An Hour With Bunny Berigan

The DuPlex Mystery Jazz Hour of 11.2.17 featured the stellar trumpet and vocals of Bunny Berigan. He had great range, power, flexibility and ideas.

LISTEN HERE

PLAYLIST

Roy Bargy "Raisin' the Rent" 1933 on Victor

The Boswell Sister "Everybody Loves My Baby" 1932 on Brunswick

Frankie Trumbauer and his Orchestra "Troubled" 1934 on Victor

Bunny Berigan · Gene Gifford and His Orchestra "Nuthin' But the Blues" 1935 on Victor

Benny Goodman & His Orchestra "Sometimes I'm happy" 1935 on Victor

Benny Goodman & His Orchestra "King Porter Stomp" 1935 on Victor

Glenn Miller Orch w. Berigan "Solo Hop" 1935 on Columbia

Bunny Berigan and his Blue Boys "Chicken and Waffles" 1935 on Decca

Bunny Berigan and His Orchestra "On Your Toes" 1935 on Victor

Bunny Berigan and his Blue Boys "Swing Mr Charlie" 1936 on Brunswick

Bunny Berigan "i Can't Get Started" 1936 on Vocalion

Bunny Berigan and His Orchestra "A Melody From the Sky" 1936 on Vocalion

Bunny Berigan and His Orchestra "Black Bottom" 1937 on Victor

Bunny Berigan and His Orchestra "Prisoner's Song" 1937 on Victor

Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra "Song of India" 1937 on Victor

Bunny Berigan and His Orchestra "Jazz Me Blues" 1939 on Victor

Bunny Berigan and His Orchestra "Ain't She Sweet" 1939 on Victor

Bunny Berigan and His Orchestra "Me and My Melinda" 1942 on Victor

Jazz Re-Shaping Standards

Without jazz, would "standards" be standards? Fact is, jazz musicians took-and continue to take-a body of music rooted in late 19th and early 20th century musical conventions and re-conceive, rejuvenate and adapt them to changing aesthetics. 

I originally took this up in this post, showing how jazz made All The Things You Are a standard. I ran across an interesting website, www.jazzstandards.com, and I'm going to use the vast amount of data they've compiled about jazz standards to expand the concept.

According to that site, these are the top ten most recorded tunes in the jazz canon, along with the year of their composition. [Notice these are all 30's and 40's tunes. In fact, in the top 300, there are only a handful that were written after 1950-but that's another story]. To keep the length of the post down, I'll take the first five of these tunes and post the earliest recordings I can find in the original context and compare them with the earliest versions I can find in the jazz context. 

1. 1930 Body and Soul
2. 1939 All the Things You Are
3. 1935 Summertime
4. 1944 Round Midnight
5. 1935 I Can't Get Started

6. 1937 My FunnyValentine
7. 1942 Lover Man
8. 1930 What Is This Thing Called Love
9. 1933 Yesterdays
10.1946 Stella By Starlight


Body and Soul, written by Johnny Green for Gertrude Lawrence, was recorded by Helen Morgan in the same year it was written. The vocal has a rubato, recitatif quality to it, with plenty of vibrato. It fits comfortably in the stylistic parameters of the era; post-parlor music, with a bit of art song harmony and the heightened emotion of European cabaret. Morgan does the verse (the first section of the song before the chorus), which most jazz versions don't include; unfortunate, from my perspective. 


Louis Armstrong also recorded Body and Soul in 1930. Right away we have the parallel universe of jazz made manifest. The Armstrong version is clearly a dance record, with a steady swing rhythm section. He approaches the tune with some measure of emotional commitment, but he completely displaces the melody rhythmically and his rendition, both vocally and on his horn, opens onto a different world than that represented by Morgan's version.

Tunes From Swing Street

Playing pre-war music from some of the denizens of 52nd St. on the Duplex Mystery Jazz Hour WZBC with Steve Provizer 08/27/2015.

LISTEN HERE.

 Eddie Condon and His Orchestra "The Eel" 1933 on Brunswick 

 Eddie Condon and His Orchestra "Home Cooking"  1933) on Brunswick 

 Eddie Condon and His Orchestra "Tennessee Twilight" 1933 on Columbia 

 Eddie Condon and His Orchestra "Madame Dynamite" 1933) on Columbia 

 Frank Froeba & His Swing Band "The music goes round and round" 1935 on Columbia 

 Louis Prima & His New Orleans Gang "Let's Have a Jubilee" 1934)on Brunswick 

 Louis Prima & His New Orleans Gang "House Rent Party Day" 1934 on Brunswick 

 Stuff Smith And His Onyx Club Boys "Old joe's hittin' the jug" 1936 on Vocalion 

 Stuff Smith And His Onyx Club Boys "Your'e a Viper"  1936 on Vocalion 

 Red McKenzie and his Rhythm Kings "What's the reason I'm Not Pleasin You" 1935 on Vocalion 

 Red McKenzie and his Rhythm Kings "You've Been Taking Lessons in Love" 1935 on Vocalion 

 Wingy Manone & His Orchestra "Isle of Capri" 1935 on Vocalion 

 Wingy Manone & His Orchestra "Nickel in the Slot" 1935 on Okeh 

 Henry Allen And His Orchestra "Every Minute of the Hour" 1936 on Vocalion 

 Henry Allen And His Orchestra "Lost" 1936 on Vocalion 

 Frank Newton & His Uptown Serenaders "You showed me the way 1937 on Variety 

 Frank Newton & His Uptown Serenaders "The Onyx Hop" 1937 on Variety 

 The Three Peppers "Swing Out, Uncle Wilson" 1937 on Variety 

 The Three Peppers "The Duck's Yas Yas Yas" 1937 on Variety 

 Joe Marsala & His Chicagoans "Jazz Me Blues" 1937)on Variety 

 Fats Waller and his Hot Piano "I'm Crazy About My Baby"1931 on Columbia 

 Art Tatum "Tea for Two" 1933 on Brunswick 

 Art Tatum "Sophisticated Lady" 933 on Brunswick 

 Teddy Wilson "Rosetta" 1935 on Brunswick 

 Teddy Wilson Between the devil and the deep blue sea" 1937 on Brunswick 

 Clarence Profit Trio "Don't Leave Me" 1939) on Previously Unissued 

 Maxine Sullivan and Her Orchestra "loch lomond" 1937 on Vocalion 

 Bunny Berigan and His Boys "A Little Bit Later On" 1936 on Vocalion 

 John Kirby and His Orchestra "Can't We Be Friends ?" 1940 on Columbia 

 John Kirby and His Orchestra "Coquette"1940)on Columbia 

 Billie Holiday and Her Orchestra "I Hear Music" 1940 on Okeh 

 Charlie Barnet & His Orchestra "Overheard in a Cocktail Lounge" 1937 on Variety 

 Billie Holiday and Her Orchestra "Practice Makes Perfect" 1940 on Okeh 

 Mildred Bailey and Her Orchestra "More Than You Know" 1936 on Vocalion 

The Codified Jazz Solo

Several improvised solos in the Basie band's "April In Paris" became codified.

Codification: when a solo is played almost exactly the same way on different recordings (or live), or when a recorded solo becomes well enough known to be orchestrated for either a section of the band or for the entire ensemble. You might call riffs 'mini-codifications.' 

Tommy Dorsey band's 1947 version of "Marie" features a well-known solo by Bunny Berigan (died in 1942) arranged for the entire trumpet section. (Starts at 1'36")


Orchestrated homages like "Marie" are well accepted as part of the arrangers art. However, while not quite a dirty little secret, soloists repeating worked out/famous solos is at least a bete noir; seen as not being in the spirit of continuously spontaneous creation that jazz people want to associate with this music. 

Is this the lingering aftershock of the Bop revolution, which moved jazz away from dance music and 'entertainment' into 'art' music?  In fact, the anti-commercialism aspect of jazz mythology predates the boppers by many years. In its 20's form it was a mythology much more driven by white jazz culture than black. i.e. "I have to play with this damned society band to make the bread but as soon as the gig is over I'm gonna go jam all night-hopefully, with some black musicians." (This dovetailed interestingly with the pressure record labels put on white bands to record "sweet" music and black bands to record "hot" even though, in practice, both colors played both kinds). 

That old devil commerciality, it was said, not only forced jazzers to play despised music, the money lust was such that bandleaders forced codified solos on reluctant musicians in order to mine every last gold shard from the vein opened up by a popular recording. 


Many possible areas of exploration open up: the 'hipness' factor in jazz and its place in the larger cultural context; the shifting/evolving relationship between that factor and the desire to please an audience (is a back-turning Miles a possible symbolic center of that shift?); the question of how much variation from melody-or from a previous solo-qualifies a performance as improvisatory. 

I invite readers to submit concrete examples of the process of codification as I have described it-or to cite other ways it has happened. Let's see how far back the process can be traced, examine contexts, compare examples and see what arises for further exploration. Tell me if you agree or disagree with the disreputability I say its reputation has acquired.

One of the Great Codifiers in jazz

You know, you can't write about Louis Armstrong, the man at the very top of the heap, without addressing codification. Give Thomas Brothers' recent book credit for doing that.

Up from the Basement. Or, Lower Register-Philia by Steve Provizer

I was talking with friends about vocalist Johnny Hartman and his justifiably esteemed 1962-63 recording with John Coltrane. Dan said: "Very few things send chills up my spine like his entrance on My One and Only Love. Up out of the basement..."




That got me thinking about other phrases that move dazzlingly up and down and out of the basement. The first two are on I Can't Get Started:

Bunny Berigan (The shift between the basement starting about 3:30 and the stratosphere at about 3:50 is dramatic):