Interracial Jazz Session (#22) Red Norvo and Teddy Wilson

Today, March 31 (1908), is Red Norvo's birthday-an appropriate time to post a session Norvo led that featured pianist Teddy Wilson. Wilson, a widely influential swing pianist, was in the forefront of the desegregation of live jazz.  In 1935, a year after these recordings, he became a member of Benny Goodman's trio with Gene Krupa and then Goodman's quartet when Lionel Hampton was added.

Starting in vaudeville and radio in the 1920's, Norvo was a preeminent marimba and xylophone player who switched to vibes in the 1940's. He had a long career as a leader and sideman, often recording with his wife, singer Mildred Bailey. He was an adventurous player who searched for new sounds throughout his long career, including an interesting early 1950's stint with Charles Mingus.

Trombonist  Jack Jenney was a solid swinger, although more well known for his tone on ballads. It's also interesting to hear Charlie Barnet and Artie Shaw before they became big timers.

These are the group's two sessions:

Red Norvo and his Swing Septet: Jack Jenney, tb / Artie Shaw, cl / Charlie Barnet, ts / Teddy Wilson, p /Bobby Johnson, g / Hank Wayland, sb / Billy Gussak, d / Red Norvo, x. New York, September 26, 1934.

• Old Fashioned Love- Col 3059-D, 35688, DB-5012, MC-5012;
• I Surrender, Dear- Col 2977-D, 35688, DB-5012, MC-5012

Red Norvo and his Swing Septet: Jack Jenney, tb / Artie Shaw, cl / Charlie Barnet, ts / Teddy Wilson, p /Bobby Johnson, g / Hank Wayland, sb / Billy Gussak, d / Red Norvo, x New York, October 4, 1934.

• A Tomboy- Col 2977-D, MC-3031, Par R-2110;
• The Night Is Blue- Col 3026-D, Par R-2088

All entries are from my book “As Long as They Can Blow. Interracial Jazz Recording and Other Jive Before 1935.”

Interracial Recording (#17) Boswells, Bing and Redman

These are some of the heaviest hitters of the day. Bing, everyone knows. The Boswell Sisters were the premiere vocal group of the era. They only recorded between 1925-1936, but were very influential, appearing often on radio and in some films. Redman was an important arranger and reed player, who, after being with Fletcher Henderson, went on to lead his own band.

Boswell Sisters

Don Redman

                                   

This arrangement of "Lawd, You Made The Night Too Long," written by Sam M. Lewis (lyricist) Victor Young (composer), is quite the opus. In a minor key, there are several sections, with intros and segues. It's not the typical Redman arrangement and I could not find who the arranger is, although I speculate it could be composer Victor Young. Strangely, there are several discographies that have no entry for this recording. To add to the oddity, the song is over 5:00 long, which means it was recorded on a 12" disc, instead of the usual 10", probably because of the clout of Young, who was a powerhouse in radio and film, receiving 22 Oscar nominations.

Boswell Sisters and Bing Crosby w. Don Redman and His Orchestra: Don Redman, cl, as, dir: Langston Curl, Sidney de Paris, Shirley Clay, t / Claude Jones, Fred Robinson, Benny Morton, tb / Edward Inge, Rupert Cole, cl, as / Robert Carroll, ts / Horace Henderson, p, a / Talcott Reeves, bj / Bob Ysaguirre, bb / Manzie Johnson, d / The Boswell Sisters, v. /Bing Crosby, v. New York, April 13, 1932.

• Lawd, You Made The Night Too Long: Br 20109, 0107, A-5113, 20097 (Italian), Col SW-290 (Japanese)

All entries are from my book “As Long as They Can Blow. Interracial Jazz Recording and Other Jive Before 1935.”

A Welcome and a Detour

Thanks very much for finding your way here. Please feel free to look around and check out past posts, of which there are many.

I also hope you will visit my Substack, where I've begun to do my posting. Substack is a great platform that really helps writers find their audience.  

I regularly also publish articles in Artsfuse.org and SyncopatedTimes.org. Great publications, well worth your time.

The Worst Labels and Jargon in Jazz

Physicists are forced to concede that they can know either the location or the speed of a particle. They can't know both because the very act of looking changes the particle's behavior. 

The way scientists freeze frame electrons is the way categories have been imposed on every art form. In jazz, categorizing is a lazy shorthand that ignores the mutability of the music-and the musicians. Apparently, critics don't have the time to explain that Player X usually plays Standards and tends to improvise melodically, while player Z plays mostly originals, is less concerned with chord changes and more often plays modally. Instead we say this one is a "smooth jazz" player and that one an "avant-garde" player. Seldom does the fact arise that players change over their lifetimes, passing from one category to another-Grover Washington, Jr. and Donald Byrd, for example. 

Unfortunately, labels seem to have an unlimited shelf life. Once coined and adopted, generations of critics fall back on them and they stick like corroded trumpet valves. I grudgingly acknowledge their existence, but am happy to write about a few that particularly irritate me.

Dixieland Jazz. Cramming the music of the likes of Oliver, Keppard and Bechet into one category is ridiculous anyway. But with the relentlessly tenacious mythology of the Gallant South, the word 'Dixieland' grows especially egregious. The popularity of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band (ODJB) probably provided the impetus for its wide use and god knows their racial views were suspect. I know the phrase was taken up by Bechet and other black musicians early on, but if you say to me "Hey, it was good enough for Louis Armstrong to use," I would say it's probably a case of his understanding that on some occasions, using shorthand could make his life a little easier. Promoters of the phrase "Dixieland revival" latched onto a handy marketing device.

Be Bop. I guess it was good for branding purposes, as such catchphrases are in the world of commerce-Coca Cola, Alka Seltzer, Finger Lickin' Good. But the disparity between the serious nature of the music and the phrase attached to it is palpable. An exception can be made for the trickster Dizzy Gillespie, who was as serious as they come, but who knew how to work wordplay into the music (ooh bop she bam, etc.).

Hard Bop. A ludicrous title. There was no harder bop played-in any sense of the word-than that played by Bird, Diz, Fats Navarro and company. If anything, hard bop took its foot off the pedal more often than Bop.

New Testament and Old Testament Basie bands. I haven't found anyone who knows who pinned these labels on the Basie bands pre and after the early 1950's. Why it stuck, I don't know. I'm not saying that jazz is the enemy of the bible-although it certainly has often been seen this way. Let's just say I believe in the separation of church and the jazz estate.

Cool Jazz. First of all, all jazz is cool, no matter how hot it gets. Second of all, this label is used to differentiate East Coast from West Coast jazz, which is ridiculous. A lot of musicians were burning on the West Coast, while Miles, Gil Evans and company were creating the music specifically called Cool in New York City.

Neo Bop, Post-Bop, Neo-Swing. Putting neo- or post- in front of anything demonstrates a chilling lack of imagination. 

These locutions are now, happily, in the Dust Bin of History:

Licorice stick (for a clarinet). In the film "Song of the Thin Man", I actually heard Keenan Wynn refer to the instrument as a Jew Stick.

Skins/Tubs (for drums), Popsickle Stick (a reed player's reed). 

Hot Lick, Oh, Daddio, Real Gone, Wig Out, Solid Sent, Moldy Fig.

Tacking "-ville" on the end of anything, is, like, hicksville, dullsville, squaresville.

                                               

Smash Arts Akron: New Evidence Unearthed

The Institute

While this is not our first foray into interdisciplinary art exploration, we at the Institute are aware that our preoccupation with novel perspectives on jazz tonsure has left us open to charges of artistic parochialism. Our core mission of advancing jazz historiography remains intact. However, we made the decision to expand our vision and have undertaken an investigation into a phenomenon that has recently come to our attention: Smash Arts Akron. 

We are aware that graduate students in Harvard's Department of Museum Studies have been sifting through and dissecting the work forged in the studios of Smash Arts Akron, but even their rabid attention has failed to unearth a great deal of valuable cross-artistic detritus. Our own research has uncovered evidence of a hitherto unknown musical component of this visionary group. I'm proud to announce our preliminary findings.

The first evidence of an interdisciplinary aspect of the Smash group's opus arose from a close examination of the above photo. Notice that each person in the photo is looking in a different direction. In music, we call this a Polyphonic Grouping and its use has been traced to the early days of multi track recordings in jazz. The woman on the left is holding sheet music and electronic magnification shows watermarks identifying it as the original Dave Lambert vocal chart for the unreleased Gil Evans/Charlie Parker "Bird with Voices" recording.

Close examination of the above clearly shows that the subject of the photo is not drinking, but is blowing into the bottle; further, that he is using the one-handed bi-liter grip first employed by Lester Overholt on a 1928 Red MacKenzie Blue Blowers session. 

The above "objets," which we conjecture were carved by Buddy Bolden's first wife's brother-in-law, were part of a schema used in place of the Western musical notation system of notes, rests, and clefs. The 5-5-5 matrix was an allusion to the 5 square block area of the Treme Dstrict of New Orleans where the system was first developed. We speculate that the tops of the objects represent an nascent form of Tweeting.

The above is the unfortunate aftermath of an impromptu jam session organized by Sol Hurok, 

involving members of Smash Arts Akron and Charles Mingus.  

The complete results of our research are in the process of being peer-reviewed at the Journal of Jazz Epiphenomena and will be released on the final Tzolkin of the Haab.

Q&A with Martin Torgoff

I recently reviewed Martin Torgoff's book Bop Apocalypse; Jazz, Race, The Beats and Drugs. Mr. Torgoff was kind enough to answer a few questions I sent to him via email.

One of the things that jazz people still try to understand is why so many players became heroin addicts in the 40's and 50's, even after it was clear that using junk would not make you the player Bird was. Did your understanding of this change before and after your research? Were you satisfied with the level of understanding you achieved about this question, or does it still seem puzzling? 

Drug use is always a very complex and challenging subject, always made more so by the ideologies and hot buttons contained therein. I find it useful to try and look at it from the vantage point of the concept of set and setting, set being all of the factors and ideas around the drug phenomenon and setting being where it happens. In this case the setting is the jazz culture of the 20th century to 1960, and the set is all of the cultural, racial, social and political currents swirling around it. And beyond that is the human element. The idea that so many of the artists got on to dope because of Bird was only prevalent at the beginning of the heroin scene from '45 to '47--that was when it was a critical factor, but it went so much deeper than that. My research made me realize how the story of jazz and heroin and the aspect of the jazz lifestyle during that time was a story that played out against a whole backdrop that encompassed everything from the mafia's organization of the global heroin trade, policies of the police and the US government, and what happened in Harlem as a result--really the first great modern drug epidemic and an American tragedy. Dizzy Gillespie pointed out that very few in the community of jazz musicians and the larger African American community of that time really understood the implications or ramifications of heroin at first. I learned a tremendous amount but I am still staggered by how these artists managed to produce such a remarkable body of classic American music despite being strung out. It really says a lot about them.

New York City was the center of most of the activity of the book. You spend some time on the San Francisco scene, very little on Central Ave., Los Angeles in general and nothing about activity around Big Sur-all places with a lot of drug use and alternative cultural activity. I was interested in why you didn't write more about that.

What I did in the book to a large degree was simply follow the marijuana. It arrived in New Orleans around 1910, just as jazz was coalescing, so it was a part of the story of jazz from the very beginning. It came up river to Chicago after the closing of Storyville in 1917; over the NY along with Pops and Mezz Mezzrow and also filters down to KC and the clubs during the 30s, and takes flight with swing. I mostly write about what happened in NY because of the culture of vipers at the Savoy and what happened when the early Beats intersected with the jazz scene, and then pick up the story of heroin. Of course this was happening elsewhere as well, as you point out in the case of LA and Central Ave (where Dexter Gordon hailed from). The drug scene in LA was quite robust, which produced Synanon, one of the first recovery communities. 

Homosexuality was addressed, and to some degree at least, validated among the Beats, although much paranoia justifiably still inhered. Among jazz musicians, it seems to have been much more on the down low. At least that is the "common wisdom" and the way Bop Apocalypse basically handles it, which is not to bring it up in the jazz context at all. What's your feeling about this-was the incidence of homosexuality so low it was not worth addressing, or was the taboo about talking about it just more intense? Also, since influence seemed to flow from the jazz world to the Beats and not at all the other way, might there in fact have been some lessening of the taboo because of the Beat influence?

Very interesting question. Beyond the homosexuality of the great Billy Strayhorn and the bisexuality of Billie Holiday, I confess that, like so many others, I know precious little about this in the jazz world of that time. It was such a taboo subject everywhere--so transgressive-- but especially in the black culture of the era. It must have been there, but forever hidden and now buried...Given that atmosphere, it's really quit astounding how open both Ginsberg and Burroughs were about the subject, but that appears to have had little or no impact on attitudes about it in the jazz scene. 

Two of the competing myths in America are: Rugged Individual-Wild West versus the Shining City on a Hill. The first says we should be free to pursue our own lives with little or no government interference. The second says we are members of a body politic, complying with an implied morality associated with the Puritan/Yankee tradition. In the history of drug use and enforcement we see the latter myth clearly dominating. Why do you think that was so?

I believe the prevalent reason was race. The whole regime of drug prohibitionism and the first drug laws were really about containing the "Other", whether ethnic immigrants, African Americans, or Mexicans, bohemians, sexual and cultural libertarians, etc. Fear of race-mixing was behind all of the early drug laws. It's stunning how the story of drugs so perfectly affirms the thesis of historian Richard Hofstadter in his classic essay The Paranoid Trend in American Politics.