• 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...

“Every Tub,” Because…

May 5, 2010 by Doug Ramsey

…because everyone should listen to it now and then.
The first tenor saxophone solo is by Lester Young. The trumpet is Harry Edison. The second tenor solo is by Herchel Evans. Prez has the tag.

Related

Filed Under: Main

Comments

  1. Bruno Leicht says

    May 5, 2010 at 3:47 am

    Yeah, yeah, yeah, Doug!
    This is the pure joy of swing, happy music, it’s a classic. Beside all what’s ingenious at this particular recording, how solos and arrangement go hand in hand, almost as there would have been just this way how it was working out best … besides all that, is there a very, very short moment, a funny one which always strikes me when I’m listening to this track:
    Just a glimpse before minute 3:24 there is this trombone sound, almost like a human voice which seems to burst out for joy, and exaltation. It may have been a “wrong” cue, but to me it sounds like “hoo!”, like: “Yeah! We made it! We are the happiest band in the land!”
    A happy orchestra, with one of the most tragic figures in jazz: Lester Young, who had clearly one of the most creative moments here, and in the recorded history of jazz at all.
    Alone the introduction to the piece, and the following solo includes all ingredients which made Pres the father of the modern tenor sax:
    Relaxed, bouncy phrasing, his false fingering technique (what my late teacher, and mentor Hans Jesse called the “honk-sound”), and the unique lines (not ‘cool’ at all, by the way!) have impressed and influenced so many other tenorists during the 1940’s that Lester rubbed his eyes in bewilderment, saying he felt like walking around, surrounded by mirrors.
    Also “Sweets” Edison’s trumpet solo: This is early modern style. There are some phrases you would find in Lee Morgan’s solos 20 years later. Especially the short fill-in of the trumpet (3:00) sounds like Lee at “Sidewinder”.
    And then comes the undeservedly neglected one, always the 2nd mentioned after the President; and that is Herschel Evans, the ever jumping counterpoint to Lester Young, like it was German decathlete Juergen Hingsen to the Briton Daley Thompson: One couldn’t exist without the other.
    Alas, Herschel died too early, which must have been quite a shock to Lester who certainly missed the beloved tenor battles, and the little, funny arguments between the two: “Hey, Pres, why don’t you play the alto sax? You have an alto sound.” And Lester called him (as he called anybody) ‘Lady’ Herschel.
    And the Count? He directed that bunch of creative individuals with his right little finger: Ping, but with what a swing!
    I forgot to mention “The All-American Rhythm Section”:
    Freddie Green, Walter Page and ‘Papa’ Jo Jones.
    What a tremendous job the three men did here, and on all these Kansas
    City jump tunes. They made most others sound like amateurs. Often copied,
    seldom achieved, as is a famous German saying.
    Glenn Miller, one of the most desperate band leaders regarding his
    rhythm boys, often nodded his head in amazement, and asked his
    friends and colleagues: “Why can’t WE swing like that?!” (Some tried
    to tell him … but alas, he didn’t listen.)

  2. Steve Provizer says

    May 5, 2010 at 1:30 pm

    What a tune. Plus, there’s the bonus of an evocative title/phrase: every tub-that brings us insight into the hard life on the road travelled by these early jazz heroes.
    I wanted to mention, if people aren’t familiar with it, the fantastic version of this tune done by Lambert, Hendricks and Ross in their 1957 “Sing A Song Of Basie” album.

  3. Lou Malerba says

    May 5, 2010 at 2:45 pm

    Always good to stick close to the classics.
    Grazie

  4. Muddy says

    May 5, 2010 at 4:31 pm

    That’s mighty nice. Somehow I managed to never hear this one before. Great comments from Bruno. Thanks.

  5. dave bernard says

    May 10, 2010 at 9:01 am

    I have this on an old Ed Beach ‘Just Jazz’ aircheck featuring Mr. Young, and thought he was saying ‘every tongue.’ Mr. Provizors’ explanation of ‘tub,’ assuming it’s correct, clears up a couple of matters in one post. Bueno!

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