form of music known as the blues, he is credited with giving it its contemporary form. While Handy was not the first to publish music in the blues form, he took the blues from a regional music style with a limited audience to one of the dominant national forces in American music.

Handy was an educated musician who used folk material in his compositions. He was scrupulous in documenting the sources of his works, which frequently combined stylistic influences from several performers.

 

Early life

 

English: W. C. Handy, age 19. Photo courtesy of University of North Alabama, Collier Library. Photographer unknown. Русский: Уильям Кристофер Хэнди в возрасте 19 лет (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

W.C. Handy at age 19

Handy was born in Florence, Alabama. His father was thepastor of a small church in Guntersville, another small town in northeast central Alabama. Handy wrote in his 1941 autobiography, Father of the Blues, that he was born in the log cabin built by his grandfather William Wise Handy, who became an African Methodist Episcopal(AME) minister after emancipation. The log cabin of Handy’s birth has been saved and preserved in downtown Florence.

Growing up he apprenticed in carpentry, shoemaking andplastering.

Handy was a deeply religious man, whose influences in his musical style were found in the church music he sang and played as a youth, and in the natural world. He later cited the sounds of nature, such as “whippoorwills, bats and hoot owls and their outlandish noises”, the sounds of Cypress Creek washing on the fringes of the woodland, and “the music of every songbird and all the symphonies of their unpremeditated art” as inspiration.

Handy’s father believed that musical instruments were tools of the devil. Without his parents’ permission, Handy bought his first guitar, which he had seen in a local shop window and secretly saved for by picking berries, nuts and making lye soap. Upon seeing the guitar, his father asked him, “What possessed you to bring a sinful thing like that into our Christian home?” Ordering Handy to “Take it back where it came from”, his father quickly enrolled him in organ lessons. Handy’s days as an organ student were short lived, and he moved on to learn the cornet. Handy joined a local band as a teenager, but he kept this fact a secret from his parents. He purchased a cornet from a fellow band member and spent every free minute practicing it.

Musical development

He worked on a “shovel brigade” at the McNabb furnace, and described the music made by the workers as they beat shovels, altering the tone while thrusting and withdrawing the metal part against the iron buggies to pass the time while waiting for the overfilled furnace to digest its ore. “With a dozen men participating, the effect was sometimes remarkable…It was better to us than the music of a martial drum corps, and our rhythms were far more complicated.” He wrote, “Southern Negroes sang about everything…They accompany themselves on anything from which they can extract a musical sound or rhythmical effect…” He would later reflect that, “In this way, and from these materials, they set the mood for what we now call blues”

In September 1892, Handy traveled to Birmingham to take a teaching exam, which he passed easily, and gained a teaching job in the city. Learning that it paid poorly, he quit the position and found industrial work at a pipe works plant in nearby Bessemer.

During his off-time, he organized a small string orchestra and taught musicians how to read notes. Later, Handy organized the Lauzetta Quartet. When the group read about the upcoming World’s Fair in Chicago, they decided to attend. To pay their way, group members performed at odd jobs along the way. They arrived in Chicago only to learn that the World’s Fair had been postponed for a year. Next they headed to St. Louis but found working conditions very bad.

After the quartet disbanded, Handy went to Evansville, Indiana, where he helped introduce the blues. He played cornet in the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. In Evansville, Handy joined a successful band that performed throughout the neighboring cities and states. His musical endeavors were varied: he sang first tenor in a minstrel show, worked as a band director, choral director, cornetist andtrumpeter.

At age 23, Handy became band master of Mahara’s Colored Minstrels. In their three-year tour, they traveled to Chicago, throughoutTexas and Oklahoma, through Tennessee, Georgia and Florida, and on to Cuba. Handy earned a salary of $6 per week. Returning from Cuba, the band traveled north through Alabama, and stopped to perform in Huntsville. Weary of life on the road, he and his wife Elizabeth decided to stay with relatives in his nearby hometown of Florence.

Marriage and family

In 1896 while performing at a barbecue in Henderson, Kentucky, Handy met Elizabeth Price. They married shortly afterward on July 19, 1896. She had Lucille, the first of their six children, on June 29, 1900 after they had settled in Florence, Alabama, his hometown. Henderson’s W.C. Handy Music Bar B Q and Blues Festival is held annually in June. There is also a 10 day, 200 event W.C. Handy Music Festival in Handy’s hometown of Florence, Alabama annually the last week of July. http://www.wchandymusicfestival.org

Teaching music

 

W.C. Handy, ca. 1900, Director of the Alabama Agriculture & Mechanical College Band

Around that time, William Hooper Councill, President of Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical College for Negroes (AAMC) (today named Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University) in Normal, Alabama, recruited Handy to teach music at the college. Handy became a faculty member in September 1900 and taught through much of 1902.

His enthusiasm for the distinctive style of uniquely American music, then often considered inferior to European classical music, was part of his development. He was disheartened to discover that the college emphasized teaching European music considered to be “classical”. Handy felt he was underpaid and could make more money touring with a minstrel group.

Studying the blues

In 1902 Handy traveled throughout Mississippi, where he listened to the various black popular musical styles. The state was mostly rural, and music was part of the culture, especially of the Mississippi Delta cotton plantation areas. Musicians usually played the guitar, banjo and to a much lesser extent, the piano. Handy’s remarkable memory enabled him to recall and transcribe the music heard in his travels.

After a dispute with AAMC President Councill, Handy resigned his teaching position to rejoin the Mahara Minstrels and tour theMidwest and Pacific Northwest. In 1903 he became the director of a black band organized by the Knights of Pythias, located inClarksdale, Mississippi. Handy and his family lived there for six years. In 1903 while waiting for a train in Tutwiler in the Mississippi Delta, Handy had the following experience:

“A lean loose-jointed Negro had commenced plunking a guitar beside me while I slept… As he played, he pressed a knife on the strings of the guitar in a manner popularized by Hawaiian guitarists who used steel bars….The singer repeated the line three times, accompanying himself on the guitar with the weirdest music I had ever heard.”

About 1905 while playing a dance in Cleveland, Mississippi, Handy was given a note asking for “our native music”. He played an old-time Southern melody, but was asked if a local colored band could play a few numbers. Three young men with a battered guitar, mandolin, and a worn-out bass took the stage.

“They struck up one of those over and over strains that seem to have no beginning and certainly no ending at all. The strumming attained a disturbing monotony, but on and on it went, a kind of stuff associated with [sugar] cane rows and levee camps. Thump-thump-thump went their feet on the floor. It was not really annoying or unpleasant. Perhaps “haunting” is the better word.”

Handy noted square dancing by Mississippi blacks with “one of their own calling the figures, and crooning all of his calls in the key of G.” He remembered this when deciding on the key for “St Louis Blues”.

“It was the memory of that old gent who called figures for the Kentucky breakdown—the one who everlastingly pitched his tones in the key of G and moaned the calls like a presiding elder preaching at a revival meeting. Ah, there was my key – I’d do the song in G.”

In describing “blind singers and footloose bards” around Clarksdale, Handy wrote, “[S]urrounded by crowds of country folks, they would pour their hearts out in song … They earned their living by selling their own songs – “ballets,” as they called them—and I’m ready to say in their behalf that seldom did their creations lack imagination.”

Transition: popularity, fame and business

In 1909 Handy and his band moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where they started playing at clubs on Beale Street. The genesis of his “Memphis Blues” was as a campaign tune written for Edward Crump, a successful Memphis mayoral candidate in 1909 (and future“boss”). Handy later rewrote the tune and changed its name from “Mr. Crump” to “Memphis Blues.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Handy’s first popular success, “Memphis Blues”. Recorded by Victor Military Band, July 15, 1914.

The 1912 publication of his “Memphis Blues” sheet music introduced his style of 12-bar blues; it was credited as the inspiration for the foxtrot dance step by Vernon and Irene Castle, a New York–based dance team. Some consider it to be the first blues song. Handy sold the rights to the song for US$100. By 1914, when Handy was 40, he had established his musical style, his popularity increased significantly, and he composed prolifically.

Handy wrote about using folk songs:

“The primitive southern Negro, as he sang, was sure to bear down on the third and seventh tone of the scale, slurring between major and minor. Whether in the cotton field of the Delta or on the Levee up St. Louis way, it was always the same. Till then, however, I had never heard this slur used by a more sophisticated Negro, or by any white man. I tried to convey this effect… by introducing flat thirds and sevenths (now called blue notes) into my song, although its prevailing key was major…, and I carried this device into my melody as well… This was a distinct departure, but as it turned out, it touched the spot.”

W. C. Handy with his 1918 Memphis Orchestra: Handy is center rear, holding trumpet.

“The three-line structure I employed in my lyric was suggested by a song I heard Phil Jones sing in Evansville … While I took the three-line stanza as a model for my lyric, I found its repetition too monotonous … Consequently I adopted the style of making a statement, repeating the statement in the second line, and then telling in the third line why the statement was made.”

Regarding the “three-chord basic harmonic structure” of the blues, Handy wrote the “(tonic, subdominant, dominant seventh) was that already used by Negro roustabouts, honky-tonkpiano players, wanderers and others of the underprivileged but undaunted class”. He noted,

“In the folk blues the singer fills up occasional gaps with words like ‘Oh, lawdy’ or ‘Oh, baby’ and the like. This meant that in writing a melody to be sung in the blues manner one would have to provide gaps or waits.”

Writing about the first time “St Louis Blues” was played (1914), Handy said,

“The one-step and other dances had been done to the tempo of Memphis Blues … When St Louis Blues was written the tango was in vogue. I tricked the dancers by arranging a tango introduction, breaking abruptly into a low-down blues. My eyes swept the floor anxiously, then suddenly I saw lightning strike. The dancers seemed electrified. Something within them came suddenly to life. An instinct that wanted so much to live, to fling its arms to spread joy, took them by the heels.”

His published musical works were groundbreaking because of his ethnicity, and he was among the first blacks to achieve economic success because of publishing. In 1912, Handy met Harry H. Pace at the Solvent Savings Bank in Memphis. Pace was valedictorian of his graduating class at Atlanta University and student of W. E. B. Du Bois. By the time of their meeting, Pace had already demonstrated a strong understanding of business. He earned his reputation by recreating failing businesses. Handy liked him, and Pace later became manager of Pace and Handy Sheet Music.

W.C. Handy Place in Yonkers, NY

While in New York City, Handy wrote:

“I was under the impression that these Negro musicians would jump at the chance to patronize one of their own publishers. They didn’t… The Negro musicians simply played the hits of the day…They followed the parade. Many white bands and orchestra leaders, on the other hand, were on the alert for novelties. They were therefore the ones most ready to introduce our numbers.” But, “Negro vaudeville artists…wanted songs that would not conflict with white acts on the bill. The result was that these performers became our most effective pluggers.”

In 1917, he and his publishing business moved to New York City, where he had offices in the Gaiety Theatre office building in Times Square. By the end of that year, his most successful songs: “Memphis Blues”, “Beale Street Blues“, and “Saint Louis Blues“, had been published. That year the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, a white New Orleans jazz ensemble, had recorded the first jazz record, introducing the style to a wide segment of the American public. Handy initially had little fondness for this new “jazz”, but bands dove into his repertoire with enthusiasm, making many of them jazz standards.

Handy encouraged performers such as Al Bernard, “a young white man” with a “soft Southern accent” who “could sing all my Blues”. Handy sent Bernard to Thomas Edison to be recorded, which resulted in “an impressive series of successes for the young artist, successes in which we proudly shared.” Handy also published the original “Shake Rattle and Roll” and “Saxophone Blues”, both written by Bernard. “Two young white ladies from Selma, Alabama (Madelyn Sheppard and Annelu Burns) contributed the songs “Pickaninny Rose” and “O Saroo”, with the music published by Handy’s company. These numbers, plus our blues, gave us a reputation as publishers of Negro music.” 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Ole Miss Rag”, a ragtime composed by W. C. Handy and recorded by Handy’s Orchestra of Memphis in 1917 in New York.

Expecting to make only “another hundred or so” on a third recording of his “Yellow Dog Blues” (originally titled “Yellow Dog Rag”, Handy signed a deal with the Victor company. The Joe Smith recording of this song in 1919 became the best-selling recording of Handy’s music to date.

Handy tried to interest black women singers in his music, but initially was unsuccessful. In 1920 Perry Bradford persuaded Mamie Smith to record two of his non-blues songs, published by Handy, accompanied by a white band: “That Thing Called Love” and “You Can’t Keep a Good Man Down”. When Bradford’s “Crazy Blues” became a hit as recorded by Smith, African-American blues singers became increasingly popular. Handy found his business began to decrease because of the competition.

In 1920 Pace amicably dissolved his long-standing partnership with Handy, with whom he also collaborated as lyricist. As Handy wrote: “To add to my woes, my partner withdrew from the business. He disagreed with some of my business methods, but no harsh words were involved. He simply chose this time to sever connection with our firm in order that he might organize Pace Phonograph Company, issuing Black Swan Records and making a serious bid for the Negro market. . . . With Pace went a large number of our employees. . . . Still more confusion and anguish grew out of the fact that people did not generally know that I had no stake in the Black Swan Record Company.”

Although Handy’s partnership with Pace was dissolved, he continued to operate the publishing company as a family-owned business. He published works of other black composers as well as his own, which included more than 150 sacred compositions and folk song arrangements and about 60 blues compositions. In the 1920’s, he founded the Handy Record Company in New York City. Bessie Smith‘s January 14, 1925, Columbia Records recording of “Saint Louis Blues” with Louis Armstrong is considered by many to be one of the finest recordings of the 1920’s. So successful was Handy’s “Saint Louis Blues” that in 1929, he and director Kenneth W. Adams collaborated on a RCA motion picture project of the same name, which was to be shown before the main attraction. Handy suggested blues singer Bessie Smith have the starring role, since she had gained widespread popularity with that tune. The picture was shot in June and was shown in movie houses throughout the United States from 1929 to 1932.

In 1926 Handy authored and edited a work entitled Blues: An Anthology—Complete Words and Music of 53 Great Songs. It is probably the first work that attempted to record, analyze and describe the blues as an integral part of the U.S. South and the history of the United States.

The genre of the blues was a hallmark of American society and culture in the 1920s and 1930s. So great was its influence, and so much was it recognized as Handy’s hallmark, that author F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in his novel The Great Gatsby that “All night the saxophones wailed the hopeless comment of the “Beale Street Blues” while a hundred pairs of golden and silver slippers shuffled the shining dust. At the gray tea hour there were always rooms that throbbed incessantly with this low, sweet fever, while fresh faces drifted here and there like rose petals blown by the sad horns around the floor.”

Later life

Following publication of his autobiography, Handy published a book on African-American musicians entitled Unsung Americans Sing(1944). He wrote a total of five books:

1. Blues: An Anthology: Complete Words and Music of 53 Great Songs
2. Book of Negro Spirituals
3. Father of the Blues: An Autobiography
4. Unsung Americans Sing
5. Negro Authors and Composers of the United States

During this time, he lived on Strivers’ Row in Harlem. He became blind following an accidental fall from a subway platform in 1943. After the death of his first wife, he remarried in 1954, when he was eighty. His new bride was his secretary, the former Irma Louise Logan, whom he frequently said had become his eyes.

In 1955, Handy suffered a stroke, following which he began to use a wheelchair. More than eight hundred attended his 84th birthday party at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.

The grave of W.C. Handy at Woodlawn Cemetery

On March 28, 1958 he died of bronchial pneumonia at Sydenham Hospital in New York City.^[26] Over 25,000 people attended his funeral in Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church. Over 150,000 people gathered in the streets near the church to pay their respects. He was buried in the Woodlawn Cemetery in Bronx, New York.

Compositions

Handy’s songs do not always follow the classic 12-bar pattern, often having 8- or 16-bar bridges between 12-bar verses.

• “Memphis Blues”, written 1909, published 1912. Although usually subtitled “Boss Crump”, it is a distinct song from Handy’s campaign satire, “Boss Crump don’t ‘low no easy riders around here”, which was based on the good-time song “Mamma Don’t Allow It.”
• “Yellow Dog Blues” (1912), “Your easy rider’s gone where the Southern cross the Yellow Dog.” The reference is to the crossing at Moorhead, Mississippi, of the Southern Railway and the local Yazoo and Mississippi Valley Railroad, called the Yellow Dog. By Handy’s telling locals assigned the words “Yellow Dog” to the letters Y.D.(for Yazoo Delta) on the freight trains that they saw.
• “Saint Louis Blues” (1914), “the jazzman’s Hamlet.”
• “Loveless Love”, based in part on the classic, “Careless Love“. Possibly the first song to complain of modern synthetics, “with milkless milk and silkless silk, we’re growing used to soulless soul.”
• “Aunt Hagar’s Blues”, the biblical Hagar, handmaiden to Abraham and Sarah, was considered the “mother” of the African Americans.
• “Beale Street Blues” (1916), written as a farewell to the old Beale Street of Memphis (actually called Beale Avenue until the song changed the name); but Beale Street did not go away and is considered the “home of the blues” to this day. B.B. King was known as the “Beale Street Blues Boy” and Elvis Presley watched and learned from Ike Turner there. In 2004 the tune was included as a track on the Memphis Jazz Box compilation as a tribute to Handy and his music.
• “Long Gone John (From Bowling Green)”, tribute to a famous bank robber.
• “Chantez-Les-Bas (Sing ‘Em Low)”, tribute to the Creole culture of New Orleans.
• “Atlanta Blues”, includes the song known as “Make Me a Pallet on your Floor” as its chorus.
• “Ole Miss Rag” (1917), a ragtime composition, recorded by Handy’s Orchestra of Memphis.

Performances and honors

• On April 27, 1928, he performed a program of jazz, blues, plantation songs, work songs, piano solos, spirituals and a Negro rhapsody in Carnegie Hall.
• In 1938 he performed at the National Folk Festival in Washington, DC, his first national performance on a desegregated stage.
• He performed at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1933 and 1934 and the New York World’s Fair in 1939 and 1940.
• In 1940, NBC broadcast an all-Handy program as part of its weekly series The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street. His songs were performed by Dinah Shore and by the composer himself.
• On September 1, 1951, Handy and Dizzy Dean were among the guest stars on the CBS live variety series, Faye Emerson’s Wonderful Town.
• Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy (1954)
• He is referenced in Prof. Harold Hill’s lead-in to the song Seventy-Six Trombones in Meredith Willson‘s 1957 musical The Music Man.
• In 1958, a movie about his life – appropriately entitled St. Louis Blues – was released starring legendary African-Americans Nat “King” Cole (in the main role), Pearl Bailey, Mahalia Jackson, Ruby Dee, Cab Calloway, Ella Fitzgerald, and Eartha Kitt. It was released the year of Handy’s death.

US Postage Stamp 1969

• On May 17, 1969, the United States Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp in his honor.
• Inducted in the National Academy of Popular Music Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970.
• He was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1983.
• He is referenced in Joni Mitchell‘s 1975 song Furry Sings the Blues.
• He is referenced in Marc Cohn‘s 1991 song Walking in Memphis, covered by Lonestar, Cher, and other artists. “…Touched down in the land of the Delta Blues, in the middle of the pouring rain. W.C. Handy, won’t you look down over me?”
• He received a Grammy Trustees Award for his lifetime achievements in 1993.
• He was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame in 1985, and was a 1993 Inductee into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame, with the Lifework Award for Performing Achievement.
• Citing 2003 as “the centennial anniversary of when W.C. Handy composed the first Blues music…” the United States Senate in 2002 passed a resolution declaring the year beginning February 1, 2003 as the “Year of the Blues.”
• Each November 16, Handy’s birthday is celebrated with free music, birthday cake and free admission to the W.C. Handy Museum in Florence, Alabama. The hand-hewn log cabin made by his grandfather is his birthplace and museum.
• An autographed 1937 photo from W.C. Handy to Anton Lada of Lada’s Louisiana Orchestra sold for $850 in 2006.

Awards, festivals and memorials

Bronze Statue of W.C. Handy in Handy Park, Beale Street, Memphis

• The Blues Music Award, widely recognized as the most prestigious award for blues artists was known as the W. C. Handy Award until the name change in 2006.
• The W. C. Handy Music Festival is held annually in Florence, Alabama and the greater Shoals area. The festival has evolved into a 10-day long celebration that includes a parade, various artists at restaurants and venues around town, and larger music events at Wilson Park in downtown Florence. The park features a statue of Handy and is close to his birthplace and museum. Previous festivals have featured jazz and blues legends including Jimmy Smith, Ramsey Lewis, Dizzy Gillespie, Bobby Blue Bland, Diane Schuur, Billy Taylor, Dianne Reeves and Charlie Byrd, Ellis Marsalis and Take 6. The festival also features a roster of annual regulars, called the W. C. Handy Jazz All-Stars.
  
• W. C. Handy Park is a city park located on Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee. The park contains a life-sized bronze statue of Handy.
• The W.C. Handy Blues & Barbeque Festival is a week-long musical event that features blues and Zydeco bands from across the U.S and is held every June on the banks of the Ohio River in downtown Henderson, Kentucky.

The footstone of W.C. Handy inWoodlawn Cemetery

• In 1979, New York City joined the list of institutions and municipalities to honor Handy by naming one block of West 52nd Street in Manhattan “W.C. Handy Place”.

Irving Mills and his Hotsy Totsy Gang – My Lit’l Honey And Me (Brunswick 4674 1929)

 

Irving Mills (Jan.16,1894 – April 21,1985) was a jazz music publisher, also known by the name of “Joe Primrose.”

Mills was born to Jewish parents in the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City. He founded Mills Music with his brother Jack in 1919. Between 1919 and 1965, when they sold Mills Music, Inc., they built and became the largest independent music publisher in the world. He died in 1985 in Palm Springs, California.

Irving and Jack discovered a number of great songwriters, among them Sammy Fain, Harry Barris, Gene Austin, Hoagy Carmichael, Jimmy McHugh, and Dorothy Fields. He either discovered or greatly advanced the careers of Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Ben Pollack, Jack Teagarden, Benny Goodman, Will Hudson, Raymond Scott and many others.

Although not a musician himself (he did sing, however), Irving decided to put together his own studio recording group. In Irving Mills and his Hotsy Totsy Gang he had for sidemen: Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey, Joe Venuti, Eddie Lang, Arnold Brillhardt, Arthur Schutt, and Manny Klein. Other variations of his bands featured Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, and Red Nichols (Irving gave Red Nichols the tag “and his Five Pennies.”)

One of his innovations was the “band within a band,” recording small groups (he started this in 1928 by arranging for members of Ben Pollack’s band to record hot small group sides for the various dime store labels, out of the main orchestra and printing “small orchestrations” transcribed off the record, so that non-professional musicians could see how great solos were constructed. This was later done by Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, and many other bands.

In late 1936, with involvement by Herbert Yates of the American Record Corporation, Irving started the Master and Variety labels, which for their short life span were distributed by ARC through their Brunswick and Vocalion label sales staff. From December, 1936, through about September, 1937, an amazing amount of records were issued on these labels. Master’s best selling artists were Duke Ellington, Raymond Scott, as well as Hudson-De Lange Orchestra, Casper Reardon and Adrian Rollini. Variety’s roster included Cab Calloway, Red Nichols, the small groups from Ellington’s band led by Barney Bigard, Cootie Williams, Rex Stewart, and Johnny Hodges, as well as Noble Sissle, Frankie Newton, The Three Peppers, Chu Berry, Billy Kyle, and other major and minor jazz and pop performers around New York. In such a short time, an amazing amount of fine music was recorded for these labels.

By late 1937 a number of problems caused the collapse of these labels. The Brunswick and Vocalion sales staff had problems of their own, with competition from Victor and Decca, and it wasn’t easy to get this new venture off the ground. Mills tried to arrange for distribution overseas to get his music issued in Europe, but was unsuccessful. Also, it’s quite likely that these records simply weren’t selling as well as hoped for.

After the collapse of the labels, those titles that were still selling on Master were reissued on Brunswick and those still selling on Variety were reissued on Vocalion. Mills continued his M-100 recording series after the labels were taken over by ARC, and after cutting back recording to just the better selling artists, new recordings made from about January 1938 by Master were issued on Brunswick (later Columbia) and Vocalion (later the revived Okeh) until May 7, 1940.

Irving was recording all the time and became the head of the American Recording Company, which is now Columbia Records. Once radio blossomed Irving was singing at six radio stations seven days a week plugging Mills tunes. Jimmy McHugh, Sammy Fain, and Gene Austin took turns being his pianist.

He produced one picture, Stormy Weather, for Twentieth Century Fox in 1943, which starred jazz greats Lena Horne, Cab Calloway, Zutty Singleton, and Fats Waller and the legendary dancers the Nicholas Brothers and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson. He had a contract to do other movies but found it “too slow” so he continued finding, recording and plugging music.

Much has been made about Mills’ co-writing credit on a number of key Ellington compositions. The fact remains that those acts managed by Irving Mills got the best gigs and had the greatest opportunities in the recording studio.

Irving lived to be over 91 years old. His place in the history of jazz is founded primarily on his business skills rather than his singing and songwriting abilities, but it was his management skills and publishing empire that were central to the history and financial success of jazz. Because of his promotion of black entertainers a leading black newspaper referred to him as the Abraham Lincoln of music.

Irving Mills and his Hotsy Totsy Gang – My Lit’l Honey And Me (1929)

The Chicago Rhythm Kings-I’ve Found A New Baby 1928

“The Chicago Rhythm Kings”:
Muggsy Spanier, c / Frank Teschemacher, cl / Mezz Mezzrow, ts / Joe Sullivan, p / Eddie Condon bj, v / Jim Lannigan, bb / Gene Krupa, d / Red McKenzie, v.
Chicago, March 27, 1928.

Guy Lombardo and The Royal Canadians (courtesy of londonbigbands)

There is no doubt that Guy Lombardo and The Royal Canadians put London Ontario on the music map during the Big Band era.

Guy (Gaetano Alberto) Lombardo was born on June 19, 1902, in London, Ontario, Canada, to Gaetano and Lena Lombardo. Lombardo senior, who had immigrated to Canada from Italy, worked as a tailor, and the family lived on a small house on Queens Avenue in the town of London Ontario. Guy was theeldest of seven children, five boys and two girls, born between 1902 and 1924 and took violin lessons from another Italian immigrant Prof. Venuta. In 1914 Guy with brothers Liebert (drums), Carmen (flute) and neighbour Kreitzer (piano) formed a quartet and played for the local Italian community. In 1920 they heard records of Paul Whitemans band and immediately became fascinated with the sound. They changed instruments to emulate it, Carmen to sax and Liebert to trumpet. By 1922 the group expanded to include more saxes, trumpets and trombone.

In the spring of 1923 the Lombardo brothers were hired as the house band for the Hopkins Casino at Port Stanley on Lake Erie. After the band started its second season at the Winter Gardens in London, the 21-year-old Guy decided that the group was wasting its time in Canada, and in November 1923 they traveled to Cleveland, Ohio, to make an attempt on the American market.

In March of 1924 the Lombardos’ band recorded several songs for the Gennett label. Their sound differed little from that of other white bands of the era, however, and the recordings sold poorly. They soon realized that changes were needed if the orchestra was going to survive. They began to develop their own brand of sweet music, focusing on melody over improvisation. Brother Carmen also helped create a distinct saxophone sound which gave them instant listener recognition and helped set them apart from all the other bands. Their big break finally came in Chicago in 1927 when Guy paid radio station WBBM to broadcast a fifteen-minute segment of their performance at the Granada Cafe. By the end of the night the ballroom was packed and the radio station had received so many calls that they extended the broadcast further into the evening.

The musical team played at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City from 1929 to 1959, and their New Year’s Eve broadcasts (which continued with Lombardo until 1976 at the Waldorf Astoria) were a major part of New Year’s celebrations across North America. Even after Lombardo’s death, the band’s New Year’s specials continued for air two more years on CBS

Lombardo never forgot his friends in Ontario,, and when the Thames River, London Ontario flooded in 1937 he staged a benefit for flood victims in Detroit’s Fox Theatre. The band opened this engagement with a rendition of Home Sweet Home, moving some in the audience to tears.

Duke Ellington

 

(From Wikipedia)

“Duke” Ellington
circa 1940s
Background information
Birth name	Edward Kennedy Ellington
Born	April 29, 1899 Washington, D.C., United States
Died	May 24, 1974 (aged 75) New York City, New York, United States
Genres	Orchestral jazz, swing, big band
Occupations	Bandleader, pianist, composer
Instruments	Piano
Years active	1914–1974
Website	www.dukeellington.com

Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974)  was an American composer, pianist, and jazz-orchestra leader. His career spanned more than 50 years: Ellington led his orchestra from 1923 until his death.

Though widely considered to have been a pivotal figure in the history of jazz, Ellington himself embraced the phrase “beyond category” as a “liberating principle,” and referred his music to the more much more general category of “American Music,” rather than to a musical genre such as “jazz.”  Born in Washington, D.C., he was based in New York City from the mid-1920s onwards, and gained a national profile through his orchestra’s appearances at the Cotton Club. In the 1930s they toured in Europe.

Some of the musicians who were members of Ellington’s orchestra, such as saxophonist Johnny Hodges, are still, in their own right, considered to be among the best players in jazz, but it was Ellington who melded them into the best-known jazz orchestral unit in the history of jazz. Several members of the orchestra remained members for several decades. A master at writing miniatures for the three-minute 78 rpm record format, Ellington often composed specifically for the style and skills of his individual musicians, such as “Jeep’s Blues” for Hodges, and “Concerto for Cootie” for trumpeter Cootie Williams, which later became “Do Nothing Till You Hear from Me” with Bob Russell‘s lyrics.

Ellington originated over 1,000 compositions, often in collaboration with others; his extensive oeuvre is also the largest recorded legacy in jazz, with much of his extant work having passed into standards. Ellington also recorded songs written by his bandsmen, such asJuan Tizol‘s “Caravan” and “Perdido” which brought the “Spanish Tinge” to big-band jazz.

After 1941, Ellington collaborated with composer-arranger-pianist Billy Strayhorn, whom he called his “writing and arranging companion”.^[3] With Strayhorn, he composed many extended compositions, or “suites”, as well as further shorter pieces. Following an appearance at the Newport Jazz Festival in July 1956, he enjoyed a major career revival and, with his orchestra, now embarked on world tours. Ellington recorded for most American record companies of his era at some point, and appeared in several films. scoring several, and composed stage musicals.

Due to his inventive use of the orchestra, or big band, and thanks to his eloquence and extraordinary charisma, he is generally considered to have elevated the perception of jazz to an art form on a par with other traditional genres of music. His reputation increased after his death and the Pulitzer Prize Board bestowed on him a special posthumous honor in 1999.

Gunther Schuller wrote in 1989: “Ellington composed incessantly to the very last days of his life. Music was indeed his mistress; it was his total life and his commitment to it was incomparable and unalterable. In jazz he was a giant among giants. And in twentieth century music, he may yet one day be recognized as one of the half-dozen greatest masters of our time.”

Early life

Edward Kennedy Ellington was born on April 29, 1899 to James Edward Ellington and Daisy Kennedy Ellington. Daisy and J.E. were both pianists. Daisy primarily played parlor songs and J.E. preferred operatic arias. They lived with his maternal grandparents at 2129 Ida Place (now Ward Place), NW in the West End neighborhood of Washington, D.C. His father, James Edward Ellington, was born in Lincolnton, North Carolina on April 15, 1879 and moved to Washington, D.C. in 1886 with his parents.  Daisy Kennedy was born in Washington, D.C. on January 4, 1879, and was the daughter of a former American slave.  James Ellington made blueprints for the United States Navy.

At the age of seven, Ellington began taking piano lessons from Marietta Clinkscales. Daisy surrounded her son with dignified women to reinforce his manners and teach him to live elegantly. Ellington’s childhood friends noticed that “his casual, offhand manner, his easy grace, and his dapper dress gave him the bearing of a young nobleman”,  and began calling him Duke. Ellington credited his “chum” Edgar McEntree for the nickname. “I think he felt that in order for me to be eligible for his constant companionship, I should have a title. So he called me Duke.” 

Though Ellington took piano lessons, he was more interested in baseball. “President Roosevelt (Teddy) would come by on his horse sometimes, and stop and watch us play”, he recalled.  Ellington went to Armstrong Technical High School in Washington, D.C. He got his first job selling peanuts at Washington Senators baseball games.

In the summer of 1914, while working as a soda jerk at the Poodle Dog Cafe, he wrote his first composition, “Soda Fountain Rag” (also known as the “Poodle Dog Rag”). Ellington created “Soda Fountain Rag” by ear, because he had not yet learned to read and write music. “I would play the ‘Soda Fountain Rag’ as a one-step, two-step, waltz, tango, and fox trot”, Ellington recalled. “Listeners never knew it was the same piece. I was established as having my own repertoire.”  In his autobiography, Music is my Mistress (1973), Ellington wrote that he missed more lessons than he attended, feeling at the time that playing the piano was not his talent. Ellington started sneaking into Frank Holiday’s Poolroom at the age of fourteen. Hearing the poolroom pianists play ignited Ellington’s love for the instrument and he began to take his piano studies seriously. Among the many piano players he listened to were Doc Perry, Lester Dishman, Louis Brown, Turner Layton, Gertie Wells, Clarence Bowser, Sticky Mack, Blind Johnny, Cliff Jackson, Claude Hopkins, Phil Wurd, Caroline Thornton, Luckey Roberts, Eubie Blake, Joe Rochester, and Harvey Brooks.

Ellington began listening to, watching, and imitating ragtime pianists, not only in Washington, D.C., but in Philadelphia and Atlantic City, where he vacationed with his mother during the summer months. Dunbar High School music teacher Henry Lee Grant gave him private lessons in harmony. With the additional guidance of Washington pianist and band leader Oliver “Doc” Perry, Ellington learned to read sheet music, project a professional style, and improve his technique. Ellington was also inspired by his first encounters withstride pianists James P. Johnson and Luckey Roberts. Later in New York he took advice from Will Marion Cook, Fats Waller, and Sidney Bechet. Ellington started to play gigs in cafés and clubs in and around Washington, D.C. and his attachment grew to be so strong that he turned down an art scholarship to the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn in 1916. Three months before graduating he dropped out of Armstrong Manual Training School, where he was studying commercial art.

Working as a freelance sign-painter from 1917, he began assembling groups to play for dances, and in 1919 met drummer Sonny Greer from New Jersey who encouraged Ellington’s ambition to become a professional musician. Through his day job, Ellington’s entrepreneurial side came out: when a customer would ask him to make a sign for a dance or party, he would ask them if they had musical entertainment; if not, Ellington would ask if he could play for them. He also had a messenger job with the U.S. Navy and State Departments. Ellington moved out of his parents’ home and bought his own as he became a successful pianist. At first, he played in other ensembles, and in late 1917 formed his first group, “The Duke’s Serenaders” (“Colored Syncopators”, his telephone directory advertising proclaimed).  He was not only a member, but also the booking agent. His first play date was at the True Reformer’s Hall, where he took home 75 cents.

Ellington played throughout the Washington, D.C. area and into Virginia for private society balls and embassy parties. The band included childhood friend Otto Hardwick, who started on string bass, then moved to C-melody sax and finally settled on alto saxophone; Arthur Whetsol on trumpet; Elmer Snowden on banjo; and Sonny Greer on drums. The band thrived, performing for both African-American and white audiences, a rarity at the time.

Music career

 

“East St. Louis Toodle-Oo” (1927)

Early career

When his drummer Sonny Greer was invited to join the Wilber Sweatman Orchestra in New York City, Ellington made the fateful decision to leave behind his successful career in Washington, D.C., and move to Harlem, becoming one of the figures of the Harlem Renaissance. New dance crazes like the Charleston emerged in Harlem, as well as African-American musical theater, including Eubie Blake‘s Shuffle Along. After the young musicians left the Sweatman Orchestra to strike out on their own, they found an emerging jazz scene that was highly competitive and hard to crack. They hustled pool by day and played whatever gigs they could find. The young band met stride pianist Willie “The Lion” Smith who introduced them to the scene and gave them some money. They played at rent-house parties for income. After a few months, the young musicians returned to Washington, D.C., feeling discouraged.

In June 1923, a gig in Atlantic City, New Jersey, led to a play date at the prestigious Exclusive Club in Harlem. This was followed in September 1923 by a move to the Hollywood Club – 49th and Broadway – and a four-year engagement, which gave Ellington a solid artistic base. He was known to play the bugle at the end of each performance. The group was initially called Elmer Snowden and his Black Sox Orchestra and had seven members, including trumpeter James “Bubber” Miley. They renamed themselves “The Washingtonians”. Snowden left the group in early 1924 and Ellington took over as bandleader. After a fire, the club was re-opened as the Club Kentucky (often referred to as the “Kentucky Club”).

Ellington made eight records in 1924, receiving composing credit on three including “Choo Choo”.  In 1925, Ellington contributed four songs to Chocolate Kiddies starring Lottie Gee and Adelaide Hall,  an all-African-American revue which introduced European audiences to African-American styles and performers. Duke Ellington and his Kentucky Club Orchestra grew to a group of ten players; they developed their own sound by displaying the non-traditional expression of Ellington’s arrangements, the street rhythms of Harlem, and the exotic-sounding trombone growls and wah-wahs, high-squealing trumpets, and sultry saxophone blues licks of the band members. For a short time soprano saxophonist Sidney Bechet played with them, imparting his propulsive swing and superior musicianship to the young band members.

Cotton Club engagement

In October 1926, Ellington made a career-advancing agreement with agent-publisher Irving Mills,  giving Mills a 45% interest in Ellington’s future.  Mills had an eye for new talent and early on published compositions by Hoagy Carmichael, Dorothy Fields, and Harold Arlen. After recording a handful of acoustic titles during 1924-1926, Ellington’s signing with Mills allowed him to record prolifically, although sometimes he recorded different versions of the same tune. Mills often took a co-composer credit. From the beginning of their relationship, Mills arranged recording sessions on nearly every label including Brunswick, Victor, Columbia, OKeh, Pathê (and its Perfect label), the ARC/Plaza group of labels (Oriole, Domino, Jewel, Banner) and their dime-store labels (Cameo, Lincoln, Romeo), Hit of the Week, and Columbia’s cheaper labels (Harmony, Diva, Velvet Tone, Clarion) labels which gave Ellington popular recognition. On OKeh, his records were usually issued as “The Harlem Footwarmers”, while the Brunswick’s were usually issued as The Jungle Band. “Whoopee Makers” and the “Ten Black Berries” were other pseudonyms.

In September 1927, King Oliver turned down a regular booking for his group as the house band at Harlem’s Cotton Club;  the offer passed to Ellington after Jimmy McHughsuggested him and Mills arranged an audition.  Ellington had to increase from a six to eleven-piece group to meet the requirements of the Cotton Club’s management for the audition,  and the engagement finally began on December 4.  With a weekly radio broadcast, the Cotton Club’s exclusively white and wealthy clientele poured in nightly to see them. At the Cotton Club, Ellington’s group performed all the music for the revues, which mixed comedy, dance numbers, vaudeville, burlesque, music, and illegal alcohol. The musical numbers were composed by Jimmy McHugh and the lyrics by Dorothy Fields (later Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler), with some Ellington originals mixed in. Weekly radio broadcasts from the club gave Ellington national exposure, while Ellington also recorded Fields-JMcHugh and Fats Waller–Andy Razaf songs.

Although trumpeter Bubber Miley was a member of the orchestra for only a short period, he had a major influence on Ellington’s sound.  An early exponent of growl trumpet, his style changed the “sweet” dance band sound of the group to one that was hotter, which contemporaries termed “jungle” style. In October 1927, Ellington and his Orchestra recorded several compositions with Adelaide Hall. One side in particular, “Creole Love Call” became a worldwide sensation and gave both Ellington and Hall their first hit record. Miley had composed most of “Creole Love Call” and “Black and Tan Fantasy”. An alcoholic, Miley had to leave the band before they gained wider fame. He died in 1932 at the age of 29, but he was an important influence on Cootie Williams, who replaced him.

In 1929, the Cotton Club Orchestra appeared on stage for several months in Florenz Ziegfeld‘s Show Girl, along with vaudeville stars Jimmy Durante, Eddie Foy, Jr., Ruby Keeler, and with music and lyrics by George Gershwin and Gus Kahn. Will Vodery, Ziegfeld’s musical supervisor, recommended Ellington for the show, and, according to John Hasse’sBeyond Category: The Life and Genius of Duke Ellington, “Perhaps during the run of Show Girl, Ellington received what he later termed ‘ valuable lessons in orchestration from Will Vodery.’ In his 1946 biography, Duke Ellington, Barry Ulanov wrote:

From Vodery, as he (Ellington) says himself, he drew his chromatic convictions, his uses of the tones ordinarily extraneous to the diatonic scale, with the consequent alteration of the harmonic character of his music, its broadening, The deepening of his resources. It has become customary to ascribe the classical influences upon Duke – Delius, Debussy and Ravel – to direct contact with their music. Actually his serious appreciation of those and other modern composers, came after his meeting with Vodery.

Ellington’s film work began with Black and Tan (1929), a nineteen-minute all-African-American RKO short  in which he played the hero “Duke”. He also appeared in the Amos ‘n’ Andy film Check and Double Check released in 1930. That year, Ellington and his Orchestra connected with a whole different audience in a concert with Maurice Chevalier and they also performed at the Roseland Ballroom, “America’s foremost ballroom”. Australian-born composer Percy Grainger was an early admirer and supporter. He wrote “The three greatest composers who ever lived are Bach, Delius and Duke Ellington. Unfortunately Bach is dead, Delius is very ill but we are happy to have with us today The Duke”. Ellington’s first period at the Cotton Club concluded in 1931.

The early 1930’s

Ellington led the orchestra by conducting from the keyboard using piano cues and visual gestures; very rarely did he conduct using a baton. As a bandleader, Ellington was not a strict disciplinarian; he maintained control of his orchestra with a combination of charm, humor, flattery, and astute psychology. A complex, private person, he revealed his feelings to only his closest intimates and effectively used his public persona to deflect attention away from himself.

Ellington signed exclusively to Brunswick in 1932 and stayed with them through late 1936 (albeit with a temporary 1933-34 switch to Victor), when Irving Mills moved him from Brunswick to Mills’ new Master label. As the Depression worsened, the recording industry was in crisis, dropping over 90% of its artists by 1933.  Ivie Anderson was hired as their featured vocalist in 1931, she is the vocalist on “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)” (1932) among other recordings. Sonny Greer had been providing occasional vocals and continued to do in a cross-talk feature with Anderson. Radio exposure helped maintain popularity as Ellington and his orchestra began to tour. The other records of this era include: “Mood Indigo” (1930), “Sophisticated Lady” (1933), “Solitude” (1934), and “In a Sentimental Mood” (1935)

While the band’s United States audience remained mainly African-American in this period, the Ellington orchestra had a huge following overseas, exemplified by the success of their trip to England in 1933 and their 1934 visit to the European mainland. The English visit saw Ellington win praise from members of the “serious” music community, including composer Constant Lambert, which gave a boost to Ellington’s interest in composing longer works. Those longer pieces had already begun to appear. He had composed and recorded Creole Rhapsody as early as 1931 (issued as both sides of a 12″ record for Victor and both sides of a 10″ record for Brunswick), and a tribute to his mother, “Reminiscing in Tempo”, took four 10″ record sides to record in 1935 after her death in that year. Symphony in Black (also 1935), a short film, featured his extended piece ‘A Rhapsody of Negro Life’. It introduced Billie Holiday, and won an Academy Award as the best musical short subject.  Ellington and his Orchestra also appeared in the features Murder at the Vanitiesand Belle of the Nineties (both 1934),

For agent Mills the attention was a publicity triumph, as Ellington was now internationally known. On the band’s tour through the segregated South in 1934, they avoided some of the traveling difficulties of African-Americans by touring in private railcars. These provided easy accommodations, dining, and storage for equipment while avoiding the indignities of segregated facilities. Competition was intensifying though, as swing bands like Benny Goodmans, began to receive popular attention. Swing dancing became a youth phenomenon, particularly with white college audiences, and “danceability” drove record sales and bookings. Jukeboxes proliferated nationwide, spreading the gospel of “swing”. Ellington’s band could certainly swing, but their strengths were mood and nuance, and richness of composition; hence his statement “jazz is music; swing is business”.

The later 1930s

From 1936, Ellington began to make recordings of smaller groups (sextets, octets, and nonets) drawn from his then-15-man orchestra and he composed pieces intended to feature specific instrumentalist, as with “Jeep’s Blues” for Johnny Hodges, “Yearning for Love” for Lawrence Brown, “Trumpet in Spades” for Rex Stewart, “Echoes of Harlem” for Cootie Williams and “Clarinet Lament” for Barney Bigard. These small groups within Ellington’s band recorded on Mills’ Variety label. In 1937, Ellington returned to the Cotton Club which had relocated to the mid-town Theater District. In the summer of that year, his father died, and due to many expenses, Ellington’s finances were tight, although his situation improved the following year.

After leaving agent Irving Mills, he signed on with the William Morris Agency. Mills though continued to record Ellington. After his Master and Variety labels collapsed in late 1937, Mills placed Ellington back on Brunswick and those small group units on Vocalion through to 1940. Well known sides continued to be recorded, “Caravan” in 1937, and “I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart” the following year.

 

Ellington in 1939

Billy Strayhorn, originally hired as a lyricist, began his association with Ellington in 1939. Nicknamed “Swee’ Pea” for his mild manner, Strayhorn soon became a vital member of the Ellington organization. Ellington showed great fondness for Strayhorn and never failed to speak glowingly of the man and their collaborative working relationship, “my right arm, my left arm, all the eyes in the back of my head, my brain waves in his head, and his in mine”.  Strayhorn, with his training in classical music, not only contributed his original lyrics and music, but also arranged and polished many of Ellington’s works, becoming a second Ellington or “Duke’s doppelganger”. It was not uncommon for Strayhorn to fill in for Duke, whether in conducting or rehearsing the band, playing the piano, on stage, and in the recording studio. The 1930s ended with a very successful European tour just as World War II loomed in Europe.

Ellington in the early to mid-1940’s

 

Duke Ellington at the Hurricane Club in New York, May 1943

Some of the musicians who joined Ellington at this at time created a sensation in their own right. The short-lived Jimmy Blantontransformed the use of double bass in jazz, allowing it to function as a solo rather than a rhythm instrument alone. Terminal illness forced him to leave by late 1941 after only about two years. Ben Webster, the Orchestra’s first regular tenor saxophonist, whose main tenure with Ellington spanned 1939 to 1943, started a rivalry with Johnny Hodges as the Orchestra’s foremost voice in the sax section.

Trumpeter Ray Nance joined, replacing Cootie Williams who had “defected”, contemporary wags claimed, to Benny Goodman. Additionally, Nance added violin to the instrumental colors Ellington had at his disposal. Recordings exist of Nance’s first concert date on November 7, 1940, at Fargo, North Dakota. Privately made by Jack Towers and Dick Burris, these recordings were first legitimately issued in 1978 as Duke Ellington at Fargo, 1940 Live; they are among the earliest of innumerable live performances which survive. Nance was also an occasional vocalist, although Herb Jeffries was the main male vocalist in this era (until 1943) while Al Hibbler (who replaced Jeffries in 1943) continued until 1951. Ivie Anderson left in 1942 after eleven years: the longest term of any of Ellington’s vocalists.

Once again recording for Victor (from 1940), with the small groups recording for their Bluebird label, three-minute masterpieces on 78 rpm record sides continued to flow from Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, Ellington’s son Mercer Ellington, and members of the Orchestra. “Cotton Tail“, “Main Stem”, “Harlem Airshaft”, “Jack the Bear”, and dozens of others date from this period. Strayhorn’s “Take the “A” Train” a hit in 1941, became the band’s theme, replacing “East St. Louis Toodle-Oo”. Ellington and his associates wrote for an orchestra of distinctive voices who displayed tremendous creativity.  Mary Lou Williams, working as a staff arranger, would briefly join Ellington a few years later.

Ellington’s long-term aim though was to extend the jazz form from that three-minute limit, of which he was an acknowledged master. While he had composed and recorded some extended pieces before, such works now became a regular feature of Ellington’s output. In this, he was helped by Strayhorn, who had enjoyed a more thorough training in the forms associated with classical music than Ellington. The first of these, “Black, Brown, and Beige” (1943), was dedicated to telling the story of African-Americans, and the place of slavery and the church in their history. Ellington debuted Black, Brown and Beige in Carnegie Hall on January 23, 1943, beginning an annual series of concerts there over the next four years. While some jazz musicians had played at Carnegie Hall before, none had performed anything as elaborate as Ellington’s work. Unfortunately, starting a regular pattern, Ellington’s longer works were generally not well received.

A partial exception was Jump for Joy, a full-length musical based on themes of African-American identity, debuted on July 10, 1941 at the Mayan Theater in Los Angeles. Hollywood luminaries like actors John Garfield and Mickey Rooney invested in the production, and Charlie Chaplin and Orson Welles offered to direct.  At one performance though, Garfield insisted Herb Jeffries, who is light skinned, should wear make-up. Ellington objected in the interval, and compared Jeffries to Al Jolson. The change was reverted, and the singer later commented that the audience must have thought he was an entirely different character in the second half of the show.

Although it had sold-out performances, and received positive reviews, it ran for only 122 performances until September 29, 1941, with a brief revival in November of that year. Its subject matter did not make it appealing to Broadway; Ellington had unfulfilled plans to take it there.  Despite this disappointment, a Broadway production of Ellington’s Beggar’s Holiday, his sole book musical, premiered on December 23, 1946 under the direction of Nicholas Ray.

The settlement of the first recording ban of 1942–43, leading to an increase in royalties paid to musicians, had a serious effect on the financial viability of the big bands, including Ellington’s Orchestra. His income as a songwriter ultimately subsidized it. Although he always spent lavishly and drew a respectable income from the Orchestra’s operations, the band’s income often just covered expenses.

Early post-war years

The music industry’s focus was shifting away from the big bands to the work of solo vocalists such as the young Frank Sinatra gaining popularity. Ellington’s wordless vocal feature “Transblucency” (1946) with Kay Davis was not going to have a similar reach. The new small-group form of jazz, bebop allowed club owners of smaller venues to draw in the jazz audience at a fraction of the cost of hiring a big band.

Ellington poses with his piano at the KFG Radio Studio November 3, 1954.

Ellington continued on his own course through these tectonic shifts. While Count Basie was forced to disband his whole ensemble and work as an octet for a time, Ellington was able to tour most of Western Europe between 6 April and 30 June 1950, with the orchestra playing 74 dates over 77 days. During the tour, according to Sonny Greer, the newer works were not performed, though Ellington’s extended composition, Harlem (1950) was in the process of being completed at this time. Ellington later presented its score to music-loving President Harry Truman.

In 1951, Ellington suffered a significant loss of personnel: Sonny Greer, Lawrence Brown, and most importantly Johnny Hodges left to pursue other ventures, although only Greer was a permanent departee. Drummer Louie Bellson replaced Greer, and his “Skin Deep” was a hit for Ellington. Tenor player Paul Gonsalves had joined in December 1950 after periods with Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie and stayed for the rest of his life, while Clark Terry joined in November 1951.

Although Ellington’s career was generally at a low ebb in the early 1950s, Ellington’s reputation did not suffer in comparison with younger figures of the time. André Previn said in 1952: “You know, Stan Kenton can stand in front of a thousand fiddles and a thousand brass and make a dramatic gesture and every studio arranger can nod his head and say, ‘‘Oh, yes, that’s done like this.’’ But Duke merely lifts his finger, three horns make a sound, and I don’t know what it is!” However by 1955, after three years of recording for Capitol, Ellington lacked a regular recording affiliation.

Career revival

Ellington’s appearance at the Newport Jazz Festival on July 7, 1956 returned him to wider prominence and exposed him to new audiences. The feature “Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue” comprised two tunes that had been in the band’s book since 1937 but largely forgotten until Ellington, who had abruptly ended the band’s scheduled set because of the late arrival of four key players, called the two tunes as the time was approaching midnight. Announcing that the two pieces would be separated by an “interlude” played by tenor saxophonist Paul Gonsalves, Ellington proceeded to lead the band through the two pieces, with Gonsalves’ 27-chorus marathon solo whipping the crowd into a frenzy, leading the Maestro to play way beyond the curfew time despite urgent pleas from Festive organizer George Wein to bring the program to an end.

The concert made international headlines, led to one of only four Time magazine cover stories dedicated to a jazz musician  (Thelonious Monk, Dave Brubeck, and Wynton Marsalis are the others) and resulted in an album produced by George Avakian  that would become the best-selling long-playing recording of Ellington’s career.

Ironically though, much of the music on the vinyl LP was, in effect, “simulated”, with only about 40% actually from the concert itself. According to Avakian, Ellington was dissatisfied with aspects of the performance and felt the musicians had been under rehearsed.  The band assembled the next day to re-record several of the numbers with the addition of artificial crowd noise, none of which was disclosed to purchasers of the album. Not until 1999 was the concert recording properly released for the first time. The revived attention brought about by the Newport appearance should not have surprised anyone, Johnny Hodges had returned the previous year, and Ellington’s collaboration with Strayhorn had been renewed around the same time, under terms more amenable to the younger man.

The original Ellington at Newport album was the first release in a new recording contract with Columbia Records which yielded several years of recording stability, mainly under producer Irving Townsend, who coaxed both commercial and artistic productions from Ellington.

In 1957, CBS (Columbia Record’s parent corporation) aired a live television production of A Drum Is a Woman, an allegorical suite which received mixed reviews. His hope that television would provide a significant new outlet for his type of jazz was not fulfilled. Tastes and trends had moved on without him. Festival appearances at the new Monterey Jazz Festival and elsewhere provided venues for live exposure, and a European tour in 1958 was well received. Such Sweet Thunder (1957), based on Shakespeare’s plays and characters, and The Queen’s Suite (1958), dedicated to Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II, were products of the renewed impetus which the Newport appearance helped to create, although the latter work was not commercially issued at the time. The late 1950s also saw Ella Fitzgerald record her Duke Ellington Songbook (Verve) with Ellington and his orchestra—a recognition that Ellington’s songs had now become part of the cultural canon known as the ‘Great American Songbook‘.

Jimmy Stewart and Ellington in Anatomy of a Murder.

Ellington at this time (with Strayhorn) began to work directly on scoring for film soundtracks, in particular Anatomy of a Murder(1959), with James Stewart, in which Ellington appeared fronting a roadhouse combo, and Paris Blues (1961), which featuredPaul Newman and Sidney Poitier as jazz musicians. Detroit Free Press music critic Mark Stryker concludes that the work ofBilly Strayhorn and Ellington in Anatomy of a Murder, a trial court drama film directed by Otto Preminger, is “indispensable, [although] . . . too sketchy to rank in the top echelon among Ellington-Strayhorn masterpiece suites like Such Sweet Thunderand The Far East Suite, but its most inspired moments are their equal.”

Film historians have recognized the soundtrack “as a landmark – the first significant Hollywood film music by African Americans comprising non-diegetic music, that is, music whose source is not visible or implied by action in the film, like an on-screen band.” The score avoided the cultural stereotypes which previously characterized jazz scores and rejected a strict adherence to visuals in ways that presaged the New Wave cinema of the ’60s”.  Ellington and Strayhorn, always looking for new musical territory, produced suites for John Steinbeck‘s novel Sweet Thursday, Tchaikovsky‘s Nutcracker Suite and Edvard Grieg‘s Peer Gynt.

In the early 1960s, Ellington embraced recording with artists who had been friendly rivals in the past, or were younger musicians who focused on later styles. The Ellington and Count Basie orchestras recorded together. During a period when he was between recording contracts, he made records with Louis Armstrong (Roulette), Coleman Hawkins, John Coltrane (both for Impulse) and participated in a session with Charles Mingus and Max Roach which produced the Money Jungle (United Artists) album. He signed to Frank Sinatra‘s new Reprise label, but the association with the label was short-lived.

Musicians who had previously worked with Ellington returned to the Orchestra as members: Lawrence Brown in 1960 and Cootie Williams in 1962.

“The writing and playing of music is a matter of intent…. You can’t just throw a paint brush against the wall and call whatever happens art. My music fits the tonal personality of the player. I think too strongly in terms of altering my music to fit the performer to be impressed by accidental music. You can’t take doodling seriously.”

He was now performing all over the world; a significant part of each year was spent on overseas tours. As a consequence, he formed new working relationships with artists from around the world, including the Swedish vocalist Alice Babs, and the South African musicians Dollar Brand and Sathima Bea Benjamin (A Morning in Paris, 1963/1997).

Ellington wrote an original score for director Michael Langham‘s production of Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens at the Stratford Festival in Ontario, Canada which opened on July 29, 1963. Langham has used it for several subsequent productions, including a much later adaptation by Stanley Silverman which expands the score with some of Ellington’s best-known works.

Last years

 

Ellington receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Nixon, 1969.

Ellington was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1965, but was turned down.  His reaction at 67 years old: “Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn’t want me to be famous too young.”  The Pulitzer Prize for music was eventually awarded posthumously in 1999.

In September of the same year, the first of his Sacred Concerts was given its premiere. It was an attempt to fuse Christian liturgy with jazz, and even though it received mixed reviews, Ellington was proud of the composition and performed it dozens of times. This concert was followed by two others of the same type in 1968 and 1973, known as the Second and Third Sacred Concerts. This caused controversy in what was already a tumultuous time in the United States. Many saw the Sacred Music suites as an attempt to reinforce commercial support for organized religion, though Ellington simply said it was “the most important thing I’ve done”. The Steinway piano upon which the Sacred Concerts were composed is part of the collection of the Smithsonian‘s National Museum of American History. Like Haydn and Mozart, Ellington conducted his orchestra from the piano – he always played the keyboard parts when the Sacred Concerts were performed.

Ellington continued to make vital and innovative recordings, including The Far East Suite (1966), New Orleans Suite (1970), Latin American Suite (1972) and The Afro-Eurasian Eclipse (1971), much of it inspired by his world tours. It was during this time that Ellington recorded his only album with Frank Sinatra, entitled Francis A. & Edward K. (1967).

Ellington was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1966. He was later awarded several other prizes, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969, an Honorary PhD from the Berklee College of Music in 1971, and the Legion of Honor by France in 1973, the highest civilian honors in each country.

Although he made two more stage appearances before his death, Ellington performed what is considered his final “full” concert in a ballroom at Northern Illinois University on March 20, 1974.

Billy Strayhorn

 

 

 

Billy Strayhorn
Photo by Carl Van Vechten (August 14, 1958)
Background information
Birth name	William Thomas Strayhorn
Born	November 29, 1915 Dayton, Ohio, U.S.
Died	May 31, 1967 (aged 51) New York City, New York,U.S.
Genres	Classical, mainstream jazz,swing
Occupations	Arranger, composer, pianist
Instruments	Piano
Years active	1934–1964
Labels	United Artists, Felsted, Mercer
Associated acts	Duke Ellington
Website	www.billystrayhorn.com

William Thomas “Billy” Strayhorn (November 29, 1915 – May 31, 1967) was anAmerican jazz composer, pianist and arranger, best known for his successful collaboration with bandleader and composer Duke Ellington lasting nearly three decades. His compositions include “Take the ‘A’ Train,” “Chelsea Bridge,” and “Lush Life.”

 

Early life

Strayhorn was born in Dayton, Ohio. His family soon moved to the Homewood section ofPittsburgh, Pennsylvania. However, his mother’s family was from Hillsborough, North Carolina, and she sent him there to protect him from his father’s drunken sprees. Strayhorn spent many months of his childhood at his grandparents’ house in Hillsborough. In an interview, Strayhorn said that his grandmother was his primary influence during the first ten years of his life. He first became interested in music while living with her, playing hymns on her piano, and playing records on her Victrola record player.

Return to Pittsburgh and meeting Ellington

Strayhorn returned to Pittsburgh, and attended Westinghouse High School, later attended by Erroll Garner and Ahmad Jamal. In Pittsburgh, he began his musical career, studyingclassical music for a time at the Pittsburgh Music Institute, writing a high school musical, forming a musical trio that played daily on a local radio station, and, while still in his teens, composing (with lyrics) the songs “Life Is Lonely” (later renamed “Lush Life“), “My Little Brown Book”, and “Something to Live For“. While still in grade school, he worked odd jobs to earn enough money to buy his first piano. While in high school, he played in the school band, and studied under the same teacher who had also instructed jazz pianists Erroll Garner and Mary Lou Williams. By age 19, he was writing for a professional musical,Fantastic Rhythm.

Though classical music was Strayhorn’s first love, his ambition to become a classical composer was shot down by the harsh reality of a black man trying to make it in the then almost completely white classical world. Strayhorn was then introduced to the music of pianists like Art Tatum and Teddy Wilson at age 19. These musicians guided him into the realm of jazz where he remained for the rest of his life. His first jazz exposure was in a combo called the Mad Hatters who played around Pittsburgh.

He met Duke Ellington in December 1938, after an Ellington performance in Pittsburgh (he had first seen Ellington play in Pittsburgh in 1933). Here he first told, and then showed, the band leader how he would have arranged one of Duke’s own pieces. Ellington was impressed enough to invite other band members to hear Strayhorn. At the end of the visit, he arranged for Strayhorn to meet him when the band returned to New York. Strayhorn worked for Ellington for the next quarter century as an arranger, composer, occasional pianist and collaborator until his early death from cancer. As Ellington described him, “Billy Strayhorn was my right arm, my left arm, all the eyes in the back of my head, my brain waves in his head, and his in mine.”

Billy Strayhorn, New York, N.Y., between 1946 and 1948

Working with Ellington

Strayhorn’s relationship with Ellington was always difficult to pin down: Strayhorn was a gifted composer and arranger who seemed to flourish in Duke’s shadow. Ellington was somewhat of a father figure and the band, by and large, was affectionately protective of the diminutive, mild-mannered, unselfish Strayhorn, nicknamed by the band “Strays”, “Weely”, and “Swee’ Pea”. Ellington may have taken advantage of him, but not in the mercenary way that others had taken advantage of Ellington; instead, he used Strayhorn to complete his thoughts, while giving Strayhorn the freedom to write on his own and enjoy at least some of the credit he deserved. Though Duke Ellington took credit for much of Strayhorn’s work, he did not maliciously drown out his partner. Ellington would make jokes onstage like, “Strayhorn does a lot of the work but I get to take the bows!”

Strayhorn composed the band’s best known theme, “Take the “A” Train“, and a number of other pieces that became part of the band’s repertoire. In some cases Strayhorn received attribution for his work such as “Lotus Blossom”, “Chelsea Bridge“, and “Rain Check”, while others, such as “Day Dream” and “Something to Live For“, were listed as collaborations with Ellington or, in the case of “Satin Doll” and “Sugar Hill Penthouse”, were credited to Ellington alone. Strayhorn also arranged many of Ellington’s band-within-band recordings and provided harmonic clarity, taste, and polish to Duke’s compositions. On the other hand, Ellington gave Strayhorn full credit as his collaborator on later, larger works such as Such Sweet Thunder, A Drum Is a Woman, The Perfume Suite and The Far East Suite, where Strayhorn and Ellington worked closely together.  Strayhorn also often sat in on the piano with the Ellington Orchestra, both live and in the studio.

Detroit Free Press music critic Mark Stryker concludes that the work of Strayhorn and Ellington in Anatomy of a Murder is “indispensable, [although] … too sketchy to rank in the top echelon among Ellington-Strayhorn masterpiece suites like Such Sweet Thunder and The Far East Suite, but its most inspired moments are their equal.”  Film historians have recognized the soundtrack “as a landmark — the first significant Hollywood film music by African Americans comprising non-diegetic music, that is, music whose source is not visible or implied by action in the film, like an on-screen band.” The score avoided the cultural stereotypes which previously characterized jazz scores and rejected a strict adherence to visuals in ways that presaged the New Wave cinema of the ’60s.”

Personal life

Shortly before Ellington went on his second European tour with his orchestra, from March to May 1939, Ellington announced to his sister Ruth and son Mercer Ellington that Strayhorn “is staying with us.”  Through Mercer, Strayhorn met his first partner, African-American musician Aaron Bridgers, with whom Strayhorn lived until Bridgers moved to Paris in 1947.

Strayhorn was openly gay. He participated in many civil rights causes. As a committed friend to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., he arranged and conducted “King Fit the Battle of Alabam'” for the Ellington Orchestra in 1963 for the historical revue (and album) My People, dedicated to Dr. King.

Strayhorn’s strong character left an impression on many people who met him. He had a major influence on the career of Lena Horne, who wanted to marry Strayhorn and considered him to have been the love of her life.  Strayhorn used his classical background in guiding Horne’s singing technique toward improvement. They eventually recorded songs together. In the 1950s, Strayhorn left his musical partner Duke Ellington for a few years to pursue a solo career of his own. He came out with a few solo albums and revues for the Copasetics (a New York show-business society), and took on theater productions with his friend Luther Henderson. Strayhorn’s compositions are known for the bittersweet sentiment and classically infused designs that set him apart from Ellington.

Illness and death

Strayhorn was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in 1964, which eventually caused his death in 1967. Strayhorn finally succumbed in the early morning on May 31, 1967, in the company of his partner, Bill Grove. It has often been falsely reported that Strayhorn died in Lena Horne’s arms. By her own account, Horne was touring in Europe when she received the news of Strayhorn’s death. His ashes were scattered in the Hudson River by a gathering of his closest friends.

While in the hospital, he had submitted his final composition to Ellington. “Blood Count” was used as the first track to Ellington’s memorial album for Strayhorn, …And His Mother Called Him Bill, which was recorded several months after Strayhorn’s death. The last track of the album is a spontaneous solo version of “Lotus Blossom” performed by Ellington, who sat at the piano and played for his friend while the band (who can be heard in the background) packed up after the formal end of the recording session.

Legacy

Strayhorn’s arrangements had a tremendous impact on the Ellington band. Ellington always wrote for the personnel he had at the time, showcasing both the personalities and sound of soloists such as Johnny Hodges, Harry Carney, Ben Webster, Lawrence Brown andJimmy Blanton, and drawing on the contrasts between players or sections to create a new sound for his band. Strayhorn brought a more linear, classically schooled ear to Ellington’s works, setting down in permanent form the sound and structures that Ellington sought.

Strayhorn’s own work, particularly his pieces written for Johnny Hodges on alto saxophone, often had a bittersweet, languorous flavor.

A Pennsylvania State historical Marker was placed at Westinghouse High School, 1101 N. Murtland St., Homewood, Pittsburgh, PA highlighting his accomplishments and marking the high school he graduated from.

The former Regent Theatre in Pittsburgh’s East Liberty neighborhood was renamed the Kelly-Strayhorn Theatre in honor of Billy Strayhorn and fellow Pittsburgher Gene Kelly in 2000. It is a community based performing arts theatre.

Lyric Records (US)

From Wikipedia

Lyric Records label, 1919. “Oh By Jingo” sung by Billy Murray. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

U.S. Lyric label

Lyric Records was a record label based in the United States of America from about 1917 to 1921.

The parent company of Lyric Records was initially listed on the label as the Lyraphone Company of America, New York City, although actually headquartered in Newark, New Jersey. Later labels reflected the actual location. The label artwork featured a drawing of a white cat (perhaps inspired by the dog Nipper of the Victor Talking Machine Company‘s His Master’s Voice logo) seated on a gramophone record, with the legend “Never Scratches”. Lyric Records actually seem to be exactly as prone to scratching as any other shellac 78rpm record of the era.

The first Lyric records were vertical-cut with an unusually narrow groove that required using steel needles, related to that used by British “Marathon” discs, which according to company publicity yielded a playing time of four-and-a-half minutes per 10-inch side and seven minutes per 12-inch side. Over 1000 titles were available by September 1917, including popular vocal, dance, operatic, and orchestral selections. J. Louis von der Mehden was the company’s chief conductor, and his diaries (now at theUniversity of Connecticut) detail recording sessions with a 40-player orchestra which he personally recruited, a much larger ensemble than most American recording groups. The recorded sound of Lyric vertical-cut discs is superior to most other contemporary American “hill-and-dale” records. From 1919 Lyric records were double-sided lateral-cut 10-inch discs which have slightly above-average sound quality for the era. The company went into receivership in the fall of 1921 and ceased operations sometime the following year.

Among those recording for Lyric were soprano Regina Vicarino, tenor Mario Rodolfi, Vaudeville comedian and prolific earlysound recording star Billy Murray and Harry Yerkes‘ band featuring early jazz trombonist Tom Brown.

Two More 78 RPM Record Finds at the Aberfoyle Antique Market

This past Sunday, I was fortunate to be able to go to the oldest antique market in Ontario, located on Brock Rd. 46, or Highway 6 South, about half an hour west of Toronto by the 401. The day was muggy, so both myself the 78  rpm collector, and my girlfriend, the 45 rpm collector, feeling the heat.

At the back part of the market was a booth with a Sonora gramophone. I asked the vendor if he had any 78’s. “Look inside the cabinet of the gramophone, and look at the pile on the shelf behind you”, was the response. After sorting some boring Victor’s, I came across a Compo Starr Gennett. I looked closely at the label-it was Ladd’s Black Aces, second record from 1921. The A side has “Gypsy Blues”, the B side has “I’m Just Too Mean to Cry”, and is number 9177, recorded orginally on Gennett 4794, October, 1921. Rust states the personnel as not being confirmed.

The second record I found was another Compo label, Microphone, one of those cheap labels meant for dime stores. Number 22305 has on the A side, Leslie Norman and his Orchestra performing “Who Says They Don’t Care?”  This hot dance band is none other than Al Lynch and his Orchestra, who first recorded on Banner 7077 in New York, March 7, 1928. Rust has the band as unknown’s in my copy of his American Dance Band Discography, and it does not appear, in the first edition of his Jazz Records book.

 

 

Putney Dandridge

From Wikipedia

Putney Dandridge
Birth name	Louis Dandridge
Born	January 13, 1902
Origin	Richmond, Virginia, United States
Died	February 15, 1946
Genres	Jazz
Occupations	Pianist Vocalist
Instruments	Piano Vocals
Associated acts	Lonnie Johnson

Louis “Putney” Dandridge (January 13, 1902 – February 15, 1946) was an American bandleader, jazz pianist and vocalist. Born inRichmond, Virginia, Dandridge began performing in 1918 as a pianist in the a revue entitled the Drake and Walker Show. In 1930, he worked for a time as accompanist for legendary tap dancer Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, including appearances in the important black musical Brown Buddies.  After touring in Illinois and the Great Lakes region, Dandridge settled in Cleveland, Ohio, forming his own band, which included famed guitarist Lonnie Johnson. This period lasted until 1934, when he attempted to perform as a solo act. He took his show to New York City, beginning a series of long residences at the Hickory House on 52nd Street and other local clubs. From 1935 to 1936, he recorded numerous sides under his own name, many of which highlighted some major jazz talents of the period, including Roy Eldridge, Teddy Wilson, Henry “Red” Allen, Buster Bailey, John Kirby, Chu Berry, Cozy Cole and more. Appearing to vanish from the music scene in the late thirties, it is speculated that Dandridge may have been forced to retire due to ill health. Dandridge died in Wall Township, New Jersey at the age of 44.

Sonny Dunham

From Wikipedia

Elmer “Sonny” Dunham (November 16, 1914 – July 9, 1990) was an American trumpet player and bandleader. A versatile musician, he was one of the few trumpet players who could double on the trombone with equal skill.

Biography

Born in Brockton, Massachusetts, the son of Elmer and Ethel (née Lewis) Dunham, he attended local schools and took lessons on the valve trombone at the age of 7. He changed to the slide trombone at the age of 11, and was playing in local bands by the age of 13. Dunham began his musical career as a trombone player in the Boston area.

In the late 1920s he moved to New York, where he played with Ben Bernie for six months before moving on in 1929 to Paul Tremaine‘s Orchestra, remaining there for two years. It was while was working with Tremaine’s group, where he also sang and arranged, that he switched to the trumpet.

In 1931, he left Tremaine and for a few months led his own group, calling it Sonny Dunham and his New York Yankees. In 1931, along with clarinettist Clarence Hutchenrider, trombonist-singer Pee Wee Hunt and singer Kenny Sargent, he was recruited by Glen Gray for Gray’s Casa Loma Orchestra. During the golden years of Casa Loma from 1931 to 1935, he was a popular soloist, scoring a big hit with his trumpet work on “Memories of You”.  His style, described as “spectacular” and “brash” is also evident on “Ol’ Man River”, “Wild Goose Chase”, “No Name Jive” and “Nagasaki”.  He stayed until March 1936, when he formed another more unusual group, Sonny Lee and The New Yorkers Band, which featured 14 pieces, with ten of his musicians doubling on trumpet.

After the band failed to secure adequate bookings, he moved to Europe for three months and in 1937 returned to the Casa Loma Orchestra, where he remained until 1940 when he tried again to form his own group, this time, with more success.

His new band debuted in July 1940 at the Glendale Auditorium in Los Angeles. Sonny’s band toured the United States, playing at the top spots and holding talent searches along the way. After returning to New York in early 1941, they were on nightly radio broadcasts at the Roseland Ballroom, and at the Meadowbrook at Cedar Grove, New Jersey, in June. The band then left New York in the late summer for Hollywood, but returned to New York in January 1942, only to return to the road again by March of that year. They played at the Hollywood Palladium in April, and were also featured in the Universal picture Behind the Eight Ball with the Ritz Brothers. Dunham served as musical director for this film. The band also appeared in another Universal film short, Jivin’ Jam Session.

In June 1943 they were part of a vaudeville revue at the Capitol that included a screening of Presenting Lily Mars (Judy Garland) and a concert.  The band then left to play in Chicago, and returned to New York for an appearance at the Paramount Theatre in November 1942. From January to April 1943, his band was on the bandstand of the Hotel New Yorker. They later toured the mid-west and returned to New York late that year where they recorded for Langworth Transcriptions. Dunham briefly experimented with dual female vocalists, Mickie Roy and Dorothy Claire, which did not turn out due to “professional temperament”.  In February 1944, the band returned to the Hotel New Yorker, and in April, performed at the Cafe Rouge Room at the Hotel Pennsylvania. The Hotel New Yorker gigs were the band’s longest career engagements: two 13-week runs and one 16-week run.^[1]The band headed back to Los Angeles and performed at the Hollywood Palladium in July and August. While there, the band appeared in the Universal film short “Jive Busters” and then went over to Warner Bros. where they were featured in the film Sonny Dunham and His Orchestra. In September, they headed back to the East Coast. After another tour of the mid-west in 1945, and again in 1946, the band returned to New York in late 1946. 1946 found Dunham playing in a short-lived band headed by Bernie Mann that included Steve Jordan, George Dessinger and Walter Robertson.

The band had few appearances between 1947 and 1950. Upon his return to the Roseland Ballroom from a tour in March 1949, Dunham became involved in a contract dispute which irked him enough to threaten to quit the business.  With a newly reorganized orchestra, late 1950 found Dunham playing the Rustic Cabin in Englewood Cliffs, NJ.  He dissolved the band in 1951 and that September joined Tommy Dorsey‘s band as trumpet player, replacing Ray Wetzel, who had died in an automobile accident a few weeks prior.  He reorganized in 1952 and remained active until the decline of the big-band business led him to give up the fight for the few bookings available, such as in the summer of 1960, when the Sonny Dunham Quartet was billed at Embers restaurant in New York.  In the mid-sixties he led a steamship band out of New York and was involved in booking other bands for such excursions. One of his last known recordings was a novelty tune (“Where Do You Work-a, John”) for Cross-Country Records in 1956 under the name of Sonny Dunham and the Noteworthys.

Little was heard from Sonny in the 1970s and 1980s. He was living in a trailer in Miami, Florida, still involved in booking bands for cruises and playing occasionally when he could find work. He died from cancer on July 9, 1990, aged 78.

Maxine Sullivan

From Wikipedia

Maxine Sullivan
Sullivan at the Village Jazz Lounge in Walt Disney World, 1975
Background information
Birth name	Marietta Williams
Born	May 13, 1911 Homestead, Pennsylvania, United States
Died	April 7, 1987 (aged 75) New York City, New York, United States
Genres	Jazz, swing

Maxine Sullivan (May 13, 1911 – April 7, 1987), born Marietta Williams, was an American jazz vocalist and performer.

As a vocalist, Maxine Sullivan was active for half a century, from the mid-1930s to just before her death in 1987. She is best known for her 1937 recording of a swing version of the Scottish folk song “Loch Lomond“. Throughout her career, Sullivan also appeared as a performer on film as well as on stage. A precursor to better-known later vocalists such as Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and Sarah Vaughan, Maxine Sullivan is considered one of the best jazz vocalists of the 1930s.

Biography

Maxine Sullivan was born in Homestead, Pennsylvania in 1911. Sullivan began her music career singing in her uncle’s band, The Red Hot Peppers, in her native Pennsylvania, in which she occasionally played the flugelhorn and the valve trombone, in addition to singing.  In the mid-1930s she was discovered by Gladys Mosier (then working in Ina Rae Hutton’s big band). Mosier introduced her to Claude Thornhill, which led to her first recordings made in June of 1937. Shorty thereafter, Sullivan became a featured vocalist at the Onyx Club in New York.  During this period, she began forming a professional and close personal relationship with bassist John Kirby, to whom she was married from 1938 to 1941.

Early sessions with Kirby in 1937 yielded a hit recording of a swing version of the Scottish folk song “Loch Lomond” featuring Sullivan on vocals.  This early success “branded” Sullivan’s style, leading her to sing similar swing arrangements of traditional folk tunes mostly arranged by pianist Claude Thornhill, such as “Darling Nellie Gray“, “I Dream of Jeanie“, “Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes“, and “If I Had a Ribbon Bow“.  Her early popularity also led to a brief appearance in the movie Going Places opposite Louis Armstrong. In 1940, Sullivan and Kirby were featured on the radio program Flow Gently Sweet Rhythm, making them the first black jazz stars to have their own weekly radio series. From 1940-1942, Sullivan often performed with her husband Kirby’s sextet. During the 1940s Sullivan then performed with a wide range of bands, including those of Teddy Wilson, Benny Carter, and Jimmie Lunceford. Sullivan also performed at many of New York’s hottest jazz spots such as the Ruban Bleu, the Village Vanguard, the Blue Angel, and the Penthouse.

In 1956, Sullivan shifted away from her earlier style and recorded the album A Tribute to Andy Razaf. Originally on the Period record label, A Tribute to Andy Razaf featured Sullivan’s interpretations of a dozen tunes featuring the lyrics of the poet and lyricist Andy Razaf. The album also highlighted the music of Fats Waller, including versions of “Keepin’ Out of Mischief Now”, “How Can you Face Me?”, “My Fate is in Your Hands”, “Honeysuckle Rose“, “Ain’t Misbehavin’“, and “Blue Turning Grey Over You“. Sullivan was joined by a sextet that was reminiscent of John Kirby’s group of 15 years prior, including trumpeter Charlie Shavers and clarinetist Buster Bailey. In 1953 Sullivan starred in the play, Take a Giant Step.

From 1958 to 1966, Sullivan began working as a nurse and raising her children, which largely consumed most of her time. Her music career did not reassert itself until 1966, when she began performing in jazz festivals alongside her new husband, Cliff Jackson, who can be heard on the 1966 live recording of Sullivan’s performance at the Manassas Jazz Festival.

Sullivan continued to perform throughout the 1960s and 1970s, and produced an output of recordings during the 1980s despite being over 70 years old. She was nominated for the 1979 Tony Award for Featured Actress in a Musical for her role in My Old Friends. She participated in a documentary film portrait, Maxine Sullivan: Love to Be in Love,  shortly before her death.

Maxine Sullivan died in 1987 in New York.^[1] She was inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame in 1998.

Mel Powell

From Wikipedia

Mel Powell
Background information
Birth name	Melvin Epstein
Born	February 12, 1923 New York City, United States
Died	April 24, 1998 (aged 75)
Genres	Jazz Swing music/Big band Classical
Occupations	Musician, Arranger, Composer, Music educator
Instruments	Piano
Years active	1939 – 1988
Associated acts	Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller‘sArmy Air Force Band

Mel Powell (born Melvin Epstein) (February 12, 1923 – April 24, 1998) was an American jazz pianist, composer of classical music, and music educator. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1990. Powell was the founding dean of the music department at theCalifornia Institute of the Arts.

Early life

Mel Powell was born Melvin D. Epstein on February 12, 1923, in The Bronx, New York City to Russian Jewish parents, Milton Epstein and Mildred Mark Epstein.  He began playing piano at age four, taking lessons from, among others, Nadia Reisenberg. A passionate baseball fan, his home was within sight of Yankee Stadium. A hand injury while playing baseball as a boy, however, convinced him to choose music as a career path instead of sports.  Powell dreamed of life as a concert pianist until one night his older brother took him to see jazz pianist Teddy Wilson play, and later to a concert featuring Benny Goodman. In a 1987 interview with The New Yorker magazine Powell said “I had never heard anything as ecstatic as this music”, prompting a shift from classical to jazz piano. By the age of 14 Powell was performing jazz professionally around New York City.  As early as 1939, he was working with Bobby Hackett, George Brunies, and Zutty Singleton, as well as writing arrangements for Earl Hines.  He changed his last name from Epstein to Powell in 1941 shortly before joining Benny Goodman’s band.

Career

Powell and actress wife Martha Scott at home in 1947. An award to Powell fromDownbeat magazine rests on the table.

Newly-named, the teenage Mel Powell became a pianist and arranger for Benny Goodman in 1941. One composition from his Goodman years, The Earl, is perhaps his best-known from that time. It is notable that the song—dedicated to Earl “Fatha” Hines, one of Powell’s piano heroes—was recorded without a drummer.  After nearly two years with Goodman, Powell played briefly with the CBS radio band under director Raymond Scott  before Uncle Sam came calling. With World War II at its height, Powell was drafted into the U.S. Army, but fought his battles from a piano stool, being assigned to Glenn Miller‘s Army Air Force Band from 1943 to 1945.

Near wars end Mel Powell was stationed in Paris, France where he played with Django Reinhardt then returned for a brief stint in Benny Goodman’s band again after being discharged from the military. It was around this time, the mid-to-late 1940s, that Powell moved toHollywood and ventured into providing music for movies and cartoons—notably Tom and Jerry.  In 1948 he played himself in the movie A Song Is Born as the jazz pianist working with Benny Goodman. In this movie he worked along with many other famous jazz players including Louis Armstrong. It was during his time in Hollywood that he met and married actress Martha Scott. Mel Powell had a major health crisis in the late 1940s when he developed Muscular dystrophy. Confined to a wheelchair for some time, then walking with aid of a cane, the illness effectively ended his ability to work as a traveling musician again with Goodman or other bands.  It was a career and life-changing event, prompting Powell to devote himself to music composition rather than performance. From 1948 to 1952 he studied under German composer and music theorist Paul Hindemith at Yale University.

Changing styles, careers

At first sticking to traditional neo-Classical styles of composition Powell increasingly explored concepts in Atonality, or “non-tonal” music as he called it,  as well as Serialism advocated by Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg.  After receiving his degree in 1952, Powell embarked on a career as a music educator, first at Mannes College of Music and Queens College in his native New York City,  then returning to Yale in 1958, succeeding Hindemith as chair of composition faculty and director of one of the nations first electronic music studios.  Powell composed several electronic music pieces in the 1960s, some of which were performed at the Electric Circus in New York’s Greenwich Village,  a venue that also saw performances by groundbreaking rock music acts like The Velvet Underground, The Grateful Dead, and Blue Öyster Cult. Mel Powell had not completely turned his back on jazz music however. While teaching in the 1950s, he also played piano and recorded music with Benny Goodman again as well as on his own.  Showing the broad range of his talent, Powell composed for orchestras, choruses, singers, and chamber ensembles throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.  In 1969 Powell returned to California to serve as founding dean of the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California. After serving as Provost of the Institute from 1972 to 1976 he was awarded the Roy O. Disney Professorship of music, and taught at the Institute until shortly before his death.

Later years

In 1987 Mel Powell joined other music greats for a jazz festival on the cruise ship SS Norway playing alongside Benny Carter, Howard Alden, Milt Hinton, and Louie Bellson and others.  One performance has been documented on the CD release The Return of Mel Powell (Chiaroscuro Records). This CD includes twenty minutes of Powell discussing his life and his reasons for leaving jazz. In an interview with The New Yorker magazine jazz critic Whitney Balliett Powell stated: “I have decided that when I retire I will think through my decision to leave jazz – with the help of Freud and Jung. At the moment, I suspect it was this: I had done what I felt I had to do in jazz. I had decided it did not hold the deepest interest for me musically. And I had decided that it was a young man’s music, even a black music. Also, the endless repetition of material in the Goodman band – playing the same tunes day after day and night after night – got to me. That repetition tended to kill spontaneity, which is the heart of jazz and which can give a lifetime’s nourishment.”

Pulitzer surprise

In 1990 Mel Powell received his highest career achievement, the Pulitzer Prize in Music for his work Duplicates: A Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra.  Powell expressed total surprise at winning the Pulitzer in a Los Angeles Times interview: “Being out here on the coast, far away from the whole Eastern establishment to which the Pulitzer is connected – that made me a remote prospect. I just didn’t expect it.”  In an interview with The New York Times Powell related the story of how Duplicates origins came from his service in World War II and an anecdote he heard in Paris about Claude Debussy‘s search for perfect music. That, Powell, stated was his goal for Duplicates. The work, commissioned in 1987 for the Los Angeles Philharmonic by music patron Betty Freeman, took Powell more than two years to complete. It was made even more difficult as his muscular dystrophy, previously affecting only his legs, began to afflict his arms, thus his ability to play the piano.

Besides the Pulitzer, other awards and honors for Mel Powell include the Creative Arts Medal from Brandeis University, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an honorary life membership in the Arnold Schoenberg Institute, a commission from the Koussevitzky Music Foundation for the Library of Congress, and a National Institute of Arts and Letters grant.  Some of Powell’s notable students include Justin Connolly, Walter Hekster, Arturo Marquez, Lewis Spratlan, John Stewart, Lois V Vierk and John Ferritto.

Death

Gravesite of Mel Powell & wife Martha Scott in Jamesport, Missouri.

Melvin “Mel” Powell died at his home in Sherman Oaks, California on April 24, 1998, from liver cancer. He was 75 years old.  Powell was survived by his wife, actress Martha Scott, two daughters and a son. He was buried in the Masonic Cemetery in his wife’s hometown of Jamesport, Missouri.

Quotes

• On his days in Big Band-Swing music: “It’s really so long ago, one ought to be able to invoke a statute of limitations. I played with Benny Goodman for two years, and I’ve been composing for 40. At the time, swing music, big-band music and Benny Goodman in particular were so boundlessly popular that people who made room for it in their lives have never forgotten it. So I get calls from people who are in a kind of time warp, who ask me about this period of my life as though it were the present. But I’ve moved on to other things.”

• “The musician’s business is structure…The musician…is…therefore drawn to a profound science of structure. Looking closely at music itself, he is likely to ask: “What changes? When? By how much?”…he is…able to feel at home where logicians exhibit techniques for “isolating relevant structure.”

• “It is true that the music I traffic in, along with Milton Babbitt, Elliott Carter and others, has never gained a great popularity. But that was true of the so-called difficult music of earlier centuries, too. And I must say that I have noticed, as we have held our ground, that there has been a softening of response. There are now those who are beginning to find expressive beauty in a music that was at first rejected entirely.”

Tony Parenti

From Wikipedia

Tony Parenti
Photo by William P. Gottlieb
Background information
Birth name	Tony Parenti
Born	6 August 1900
Origin	New Orleans, Louisiana
Died	17 April 1972
Genres	Jazz
Instruments	clarinet
Associated acts	Eddie Condon, Ted Lewis

Tony Parenti (6 August 1900 – 17 April 1972) was an American jazz clarinettist and saxophonist born in New Orleans, perhaps best known for his decades of work in New York City.

Biography

Parenti was a childhood musical prodigy, first on violin, then on clarinet. As a child he substituted for Alcide Nunez in Papa Jack Laine‘s band. In New Orleans he also worked with Johnny Dedroit. During his early teens Parenti worked with the Nick LaRocca band. among other local acts. Parenti led his own band in New Orleans in the mid-1920s, making his first recordings there, before moving toNew York City at the end of the decade.

In the late 1920s, Parenti worked with Benny Goodman and Fred Rich, and later in the decade moved to New York City full-time where he worked through the 1930s as a CBS staffman and as a member of the Radio City Symphony Orchestra.

From 1939-1945 Parenti, with Ted Lewis‘s band, played alongside Muggsy Spanier. In 1944, he recorded and appeared in concert withSidney Bechet and Max Miller in Chicago.

In the 1940s and still in New York City, Parenti formed a Dixieland jazz band called Tony Parenti and His New Orleanians, and which featured Wild Bill Davison, Art Hodes and Jimmy Archey, among others. He often appeared at such New York jazz spots as Nick’s and Jimmy Ryan’s, and also worked with Eddie Condon. Parenti remained active until the 1960s in clubs, and died in New York City on April 17, 1972.

Over his career, Parenti recorded on the labels of Jazzology, Southland and Fat Cat, among several others.

Art Hodes

From Wikipedia

Art Hodes
Art Hodes on the piano at left
Background information
Birth name	Arthur W. Hodes
Born	November 14, 1904 Nikolayev, Russian Empire
Origin	Chicago, Illinois
Died	March 4, 1993 (aged 88) Harvey, Illinois, United States
Genres	Jazz
Occupations	Musician
Instruments	Piano
Associated acts	Sidney Bechet, Joe Marsala,Mezz Mezzrow

Arthur W. Hodes (November 14, 1904, Russian Empire – March 4, 1993, Harvey, Illinois), known professionally as Art Hodes, was an American jazz pianist.

Biography

Hodes was born in Ukraine. His family settled in Chicago, Illinois when he was a few months old. His career began in Chicago clubs, but he did not gain wider attention until moving to New York City in 1938. In that city he played with Sidney Bechet, Joe Marsala, andMezz Mezzrow.

Later Hodes founded his own band in the 1940s and it would be associated with his home town of Chicago. He and his band played mostly in that area for the next forty years.

In the late 1960s Hodes starred in a series of TV shows on Chicago style jazz called “Jazz Alley”. Here he appeared with greats likePee Wee Russell and Jimmy McPartland. He also wrote for jazz magazines like Jazz Record. He remained an educator and writer in jazz. During this period of his life and into the 1970s Hodes resided in south suburban Park Forest, Illinois.

He toured the UK in 1987 recording with drummer John Petters. In 1988 he returned to appear at the Cork jazz Festival with Petters and Wild Bill Davison. A tour, the Legends of American Dixieland, followed in May 1989 with the same line-up.

Other musicians he played and recorded with included Louis Armstrong, Wingy Manone, Gene Krupa, Muggsy Spanier, Joe Marsala,Mezz Mezzrow, Sidney Bechet, Albert Nicholas, Wild Bill Davison, and Vic Dickenson.

In 1998, he was inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame.

Don Stovall

From Wikipedia

Don Stovall (December 12, 1913 – November 20, 1970) was an American jazz alto saxophonist.

Stovall began playing violin as a child before settling on alto. He played in St. Louis, Missouri with Dewey Jackson and Fate Marable on riverboats in the 1920s, and then played withEddie Johnson‘s Crackerjacks in 1932-33. In the 1930s he lived in Buffalo, New York, where he led his own ensemble and played with Lil Armstrong. He moved to New York City in 1939, and played there with Sammy Price, Eddie Durham, and Cootie Williams. Following this he recorded extensively with Red Allen, remaining with him until 1950. He also recorded with Pete Johnson and Snub Mosley over the course of his career, though he never recorded as a leader.

Stovall retired from music in 1950 and spent the remainder of his life working for a telephone company.

Sidney De Paris

From Wikipedia

Sidney De Paris (May 30, 1905 Crawfordsville, Indiana – September 13, 1967 New York City) was an American jazz trumpeter.

He was the son of Sidney G. and Fannie (Hyatt) Paris and the brother of Wilbur de Paris.

He worked with Charlie Johnson’s Paradise Ten (1926–1931), Don Redman (1932–1936 and 1939), Zutty Singleton (1939–1941), Benny Carter (1940–41), and Art Hodes (1941). Further, he recorded on the famed Panassie sessions (1938) and with Jelly Roll Morton (1939) and Sidney Bechet (1940).

Partial discography

• “I’ve Found A New Baby” b/w “Black And Blue” – Commodore Records 78 rpm 552 (1940s) – as De Paris Brothers Orchestra featuring Wilbur de Paris, with Edmond Hall, Clyde Hart, Billy Taylor & Specs Powell

Sammy Price

From Wikipedia

Sammy Price
Price (background) with Wilbur De Paris (left),Sidney De Paris, Eddie Barefield and Charlie Traeger, Jimmy Ryan’s (Club), New York, ca. July 1947. Photograph by William P. Gottlieb.
Background information
Born	October 6, 1908 Honey Grove, Texas, United States
Died	April 14, 1992 (aged 83) New York City, United States
Genres	Jazz, jump blues
Occupations	Pianist, singer, dancer
Instruments	Piano
Associated acts	Henry “Red” Allen

Sammy Price (October 6, 1908 – April 14, 1992)  was an American jazz, boogie-woogie and jump blues pianist and bandleader. He was born Samuel Blythe Price, in Honey Grove, Texas, United States.  Price was most noteworthy for his work on Decca Records with his own band, known as the Texas Bluesicians, that included fellow musicians Don Stovall and Emmett Berry.  Theartist was equally notable for his decade-long partnership with Henry “Red” Allen.

During his early career, Price was a singer and dancer  in local venues in the Dallas area. Price lived and played jazz in Kansas City,Chicago and Detroit. In 1938 he was hired by Decca Records as a session sideman on piano, assisting singers such as Trixie Smithand Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

Later in his life, he partnered with the Roosevelt Hotel in New York, and was the headline entertainment at the Crawdaddy Restaurant, a New Orleans themed restaurant in New York in the mid 1970s. Both Benny Goodman and Buddy Rich played with Price at this venue. in the 1980s he switched to playing in the bar of Boston‘s Copley Plaza.

He died in April 1992, in New York, at the age of 83.

Cutty Cutshall

From Wikipedia

Robert Dewees “Cutty” Cutshall (December 29, 1911 – August 16, 1968) was an American jazz trombonist.

Cutshall played in Pittsburgh early in his career, making his first major tour in 1934 with Charley Dornberger. He joined Jan Savitt‘s orchestra in 1938, then played with Benny Goodman in the early 1940s. Later in the decade he worked frequently with Billy Butterfield and did some freelance work in New York City. He started working with Eddie Condon in 1949, an association which would last over a decade. Cutshall was touring with Condon in 1968 at the time of his death, which occurred in a hotel room.

Cutshall’s credits include work with Peanuts Hucko, Bob Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, and Louis Armstrong.

Jack Lesberg

From Wikipedia

Jack Lesberg
Jack Lesberg, Max Kaminsky, and Peanuts Hucko, Eddie Condon’s, New York, N.Y., ca. May 1947. Image: Gottlieb
Background information
Birth name	Jack Lesberg
Born	February 14, 1920
Died	September 17, 2005 (aged 85)
Genres	Swing, Big band
Occupations	Musician
Instruments	Double bass

Jack Lesberg (February 14, 1920 – September 17, 2005) was a jazz double-bassist.

He performed with many famous jazz musicians, including Louis Armstrong, Sarah Vaughan, and Benny Goodman.

Lesberg had the misfortune of playing in the Cocoanut Grove on the night in 1942 when 492 people lost their lives in a fire. His escape was memorialized by fellow bassist Charles Mingus in an unpublished section of Mingus’s autobiography “Beneath the Underdog”; this passage was read by rapper Chuck D. on the Mingus tribute album “Weird Nightmare”. According to Mingus’s telling, Lesberg used his double bass to “make a door” inside the club which aided in his escape.

Lesberg continued to tour in the 1980s and was interviewed for KCEA radio in 1984 following a performance in Menlo Park, CA. During the taped interview Jack spoke of the many bands and performers he worked with and expressed his feelings that he felt blessed to be a musician.

Max Kaminsky

From Wikipedia

 

 

Jack Lesberg
Jack Lesberg, Max Kaminsky, and Peanuts Hucko at Eddie Condon’s, New York, N.Y., ca. May 1947. Image: Gottlieb
Background information
Born	September 7, 1908
Origin	Brockton, Massachusetts
Died	September 6, 1994 (aged 85)
Genres	Swing, Big band
Occupations	Musician
Instruments	trumpet

Max Kaminsky (September 7, 1908 – September 6, 1994) was a jazz trumpeter and bandleader of his own orchestra (The Max Kaminsky Orchestra).

Biography

Kaminsky was born in Brockton, Massachusetts. He started his career in Boston in 1924 and by 1928 worked in Chicago with George Wettling and Frank Teschemacher at the Cinderella Ballroom and in New York for a brief period in 1929 with Red Nichols. He was primarily known for Dixieland.  At one time he played for the Original Dixieland Jass Band.

For the next five years he worked in commercially oriented dance bands, at the same time recording with Eddie Condon and Benny Carter‘s Chocolate Dandies (1933) and with Mezz Mezzrow (1933–34). He played with Tommy Dorsey (1936, 1938)and Artie Shaw(briefly in 1938), performed and recorded with Bud Freeman (1939–40) and worked again with Shaw (1941–43), who led a navy band with which Kaminsky toured the South Pacific.

From 1942 he took part in important concerts in New York that were organized by Condon at Carnegie Hall and Town Hall, and from the following year he played Dixieland with various groups. He also worked in the 1940s with Sidney Bechet, George Brunis, Art Hodes,Joe Marsala, Willie “The Lion” Smith, and Jack Teagarden.

He went on to work in television, and led Jackie Gleason‘s personal band for several seasons, toured Europe with Teagarden’s and Earl Hines‘ All Stars (1957), and performed at the Metropole and Ryan’s in New York (at intervals from the late 1960s to 1983, the Newport Jazz Festival and the New York World’s Fair (1964–5). In 1963 he published My Life in Jazz with V. E. Hughes. In 1975–76 he made recordings as a leader that well illustrate his style, which is full-toned, economical and swinging in the manner of King Oliver, Freddy Keppard and Louis Armstrong.

Benny Goodman

From Wikipedia

Benny Goodman
Goodman in Stage Door Canteen, 1943.
Background information
Birth name	Benjamin David Goodman
Also known as	“King of Swing”, “The Professor”, “Patriarch of the Clarinet”, “Swing’s Senior Statesman”
Born	May 30, 1909 Chicago, Illinois United States
Died	June 13, 1986 (aged 77) New York City, New York United States
Genres	Swing, big band
Occupations	Musician, bandleader, songwriter
Instruments	Clarinet
Years active	1926–1986
Website	www.bennygoodman.com

Benjamin David “Benny” Goodman  (May 30, 1909 – June 13, 1986) was an American jazz and swing musician, clarinetist and bandleader; known as the “King of Swing”.

In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman led one of the most popular musical groups in America. His January 16, 1938 concert at Carnegie Hall in New York City is described by critic Bruce Eder as “the single most important jazz or popular music concert in history: jazz’s ‘coming out’ party to the world of ‘respectable’ music.”

Goodman’s bands launched the careers of many major names in jazz, and during an era of segregation, he also led one of the first well-known racially integrated jazz groups. Goodman continued to perform to nearly the end of his life, while exploring an interest in classical music.

Childhood and early years

Goodman was born in Chicago, the ninth of twelve children of poor Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire,  who lived in the Maxwell Street neighborhood. His father was David Goodman (1873-1926), a tailor from Warsaw; his mother was Dora Grisinsky  (1873-1964) from Kaunas, Lithuania. His parents met in Baltimore, Maryland, and moved to Chicago before Benny was born.

When Benny was 10, his father enrolled him and two of his older brothers in music lessons at the Kehelah Jacob Synagogue. The next year he joined the boys club band at Jane Addams‘ Hull House, where he received lessons from director James Sylvester. He also received two years of instruction from the classically trained clarinetist Franz Schoepp.  His early influences were New Orleans jazz clarinetists working in Chicago, notably Johnny Dodds, Leon Roppolo, and Jimmy Noone.  Goodman learned quickly, becoming a strong player at an early age: he was soon playing professionally in various bands.

Goodman made his professional debut in 1921 at Central Park Theater in Chicago and entered Harrison High School in 1922. He joined the musicians’s union in 1923 and that summer he met Bix Beiderbecke. He attended Lewis Institute (now Illinois Institute of Technology) in 1924 as a high school sophomore, while also playing the clarinet in a dance hall band. (He was awarded an honorary LL.D. from IIT in 1968.) At age 14, he was in a band that featured the legendary Bix Beiderbecke.  When Goodman was 16, he joined one of Chicago’s top bands, the Ben Pollack Orchestra, with which he made his first recordings in 1926.

He made his first record on Vocalion under his own name two years later. Goodman recorded with the regular Pollack band and smaller groups drawn from the orchestra through 1929. The side sessions produced scores of sides recorded for the variousdimestore record labels under an array of group names, including Mills’ Musical Clowns, Goody’s Good Timers, The Hotsy Totsy Gang, Jimmy Backen’s Toe Ticklers, Dixie Daisies, and Kentucky Grasshoppers.

Goodman’s father, David, was a working-class immigrant about whom Benny said (interview, Downbeat, February 8, 1956); “…Pop worked in the stockyards, shoveling lard in its unrefined state. He had those boots, and he’d come home at the end of the day exhausted, stinking to high heaven, and when he walked in it made me sick. I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t stand the idea of Pop every day standing in that stuff, shoveling it around”.

On December 9, 1926, David Goodman was killed in a traffic accident. Benny had recently joined the Pollack band and was urging his father to retire, since he and his brother (Harry) were now doing well as professional musicians. According to James Lincoln Collier, “Pop looked Benny in the eye and said, ‘Benny, you take care of yourself, I’ll take care of myself.'” Collier continues: “It was an unhappy choice. Not long afterwards, as he was stepping down from a streetcar—according to one story—he was struck by a car. He never regained consciousness and died in the hospital the next day. It was a bitter blow to the family, and it haunted Benny to the end that his father had not lived to see the success he, and some of the others, made of themselves.”  “Benny described his father’s death as ‘the saddest thing that ever happened in our family.'”

Career

Goodman left for New York City and became a successful session musician during the late 1920s and early 1930s (mostly with Ben Pollack‘s band between 1926 and 1929). A notable March 21, 1928 Victor session found Goodman alongside Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, and Joe Venuti in the All-Star Orchestra, directed by Nat Shilkret.  He played with the nationally known bands of Ben Selvin, Red Nichols, Isham Jones (although he is not on any of Jones’s records), and Ted Lewis. He recorded sides for Brunswick under the name Benny Goodman’s Boys, a band that featured Glenn Miller. In 1928, Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller wrote the instrumental “Room 1411“, which was released as a Brunswick 78.  He also recorded musical soundtracks for movie shorts; fans believe that Benny Goodman’s clarinet can be heard on the soundtrack of One A. M., a Charlie Chaplin comedy re-released to theaters in 1934.

During this period as a successful session musician, John Hammond arranged for a series of jazz sides recorded for and issued on Columbia starting in 1933 and continuing until his signing with Victor in 1935, during his success on radio. There were also a number of commercial studio sides recorded for Melotone Records between late 1930 and mid-1931 under Goodman’s name. The all-star Columbia sides featured Jack Teagarden, Joe Sullivan, Dick McDonough, Arthur Schutt, Gene Krupa, Teddy Wilson, Coleman Hawkins (for 1 session), and vocalists Jack Teagarden and Mildred Bailey, and the first two recorded vocals by a young Billie Holiday.

In 1934 Goodman auditioned for NBC‘s Let’s Dance, a well-regarded three-hour weekly radio program that featured various styles of dance music. His familiar theme song by that title was based on Invitation to the Dance by Carl Maria von Weber. Since he needed new arrangements every week for the show, his agent, John Hammond, suggested that he purchase “hot” (swing) arrangements from Fletcher Henderson, an African-American musician from Atlanta who had New York’s most popular African-American band in the 1920s and early 1930s.

Goodman, a wise businessman, helped Henderson in 1929 when the stock market crashed. He purchased all of Henderson’s song books, and hired Henderson’s band members to teach his musicians how to play the music.  In 1932, his career officially began with Fletcher Henderson. Although Henderson’s orchestra was at its climax of creativity, it had not reached any peaks of popularity. During the Depression, Fletcher disbanded his orchestra as he was in financial debt.

In early 1935, Goodman and his band were one of three bands (the others were Xavier Cugat and “Kel Murray” [r.n. Murray Kellner]) featured on Let’s Dance where they played arrangements by Henderson along with hits such as “Get Happy” and “Jingle Bells” from composer and arranger Spud Murphy.  Goodman’s portion of the program from New York, at 12:30 a.m. Eastern Time, aired too late to attract a large East Coast audience. However, unknown to him, the time slot gave him an avid following on the West Coast (they heard him at 9:30 p.m. Pacific Time). He and his band remained on Let’s Dance until May of that year when a strike by employees of the series’ sponsor, Nabisco, forced the cancellation of the radio show. An engagement was booked at Manhattan’s Roosevelt Grill (filling in for Guy Lombardo), but the crowd there expected ‘sweet’ music and Goodman’s band was unsuccessful.  The band set out on a tour of America in May 1935, but was still poorly received. By August 1935, Goodman found himself with a band that was nearly broke, disillusioned and ready to quit.

Catalyst for the Swing era

An eager crowd of Goodman fans inOakland

In July 1935, a record of the Goodman band playing the Henderson arrangements of “King Porter Stomp” backed with “Sometimes I’m Happy“, Victor 78 25090, had been released to ecstatic reviews in both Down Beat and Melody Maker. Reports were that in Pittsburgh at the Stanley Theater some of the kids danced in the aisles,  but in general these arrangements had made little impact on the band’s tour until August 19 when they arrived in Oakland to play at McFadden’s Ballroom.  There, Goodman and his artists Gene Krupa,Bunny Berigan, and Helen Ward found a large crowd of young dancers, raving and cheering the hot music they had heard on the Let’s Dance radio show.  Herb Caen wrote that “from the first note, the place was in an uproar.”  One night later, at Pismo Beach, the show was another flop, and the band thought the overwhelming reception in Oakland had been a fluke.

The next night, August 21, 1935 at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles, Goodman and his band began a three-week engagement. On top of the Let’s Dance airplay, Al Jarvis had been playing Goodman records on KFWB radio, and Los Angeles fans were primed to hear him in person.  Goodman started the evening with stock arrangements, but after an indifferent response, began the second set with the arrangements by Fletcher Henderson and Spud Murphy. According to Willard Alexander, the band’s booking agent, Krupa said “If we’re gonna die, Benny, let’s die playing our own thing.” The crowd broke into cheers and applause. News reports spread word of the enthusiastic dancing and exciting new music that was happening. Over the course of the engagement, the “Jitterbug” began to appear as a new dance craze,  and radio broadcasts carried the band’s performances across the nation.

The Palomar engagement was such a marked success it is often exaggeratedly described as the beginning of the swing era.  Donald Clarke wrote “It is clear in retrospect that the Swing Era had been waiting to happen, but it was Goodman and his band that touched it off.”

In November 1935 Goodman accepted an invitation to play in Chicago at the Joseph Urban Room at the Congress Hotel. His stay there extended to six months and his popularity was cemented by nationwide radio broadcasts over NBC affiliate stations. While in Chicago, the band recorded If I Could Be With You, Stompin’ At The Savoy, and Goody, Goody. Goodman also played three special concerts produced by jazz aficionado and Chicago socialite Helen Oakley. These “Rhythm Club” concerts at the Congress Hotel included sets in which Goodman and Krupa sat in with Fletcher Henderson’s band, perhaps the first racially integrated big band appearance before a paying audience in the United States.  Goodman and Krupa played in a trio with Teddy Wilson on piano. Both combinations were well-received, and Wilson stayed on.

In his 1935–1936 radio broadcasts from Chicago, Goodman was introduced as the “Rajah of Rhythm.”  Slingerland Drum Company had been calling Krupa the “King of Swing” as part of a sales campaign, but shortly after Goodman and crew left Chicago in May 1936 to spend the summer filming The Big Broadcast of 1937 in Hollywood, the title “King of Swing” was applied to Goodman by the media.  Goodman left record company RCA for Columbia, following his agent and soon to be brother-in-law John Hammond.

At the end of June 1936, Goodman went to Hollywood, where, on June 30, 1936 his band began CBS’s “Camel Caravan,” its third, and, according to Connor and Hicks, its greatest of them all, sponsored radio show, co-starring Goodman and his old boss Nat Shilkret.  By spring, 1936, bandleader Fletcher Henderson was writing arrangements for Goodman’s band. He would disband his own group in 1939 and become a full-time arranger for Goodman. Other noteworthy arrangers in the Goodman band were Jimmy Mundy, 1935 to 1939 (overlapping with Henderson) and Eddie Sauter, the 1940s. In 1940, Benny developed a serious case of sciatica, and had others compose pieces for him, such as Eddie Sauter who did not fully compose flawless compositions such as Benny Rides Again where the clarinet piece sounded like two tempo pieces instead of one. During 1945, the orchestra disbanded. After, Benny still continued to tour internationally, and played in classical concert halls with major composers such as Hindemith and Copland.

Carnegie Hall concert

“	In bringing jazz to Carnegie, [Benny Goodman was], in effect, smuggling American contraband into the halls of European high culture, and Goodman and his 15 men pull[ed] it off with the audacity and precision of Ocean’s Eleven.	”
—Will Friedwald

In late 1937, Goodman’s publicist Wynn Nathanson attempted a publicity stunt by suggesting Goodman and his band should play Carnegie Hall in New York City. If this concert were to take place, then Benny Goodman would be the first jazz bandleader to perform at Carnegie Hall. “Benny Goodman was initially hesitant about the concert, fearing for the worst; however, when his film Hollywood Hotel opened to rave reviews and giant lines, he threw himself into the work. He gave up several dates and insisted on holding rehearsals inside Carnegie Hall to familiarize the band with the lively acoustics.”

The concert was the evening of January 16, 1938. It sold out weeks before, with the capacity 2,760 seats going for the top price of US$2.75 a seat, for the time a very high price. The concert began with three contemporary numbers from the Goodman band—”Don’t Be That Way,” “Sometimes I’m Happy,” and “One O’Clock Jump.” They then played a history of jazz, starting with a Dixieland quartet performing “Sensation Rag”, originally recorded by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band in 1918. Once again, initial crowd reaction, though polite, was tepid. Then came a jam session on “Honeysuckle Rose” featuring members of the Count Basie and Duke Ellington bands as guests. (The surprise of the session: Goodman handing a solo to Basie’s guitarist Freddie Green who was never a featured soloist but earned his reputation as the best rhythm guitarist in the genre—he responded with a striking round of chord improvisations.) As the concert went on, things livened up. The Goodman band and quartet took over the stage and performed the numbers that had already made them famous. Some later trio and quartet numbers were well-received, and a vocal on “Loch Lomond” by Martha Tilton provoked five curtain calls and cries for an encore. The encore forced Goodman to make his only audience announcement for the night, stating that they had no encore prepared but that Martha would return shortly with another number.

By the time the band got to the climactic piece “Sing, Sing, Sing“, success was assured. This performance featured playing by tenor saxophonist Babe Russin, trumpeter Harry James, and Benny Goodman, backed by drummer Gene Krupa. When Goodman finished his solo, he unexpectedly gave a solo to pianist Jess Stacy. “At the Carnegie Hall concert, after the usual theatrics, Jess Stacy was allowed to solo and, given the venue, what followed was appropriate,” wrote David Rickert. “Used to just playing rhythm on the tune, he was unprepared for a turn in the spotlight, but what came out of his fingers was a graceful, impressionistic marvel with classical flourishes, yet still managed to swing. It was the best thing he ever did, and it’s ironic that such a layered, nuanced performance came at the end of such a chaotic, bombastic tune.”

This concert has been regarded as one of the most significant in jazz history. After years of work by musicians from all over the country, jazz had finally been accepted by mainstream audiences. Recordings were made of this concert, but even by the technology of the day the equipment used was not of the finest quality. Acetate recordings of the concert were made, and aluminum studio masters were also cut.

“	The recording was produced by Albert Marx as a special gift for his wife, Helen Ward and a second set for Benny. He contracted Artists Recording Studio to make 2 sets. Artists Recording only had 2 turntables so they farmed out the second set to Raymond Scott‘s recording studio.[…] It was Benny’s sister-in-law who found the recordings in Benny’s apartment [in 1950] and brought them to Benny’s attention.	”
—Ross Firestone

Goodman took the newly discovered recording to his record company, Columbia, and a selection was issued on LP. These recordings have not been out of print since they were first issued. In early 1998, the aluminum masters were rediscovered and a new CD set of the concert was released based on these masters. The album released based on those masters went on to be one of the best selling live jazz albums of all time.

Charlie Christian

Pianist/arranger Mary Lou Williams  was a good friend of both Columbia records producer John Hammond and Benny Goodman. She first suggested to John Hammond that he see Charlie Christian.

Charlie Christian was playing at the Ritz in Oklahoma City where […] John Hammond heard him in 1939. Hammond recommended him to Benny Goodman, but the band leader wasn’t interested. The idea of an electrified guitar didn’t appeal, and Goodman didn’t care for Christian’s flashy style of dressing. Reportedly, Hammond personally installed Christian onstage during a break in a Goodman concert in Beverly Hills. Irritated to see Christian among the band, Goodman struck up “Rose Room“, not expecting the guitarist to know the tune. What followed amazed everyone who heard the 45-minute performance.

Charlie was a hit on the electric guitar and remained in the Benny Goodman Sextet for two years (1939–1941). He wrote many of the group’s head arrangements (some of which Goodman took credit for) and was an inspiration to all. The sextet made him famous and provided him with a steady income while Charlie worked on legitimizing, popularizing, revolutionizing, and standardizing the electric guitar as a jazz instrument.

Charlie Christian’s recordings and rehearsal dubs made with Benny Goodman in the early forties are widely known and were released by Columbia.

Beyond swing

Goodman continued his meteoric rise throughout the late 1930s with his big band, his trio and quartet, and a sextet. By the mid-1940s, however, big bands lost a lot of their popularity. In 1941, ASCAP had a licensing war with music publishers. In 1942 to 1944 and 1948, the musician’s union went on strike against the major record labels in the United States, and singers took the spot in popularity that the big bands had once enjoyed. During this strike, the United States War Department approached the union and requested the production of the V-Disc, a set of records containing new and fresh music for soldiers to listen to.  Also, by the late 1940s, swing was no longer the dominant mode of jazz musicians.

Bebop, Cool Jazz

By the 1940s, jazz musicians were borrowing advanced ideas from classical music. The recordings Goodman made in bop style for Capitol Records were highly praised by jazz critics. When Goodman was starting a bebop band, he hired Buddy Greco, Zoot Sims, Wardell Gray and a few other modern players.

Benny Goodman (third from left) in 1952 with some of his former musicians, seated around piano left to right: Vernon Brown,George Auld, Gene Krupa, Clint Neagley,Ziggy Elman, Israel Crosby and Teddy Wilson (at piano)

“	Pianist/arranger Mary Lou Williams had been a favorite of Benny’s since she first appeared on the national scene in 1936 […]. [A]s Goodman warily approached the music of [Charlie] Parker and [Dizzy] Gillespie, he turned to Williams for musical guidance. […] Pianist Mel Powell was the first to introduce the new music to Benny in 1945, and kept him abreast to what was happening around 52nd Street.	”
—Schoenberg

Goodman enjoyed the bebop and cool jazz that was beginning to arrive in the 1940s. When Goodman heard Thelonious Monk, a celebrated pianist and accompanist to bop players Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Kenny Clarke, he remarked, “I like it, I like that very much. I like the piece and I like the way he played it. […] I think he’s got a sense of humor and he’s got some good things there.”

“	Benny had heard this Swedish clarinet player named Stan Hasselgard playing bebop, and he loved it … So he started a bebop band. But after a year and a half, he became frustrated. He eventually reformed his band and went back to playing Fletcher Henderson arrangements. Benny was a swing player and decided to concentrate on what he does best.	”
—Nate Guidry

By 1953, Goodman completely changed his mind about bebop. “Maybe bop has done more to set music back for years than anything […] Basically it’s all wrong. It’s not even knowing the scales. […] Bop was mostly publicity and people figuring angles.”

Forays into classical repertoire

Goodman’s first classical recording dates from April 25, 1938 when he recorded Mozart‘s Clarinet Quintet in A major, K. 581, with the Budapest Quartet. After his bop period, Goodman furthered his interest in classical music written for the clarinet, and frequently met with top classical clarinetists of the day. In 1946, he met Ingolf Dahl, an emigre classical composer on the faculty of the University of Southern California, who was then musical director of the Victor Borge show. They played chamber music together (Brahms,Milhaud, Hindemith, Debussy) and in 1948 Goodman played in the world premiere performance of Dahl’s Concerto a Tre.

In 1949, when he was 40, Goodman decided to study with Reginald Kell, one of the world’s leading classical clarinetists. To do so, he had to change his entire technique: instead of holding the mouthpiece between his front teeth and lower lip, as he had done since he first took a clarinet in hand 30 years earlier, Goodman learned to adjust his embouchure to the use of both lips and even to use new fingering techniques. He had his old finger calluses removed and started to learn how to play his clarinet again—almost from scratch.

Clarinetists all over the world are indebted to Goodman for his being singly responsible for having commissioned many major works of twentieth century chamber music for clarinet and small ensembles as well as compositions for clarinet and symphony orchestra that are now standard repertoire in the field of classical performance. He also gave premiere performances of other works written by leading composers in addition to the pieces he commissioned, namely Contrasts by Béla Bartók, Clarinet Concerto No. 2, Op. 115 byMalcolm Arnold, Derivations for Clarinet and Band by Morton Gould, and Aaron Copland‘s Clarinet Concerto. While Leonard Bernstein‘s Prelude, Fugue, and Riffs was commissioned for Woody Herman‘s big band, it was premiered by Goodman. Woody Herman was the dedicatee (1945) and first performer (1946) of Igor Stravinsky‘s Ebony Concerto, but many years later Stravinsky made another recording, this time with Benny Goodman as the soloist.^[40]

He made a further recording of Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet, in July 1956 with the Boston Symphony String Quartet, at the Berkshire Festival; on the same occasion he also recorded Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A major, K. 622, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Charles Munch. He also recorded the clarinet concertos of Weber and Carl Nielsen.

Other recordings of classical repertoire by Goodman are:

• Premiere Rhapsodie for Clarinet by Claude Debussy
• Clarinet Sonata No. 2 in E flat by Johannes Brahms
• Rondo from Grand Duo Concertant in E flat by Weber, and
• An arrangement by Simeon Bellison of Beethoven‘s Variations on a theme from Mozart’s “Don Giovanni“.

Touring with Armstrong

After forays outside of swing, Goodman started a new band in 1953. According to Donald Clarke, this was not a happy time for Goodman.

Goodman with his band and singer,Peggy Lee, in the film Stage Door Canteen(1943)

“	In 1953 Goodman re-formed his classic band for an expensive tour with Louis Armstrong’s All Stars that turned into a famous disaster. He managed to insult Armstrong at the beginning; then he was appalled at the vaudeville aspects of Louis’s act […] a contradiction of everything Goodman stood for.	”
—Donald Clarke

Movies

Benny Goodman’s band appeared as a specialty act in major musical features, including The Big Broadcast of 1937, Hollywood Hotel(1938), Syncopation (1942), The Powers Girl (1942), Stage Door Canteen (1943), The Gang’s All Here (1943), Sweet and Lowdown (1944) and A Song Is Born (1948). Goodman’s only starring feature was Sweet and Low-Down (1944).

Goodman’s success story was told in the 1955 motion picture The Benny Goodman Story  with Steve Allen and Donna Reed. A Universal-International production, it was a follow up to 1954’s successful The Glenn Miller Story. The screenplay was heavily fictionalized, but the music was the real draw. Many of Goodman’s professional colleagues appear in the film, including Ben Pollack,Gene Krupa, Lionel Hampton and Harry James.

Personality and influence

Goodman was regarded by some as a demanding taskmaster, by others an arrogant and eccentric martinet. Many musicians spoke of “The Ray”,  Goodman’s trademark glare that he bestowed on a musician who failed to perform to his demanding standards. Guitarist Allan Reuss incurred the maestro’s displeasure on one occasion, and Goodman relegated him to the rear of the bandstand, where his contribution would be totally drowned out by the other musicians. Vocalists Anita O’Day and Helen Forrest spoke bitterly of their experiences singing with Goodman.  “The twenty or so months I spent with Benny felt like twenty years,” said Forrest. “When I look back, they seem like a life sentence.” At the same time, there are reports that he privately funded several college educations and was sometimes very generous, though always secretly. When a friend once asked him why, he reportedly said, “Well, if they knew about it, everyone would come to me with their hand out.”

“As far as I’m concerned, what he did in those days—and they were hard days, in 1937—made it possible for Negroes to have their chance in baseball and other fields.”

—Lionel Hampton on Benny Goodman

Goodman is also responsible for a significant step in racial integration in America. In the early 1930s, black and white jazz musicians could not play together in most clubs or concerts. In the Southern states, racial segregation was enforced by the Jim Crow laws. Benny Goodman broke with tradition by hiring Teddy Wilson to play with him and drummer Gene Krupa in the Benny Goodman Trio. In 1936, he added Lionel Hampton on vibes to form the Benny Goodman Quartet; in 1939 he added pioneering jazz guitarist Charlie Christian to his band and small ensembles, who played with him until his death from tuberculosis less than three years later. This integration in music happened ten years before Jackie Robinson became the first black American to enter Major League Baseball. “[Goodman’s] popularity was such that he could remain financially viable without touring the South, where he would have been subject to arrest for violating Jim Crow laws.” According to Jazz by Ken Burns, when someone asked him why he “played with that nigger” (referring to Teddy Wilson), Goodman replied, “I’ll knock you out if you use that word around me again”.

John Hammond and Alice Goodman

One of Benny Goodman’s closest friends off and on, from the 1930s onward was celebrated Columbia records producer John H. Hammond, who influenced Goodman’s move from RCA to the newly created Columbia records in 1939.

Benny Goodman married Hammond’s sister Alice Frances Hammond (1913–1978) on March 14, 1942. They had two daughters, Benjie and Rachel. Alice was previously married to British politician Arthur Duckworth, from whom she obtained a divorce.

Both daughters studied music, though neither was as successful as her father.

Hammond had encouraged Goodman to integrate his band, persuading him to employ pianist Teddy Wilson. But Hammond’s tendency to interfere in the musical affairs of Goodman’s and other bands led to Goodman pulling away from him. In 1953 they had another falling-out during Goodman’s ill-fated tour with Louis Armstrong, which was produced by John Hammond.

Goodman appeared on a 1975 PBS salute to Hammond but remained at a distance. In the 1980s, following the death of Alice Goodman, John Hammond and Benny Goodman, both by then elderly, reconciled. On June 25, 1985, Goodman appeared at Avery Fisher Hall in New York City for “A Tribute to John Hammond”.

Later years

Benny Goodman in concert in Nuremberg, Germany (1971)

After winning numerous polls over the years as best jazz clarinetist, Goodman was inducted into the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame in 1957.

Goodman continued to play on records and in small groups. One exception to this pattern was a collaboration with George Benson in the 1970s. The two met when they taped a PBS salute to John Hammond and re-created some of the famous Goodman-Charlie Christian duets.

Benson later appeared on several tracks of a Goodman album released as “Seven Come Eleven.” In general Goodman continued to play in the swing style he was most known for. He did, however, practice and perform classical clarinet pieces and commissioned compositions for clarinet. Periodically he would organize a new band and play a jazz festival or go on an international tour.

Despite increasing health problems, he continued to play until his death from a heart attack in New York City in 1986 at the age of 77, in his home at Manhattan House, 200 East 66th Street. A longtime resident of Stamford, Connecticut, Benny Goodman is interred in the Long Ridge Cemetery in Stamford. The same year, Goodman was honored with the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.  Benny Goodman’s musical papers were donated to Yale University after his death.

Goodman received honorary doctorates from Union College, University of Illinois, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville,  Bard College, Columbia University, Yale University, and Harvard University.

He is a member of the National Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame in the radio division.

His music was featured in the 2010 documentary Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story, narrated by Academy Award winner Dustin Hoffman.

Lee Wiley

From Wikipedia

Lee Wiley
Born	October 9, 1908 Fort Gibson, Oklahoma, U.S.
Died	December 11, 1975 (aged 67) New York City, New York, U.S.
Spouse(s)	Jess Stacy (1943-1948) Nat Tischenkel (1966-1975; her death)

Lee Wiley (October 9, 1908 – December 11, 1975) was an American jazz singer popular in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s.

Wiley was born in Fort Gibson, Oklahoma.  While still in her early teens, she left home to pursue a singing career with the Leo Reisman band. Her career was temporarily interrupted by a fall while horseback riding. Wiley suffered temporary blindness, but recovered, and at the age of 19 was back with Reisman again, with whom she recorded three songs: “Take It From Me,” “Time On My Hands,” and her own composition, “Got The South In My Soul.” She sang with Paul Whiteman and later, the Casa Loma Orchestra. A collaboration with composer Victor Young resulted in several songs for which Wiley wrote the lyrics, including “Got The South in My Soul” and “Anytime, Anyday, Anywhere,” the latter an R&B hit in the 1950s.

During the early 1930s, Wiley recorded very little, and many sides were rejected:

• Take it From Me (with Leo Reisman’s Orchestra, June 30, 1931, issued)
• Time On My Hands (with Leo Reisman’s Orchestra, October 19, 1931, rejected & October 26, 1931, issued)
• Got The South In My Soul (with Leo Reisman’s Orchestra, June 15, 1932, issued)
• Just So You’ll Remember (with unknown orchestra, January 21, 1933, rejected)
• A Tree Was A Tree (with unknown orchestra, February, 1933, rejected)
• You’re An Old Smoothie (duet with Billy Hughes) (with Victor Young’s Orchestra, January 21, 1933, issued)
• You’ve Got Me Crying Again &
• I Gotta Right to Sing The Blues (with Dorsey Brothers, March 7, 1933, both rejected)
• Let’s Call It A Day (with Dorsey Brothers, April 15, 1933 and May 3, 1933, both rejected)
• Repeal The Blues &
• Easy Come, Easy Go (with Johnny Green’s Orchestra, March 17, 1934, issued)
• Careless Love &
• Motherless Child (with Justin Ring’s? Orchestra, August 13, 1934, issued)
• Hands Across The Table &
• I’ll Follow My Secret Heart (with Victor Young’s? Orchestra, November 26, 1934, issued)
• Mad About The Boy (with Victor Young’s Orchestra, August 25, 1935, rejected)
• What Is Love? &
• I’ve Got You Under My Skin (with Victor Young’s Orchestra, February 10, 1937, issued)

In 1939, Wiley recorded eight Gershwin songs on 78s with a small group for Liberty Music Shops. The set sold well and was followed by 78s dedicated to the music of Cole Porter(1940) and Richard Rodgers & Lorenz Hart (1940 and 1954), Harold Arlen (1943), and 10″ LPs dedicated to the music of Vincent Youmans and Irving Berlin (1951). The players on these recordings included Bunny Berigan, Bud Freeman, Max Kaminsky, Fats Waller, Billy Butterfield, Bobby Hackett, Eddie Condon, Stan Freeman, Cy Walter, and the bandleader Jess Stacy, to whom Wiley was married for a number of years. These influential albums launched the concept of a “songbook” (often featuring lesser-known songs), which was later widely imitated by other singers.

Wiley’s career made a resurgence in 1950 with the much admired ten-inch album Night in Manhattan. In 1954, she opened the very first Newport Jazz Festival accompanied byBobby Hackett. Later in the decade she recorded two of her finest albums, West of the Moon (1956) and A Touch of the Blues (1957). In the 1960s, Wiley retired, although she acted in a 1963 television film, Something About Lee Wiley, which told her life story. The film stimulated interest in the singer. Her last public appearance was a concert in Carnegie Hall in 1972 as part of the New York Jazz Festival, where she was enthusiastically received.

Bob Haggart

From Wikipedia

Robert Sherwood Haggart (March 13, 1914, New York City – December 2, 1998, Venice, Florida) was a dixieland jazz double bass player, composer and arranger. Although he is associated with dixieland he was in fact one of the finest rhythm bassists of the Swing Era.

Haggart was a founder-member of the Bob Crosby Band (1935), arranging and part-composing several of the band’s big successes, including “What’s New?“, “South Rampart Street Parade”, “My Inspiration”, and “Big Noise from Winnetka“.

He remained with the band until 1942. He then worked as a studio musician in New York and recorded with Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman and Ella Fitzgerald; his arrangements can be heard on Ella’s Decca release “Lullabies of Birdland”. During the 1950s, Haggart organised, with Yank Lawson, a regular series of small band recordings and also arranged many of the tunes for Louis Armstrong‘s 1956-7 four-volume LP recreation set.^{[clarification needed]}

Bob Crosby also used this ensemble as the core of many groups, including the band that recorded Haggart’s arrangement of Porgy and Bess (1958). During the late 1960s he played frequently in bands organised by Bob Crosby.

He co-led, with Yank Lawson, The World’s Greatest Jazz Band (1968–1978). From 1978 until shortly before his death, Haggart worked with own groups or as a free-lance musician in several jazz groups and toured all over the world. He wrote a tutor for double bass which has become a standard text.

Irene Taylor

From Wikipedia

Irene Taylor (1906–1988?) was an American singer best known for her recorded work with Paul Whiteman. She was married to singer and bandleader Seger Ellis.

Taylor came from Muskogee, Oklahoma, but seems to have begun her musical career in Dallas. There she made her recording debut for Okeh Records in 1925, resulting in two sides where she is accompanied by local bandleader Jack Gardner. After that Taylor worked for a while with another local band, the Louisiana Ramblers, before going to New York City.

In New York in 1928 Taylor made what is probably her best known and most frequently reissued recording: Mississippi Mud (Victor 21274) with Paul Whiteman‘s orchestra, also featuring Bix Beiderbecke and The Rhythm Boys (including a young Bing Crosby). This was the first Whiteman recording ever to feature a female vocalist. Taylor would work briefly with Whiteman again during the early 1930s, replacing Mildred Bailey who had left the band due to disagreements regarding her salary. During this latter period, Taylor’s recordings with Whiteman included Willow Weep for Me (Victor 24187). This was the second recording ever of this future jazz standard by Ann Ronell and became a hit. She was also the vocalist on one of Whiteman’s hottest 1930’s recordings, “In The Dim Dim Dawning” (Victor 24189).

Otherwise Taylor worked mostly in radio during the 1930s, including regular appearances in Bing Crosby’s radio shows, and seems to have had her main base in Chicago. She also made a few records in her own name, first for Victor Records (which were never issued) and later for Vocalion Records. She also appeared on Broadway and in the Vitaphone short film Listening In where she sang I Ain’t Lazy, I’m Just Dreamin’.

Probably in the 1930s, Taylor married pianist, crooner and bandleader Seger Ellis. She appeared as vocalist on several of her husband’s big band recordings during the late 1930s and early 1940s. Facts about her life after that period are very scarce, and her estimated year of death is based on an interview with Ted Parrino, former pianist in the orchestra of Jack Gardner.

Solo discography

Recording location and date	Title	Author	Issue	Comments
Dallas, c. October 18, 1925	I Did Wanta, But I Don’t Wanta Now	Gardner	Okeh 40527	Accompanied by Jack Gardner’s Orchestra
Dallas, c. October 18, 1925	I Ain’t Thinkin’ ‘Bout You	Gardner	Okeh 40527	Accompanied by Jack Gardner’s Orchestra
Chicago, July 20, 1928	My Castle In The Clouds	–	Victor (unissued)	Accompanied by unknown quintet
Chicago, July 20, 1928	I Must Have That Man	–	Victor (unissued)	Accompanied by unknown quintet
New York City, July 12, 1933	Shadows On The Swanee	Young-Burke-Spina	Vocalion 25003	Dorsey Brothers Orchestra
New York City, July 12, 1933	Don’t Blame Me	–	Vocalion 25003	Dorsey Brothers Orchestra

Taft Jordan

From Wikipedia

Taft Jordan, Aquarium, New York, ca. November 1946

Taft Jordan (February 15, 1915, Florence, South Carolina – December 1, 1981, New Orleans) was an American jazz trumpeter, heavily influenced by Louis Armstrong.

Jordan played early in his career with the Washboard Rhythm Kings before joining Chick Webb‘s orchestra from 1933 to 1942, remaining there after Ella Fitzgerald became its frontwoman. Jordan and Bobby Stark traded duties as the main trumpet soloist in Webb’s orchestra. From 1943 to 1947 he played with Duke Ellington, then with Lucille Dixon at the Savannah Club in New York City from 1949 to 1953. After this he played less often, though he toured with Benny Goodman in 1958, played on Miles Davis‘s Sketches of Spain, and worked with the New York Jazz Repertory Company. He recorded four tunes as a leader in 1935, and led his own band in 1960–61, when he recorded LPs for Mercury, Aamco Records, and Moodsville.

Taft Jordan and The Mob

Jordan recorded 4 titles for ARC (Banner, Melotone, Oriole, Perfect, Romeo) on February 21 and 22, 1935. It was an all-star group consisting of

• Jordan-t
• Ward Silloway-tb
• Johnny Mince-cl
• Elmer Williams-ts
• Teddy Wilson-p
• Bobby Johnson-g
• John Kirby-sb
• Eddie Dougherty-d

Two takes were recorded of “Night Wind”, “If the Moon Turns Green”, “Devil in the Moon”, and “Lousiana Fairy Tale” (all were current commercial pop hits). Take 1 of each were rejected versions with vocals by Jordan. ARC issued the take 2 instrumental versions, which were outstandingly arranged swing.

Charlie Shavers

From Wikipedia

Charlie Shavers
Charlie Shavers, National Studios, ca. May 1947. Photography by William P. Gottlieb.
Background information
Birth name	Charles James Shavers
Born	August 3, 1920 New York City, New York,United States
Died	July 8, 1971 (aged 50) New York City, New York, United States
Genres	Jazz
Instruments	Trumpet

Charles James Shavers (August 3, 1920 – July 8, 1971), known as Charlie Shavers, was an American swing era jazz trumpetplayer who played at one time or another with Dizzy Gillespie, Roy Eldridge, Johnny Dodds, Jimmy Noone, Sidney Bechet, Midge Williams and Billie Holiday. He was also an arranger and composer, and one of his compositions, “Undecided”, is a jazz standard.

Charlie Shavers’ father (a distant relative of Fats Navarro) was from the prominent Shavers family of Key West, Florida, and Charlie was a cousin of heavyweight boxer Earnie Shavers. Born in New York City, he originally took up the piano and banjo before switching to trumpet.  In the mid-thirties, he performed with Tiny Bradshaw and Lucky Millinder. In 1936 he joined John Kirby‘s Sextet as trumpet soloist and arranger (he was only 16 but gave his birthdate as 1917 in order to avoid child labor laws  – many biographies still list this date ). His arrangements and solos with this band contributed greatly towards making it one of the most commercially successful and widely imitated bands of its day. In 1937 he was performing with Midge Williams and her Jazz Jesters. In 1944 he began playing sessions in Raymond Scott‘s CBS staff orchestra. In 1945 he left John Kirby‘s band to join Tommy Dorsey‘s Orchestra, with whom he toured and recorded, off and on, until 1953. During this time he continued to play sessions at CBS, played with theMetronome All-Stars, and made a number of recordings as trumpet soloist with Billie Holiday. From 1953 to 1954 he worked withBenny Goodman, and toured Europe with Norman Granz‘s popular Jazz at the Philharmonic series, where he was always a crowd favorite. He went on to form his own band with Terry Gibbs and Louie Bellson.

Charlie Shavers died from throat cancer in New York in 1971 at the age of 50. His friend Louis Armstrong died while Shavers was on his deathbed, and his last request was that his trumpet mouthpiece be buried with Armstrong in his coffin.

Ambrose

From Wikipedia

Ambrose
Birth name	Benjamin Baruch Ambrose
Born	September 15, 1896 London, England
Origin	New York, New York, United States
Died	June 11, 1971 (aged 74) Leeds, England
Genres	Big band
Occupations	Musician, bandleader
Instruments	Violin
Years active	1916–1971
Notable instruments
Violin

Benjamin Baruch Ambrose (15 September 1896 – 11 June 1971), known professionally as Ambrose or Bert Ambrose, was anEnglish bandleader and violinist. Ambrose became the leader of a highly acclaimed British dance band, Bert Ambrose & His Orchestra, in the 1930s.

Early life

Ambrose was born in the East End of London; his father was a Jewish wool merchant. He began playing the violin while young, and soon after he was taken to the United States by his aunt he began playing professionally — first for Emil Coleman at New York’s Reisenweber’s restaurant, then in the Palais Royal’s big band. After making a success of a stint as bandleader, at the age of twenty he was asked to put together and lead his own fifteen-piece band. After a dispute with his employer, he moved his band to another venue, where they enjoyed considerable popularity.

In 1922, he returned to London, where he was engaged by the Embassy Club to form a seven-piece band. Ambrose stayed at the Embassy for two years, before walking out on his employer in order to take up a much more lucrative job in New York. After a year there, besieged by continual pleas to return from his ex-employer in London, in 1925 he was finally persuaded to go back by a cablefrom the Prince of Wales: “The Embassy needs you. Come back — Edward”.

This time Ambrose stayed at the Embassy Club until 1927. The club had a policy of not allowing radio broadcasts from its premises, however, and this was a major drawback for an ambitious bandleader; this was largely because the fame gained by radio work helped a band to gain recording contracts (Ambrose’s band had been recorded by Columbia Records in 1923, but nothing had come of this). He therefore accepted an offer by The May Fair hotel, with a contract that included broadcasting.

Ambrose stayed at the Mayfair for six years, during which time the band made recordings for Brunswick Records, HMV and Decca Records. He teamed up with Richard Rodgersand Lorenz Hart, and an American harmony song trio, the Hamilton Sisters and Fordyce (aka, Three X Sisters) to record songs “My Heart Stood Still” and other tunes. This period also saw the musical development of the band, partly as a result of Ambrose’s hiring of first-class musicians, including Sylvester Ahola, Ted Heath, Joe Crossman, Joe Jeannette,Bert Read, Joe Brannelly, Dick Escott and trumpeter Max Goldberg.

The 1930s and 1940s

In 1933, Ambrose was asked to accept a cut in pay at the Mayfair; refusing, he went back to the Embassy Club, and after three years there (and a national tour), he rejected American offers and returned to the Mayfair Hotel in 1936. He then went into partnership with Jack Harris (an American bandleader), and in 1937 they bought a club together (Ciro’s Club). For 3 months they even employed Art Tatum  there, some think the greatest jazz pianist who ever lived. Ambrose and Harris alternated performances in Ciro’s until a disagreement led to the rupture of their partnership. Ambrose then worked at the Café de Paris until the outbreak of World War II, when he again went on tour.

His major discovery in the years leading up to the war was the singer Vera Lynn (b. 1917), who sang with his band from 1937 to 1940 and, during the war, became known as the “Forces’ Sweetheart”. Lynn married Harry Lewis, a clarinettist in the band, in 1939. Other singers with the Ambrose band included Sam Browne, Elsie Carlisle, Denny Dennis (who recorded a number of duets with Vera Lynn), and Evelyn Dall. The Ambrose signature tune was When Day Is Done.

After a short period back at the Mayfair Hotel, he retired from performing in 1940 (though he and his orchestra continued to make records for Decca until 1947). Several members of his band became part of the Royal Air Force band, the Squadronaires, during the war. Ambrose’s retirement was not permanent, however, and he formed and toured with the Ambrose Octet, and dabbled in management.

The 1950s and 1960s

In the mid-1950s, despite appearances back in London’s West End and a number of recordings for MGM, Ambrose was — in common with other bandleaders — struggling; rock and roll had arrived. He was forced to start performing in small clubs with casual musicians, and his financial position deteriorated catastrophically. His situation was saved, however, by his discovery of the singer Kathy Kirby (1938–2011), whom he heard singing at the age of sixteen at the Ilford Palais; he started a long relationship with her, and promoted her career.

It was during the recording of one of Kirby’s television programmes (at the Yorkshire Television studios) that Ambrose collapsed, dying later the same night in Leeds General Infirmary. His music was kept alive after his death by, among others, the Radio 2 broadcasters Alan Dell and Malcolm Laycock, the latter continuing to play his records into the 21st century. His records, especially from his many 78RPM discs, still regularly feature on Australian radio 8CCC-FM’s long running nostalgia programme “Get Out Those Old Records” hosted by Rufl.

Ambrose was commemorated in 2005 by a blue plaque unveiled on the May Fair hotel.

Rube Bloom

From Wikipedia

Reuben Bloom (April 24, 1902 – March 30, 1976) was a Jewish American multi-faceted entertainer, and in addition to being a songwriter, pianist, arranger, band leader, recording artist, vocalist, and writer (he wrote several books on piano method).

Life and career

He was born and died in New York City.

During his career, he worked with many well-known performers, including Bix Beiderbecke, Joe Venuti, Ruth Etting, and Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey. He collaborated with a wide number of lyricists, including Johnny Mercer, Ted Koehler, and Mitchell Parish.

During the 20s he wrote many novelty piano solos which are still well regarded today. He recorded for the Aeolian Company’s Duo-Art reproducing piano system various titles including his “Spring Fever”. His first hit came in 1927 with “Soliloquy”; his last was “Here’s to My Lady” in 1952, which he wrote with Johnny Mercer. In 1928, he made a number of records with Joe Venuti’s blue Four for OKeh, including 5 songs he sung, as well as played piano.

Bloom formed and led a number of bands during his career, most notably “Rube Bloom and His Bayou Boys”, which consisted of 3 records made over 3 sessions in 1930 and are considered 6 of the hottest recordings made in the first days of the depression. It was an all-star studio group containing Benny Goodman, Adrian Rollini, Tommy Dorsey andManny Klein). At other times, he played with other bands; an example of this side of his career can be found in his work with Bix Beiderbecke and Frankie Trumbauer in the Sioux City Six, as well as his frequent work with Joe Venuti’s Blue Four.

His song “I Can’t Face the Music” was recorded by Ella Fitzgerald on her 1962 Verve release Rhythm is My Business, in a fabulous swing/big band version with Bill Doggett.

According to some sources, his first name was pronounced like ‘Ruby’ by his friends.

He is buried in Beth David Cemetery in Elmont, New York.

Songs

• “Day In, Day Out” – lyrics by Johnny Mercer
• “Don’t Worry ‘Bout Me” – lyrics by Ted Koehler
• “Fools Rush In (Where Angels Fear to Tread)” – lyrics by Johnny Mercer
• “Give Me the Simple Life” – with Harry Ruby
• “Good-for-Nothin’ Joe” – lyrics by Ted Koehler
• “I Can’t Face the Music” – lyrics by Ted Koehler
• “Maybe You’ll Be There” – lyrics by Sammy Gallop
• “Out in the Cold Again”
• “The Man from the South”
• “Truckin'” (revised as “Ev’rybody’s Twistin'” (Frank Sinatra, 1962)
• “What Goes Up Must Come Down”
• “Mysterious Mose“

Lucille Hegamin

From Wikipedia

Lucille Hegamin
Birth name	Lucille Nelson
Born	November 29, 1894 Macon, Georgia, United States
Died	March 1, 1970 (aged 75) New York, United States
Genres	Blues
Occupations	Singer, entertainer
Years active	1910–1934; 1961–1962

Lucille Nelson Hegamin (November 29, 1894 – March 1, 1970) was an American singer and entertainer, and a pioneer African American blues recording artist.

Life and career

Hegamin was born as Lucille Nelson in Macon, Georgia, United States.  From an early age she sang in local church choirs. By the age of 15 she was touring the US South with the Leonard Harper Minstrel Stock Company.  In 1914 she settled in Chicago, Illinois, where, often billed as “The Georgia Peach”, she worked with Tony Jackson and Jelly Roll Morton before marrying pianist, Bill Hegamin.  She later told a biographer: “I was a cabaret artist in those days, and never had to play theatres, and I sang everything from blues to popular songs, in a jazz style. I think I can say without bragging that I made the “St. Louis Blues” popular in Chicago; this was one of my feature numbers.”  Lucille Hegamin’s stylistic influences included Annette Hanshaw and Ruth Etting.

The Hegamins moved to Los Angeles, California in 1918, then to New York City the following year. Bill Hegamin led his wife’s accompanying band, called the Blue Flame Syncopators; Jimmy Wade was a member of this ensemble.

In November 1920, Hegamin became the second African American blues singer to record, after Mamie Smith.  Hegamin made a series of recordings for the Arto record label through 1922, then a few sides for Black Swan, Lincoln, Paramount and Columbia. From 1922 through late 1926 she recorded for Cameo Records; from this association she was billed as ‘The Cameo Girl’. Like Mamie Smith, Hegamin sang in a lighter, more pop-tune influenced style than the rougher rural-style blues singers such as Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith who became more popular a few years later. Two of her earliest recordings, “The Jazz Me Blues” and “Arkansas Blues” became classic tunes.

On January 20, 1922, she competed in a blues singing contest against Daisy Martin, Alice Leslie Carter and Trixie Smith at the Fifteenth Infantry’s First Band Concert and Dance in New York City. Hegamin placed second to Smith in the contest, which was held at the Manhattan Casino.

In 1926, Hegamin performed in Clarence Williams‘ Review at the Lincoln Theater in New York, then in various reviews in New York and Atlantic City, New Jersey through 1934. In 1929 she appeared on the radio show “Negro Achievement Hour” on WABC, New York.  In 1932 she recorded for Okeh Records.

About 1934 she retired from music as a profession, and worked as a nurse. She came out of retirement to make more records in 1961 and 1962.

Lucille Hegamin died in Harlem Hospital in New York on March 1, 1970,  and was interred in the Cemetery of the Evergreens in Brooklyn, New York.

Rex Stewart

From Wikipedia

Rex Stewart
Rex Stewart with Duke Ellington’s orchestra (1943)
Background information
Birth name	Rex William Stewart
Born	22 February 1907
Origin	Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Died	7 September 1967 (aged 60)
Genres	Jazz
Instruments	cornet
Associated acts	Duke Ellington

Rex Stewart (22 February 1907 – 7 September 1967) was an American jazz cornetist best known for his work with the Duke Ellingtonorchestra.

After stints with Elmer Snowden, Fletcher Henderson, Horace Henderson, McKinney’s Cotton Pickers, and Luis Russell, Stewart joined the Ellington band in 1934, in replacement of Freddie Jenkins. Ellington arranged many of his pieces to showcase Stewart’s half-valve effects, muted sound, and forceful style.

Stewart co-wrote “Boy Meets Horn” and “Morning Glory” while with Ellington, and frequently supervised outside recording sessions by members of the Ellington band. After eleven years Stewart left to lead his own groups – ” little swing bands, that were a perfect setting for his solo playing.”   He also toured Europe and Australia with Jazz at the Philharmonic from 1947 to 1951. From the early 1950s on he worked in radio and television and published highly regarded jazz criticism. The book Jazz Masters of the Thirties  is a selection of his criticism.

Rex also wrote for Playboy, Downbeat and several other print outlets during his life. He lived in upstate New York after purchasing a 100+ year old farmhouse. He hosted a jazz radio program in Troy, New York and owned a small restaurant for a very short time near a drag racing stadium in Vermont. While living in France, he attended the Cordon Bleu school of cooking and dedicated his life to being a fine cook.

Rex moved to Los Angeles, California to be near his three children – Rex Jr., Helena and Regina. His other son Paul Albert Hardy lived in New York City. While in Los Angeles he re-connected to many of the Ellington side-men who lived there and played a lot of “jam” sessions in clubs in the Los Angeles area. Rex was also one of the regular studio musicians seen on the Steve Allen TV show.

Rex Stewart was a vivacious, funny and talented man. He wrote many articles and was considered an expert on the history of jazz.

Victoria Spivey

From Wikipedia

Victoria Spivey
Birth name	Victoria Regina Spivey
Born	October 15, 1906 Houston, Texas, United States
Died	October 3, 1976 (aged 69) New York, United States
Genres	Blues
Occupations	Singer, songwriter
Instruments	Vocals, piano
Labels	Okeh RCA Victor Vocalion Decca Prestige Bluesville Spivey

Victoria Spivey (October 15, 1906 – October 3, 1976)  was an American blues singer and songwriter. During a recording career that spanned forty years, from 1926 to the mid 1960s, she worked with Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Clarence Williams, Luis Russell,Lonnie Johnson, and Bob Dylan  She also performed in vaudeville and clubs, sometimes with her sister, Addie “Sweet Pease” Spivey. Among her compositions are “Black Snake Blues”, “Dope Head Blues” and “Organ Grinder Blues”. In 1962 she initiated her own recording label, Spivey Records.

Life and career

She was born Victoria Regina Spivey in Houston, Texas, United States,  the daughter of Grant and Addie (Smith) Spivey. Her father was a part-time musician and a flagman for the railroad; her mother was a nurse. Her sisters were Addie “Sweet Peas” Spivey (1910–1943), also a singer and musician, who recorded for several major record labels between 1929 and 1937; and Elton Island Spivey (1900–1971), who also followed a professional singing career.

Spivey’s first professional experience was in a family string band led by her father in Houston. After Grant Spivey died, the seven-year-old Victoria played on her own at local parties and, in 1918, was hired to accompany films at the Lincoln Theater in Dallas.  As a teenager, she worked in local bars, nightclubs, and buffet flats, mostly alone, but occasionally with singer-guitarists such as Blind Lemon Jefferson. In 1926, she moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where she was signed by Okeh Records. Her first recording, “Black Snake Blues”, did well, and her association with the record label continued. She made numerous Okeh sides in New York until 1929, then switched to the RCA Victor label. Between 1931 and 1937, more recordings followed on the Vocalion and Decca labels,  and, working out of New York, she maintained an active performance schedule. Spivey’s recorded accompanists included King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Lonnie Johnson, and Red Allen. She recorded many of her own songs, which dwelt on disease, crime and outré sexual images.

The Depression did not put an end to Spivey’s musical career; she found a new outlet for her talent in the year of the crash, when film director King Vidor cast her to play “Missy Rose” in his first sound film, Hallelujah! (1929).  Through the 1930s and 1940s, Spivey continued to work in musical films and stage shows, often with her husband, vaudevilledancer Billy Adams, including the Hellzapoppin’ Revue.

In 1951, Spivey retired from show business to play the pipe organ and lead a church choir, but she returned to secular music in 1961, when she was reunited with an old singing partner, Lonnie Johnson, to appear on four tracks on his Prestige Bluesville album, Idle Hours. The folk music revival of the 1960s gave her further opportunities to make at least a semblance of a comeback. She recorded again for Prestige Bluesville, sharing an album Songs We Taught Your Mother with fellow veterans Alberta Hunter and Lucille Hegamin and began making personal appearances at festivals and clubs.

In 1962, Spivey and jazz historian Len Kunstadt launched Spivey Records, a low-budget label dedicated to blues and related music. They recorded prolifically such performers asSippie Wallace, Lucille Hegamin, Otis Rush, Otis Spann, Willie Dixon, Roosevelt Sykes, Big Joe Turner, Buddy Tate and Hannah Sylvester, as well as newer artists includingLuther Johnson, Brenda Bell, Washboard Doc, Bill Dicey, Robert Ross, Sugar Blue, Paul Oscher, Danny Russo and Larry Johnson.

In March 1962, Bob Dylan contributed harmonica and back-up vocals, accompanying Victoria Spivey and Big Joe Williams on a recording for Spivey Records. The recordings were released on Three Kings And The Queen (Spivey LP 1004) and Kings And The Queen Volume Two (Spivey LP 1014). (Dylan was listed under his own name on the record covers.)  In 1964 Spivey made her only recording with an all-white band: the Connecticut based Easy Riders Jazz Band, led by trombonist Big Bill Bissonnette. It was released first on an LP and later re-released on compact disc.

Spivey married four times; her husbands included Ruben Floyd and Billy Adams.

Victoria Spivey died in New York on October 3, 1976, at the age of 69, from an internal haemorrhage.

Joe Haymes

From Wikipedia

Joseph Lawrence Haymes (10 February 1907 – 10 July 1964) was an American jazz bandleader and arranger.

Born in Marshfield, Missouri, Haymes relocated with his family to Springfield, Missouri, after his railroader father was killed in an accident. Joe attended Greenwood Laboratory School in Springfield and was a drummer in the local Boy Scout Band; as a youth he also learned the piano. Entering Drury College in 1926, he played locally with his own dance band before being hired as arranger by Ted Weems in 1928 and leaving school. Haymes arranged the hit “Piccolo Pete“, among many others, for Weems, setting a new, highly jazz-informed style for the orchestra.

Haymes struck out on his own again in 1930, leading a band in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Billed as “a Ted Weems unit”, Joe continued to write Weems’ arrangements. During 1931 vocal trio The Merry Macs toured with the band. Relocating to New York City by 1932, the Haymes orchestra was briefly one of the country’s hottest dance bands, with a particular knack for jazz novelties and recording on all 3 major labels, but in late 1933 he sold the band to actor-leader Buddy Rogers, beginning a habit of selling orchestras to others.

Early in 1934, Haymes put together a swing group with assistance from arranger Spud Murphy, but after Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey split in 1935, Tommy arranged a deal with Haymes to take over the latter’s group. Haymes himself hired several of Charlie Barnet‘s musicians for a new band, which recorded for ARC from 1935-1937 but was only modestly successful.

Haymes toured as an arranger with Les Brown in 1938, re-formed in 1939, and then found work writing and arranging anonymously for radio. He was briefly inducted into the U.S. Army in 1942, where he served as a medical orderly. On his return, he continued arranging for Hollywood studios from the 1940s into the late 1950s, interrupted by spells with Phil Harris and Johnnie Lee Wills. Haymes’ chief employer during the 50s was Lawrence Welk‘s television show, although he sometimes performed solo in L.A. area piano bars.

Death

About 1960, he relocated to Dallas, Texas, then home to several semi-retired bandleaders (Ted Weems chief among them) who occasionally employed his scoring skills. Never married, Haymes died of heart failure at age 57.

Other

Among the players in Haymes’s orchestras were Johnny Mince, Pee Wee Erwin, Toots Mondello, Chris Griffin, Sterling Bose, Bud Freeman, Walt Yoder, and Lee Castle. He is buried in his native Marshfield, Missouri.

Fred Rich

From Wikipedia

Frederic Efrem “Fred” Rich (January 31, 1898 – September 8, 1956) was a Polish-born American bandleader and composer who was active from the 1920s to the 1950s. Among the famous musicians in his band included the Dorsey Brothers, Joe Venuti, Bunny Berigan and Benny Goodman. In the early 1930s, Elmer Feldkamp was one of his vocalists.

Fred Rich was born in Warsaw, Poland. Rich was a pianist and he formed his own band in the 1920s. His theme songs were “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows” and “So Beats My Heart For You.” Between 1925-1928, he toured Europe. Rich enjoyed a long stay at the famous Waldorf-Astoria in New York City. After this, he began leading studio band that featured many famous musicians. He recorded for Okeh, Columbia, Paramount, Camden and Vocalion and several others, often recording under the names Fred Richards, the Astorites, the Hotel Astor Band (Rich and his band served as their house band for a time in the 1920s) and many others. In the late 1930s, he would become a musical director for various radio stations and in 1942, he moved onto a staff position with United Artists Studios in Hollywood, where he was to remain for most of his career.

Like many prolific leaders of bands and studio groups, most of Rich’s records are typical ordinary dance fare of the era. However, during the period between November 1929 and March 1931, there was a scattering of outstanding hot jazz versions of popular tunes, with notable solos by Bunny Berigan, Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey, Joe Venuti, Eddie Lang, and others. These celebrated recordings include:

• A Peach Of A Pair (October 29, 1930)
• I Got Rhythm (October 29, 1930)
• Cheerful Little Earful (November 19, 1930)
• I’m Tickled Pink With A Blue-Eyed Baby (November 19, 1930)

As “Freddie Rich,” he recorded dozens of popular-title piano rolls in the 1920s for the Aeolian Company, both for its reproducing Duo-Art system and its 88 note Mel-O-Dee label.

In 1945, Rich was badly injured when he suffered a fall. As a result, he suffered from partial paralysis. But despite this, Rich continued to lead studio bands into the 1950s. Fred Rich died on September 8, 1956 in California aged 58 after a long illness.

A pianist, Fred Rich has a number of song credits to his name, including “Blue Tahitian Moonlight,” “Time Will Tell” and “On The Riviera.” He also wrote scores for many movies.

Bob Haring

From Wikipedia

Bob Haring (1896-?) was an American popular music bandleader of the 1920s and early 1930s.

Haring began recording as the music director of the then-new Cameo Records label beginning in 1922 under a plethora of pseudonyms, such as The Caroliners, The Lincoln Dance Orchestra, The Society Night Club Orchestra, King Solomon and His Miners, etc. (Cameo was one of the primary ‘dime store’ labels in the 1920s and Haring’s sessions there were also issued on Plaza/ARC’s other labels, including Romeo, Perfect, Oriole and others.)

In 1925, Haring signed a contract with Brunswick Records. His best recordings were issued on the Brunswick label, one of the three major recordings labels in the 1920s. His first commercial recording for Brunswick was made on May 16, 1925 as the leader of the Regent Club Orchestra. The Regent Club Orchestra focused on playing waltzes. It was at this time that Haring that lush song for which he became famous in the late 1920s. Due to the popularity of his recordings, Haring became the leader of the The Colonial Club Orchestra in May 1926. This orchestra that focused on fox-trot dance music played in an elegant style with the occasional tango and waltz. Later that year, in July 1926, Haring appeared on the label for the first time under his own name as Bob Haring & His Orchestra. In all of these recordings, Haring emphasized a classy society sound by extensively using string instruments, such as violins, to carry the melody. This is especially evident in his elegant waltz recordings, mostly issued as The Regent Club Orchestra.

By April 1929, Haring had been appointed the musical director for the Brunswick recording laboratories in New York City “to supervise musical arrangements in connection with recording.”  Bob Haring continued to record for Brunswick Records until the Warner Bros. took over the company in April 1930 and the subsequent reorganization that took place led to the non-renewal of Haring’s contract in March 1931. Haring then recorded for ARC (Banner, Oriole, Perfect, Romeo) through July, 1931. Haring continued to work in radio, however, until the introduction of swing music drastically changed the public’s taste in music around 1935.

Haring’s discography is difficult to trace, since many of the sides he performed on do not actually list his name. However, several dozen sessions on which Haring led or arranged an orchestra have been catalogued by discographers, mostly falling between 1920 and 1931.

His recordings with The Colonial Club Orchestra and The Regent Club Orchestra for Brunswick were his most popular in terms of sales.

Bunny Berigan

From Wikipedia

Bunny Berigan
Birth name	Roland Bernard Berigan
Born	November 2, 1908 Hilbert, Wisconsin, United States
Died	June 2, 1942 (aged 33) New York City, United States
Genres	Jazz
Occupations	Trumpeter, singer
Instruments	Trumpet
Years active	1930-1942

Roland Bernard “Bunny” Berigan (November 2, 1908 – June 2, 1942) was an American jazz trumpeter who rose to fame during theswing era, but whose career and influence were shortened by a losing battle with alcoholism that ended with his early death at age 33 from cirrhosis. Although he composed some jazz instrumentals like “Chicken and Waffles” and “Blues”, Berigan was best known for his virtuoso jazz trumpeting. His 1937 classic recording “I Can’t Get Started” was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1975.

Early life and career

Berigan was born in Hilbert, Wisconsin,  the son of William Patrick  Berigan and Mary Catherine (Mayme) Schlitzberg, and raised inFox Lake, Wisconsin. A musical child prodigy, having learned the violin and trumpet at an early age, Berigan played in local orchestrasby his mid-teens before joining the successful Hal Kemp orchestra in 1930. Berigan’s first recorded trumpet solos came with the Kemp orchestra, and he was with the unit when they toured England and a few other European countries later in 1930.

Shortly after the Kemp unit returned to the U.S. in late 1930, Berigan, like fellow trumpeter Manny Klein, the Dorsey Brothers and Artie Shaw, became a sought-after studio musician in New York. Fred Rich, Freddy Martin and Ben Selvin were just some conductors who sought his services for record dates. He joined the staff of CBS radio network musicians in early 1931. Berigan recorded his first vocal, “At Your Command,” with Rich that year. From late 1932 through late 1933, Berigan was a member of Paul Whiteman’sorchestra, before playing with Abe Lyman’s band briefly in 1934.

He returned to freelancing in the New York recording studios and working on staff at CBS radio in 1934. He recorded as a sideman on hundreds of commercial records, most notably with the Dorsey Brothers and on Glenn Miller’s earliest recording date as a leader in 1935, playing on “Solo Hop“. At the same time, however, Berigan made an association that began his ascent to fame in his own right: he joined Benny Goodman’s jazz oriented dance band. Legendary jazz talent scout and producer John Hammond, who also became Goodman’s brother-in-law in due course, later wrote that he helped persuade Gene Krupa to re-join Goodman, with whom he’d had an earlier falling-out, by mentioning that Berigan, whom Krupa admired, was already committed to the new ensemble. With Berigan and Krupa both on-board, the Goodman band made the legendary, often disheartening tour that ended with their unexpectedly headline-making stand at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles, the stand often credited with the “formal” launch of the swing era.  Berigan recorded a number of classic solos while with Goodman, including on “King Porter Stomp,” “Sometimes I’m Happy,” and “Blue Skies.”

Fame

Berigan left Goodman to return again to freelancing as a recording and radio musician in Manhattan. During this time (late 1935 and throughout 1936), he began to record regularly under his own name, and continued to back singers such as Bing Crosby, Mildred Bailey, and Billie Holiday. He spend some time with Tommy Dorsey‘s orchestra in late 1936 and early 1937, working as a jazz soloist on Dorsey’s radio program and on several records. His solo on the Dorsey hit recording “Marie” became considered one of his signature performances. In 1937, Berigan assembled a band to record and tour under his name, picking the then-little known Ira Gershwin/Vernon Duke composition, “I Can’t Get Started” as his theme song. Berigan’s bravura trumpet work and curiously attractive vocal made his recorded performance of it for Victor the biggest hit of his career. Berigan modeled his trumpet style in part on Louis Armstrong’s style, and often acknowledged Armstrong as his own idol, but he was no Armstrong clone. He had a trumpet sound that was unique, and very individual jazz ideas. Armstrong, for his part, recognized Berigan’s talents, and praised them both before and after Berigan’s death.

Bandleader

Berigan got the itch to lead his own band full-time and did so from early 1937 until June 1942, with one six-month hiatus in 1940, when he became a sideman in Tommy Dorsey’s band. Some of the records he made with his own bands were equal in quality to the sides he cut with Goodman and Dorsey. But a series of misfortunes as well as Berigan’s alcoholism worked against his financial success as a bandleader. Bunny also began a torrid affair with singer Lee Wiley in 1936, which lasted into 1940. The various stresses of bandleading drove Berigan to drink even more heavily. Nevertheless, musicians considered him an excellent bandleader. Among the notable players who worked in the Berigan band were: drummersBuddy Rich, Dave Tough, George Wettling, Johnny Blowers, and Jack Sperling; alto saxophonists/clarinetistsGus Bivona, Joe Dixon, and Andy Fitzgerald; vocalistsDanny Richards, Ruth Bradley and Kathleen Lane; pianistJoe Bushkin, trombonist/arrangerRay Conniff, trombonist Sonny Lee; bassists Hank Wayland, and Morty Stulmaker, trumpeters Carl“Bama” Warwick, Steve Lipkins, and Les Elgart; tenor saxophonists Georgie Auld,and Don Lodice; and pianist/arrangerJoe Lippman.

Berigan was regularly featured on CBS Radio‘s Saturday Night Swing Club broadcasts from 1936 into 1937. This network radio show helped further popularize jazz as the swing era reached its apogee. For the balance of the 1930s, he sometimes appeared on this program as a guest.

Final years and Death

Berigan’s business troubles drove him to declare bankruptcy in 1939, and shortly after to join Tommy Dorsey as a featured jazz soloist. By September 1940, Berigan briefly led a new small group, but soon reorganized a touring big band. Berigan led moderately successful big bands from the fall of 1940 into early 1942, and was on the comeback trail when his health declined alarmingly. In April 1942, Berigan was hospitalized with pneumonia in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. But his doctors discovered worse news: that cirrhosis had severely damaged his liver. He was advised to stop drinking and stop playing the trumpet for an undetermined length of time. Berigan couldn’t do either. He returned to his band on tour, and played for a few weeks before he returned to New York City and suffered a massive hemorrhage on May 31, 1942. He died two days later in Polyclinic Hospital at age 33. He was survived by his wife, Donna, and his two young daughters, Patricia, 10, and Joyce, 6.

He was buried in St. Mary’s Cemetery south of Fox Lake.

Legacy

His 1937 recording of “I Can’t Get Started” was used in the film Save the Tiger (1973), the Roman Polanski film Chinatown (1974), and a Martin Scorsese short film,The Big Shave(1967). Woody Allen has used Berigan’s music occasionally in his films. In 2010, his Victor recording of “Heigh-Ho” was used on a Gap clothing TV commercial. Berigan’s name was used frequently in the comic strip “Crankshaft.” Fox Lake, Wisconsin has kept his memory and influence alive with an annual Bunny Berigan Jazz Jubilee since the early 1970s. Most of Berigan’s recordings are currently available, and two full-length biographies of him have been published.

Compositions by Bunny Berigan

Bunny Berigan’s compositions (really informally created jam tunes) include “Chicken and Waffles”, released as Decca 18117 in 1935 as by Bunny’s Blue Boys, and “Blues”, released in 1935 as Decca 18116, also with the Blue Boys.

Honors

In 1975, Bunny Berigan’s 1937 recording “I Can’t Get Started” on Victor as VICTOR 25728-A was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

He was inducted in the ASCAP Jazz Wall of Fame in 2008. ^[6]

Mildred Bailey

From Wikipedia

Mildred Bailey
Portrait of Mildred Bailey, Carnegie Hall (?), New York, ca. April 1947
Background information
Born	February 27, 1907 Tekoa, Washington, Washington,United States
Died	December 12, 1951 (age 44) Poughkeepsie, New York, United States
Genres	Jazz
Occupations	Singer
Instruments	Vocals
Associated acts	Red Norvo, Bing Crosby

Mildred Rinker Bailey (February 27, 1907 – December 12, 1951) was a popular and influential American jazz singer during the 1930s, known as “The Queen of Swing”, “The Rockin’ Chair Lady” and “Mrs. Swing”. Some of her best known hits are “It’s So Peaceful in the Country”, “Trust In Me”, “Where Are You”, “I Let A Song Go Out Of My Heart”, “Small Fry”, “Please Be Kind“, “Darn That Dream“, “Rockin’ Chair“, “Blame It On My Last Affair”, and “Says My Heart”.

Biography

Born Mildred Rinker in Tekoa,  Washington, her mother, Josephine, was an enrolled member of the Coeur d’Alene Tribe  and a devout Roman Catholic.  Her father, Charles, played fiddle and called square dances. Her mother played piano every evening after supper and taught Mildred to play and sing. Her brothers were the vocalist and composer Al Rinker, and the lyricist Charles Rinker.

Career

At the age of seventeen, Bailey moved to Seattle and worked as a sheet music demonstrator at Woolworth’s. She married and divorced Ted Bailey, keeping his last name because she thought it sounded more American than Rinker.  With the help of her second husband, Benny Stafford, she became an established blues and jazz singer on the West Coast. According to Gary Giddins‘ book Bing Crosby – A Pocketful of Dreams – The Early Years 1903-1940, in 1925 she secured work for her brother, Al Rinker, and his partnerBing Crosby. Giddins further states that Crosby first heard of Louis Armstrong and other Chicago black jazz records from Bailey’s own record collection. Crosby helped Bailey in turn by introducing her to Paul Whiteman. She sang with Paul Whiteman’s band from 1929 to 1933 (Whiteman had a popular radio program and when Bailey debuted with her version of “Moaning Low” in 1929, public reaction was immediate, although she did not start recording with Whiteman until late 1931).

Her first two records were as uncredited vocalist for an Eddie Lang Orchestra session in 1929 (“What Kind O’ Man Is You?”, an obscure Hoagy Carmichael song that was only issued in the UK) and a 1930 recording of “I Like To Do Things For You” for Frankie Trumbauer. She was Whiteman’s popular female vocalist through 1932 (recording in a smooth crooning style), when she left the band due to salary disagreements. She then recorded a series of records for Brunswick in 1933 (accompanied by The Dorsey Brothers), as well an all-star session with Benny Goodman‘s studio band in 1934 that featured Coleman Hawkins.

In the mid-1930s, she recorded with her third husband Red Norvo. A dynamic couple, they earned the nicknames “Mr. and Mrs. Swing”. During this period (1936–1939) Norvo recorded for Brunswick (with Bailey as primary vocalist) and Bailey recorded her own set of recordings for Vocalion, often with Norvo’s band. Some of her recordings instead featured members of Count Basie‘s band. Despite her divorce from Norvo, she and Red would continue to record together until 1945. Suffering from diabetes and depression (during her adult life Bailey was overweight), she only made a few recordings following World War II.

Mildred Bailey died December 12, 1951, in Poughkeepsie, New York, of heart failure, aged 44, chiefly due to her diabetes. Her ashes were scattered. Red Norvo outlived Bailey by nearly half a century, dying in April 1999, a week after his 91st birthday.

Notable recordings

The following are some of Bailey’s most well-known swing recordings

• “I’d Love To Take Orders From You” (1935)
• “Someday, Sweetheart” (1935)
• “When Day Is Done” (1935)
• “Honeysuckle Rose” (1935)
• “Squeeze Me” (1935)
• “‘Long About Midnight” (1936)
• “Where Are You?” (1937)
• “Rockin’ Chair” (1937)
• “It’s The Natural Thing To Do” (1937)
• “Bob White (Whatcha Gonna Swing Tonight?)” (1937)
• “Thanks for the Memory” (1938)
• “Please Be Kind” (1938)
• “Says My Heart” (1938)
• “Born To Swing” (1938)
• “Darn That Dream” (1939)
• “Love’s A Necessary Thing” (1939)
• “I’m Glad There is You” (1939)
• “I Don’t Stand a Ghost of a Chance with You” (1939)
• “The Lamp Is Low” (1939)

In 1939, Bailey fronted a six-side, mostly blues session as “Mildred Bailey and her Oxford Greys” for Vocalion, which featured a small mixed-race combo of Mary Lou Williams(piano), Floyd Smith (electric guitar), John Williams (bass) and Eddie Dougherty (drums).

Number one hits

In 1938, Bailey had two number one hits with Red Norvo. “Please Be Kind” was number one for two weeks. She also sang lead vocals on “Says My Heart” by Red Norvo and his Orchestra, which was number one for four weeks on the pop charts. “Says My Heart” reached number one during the week of June 18, 1938. Bailey sang lead vocals on “Darn That Dream”, recorded by Benny Goodman and His Orchestra, which reached number one for one week in March, 1940 on the U.S. pop singles chart.

Honors

In 1989, Bailey was inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame.

Daisy Martin

From Wikipedia

Daisy Martin (fl. c.1914–c.1925) was an African American actress and blues singer in the classic female blues style.

She toured America’s eastern and midwestern states in black vaudeville in the 1910s and early 1920s.  In 1914 she appeared in the revue My Friend From Kentucky at the National Theater in Chicago, Illinois.  In 1917 she performed in the musical comedy My People, which also featured Sam Gray and Julia Moody.  In 1920 she appeared at the Strand Theatre in Chicago in the revue Hello 1919.

Martin was one of the first black women to sing blues on recordings when she recorded for the Gennett and Okeh labels in April 1921.  On her first sides, “Royal Garden Blues” and “Spread Yo’ Stuff”, she was accompanied by the Five Jazz Bell Hops, whose identities are unknown. In total she recorded 16 sides, ending with her final session in July 1923.

On January 20, 1922 she competed against Lucille Hegamin, Alice Leslie Carter and the eventual winner Trixie Smith in a blues-singing contest at the Manhattan Casino in New York City.  For this contest, which was a highlight of the Fifteenth Infantry’s First Band Concert and Dance, Noble Sissle was master of ceremonies, and Fiorello la Guardia served as one of the judges.

Blues writer Steve Tracy wrote in 1997 that “Martin is really not one of the better vaudeville blues singers, possessed as she is of a soprano voice with a very stilted vibrato effect”. Few of the players who accompanied her on record have been identified, but the band for one of her sessions included Gus Aiken, Jake Frazier, and Garvin Bushell.

Trixie Smith

From Wikipedia

Trixie Smith
Born	1895
Origin	Atlanta, Georgia, United States
Died	September 21, 1943 (age 48) New York, United States
Genres	Blues
Occupations	Vocalist, actress
Years active	1920s – 1930s
Labels	Black Swan Paramount Decca

Trixie Smith (1895 – September 21, 1943) was an African American blues singer, recording artist, vaudeville entertainer, and actress. She made four dozen recordings.

Biography

Born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, she came from a middle class-background.  She attended Selma University in Alabama before moving to New York around 1915.  Smith worked in minstrel shows and on the TOBA vaudeville circuit, before making her first recordings for the Black Swan label in 1922.

Amongst these were “My Man Rocks Me (With One Steady Roll)” (1922),  written by J. Berni Barbour, of historic interest as the first secular recording to reference the phrase “rock and roll“.  Her record inspired various lyrical elaborations, such as “Rock That Thing” by Lil Johnson and “Rock Me Mama” by Ikey Robinson. Also in 1922, Trixie Smith won first place and a silver cup in a blues singing contest at the Inter-Manhattan Casino in New York, sponsored by dancer Irene Castle, with her song “Trixie’s Blues,” singing against Alice Carter, Daisy Martin and Lucille Hegamin.  She is most remembered for “Railroad Blues,” (1925) a song that featured one of Smith’s most inspired vocal performances on record, and “The World Is Jazz Crazy and So Am I” (1925). Both songs feature Louis Armstrong on cornet. A highly polished performer, her records include several outstanding examples of the blues on which she is accompanied by artists such as James P. Johnson, and Freddie Keppard.  She recorded with Fletcher Henderson‘s Orchestra for Paramount Records in 1924–1925.

As her career as a blues singer waned, mostly she sustained herself by performing in cabaret revues, and starring in musical revues such as New York Revue (1928) and Next Door Neighbors (1928) at the Lincoln Theatre in Harlem.  Smith also appeared in Mae West‘s short-lived 1931 Broadway effort, The Constant Sinner. Two years later, she was elevated to the stage of the Theatre Guild for its production of Louisiana.

She appeared in four movies: God’s Step Children (1938), Swing! (1938), Drums o’ Voodoo (1934), and The Black King (1932). Two of these films were directed by Oscar Micheaux.  She appeared at John H. Hammond‘s “From Spirituals to Swing” concert in 1938, and recorded seven titles during 1938–1939. Most of her later recordings were withSidney Bechet for Decca in 1938. In 1939 she cut “No Good Man” with a band including Red Allen and Barney Bigard.

Trixie Smith died in New York in 1943, after a brief illness, aged 48.

Claude Hopkins

From Wikipedia

Claude Hopkins
Ray Bauduc (drums), Billie Holiday (singing), Claude Hopkins (piano), and Walter Page(double-bass)
Background information
Born	August 24, 1903 Alexandria, Virginia
Died	February 19, 1984 New York City
Genres	Jazz
Occupations	Bandleader
Instruments	Piano
Years active	1924–1984

Claude Driskett Hopkins (August 24, 1903 – February 19, 1984)^[1] was an American jazz stride pianist and bandleader.

Biography

Claude Hopkins was born in Alexandria, Virginia in 1903. Historians differ in respect of the actual date of his birth. His parents were on the faculty of Howard University. A highly talented stride piano player and arranger, he left home at the age of only 21 as a sideman with the Wilbur Sweatman Orchestra but stayed less than a year. In 1925, he left for Europe as the musical director of The Revue Negre which starred Josephine Baker  with Sidney Bechet in the band.

He returned to the USA in 1927 where, based in Washington, he toured the TOBA circuit with The Ginger Snaps Revue before heading once again for NYC where he took over the band of Charlie Skeets. At this time (1932–36), he led a fairly successful Harlem band employing many jazz musicians who were later to become famous in their own right such as Edmond Hall, Jabbo Smith and Vic Dickenson (although it’s worth noting that his records were arranged to feature his piano more than his band). This was his most successful period with long residencies at the Savoy and Roseland ballrooms and at the Cotton Club. In 1937 he took his band on the road with a great deal of success.

He broke up the band in 1940 and used his arranging talents working for several non-jazz band leaders and for CBS. In 1948/9 he led a “novelty” band briefly but took a jazz band into The Cafe Society in 1950. From 1951 up until his death, he remained in NYC working mostly as a sideman with other Dixieland bands playing at festivals and various New York clubs and recording. Often under-rated in later years, he was one of jazz’s most important band leaders and has yet to be given full recognition for his achievements. He died on 19 February 1984, a disillusioned and dispirited man.

As popular as Hopkins’ band was, it never achieved the high level of musical brilliance that Ellington, Henderson, Hines, Basie, Webb or Lunceford achieved. Besides Hopkins’ piano being featured within the band, the high-pitched vocals of Orlando Roberson brought the band a good part of its popularity.

Monette Moore

From Wikipedia

Monette Moore (May 19, 1902, Gainesville, Texas – October 21, 1962, Garden Grove, California) was an American jazz and classic female blues singer. 

Moore was raised in Kansas City. She taught herself piano in her teens, and worked as a theater pianist in Kansas City in the early 1920s.  In 1923–24 she recorded with the Paramount Records label in New York City and Chicago,  and relocated to New York City.  In the 1920s she also worked in Chicago, Dallas and Oklahoma City. She played with Charlie Johnson‘s ensemble at Small’s Paradise, and recorded with him in 1927–28.  Her output from 1923–27 amounts to 44 tunes, some recorded under the name Susie Smith; her sidemen included Tommy Ladnier, Jimmy O’Bryant, Jimmy Blythe, Bob Fuller, Rex Stewart, Bubber Miley, and Elmer Snowden.

In the 1930s, Moore recorded with Fats Waller (1932), filled in for Ethel Waters as an understudy, and sang with Zinky Cohn in Chicago in 1937. She performed at her own club, Monette’s Place, in New York City in 1933.  Around 1940 she sang in New York with Sidney Bechet and Sammy Price, and then moved to Los Angeles in 1942, where she performed often in nightclubs.  She appeared in James P. Johnson‘s revue Sugar Hill (ca. 1949)  and appeared in numerous films in minor roles. Moore recorded again in 1945-47. She played with the Young Men of New Orleans at Disneyland in 1961-62, and died of a heart attack that year.

Josie Miles

From Wikipedia

Josie Miles (c. 1900 – c. 1953–65) was an American vaudeville and blues singer. She was one of the classic female blues singers popular in the 1920s.

She was born in Summerville, South Carolina, United States.  By the early 1920s she was working in New York City, where she appeared in Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle‘s musical comedy Shuffle Along. In 1922 she made her first recordings, for the Black Swan Company, and later recorded for the Gennett, Ajax, Edison, and Banner Records labels. In 1923 she toured the African-American theatre circuit with the Black Swan Troubadours, and performed in New York City in James P. Johnson‘s revue Runnin’ Wild at the Colonial Theatre. In that same year she also performed on WDT Radio in New York City.

According to blues writer Steve Tracy, Josie Miles was characterized by “a light but forceful delivery that was not low-down but was nevertheless convincing.”  Her last recordings date from 1925. After the early 1930s, she devoted herself to church activities in Kansas City, Missouri, where she had settled. She is thought to have died in an automobile accident in the 1950s or 1960s.

Josie Miles has often been credited with the six sides recorded in 1928 by the fiery Missionary Josephine Miles (also issued under the name Evangelist Mary Flowers), although blues historians Paul Oliver  and Chris Smith  believe that the aural evidence does not support this identification.

Blossom Seeley

From Wikipedia

Blossom Seeley
Born	Minnie Guyer July 16, 1891 San Francisco, California
Died	April 17, 1974 (aged 82) New York City, New York
Occupation	Singer, actress, dancer
Years active	1908–1933
Spouse(s)	Joe Kane (1911–1913) Rube Marquard (1913–1920) Benny Fields (1921–1959)

Blossom Seeley (July 16, 1891 – April 17, 1974)  was a singer and entertainer.

Biography

Seeley was born Minnie Guyer, in San Francisco, California, USA. A top vaudeville headliner, she was known as the “Queen of Syncopation” and helped bring jazz and ragtime into the mainstream of American music. She introduced the Shelton Brooks classic “Some of These Days” in vaudeville in 1910, one year before Sophie Tucker recorded it in 1911. Seeley herself was a major recording star with a series of solo records in the 1920s, and her biggest hits included “Way Down Yonder in New Orleans,” “Rose Room,” Irving Berlin‘s “Lazy“, “Yes Sir, That’s My Baby” and her signature song, “Toddling the Todalo.” She was also featured in two 1933 films,Blood Money with Judith Anderson, and Broadway Through a Keyhole with Russ Columbo and Texas Guinan.

Seeley was one half of the vaudeville team of Blossom Seeley and Benny Fields. When they played the Palace Theatre in its Golden Era, they always had the No. 1 spot, even when sharing the bill with such stars as Jack Benny, George Burns and Gracie Allen, andGeorge Jessel. Burns and Allen would remain their closest lifelong friends. In 1928, they filmed one of the very first Vitaphone sound shorts, Blossom Seeley and Benny Fields, in which Blossom introduced the song “Hello, Bluebird“, later re-popularized by Judy Garland in the movie I Could Go On Singing. The story of their marriage and career was made into the movie Somebody Loves Me(1952) with Betty Hutton and Ralph Meeker, which revived their careers and led to a string of TV appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show. Seeley and Fields also recorded three LP albums in the 1950s for the Decca, MGM and Mercury labels. Seeley continued to perform as a solo after Fields’ death in 1959 and was one of the legends who starred on the 1961 CBS special Chicago and All That Jazz. She also sang on the accompanying Verve album, which was her first in stereo. She made two appearances on The Garry Moore Show and sang her version of the Frank Sinatra hit “My Kind of Town” on a 1966 Ed Sullivan Show. Her last TV appearance was withMike Douglas, which he taped at the nursing home where she was living.

Blossom was previously married to, and performed with, Baseball Hall of Famer Rube Marquard of the New York Giants; a book by Noel Hynd detailing their relationship, Marquard and Seeley, was published in 1996.  Seeley died in New York City.

 

Gene Rodemich

From Wikipedia,

Gene Rodemich
Gene Rodemich
Born	April 13, 1890 St Louis, Missouri
Died	February 27, 1934, age 43 New York
Nationality	US
Occupation	band leader, pianist
Spouse(s)	Henrietta Pauk Rodemich (1915-1934, his death)
Signature

Eugene Frederick (Gene) Rodemich (born April 13, 1890, St Louis, Missouri, died February 27, 1934, New York, age 43) was a pianist and orchestra leader, who composed the music for Frank Buck’s first movie, Bring ‘Em Back Alive (1932) .

Early life

Rodemich was born in St. Louis, son of a dentist, Dr. Henry Rodemich, and wife Rose Rodemich. Gene Rodemich began his musical career in and near his home town as a pianist, later becoming conductor of a dance orchestra. He was accompanist for Elsie Janis on several tours, including one in Europe. Before starting in radio in New York, 1929, he had for three years been director and master of ceremonies at the Metropolitan Theatre, Boston.

Later career

Rodemich was musical director of Van Beuren Studios, writing music for animated cartoons. He composed for many of the studio’s other shorts (including six Charlie Chaplin comedies) and for Frank Buck’s first feature-length film, Bring ‘Em Back Alive (1932).  He also conducted during numerous NBC programs and recorded for Brunswick Records.  Singles

Year	Single	US
1920	“Margie”	7
1923	“Wolverine Blues”	7

Death

Rodemich became ill while making a recording with his orchestra, which had been accompanying a National Broadcasting Company program on Sunday nights. He insisted on continuing the recording although he had been stricken with a severe chill. He was taken to the Medical Arts Sanitarium, 57 West Fifty-Seventh Street, and died three days later of lobar pneumonia. He is buried in Kensico Cemetery,  Valhalla, New York. A widow, a son, and a daughter survived him.

Sy Oliver

From Wikipedia

Sy Oliver
Sy Oliver from September 1946
Background information
Birth name	Melvin James Oliver
Born	December 17, 1910 Bentleyville, Pennsylvania, United States
Died	May 28, 1988 (aged 77)
Genres	Bandleader, conductor
Years active	1930s – 1980s
Labels	Decca Records, Columbia,Capitol
Associated acts	Bill Kenny, Frank Sinatra, Jimmie Lunceford

Melvin James “Sy” Oliver (December 17, 1910 in Battle Creek, Michigan – May 28, 1988 in New York City) was a jazz arranger,trumpeter, composer, singer and bandleader.

Life

Sy Oliver was born in Battle Creek, Michigan.  His mother was a piano teacher and his father was a multi-instrumentalist who made a name for himself demonstrating saxophones at a time that instrument was little used outside of marching bands.

Oliver left home at 17 to play with Zack Whyte and his Chocolate Beau Brummels and later with Alphonse Trent.  He sang and played trumpet with these bands, becoming known for his “growling” horn playing.

Oliver arranged and conducted many songs for Ella Fitzgerald from her Decca years. As a composer, one of his most famous songs was T’ain’t What You Do (It’s the Way That You Do It), which he co-wrote with Trummy Young.

In 1933, Oliver joined Jimmie Lunceford‘s band, contributing many hit arrangements for the band, including “My Blue Heaven” and “Ain’t She Sweet”. In 1939, he became one of the first African Americans with a prominent role in a white band when he joined Tommy Dorsey as an arranger, though he ceased playing trumpet at that time. (Fletcher Henderson joined the Benny Goodman orchestra as the arranger in the same year.) He led the transition of the Dorsey band from Dixieland to modern big band. His joining was instrumental in Buddy Rich‘s decision to join Dorsey. His arrangement of “On the Sunny Side of the Street” was a big hit for Dorsey, as were his own compositions “Yes Indeed” (a gospel-jazz tune that was later recorded by Ray Charles), “Opus One,” “The Minor is Muggin’,” “T.D.’s Boogie Woogie,” and “Well, Git It.”

After leaving Dorsey, Oliver continued working as a free-lance arranger and as music director for Decca Records.  One of his more successful efforts as an arranger was the Frank Sinatra album I Remember Tommy, a combined tribute to each man’s former boss.

In later years, up until 1980, he led his own jazz band, for which he took up the trumpet again.

Bertha “Chippie” Hill

From Wikipedia

Bertha “Chippie” Hill
Bertha “Chippie” Hill in New York, between 1946 and 1948. (William P. Gottlieb)
Background information
Born	March 15, 1905 Charleston, South Carolina, United States
Died	May 7, 1950 (aged 45) New York City, New York, United States
Genres	Blues, vaudeville
Occupations	Singer
Years active	1920s – 1950
Labels	Okeh

Bertha “Chippie” Hill (March 15, 1905 – May 7, 1950), was an American blues and vaudeville singer and dancer, best known for her recordings with Louis Armstrong.

Career

Hill was born in Charleston, South Carolina, one of sixteen children,  but in 1915 the family moved to New York. She began her career as a dancer in Harlem, and by 1919 was working with Ethel Waters. At age 14, during a stint at Leroy’s, a noted New York nightclub, Hill was nicknamed “Chippie” because of her young age.  She also performed with Ma Rainey as part of the Rabbit Foot Minstrels, before establishing her own song and dance act and touring on the TOBA circuit in the early 1920s.

She settled in Chicago in about 1925, and worked at various venues with King Oliver‘s Jazz Band. She first recorded in November 1925 for Okeh Records, backed by the cornet player Louis Armstrong and pianist Richard M. Jones, on songs such as “Pratt City Blues”, “Low Land Blues” and “Kid Man Blues” that year, and on “Georgia Man” and “Trouble in Mind” with the same musicians in 1926. She also recorded in 1927, with Lonnie Johnson on the vocal duet, “Hard Times Blues”, plus “Weary Money Blues”, “Tell Me Why” and “Speedway Blues”. In 1928, came the Tampa Red vocal duets, “Hard Times Blues” and “Christmas Man Blues”, and in 1929 with“Scrapper” Blackwell & The Two Roys, with Leroy Carr on piano, the song “Non-skid Tread”.  Hill recorded 23 titles between 1925 to 1929.

In the 1930s she retired from singing to raise her seven children.^[1] Hill staged a comeback in 1946 with Lovie Austin‘s Blues Serenaders, and recorded for Rudi Blesh‘s Circle label. She began appearing on radio and in clubs and concerts in New York, including in 1948 the Carnegie Hall concert with Kid Ory, and she sang at the Paris Jazz Festival, and worked with Art Hodes in Chicago.

She was back again in 1950, when she was run over by a car and killed in New York at the age of 45. She is buried at the Lincoln Cemetery, Blue Island, Cook County, Illinois.^[5]

Tricky Sam Nanton

From Wikipedia

Joe “Tricky Sam” Nanton
From the left: Tricky Sam Nanton, H. Carney, W. Jones. Hurricane Ballroom, April 1943. (Nanton and Jones with a plunger mute).
Background information
Birth name	Joseph Nanton
Born	February 1, 1904
Origin	New York City
Died	July 20, 1946 (aged 42)
Genres	Jazz, Swing
Instruments	trombone
Associated acts	Duke Ellington

Joe “Tricky Sam” Nanton (February 1, 1904 – July 20, 1946) was a famous trombonist with the Duke Ellington Orchestra.

Early life

Nanton was born in New York City and began playing professionally in Washington with bands led by Cliff Jackson and Elmer Snowden. He joined Ellington in 1926.

From 1923 to 1924, he worked with Frazier’s Harmony Five. A year later, he performed with banjoist Elmer Snowden. At age 22, Joe Nanton found his niche in Duke Ellington’s Orchestra when he reluctantly took the place of his friend Charlie Irvis. He remained a member of the orchestra until his early death in 1946. Nanton, along with Lawrence Brown, anchored one of the outstanding jazz trombone sections of the swing era, their different, complementary talents and personalities opening up a wide range of trombone sounds and solos in the early Ellington bands.

The wah-wah

Nanton was one of the great pioneers of the plunger mute. Together with his musical soulmate Bubber Miley on trumpet, Nanton is largely responsible for creating the characteristic Wah-wah sounds copied by many later brass soloists in the swing era. Their highly expressive growl and plunger sounds were the main ingredient in the band’s famous “jungle” sound that evolved during the band’s late 1920s engagement at Harlem‘s “Cotton Club“. After Miley’s premature departure in 1929, Nanton taught Cootie Williams, Miley’s successor, some of the growl and plunger techniques that Miley had used. Williams became a plunger virtuoso in his own right and helped the band retain its distinctive sound.

Many people asked Nanton how he acquired and formulated his unique style and sounds. In 1921, Nanton heard Johnny Dunn playing the trumpet with a plunger, which Nanton realized could be used to similar effect on the trombone.

When Joe Nanton joined the Ellington band, he was eager to solo. Nanton had been playing with the band for several weeks before the jovial alto saxophonist Otto “Toby” Hardwickconvinced Ellington to let him play. According to Barney Bigard, “…he [Joe Nanton] grabbed his plunger. He could use that thing, too. It talked to you. I was sitting there, looking up at him, and every time he’d say ‘wa-wa,’ I was saying ‘wa-wa’ with my mouth, following him all the way through.”

“Tricky Sam”

Sensing Nanton’s impressive manual dexterity the fun-loving Hardwick, ever inclined to tag friends with fitting nicknames, dubbed Nanton “Tricky Sam”: “anything to save himself trouble—he was tricky that way.”

From his early days with the Ellington band, Tricky Sam was featured regularly. But he and Miley worked especially well in combination, often playing in harmony or “playing off each other” (embellishing and developing the musical theme of the preceding soloist into one’s own new musical idea). Nanton and Miley successfully incorporated plunger skills in their playing to evoke moods, people, or images. It was their work together as much as their individual talents that earned Tricky Sam Nanton and Bubber Miley their place as the first musicians widely recognized for their plunger sounds and styles.

The celebrated brass growl effect was vividly described by Duke Ellington’s son, Mercer Ellington:

There are three basic elements in the growl: the sound of the horn, a guttural gargling in the throat, and the actual note that is hummed. The mouth has to be shaped to make the different vowel sounds, and above the singing from the throat, manipulation of the plunger adds the wa-wa accents that give the horn a language. I should add that in the Ellington tradition a straight mute is used in the horn besides a plunger outside, and this results in more pressure. Some players use only the plunger, and then the sound is usually coarser, less piercing, and not as well articulated.

Nanton and Miley gave the Ellington Orchestra the reputation of being one of the “dirtiest” jazz groups. Many listeners were excited by the raunchy, earthy sounds of their growls and mutes. Among the best examples of their style are “East St. Louis Toodle-oo,” “The Blues I Love to Sing,” “Black and Tan Fantasy,” “Goin’ to Town,” and “Doin’ the Voom-Voom.”

While other brass players became adept at growl and plunger techniques, Nanton’s sound was all his own. He developed, in addition to other tricks in his bag, an astonishing “ya-ya” sound with the plunger mute. Like a chef zealously guarding the recipe of a sensational dish, Nanton kept the details of his technique a secret, even from his band mates, until his premature death.

Some ingredients in Nanton’s unique “ya-ya” sound, however, are apparent: inserting a nonpareil trumpet straight mute into the bell, using a large plumber’s plunger outside the bell, and “speaking” into the instrument while playing. This sort of speaking involved changing the cavity of the mouth while silently reproducing different vowel sounds without actually vibrating the vocal cords. By shaping the soft palate to change from “ee” to “ah,” Nanton was able to make his trombone sound like a voice singing “ya.”  His palette of near-vocal sounds was radical for its time and helped produce the unique voicings in Ellington compositions, such as “The Mooche” and “Mood Indigo“.

Death

Nanton died from a stroke  in San Francisco, California on July 20, 1946, while on tour with the Ellington Orchestra. Nanton’s death, the first of an active Ellington musician, was an enormous loss for the Ellington Orchestra. While later trombonists, including Tyree Glenn, Nanton’s replacement, have tried to duplicate Tricky Sam’s plunger techniques, no one has been able to reproduce his legendary style. Nanton had a wide variety of expression, and his intricate techniques were not well documented.

Fortunately, Nanton left behind a legacy of many outstanding recordings (unlike Miley) and a lasting influence on the art of the jazz trombone.

Ragbaby Stephens

From Wikipedia

1918 Photo of Ragbaby Stevens

Joe Stephens, generally known as ‘“Ragbaby” or “Rag Baby Stephens”, (March 3, 1887 – c. 1927) was an early New Orleans dixielandand jazz drummer. (His family name has appeared in print both as “Stephens” and “Stevens“, although the family themselves spelled it with the “ph”). He was the 13th and last child of Philip Stephens (1841–1906) and his wife Catherine Kolb (1843–1913), both natives of Baden-Baden. A number of the Stephens family descendants were professional musicians or band members.

“Ragbaby” was of the best regarded hot drummers with Papa Jack Laine‘s Reliance band in New Orleans in the early years of the 20th century. He left town to get away from personal problems, and became one of the first New Orleans jazz musicians established in Chicago. His telegrams home were responsible for bringing Paul Mares and George Brunies up north. For some years he worked with banjoist/ bandleader Bert Kelly.

In 1918 Kelly brought his “Jass Band”, including Ragbaby, Alcide Nunez, and Tom Brown (trombonist) to New York City to fill in for theOriginal Dixieland Jass Band at Reisenweber’s Cafe. The Kelly band enjoyed success, and was hired to continue playing, alternating with the Original Dixieland, after that band’s return to New York. After the Kelly Jazz Band won greater approval from the crowds at a “Battle of the Bands” Ragbaby found his drum head’s slashed, and he took the next train back to Chicago and never again headed east.

Stephens was a regular on the Chicago jazz scene into the 1920s; early in the decade he was reunited with clarinetist Alcide Nunez playing in the house band at the noted jazz venue (and speakeasy) “Kelly’s Stables”.

Eddie Edwards recalled Rag Baby “was a magnificent drummer…He inspired you.”

His son Joseph Jr. (1909–1974) played jazz at Roma’s Cafe in New Orleans, and his grandson Joseph E. Stephens (1929–2004) was also a musician. Both are buried in New Orleans, Joe Jr. at St. Vincent de Paul Cemetery No. 2 and Joe E. at Jefferson Memorial Gardens.

 

Coon-Sanders Original Nighthawk Orchestra

From Wikipedia

Coon-Sanders Original Nighthawk Orchestra was the first Kansas City jazz band to achieve national recognition, which it acquired through national radio broadcasts. It was founded in 1919, as the Coon-Sanders Novelty Orchestra, by drummer Carleton Coon and pianist Joe Sanders.

Original Band

Coon was born in Rochester, Minnesota in 1893 and his family moved to Lexington, Missouri shortly after his birth. Sanders was born in Kansas in 1896. Sanders was known as “The Old Left Hander” because of his skills at baseball. He gave the game up in the early 1920s to make dance music his career.

The orchestra began broadcasting in 1922 on clear channel station WDAF, which could be received throughout the United States. They were broadcast in performance at theMuehlebach Hotel in Kansas City. They took the name Nighthawks because they broadcast late at night (11:30pm to 1:00am). By 1924 their fan club had 37,000 members. Fans were encouraged to send in requests for songs by letter, telephone or telegram. That move became so popular that Western Union set up a ticker tape between Sanders’ piano and Coon’s drums so the telegrams could be acknowledged during the broadcasts. Their song “Nighthawk Blues” includes the lines: “Tune right in on the radio/Grab a telegram and say ‘Hello’.” In 1925, they recorded the Paul Whiteman and Fred Rose composition “Flamin’ Mamie“.

The group left Kansas City for the first time in 1924 for a three-month engagement in a roadhouse in Chicago. The orchestra moved to Chicago the same year, where Jules Stein used the profits from a tour he booked for them to establish the Music Corporation of America, with the orchestra as its first client. The orchestra moved into the Blackhawk in Chicago in 1926. The members of the orchestra at that time were Joe Richolson and Bob Pope, trumpets; Rex Downing, trombone; Harold Thiell, Joe Thiell and Floyd Estep, saxophones; Joe Sanders, piano; Russ Stout, banjo and guitar; “Pop” Estep, tuba; Carleton Coon, drums. In the following years, the Nighthawks performed at the Blackhawk every winter, doing remote broadcasts over radio station WGN. Their reputation spread coast-to-coast through these broadcasts and the many records they made for Victor. They undertook very successful road tours.

The orchestra later moved to New York City for an 11-month broadcast engagement at the Hotel New Yorker arranged by William S. Paley, who needed a star attraction to induce radio stations to join the Columbia Broadcasting System.

At their peak, each member of the Orchestra owned identical Cord Automobiles, each in a different color with the name of the Orchestra and the owner embossed on the rear. The Orchestra’s popularity showed no signs of abating and their contract with MCA had another 15 years to run in the spring of 1932 when Carleton Coon came down with a jaw infection and died, on May 4.

Joe Sanders attempted to keep the organization going; however, without Coon, the public did not support them. In 1935, he formed his own group and played until the early 1940s when he became a part time orchestra leader and studio musician. In his later years he suffered from failing eyesight and other health problems. He died in 1965 after suffering a stroke.

The Kansas City Public Library acquired the scrapbooks and other memorabilia collected and prepared by Joe Sanders and the information is available to researchers.

Modern Revivals

The Coon Sanders Nighthawks Fans’ Bash is held annually on the weekend following Mothers’ Day in Huntington, West Virginia to remember the great contributions to music made by all the members of the Coon Sanders Nighthawks Orchestra and to play and enjoy the great music of the era. This event has been held annually for 44 years. In 2011, the event featured the West End Jazz Band from Chicago, the Toll House Jazz Band from Columbus Ohio, the Sounds of Dixie from Raleigh North Carolina and the Backyard Dixie Jazz Stompers from Huntington West Virginia. Over the years, such musical notables as Curt Hitch, Bill Rank, Earl Roberts, Doc Ryker, Paul Oconnor, Mike Walbridge, Bob Neighbor, Frank Powers, Bob Lefever, Johnny Haynes, Jimmy and Carrie Mazzy, Moe Klippert, Clyde Austin, Nocky Parker, Fred Woodaman and Spiegle Willcox have attended the event.

Project to Record Modern Performances

Efforts were being made during the summer and fall of 2011 to organize and fund a project to record modern performances of the Coon-Sanders repertoire (as well as performing the music in a series of live concerts). The project was led by Doug Bowles, the Washington DC-based founder of a period big band, the SingCo Rhythm Orchestra.

 

Tom Brown

From Wikipedia

Tom Brown (June 3, 1888 – March 25, 1958), sometimes known by the nickname Red Brown, was an early New Orleans dixieland jazz trombonist. He also played string bassprofessionally.

English: Trombonist Tom Brown (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Tom Brown in the early 1910s

Tom P. Brown was born in Uptown New Orleans, Louisiana. His younger brother Steve Brown also became a prominent professional musician. He played trombone with the bands of Papa Jack Laine and Frank Christian; by 1910 usually worked leading bands under his own name. The band played in a style then locally known as “hot ragtime” or “ratty music”. In early 1915, his band was heard by Vaudeville dancer Joe Frisco who then arranged a job for Brown’s band in Chicago, Illinois.

On May 15, 1915, Tom Brown’s Band from Dixieland opened up at Lamb’s Cafe at Clark & Randolph Streets in Chicago, with Ray Lopez, cornet and manager; Tom Brown, trombone and leader; Gussie Mueller clarinet, Arnold Loyacano piano and string bass; and Billy Lambert on drums. In Chicago Gussie Mueller was hired by bandleader Bert Kelly, and his place was taken by young New Orleans clarinetist Larry Shields.

This band seems to be the first to be popularly referred to as playing “Jazz”, or, as it was spelled early on, “Jass“. According to Brown, once his band started enjoying popularity the local Chicago musicians union began picketing his band of non-union out-of-towners. One picketer’s placards intended to link Brown’s band with the Storyville prostitution district of New Orleans and the implied disreputable low life status; the signs read “Don’t Patronize This Jass Music”. The term “jass” at that time had a sexual connotation. The signs had the opposite of the intended effect; more people came to hear the band out of curiosity as to what “Jass Music” might be and how it could be performed in public. Brown realized the publicity potential and started calling his group “Brown’s Jass Band”. Some recently rediscovered Chicago newspaper advertisements list it as “Brown’s Jab Band” or “Jad Band”, confirming the reminiscences of Ray Lopez that the bandmembers assumed that “Jass” was too rude a word to be printed in the newspapers so they looked in a dictionary for printable words close to it, like “jade”.

Years later, Brown would frequently brag that he led “the first white jazz band” to go up north. Brown’s careful wording implies that he was aware that the Original Creole Orchestra preceded him and that they played jazz.

Tom Brown’s Band enjoyed over four months of success in Chicago before moving to New York City, where it played for four months more before returning to New Orleans in February 1916. Upon arriving home Brown immediately started rounding up another band to go back to Chicago with him. The group again included Larry Shields; at the end of October, Brown agreed to switch clarinetists with the Original Dixieland Jass Band bringing Alcide Nunez into his band. Brown, Nunez and New Orleans drummer Ragbaby Stevens then went to work for Bert Kelly, who brought them to New York where they temporarily replaced the Original Dixieland Jass Band at Reisenweber’s in 1918. Brown started doing freelance recording work with New York dance and novelty bands, then joined the band of Harry Yerkes. At the start of 1920 he was joined in the Yerkes Band by Alcide Nunez.

Tom Brown also played on Vaudeville in the acts of Joe Frisco and Ed Wynn.

About late 1921 Brown returned to Chicago and joined Ray Miller’s Black & White Melody Boys, with whom he made more recordings. During this period he also co-lead a dance band with his brother Steve.

In the mid 1920s he returned home to New Orleans where he played with Johnny Bayersdorffer and Norman Brownlee‘s bands, making a few excellent recordings.

During the Great Depression he supplemented his income from music by repairing radios. He opened up a music shop and a junk shop on Magazine Street. He played string bass in local swing and dance bands. With the revival of interest in traditional jazz he played in various Dixieland bands in the 1950s, notably that of Johnny Wiggs. A local televisionstation thought it would be a good idea to invite Brown and Nick LaRocca to talk about how jazz first spread north from New Orleans, but the show had scaresly started before the two old men got into an argument that turned into a fist-fight.

Tom Brown made his last recording just weeks before his death, his trombone playing apparently not suffering from the fact that he had neither teeth nor dentures at the time. Brown died in New Orleans.

Eddie Edwards

From Wikipedia

Edwin B. Edwards, c. 1921.

Edwin Branford “Eddie” Edwards (May 22, 1891 – April 9, 1963) was an early jazz trombonist, best known for his pioneering recordings with the Original Dixieland Jass Band.

Life and career

Eddie Edwards was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, started playing violin at age 10, and took up trombone in addition at 15.  He played both instruments professionally, including with the bands of Papa Jack Laine and Ernest Giardina. In addition to music Edwards played minor-league baseball and worked as an electrician.

In 1916 he was picked by Alcide Nunez to go to Chicago, Illinois to play trombone with Johnny Stein‘s Jazz Band. With a few changes of personnel this band became the famous Original Dixieland Jazz Band which made the first records of jazz music in 1917.

He left the band after being drafted into the United States Army. The O.D.J.B. replaced him with Emile Christian. Edwards served in the Army from July 1918 to March 1919. After discharge he led a band of his own and worked in the band of Jimmie Durante before returning to the O.D.J.B.

After the breakup the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, Edwards again led his own band in New York City for most of the 1920s. In the early 1930s he retired from music and ran a newspaper stand and worked as a sports coach.

He returned to music when Nick LaRocca reformed the O.D.J.B. in 1936, playing with them until 1938. He played with other bands including O.D.J.B. alumni Larry Shields, Tony Sbarbaro, and J. Russell Robinson in New York into the 1940s. He continued playing professionally irregularly until shortly before his death in New York City in 1963.

Jazz musician Johnny Wiggs said that while he’d heard more sophisticated trombone players, he’d “never heard another trombonist who could give a band the rhythmic punch that Edwards could.”

His composition “Sensation Rag” or “Sensation” was performed at the 1938 landmark Benny Goodman jazz concert at Carnegie Hall released on the album The Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert.

Honors

The ODJB 1917 recording of “Darktown Strutter’s Ball” on Columbia was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2006.