• Home
  • About
    • Doug Ramsey
    • Rifftides
    • Contact
  • Purchase Doug’s Books
    • Poodie James
    • Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond
    • Jazz Matters
    • Other Works
  • AJBlogs
  • ArtsJournal
  • rss

Rifftides

Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

Medium But Well Done

March 19, 2008 by Doug Ramsey

Rifftides reader Charles Landy wrote:

 Enjoy your blog immensely. Bought 3 Rod Levitt LPs on e-bay recently and found them (especially Insight) just as rewarding as you suggested. Have some Billy Byers and some other perhaps (to many jazz fans of recent vintage) lesser known musicians like Pete Rugolo, Tom Talbert, Ralph Burns, Marty Paich, Frank Capp, Nat Pierce, Carl Fontana, Jimmy Gourley, Don Fagerquist and Bob Florence. But would appreciate it if you could devote a blog day or small series to recommending other somewhat obscure but highly enjoyable artists and arrangers like Levitt.

Levitt.jpgMuch of what makes Levitt interesting, of course, is that there is no one like him. Mr. Landy’s list covers arrangers, leaders and soloists, but I take it that “like Levitt” means he is asking about medium-sized groups. Six to eleven pieces allow arrangers freedom that the conventions and sheer size of sixteen-piece bands tend to limit. Medium-sized groups have been important since the beginnings of jazz. For Charles Landy and anyone else interested, I’ll mention a few recordings from various eras and styles, with brief comments, and links to recordings where possible.

“Go ‘Long, Mule” is a logical place to start in a survey of medium-sized groups, an investigation that could lead into dozens of interesting nooks and crannies. Fletcher Henderson organized the prototype of the big bands of the swing era. He eventually had fourteen pieces, but his first recording in the fall of 1923 was with six.
Henderson 2.jpgEight months passed before he expanded to ten men. They included the young avant garde players Coleman Hawkins, Don Redman and Louis Armstrong. All of them and trombonist Charlie Green solo on Redman’s arrangement of “Go ‘Long, Mule” from October, 1924. To hear it, click here. Remastering is far from perfect in the three-CD box set A Study In Frustration: The Fletcher Henderson Story, but it’s the most Henderson available under one roof.

Red Norvo’s all-star nonet date of 1935 established no arranging landmarks, but it brought together a remarkable collection of players–Norvo, Bunny Berigan, Artie Shaw, Chu Berry, Jack Jenney, Teddy Wilson, George Van Eps, Artie Bernstein and Gene Krupa. Among the four pieces from the session is the remarkable “Blues in E-flat” with its masterpiece Norvo xylophone solo and very good choruses from Wilson and Berigan. The Norvo tracks are included in this CD.

In his series of combo recordings for RCA Victor in the late 1930s and early ’40s, Lionel
Hampton.jpgHampton never had fewer than six pieces. He frequently had ten or eleven, and the players were the finest he could attract. Harry James, Dave Matthews, Babe Russin, Jess Stacy and Ziggy Elman–Hampton’s white colleagues from the Benny Goodman band–were likely to team up in the studio with Benny Carter, Johnny Hodges, Herschel Evans, John Kirby and Billy Kyle.
 Hampton’s goal was to produce the best music possible, and he succeeded in dozens of superior examples of small band swing. In the process, like Goodman and Norvo, he pioneered in bringing black and white musicians together. All of the Hampton Victor sessions are in an indispensable new Mosaic box set.

On a scale of orderliness, recordings by Hampton’s medium-sized groups were a degree or two above jam sessions. Duke Ellington’s were another matter. They were almost always led in name by members of his orchestra but, with few exceptions, Ellington did the “writing,” even if it was last-minute studio inventions for the ensembles.
Ellington.jpgWhether the putative leader was Johnny Hodges, Barney Bigard, Cootie Williams or Rex Stewart, the small group sessions had Ellington’s creative earmarks; plenty of opportunities for the soloists in arrangements notable for Ellington’s genius at tonal organization, even in impromptu situations. A pair of two-CD boxes called The Duke’s Men contains ninety-eight recordings made from 1934 to 1939 by medium-sized Ellington units. Some of them were lightweight, aimed at the pop market, but none is less than enjoyable, and they include classics like “Clouds In My Heart,” “The Jeep Is Jumpin’,” “Dooji Wooji” and “Stompy Jones.”

The first nine tracks on Johnny Hodges: Passion Flower are by a seven-piece Ellington group from 1940 and ’41. They are essential to any reasonably serious jazz collection. The players are
Hodges.jpgHodges, Ellington Cootie Williams, Lawrence Brown, Harry Carney, Jimmy Blanton and Sonny Greer. The pieces are triumphs of small-group Ellingtonia: “Day Dream,” “Good Queen Bess,” “That’s The Blues Old Man,” Junior Hop,” Squatty Roo,” “Passion Flower,” “Things Ain’t What They Used To Be” and “Going Out The Back Way.” I can sing along with every note of “Going Out The Back Way.” It was the theme of my first radio program, Teen Talent Time, when I was seventeen. The engineer called it Teen Torture Time. But the theme song was terrific.

In 1946, Woody Herman and his Woodchoppers recorded nine tracks that are glories of the medium-sized oeuvre (I’ve always wanted to use that word). The
Herman.jpgWoodchoppers were a ten-piece unit from Herman’s First Herd: Herman, clarinet and alto sax; Sonny Berman and Shorty Rogers, trumpet; Bill Harris, trombone; Flip Phillips, tenor sax; Red Norvo, vibes; Jimmy Rowles, piano; Billy Bauer, guitar; Chubby Jackson, bass; Don Lamond,drums; arrangements by Ralph Burns, Rogers and Bauer. Because of the popularity of Herman’s band, the horn soloists and Norvo were among the most famous in jazz. Their solos are at a high level on the Woodchoppers tracks, the swing and spirit of the band irresistible, the arrangements ingenious, the execution full of harmonic and rhythmic daring. Rowles solos little, but his profoundly individual approach to accompaniment is vital to the success of these recordings.

“Igor,” “Fan It” and “Lost Weekend” are on a two-disc First Herd set called Blowin’ Up A Storm,” but the only CD collection I can find that has all of the studio Woodchoppers tracks is Mosaic’s The Complete Columbia Recordings of Woody Herman And His Orchestra & Woodchoppers (1945-1947). The other pieces are “Steps,” “Four Men On A Horse,” “Nero’s Conception,” “Pam,” “I Surrender Dear” and “Someday Sweetheart.” The Mosaic box includes alternate takes that allow the listener to hear how the pieces developed as the musicians achieved artistic and sonic balance. This is exquisite music. 

In the next installment, we’ll enter the bebop era and, possibly, get through the 1950s.

Related

Filed Under: Main

Comments

  1. Tom Djll says

    July 29, 2008 at 10:04 pm

    Very nice blog you got here. Thanks and just wanted to add a footnote to the Woodchoppers comments. Mosaic’s set is missing at least one track, a take of I Surrender, Dear, which can be heard on the old Columbia 3-LP set “The Thundering Herds” (CJ44108) — sorry, I don’t have a matrix# to back that up, having sold my LP set 20 years ago (but I still have it on cassette). To my ears, the take missing on the Mosaic set came from the last Woodchoppers session of October 12, 1946.
    It was surprising to encounter that kind of goof from Mosaic, and with such a high-profile release with a big label (Columbia) too. The only other explanation I can offer is that the track on the LP was edited together out of other takes, but Mosaic makes no mention of that possibility.

Doug Ramsey

Doug is a recipient of the lifetime achievement award of the Jazz Journalists Association. He lives in the Pacific Northwest, where he settled following a career in print and broadcast journalism in cities including New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, San Antonio, Cleveland and Washington, DC. His writing about jazz has paralleled his life in journalism... [Read More]

Rifftides

A winner of the Blog Of The Year award of the international Jazz Journalists Association. Rifftides is founded on Doug's conviction that musicians and listeners who embrace and understand jazz have interests that run deep, wide and beyond jazz. Music is its principal concern, but the blog reaches past... Read More...

Subscribe to RiffTides by Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Doug’s Books

Doug's most recent book is a novel, Poodie James. Previously, he published Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond. He is also the author of Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of its Makers. He contributed to The Oxford Companion To Jazz and co-edited Journalism Ethics: Why Change? He is at work on another novel in which, as in Poodie James, music is incidental.

Archives

Recent Comments

  • Rob D on We’re Back: Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s New Trio Album for Sunnyside
  • W. Royal Stokes on We’re Back: Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s New Trio Album for Sunnyside
  • Larry on We’re Back: Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s New Trio Album for Sunnyside
  • Lucille Dolab on We’re Back: Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s New Trio Album for Sunnyside
  • Donna Birchard on We’re Back: Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s New Trio Album for Sunnyside

Doug’s Picks

We’re Back: Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s New Trio Album for Sunnyside

As Rifftides readers have undoubtedly noticed, it has been a long time since we posted. We are creating a new post in hopes  that it will open the way to resumption of frequent reports as part of the artsjournal.com mission to keep you up to date on jazz and other matters. Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s stunning new trio album […]

Recent Listening: The New David Friesen Trio CD

David Friesen Circle 3 Trio: Interaction (Origin) Among the dozens of recent releases that deserve serious attention, a few will get it. Among those those receiving it here is bassist David Friesen’s new album.  From the Portland, Oregon, sinecure in which he thrives when he’s not touring the world, bassist Friesen has been performing at […]

Monday Recommendation: Dominic Miller

Dominic Miller Absinthe (ECM) Guitarist and composer Miller delivers power and subtlety in equal measure. Abetted by producer Manfred Eicher’s canny guidance and ECM’s flawless sound and studio presence, Miller draws on inspiration from painters of France’s impressionist period. His liner essay emphasizes the importance to his musical conception of works by Cezanne, Renoir, Lautrec, […]

Recent Listening: Dave Young And Friends

Dave Young, Lotus Blossom (Modica Music) Young, the bassist praised by Oscar Peterson for his “harmonic simpatico and unerring sense of time” when he was a member of Peterson’s trio, leads seven gifted fellow Canadians. His beautifully recorded bass is the underpinning of a relaxed session in which his swing is a force even during […]

Recent Listening: Jazz Is Of The World

Paolo Fresu, Richard Galliano, Jan Lundgren, Mare Nostrum III (ACT) This third outing by Mare Nostrum continues the international trio’s close collaboration in a series of albums that has enjoyed considerable success. With three exceptions, the compositions in this installment are by the members of Mare Nostrum. It opens with one the French accordionist Galliano […]

Monday Recommendation: Thelonious Monk’s Works In Full

Kimbrough, Robinson, Reid, Drummond: Monk’s Dreams(Sunnyside) The subtitle of this invaluable 6-CD set is The Complete Compositions Of Thelonious Sphere Monk. By complete, Sunnyside means that the box contains six CDs with 70 tunes that Monk wrote beginning in the early years when his music was generally assumed to be an eccentric offshoot of bebop, […]

More Doug's Picks

Blogroll

All About Jazz
JerryJazzMusician
Carol Sloane: SloaneView
Jazz Beyond Jazz: Howard Mandel
The Gig: Nate Chinen
Wonderful World of Louis Armstrong
Don Heckman: The International Review Of Music
Ted Panken: Today is The Question
George Colligan: jazztruth
Brilliant Corners
Jazz Music Blog: Tom Reney
Brubeck Institute
Darcy James Argue
Jazz Profiles: Steve Cerra
Notes On Jazz: Ralph Miriello
Bob Porter: Jazz Etc.
be.jazz
Marc Myers: Jazz Wax
Night Lights
Jason Crane:The Jazz Session
JazzCorner
I Witness
ArtistShare
Jazzportraits
John Robert Brown
Night After Night
Do The Math/The Bad Plus
Prague Jazz
Russian Jazz
Jazz Quotes
Jazz History Online
Lubricity

Personal Jazz Sites
Chris Albertson: Stomp Off
Armin Buettner: Crownpropeller’s Blog
Cyber Jazz Today, John Birchard
Dick Carr’s Big Bands, Ballads & Blues
Donald Clarke’s Music Box
Noal Cohen’s Jazz History
Bill Crow
Easy Does It: Fernando Ortiz de Urbana
Bill Evans Web Pages
Dave Frishberg
Ronan Guilfoyle: Mostly Music
Bill Kirchner
Mike Longo
Jan Lundgren (Friends of)
Willard Jenkins/The Independent Ear
Ken Joslin: Jazz Paintings
Bruno Leicht
Earl MacDonald
Books and CDs: Bill Reed
Marvin Stamm

Tarik Townsend: It’s A Raggy Waltz
Steve Wallace: Jazz, Baseball, Life and Other Ephemera
Jim Wilke’s Jazz Northwest
Jessica Williams

Other Culture Blogs
Terry Teachout
DevraDoWrite
Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise
On An Overgrown Path

Journalism
PressThink: Jay Rosen
Second Draft, Tim Porter
Poynter Online

Related

Return to top of page

an ArtsJournal blog

This blog published under a Creative Commons license

Copyright © 2023 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in