III A. THE JAZZ COMPONENT: THE JAZZ MAKERS
III A1. LOUIS ARMSTRONG
There is no more towering figure in the history of jazz than Louis Armstrong, and
for much of the jazz era, throughout the world, he was America’s best known musical
personality. He virtually recreated jazz with his first recordings in the 1920s, and he
continued to perform for enthusiastic audiences as a musician, singer and entertainer until
his death in 1971. For most Americans it was his infectious smile and his effervescent
singing of the popular song “Hello Dolly!” that lingered longest in their memories,
though he almost matched the success of “Dolly” with his rendition of the Brecht-Weill
song “Mac The Knife.” He appeared in dozens of movies and television specials,
beginning with “sound” shorts from the early 1930s, posing in jungle costumes and
performing in Hollywood’s most artificial stage settings. His musical legacy continues to
define large areas of the jazz experience, and for younger musicians there is still an aura
of awe and respect associated with his name.
In the Archive, however, there is only an extensive documentation of his early
recordings. The reality of Armstrong’s career is that after the breath-taking technical
achievements of his first years he spent the next two decades touring with second-rate
bands performing hundreds of generally unmemorable popular songs. The recordings
settled into a predictable pattern of a trumpet introduction paraphrasing the melody, the
vocal, and a solo chorus which usually ended with his peaking on a high note on the
trumpet. In 1947, following the shift in popularity from large swing bands to small jazz
groups, he launched a new career touring with his “All-Stars” - a small group of featured
artists with their own reputations as jazz soloists. Their show was an unvarying concert
of the most overplayed numbers in their repertoire, presented with the brave panache of a
Las Vegas nightclub review. One of the nights I heard them perform they all trooped off
the stage after the opening choruses of the obligatory drum solo number, and when they
drifted back on stage to finish the piece none of them could remember what they’d been
playing when they started. Louis grinned tirelessly through it all, for comic effect he
peeked down the front of the woman singer’s dress, and at every show he and trombonist
Jack Teagarden, or one of Teagarden’s later replacements, clowned their way through
favorites like “Rocking Chair” as if they’d just heard the songs for the first time. The
tours never seemed to end. Musicians came and went, and the format and the choice of
material felt like something that had been etched in stone. Describing the success of the
shows Armstrong once said something like, “Next year my manager and I have a new
plan for the money. We’re going to burn it in bonfires.”
For many of the younger musicians of the Bop revolution in the 1950s Armstrong
came to be regarded as something of an embarrassment. Miles Davis became so annoyed
with the “darkey” mannerisms that he vilified Armstrong as an Uncle Tom, and only
softened his criticism - after he spent some time with the older man - by declaring, that
“ . . . he Toms from the heart.” Armstrong seemed to be unaffected by any of the
controversy. He had always openly smoked marijuana daily - he was briefly jailed for
possession in the 1930s - and his smile never faltered. For the first half of his long career
marijuana was legal and it was a crime to drink alcohol, and for the last half of his career
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it was marijuana that was illegal and alcohol was no longer a crime. He seemed to accept
the changes, as he accepted most of what was going on in the society around him,
without any noticeable comment. Then in the midst of the struggle for Civil Rights he
made a public decision to stop his endless world tours for the U. S. State Department as a
symbol of American culture. He announced that he would refuse to appear as a
representative of the United States as long as the South maintained its public policies of
racial segregation. For many of his fellow musicians his stand on the civil rights issue
was as important as his creative achievement thirty years before.
Today Armstrong’s reputation still reflects the complexity of his achievement.
Younger musicians like Wynton Marsalis respectfully hum his ground-breaking solo
chorus on “Potato Head Blues” from May, 1927, or his blazing introduction to “West
End Blues” recorded a year later. Trumpet players working in every style of jazz fall
back on his phrasing and his extensions of melodic rhythms. His innovations were so
pervasive that it was necessary for musicians playing instruments as diverse as the piano
and the saxophone to adapt their own style to match what Armstrong had created. At the
same time, for the larger audience he will always be the smiling figure who steps to the
microphone and sings “Hello Dolly!”
THE FIRST RECORDINGS - CHICAGO, 1923
Armstrong, still a mawkish twenty-two year old, was brought from New Orleans
to Chicago by the older New Orleans trumpet player Joe “King” Oliver in 1922. Oliver
had been the younger man’s surrogate father in his difficult adolescence, as well as his
most important influence during his New Orleans musical apprenticeship. Oliver’s
Creole Jazz Band was playing in a popular Chicago cabaret and he decided to fill out the
sound with a second cornetist. The band’s recordings were made under wretched
conditions for Chicago’s “race” labels, but in the middle of the jumble of sound on a
handful of the numbers Armstrong can be dimly heard as he works toward creating a new
melodic style that would transform early jazz. There are several pieces with the famed
double cornet breaks that Oliver and Armstrong improvised on the bandstand, and he
takes his first recorded solo on “Chimes Blues.” The opening measures of the solo are
careful and restrained, but after a few phrases the tone suddenly warms and the solo line
becomes freely melodic. The mature Armstrong was already beginning to emerge.
Listening to the performances today, it is also clear that Oliver was himself a major jazz
figure, even though he was never able to take the decisive step forward that Armstrong
had taken. His majestic solo on “Dippermouth Blues” is copied by every trumpet player
today who performs the piece, and Armstrong himself recreated it for the rest of his
career.
For someone hearing the recordings of the Creole Jazz Band for the first time the
experience can be disconcerting. The recording balance on the acoustic discs is so bad
and the sound is so dim that on some of the sides it is almost impossible to hear what is
going on, except for the brilliant clarities of Dodds’s clarinet lines and the woeful
ineptitude of the trombone player, Honore Dutrey. Oliver is sometimes close to the
recording horn - this was three years before the invention of electrical recordings sometimes he is muted and shuffled off in the background. Armstrong is mostly
inaudible except for his solo and the duet breaks with Oliver, though he can also be heard
playing an ensemble solo with Dodds toward the end of “Froggy Moore.” The “Weather
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Bird Rag” the Oliver band recorded became the vehicle for the stunning duet by
Armstrong and Earl Hines a few years later under the simpler title of “Weather Bird.”
KING OLIVER’S CREOLE JAZZ BAND - 2 LPs, Louis Armstrong and King Oliver
Milestone Records, 1974. Dodd LP 754 a/b
Titles:
Just Gone
Canal Street Blues
Mandy Lee Blues
I’m Going To Wear You Off My Mind
Chimes Blues
Weather Bird Rag
Dipper Mouth Blues
Froggie Moore
Snake Rag
Alligator Hop
Zulu’s Ball
Working Man Blues
Krooked Blues
Mabel’s Dream (two takes)
Southern Stomps (two takes)
Riverside Blues
The set also includes duets by Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton, and titles recorded by
Armstrong in New York with a group called the Red Onion Jazz Babies. These are listed
below.
NEW YORK, 1924-1925
The pianist in Oliver’s band was a young woman from Memphis named Lil Hardin,
and she and Armstrong were married a few months after he joined the group. She was
ambitious for him, and when there was an offer for him to come to New York to join the
band led by the best known of the African American musicians of the period, Fletcher
Henderson, she encouraged him to leave Chicago. She followed him and stayed in New
York for some months, but there wasn’t enough steady work for her as a musician and
she finally returned to Chicago. In New York he worked with Henderson - among other
things polishing his rudimentary music reading skills - and also was available for other
recordings accompanying blues artists and working in smaller combinations. In some of
the early New York dates, in groups put together by pianist Clarence Williams, he
encountered another musician as fiercely individualistic and competitive as he was, the
clarinet and soprano saxophone soloist Sidney Bechet. In all of Armstrong’s career there
were only a handful of moments on record where he was challenged by the imaginative
performance of another musician, as he was in these choruses with Bechet. In the breaks
and solo choruses on the two versions of “Cake Walking Babies From Home,” recorded a
few weeks apart in December, 1924 and January, 1925, Bechet clearly has bragging
rights for the final choruses of the first version, and in the second version Armstrong
comes out alive just by the skin of his teeth. Many musicians in the United States
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breathed a little more freely when Bechet moved permanently to Paris shortly after the
session. His long, productive, and influential career was largely spent in Europe.
The Henderson Orchestra, which was to become the most supple and swinging of
the large jazz groups of the late 1920s, was still fumbling toward its mature style in the
Armstrong years, but his solos already were defining the next jazz era. His assurance and
individuality are immediately obvious in an arrangement like “The Meanest Kind Of
Blues,” his solo on “Mandy Make Up Your Mind” takes the melody into a new rhythmic
dimension, and on “Sugar Foot Stomp” - the new title for Oliver’s “Dippermouth Blues”
- he presents the Oliver solo with Oliver’s assurance and his own developing dimensions
of structure and tone. Armstrong, quite simply, discovered rhythmic possibilities which
no one had explored before in any melody he played, and the rich vocalization of his
tone brought a new expressive dimension into early jazz.
FLETCHER HENDERSON - CD, 1924/1927 Jazz Archives, No. 33, nd. Dodd CD 472
Armstrong appears on the following titles:
Go Long Mule
Copenhagen
Shanghai Shuffle
The Meanest Kind Of Blues
Naughty Man
Everybody Loves My Baby
How Come You Do Me Like You Do?
Prince Of Wails
Mandy Make Up Your Mind
Bye And Bye
Play Me Slow
Alabamy Bound
Money Blues
Sugar Foor Stomp
What-Cha-Call-’Em Blues
T.N.T.
BLUES ACCOMPANIEST AND MEMBER OF SMALL GROUPS
CLARENCE WILLIAMS - CD, The Complete Clarence Williams Sessions,
Vol. 2 - 1923-1925 Hot ‘N Sweet, 1990. Dodd CD 473
Williams was a successful African American musician and composer who was born in
New Orleans, and moved to New York in time to take advantage of the opportunities for
black musicians in the Race Record field in the early 1920s. As Race recording director
for Columbia Records he was responsible for producing singles with blues artists and
younger instrumentalists. Often his sessions featured the singing of his wife, Eva Taylor,
and he supplied his own steady, if uneventful, piano accompaniments.
Armstrong appears on the following titles:
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Texas Moaner Blues (Instrumental)
Accompanying Virginia Liston
Early In The Morning
You’ve Got The Right Key But The Wrong Keyhole
With Eva Taylor, vocal
Of All The Wrongs You Done To Me
Everybody Loves My Baby
Accompanying Margaret Johnson
Papa, Mama’s All Alone Blues
Changeable Daddy Of Mine
Accompanying Sippie Wallace
Baby I Can’t Use You No More
Trouble Everywhere I Roam
With Eva Taylor, vocal
Mandy Make Up Your Mind
I’m A Little Blackbird, Looking For A Bluebird
Cake Walkin’ Babies From Home
Pickin’ On Your Baby
Cast Away
Papa De-Da-Da
RED ONION JAZZ BABIES - LP, included in the set Louis Armstrong and King Oliver
listed above.
This group included most of the musicians working in the Clarence Williams bands at the
same time, but the pianist here was Armstrong’s wife, Lil Hardin Armstrong.
Titles:
Texas Moaner Blues
Of All The Wrongs You’ve Done To Me
Terrible Blues
Santa Claus Blues
Nobody Knows The Way I Feel This Morning
Early Every Morn
Cake Walking Babies From Home (vocal by Alberta Hunter, using the name of
“Josephine Beatty,” and Clarence Todd.
CHICAGO, 1926-1930
For a number of reasons, among them strains on their marriage, Armstrong
returned to Chicago in the fall of 1925 and began one of his richest creative periods. His
wife had secured a contract at the popular Dreamland Ballroom, and she was able to offer
him a sizeable salary to join her. He soon was also appearing as a featured artist with the
pit orchestra at one of the major Southside theaters, as well as playing in a number of
Chicago cabarets with groups led by musicians he admired and respected. None of the
many recordings he had made, however, had been released under his own name, and the
general music public knew very little about him. He was still a name musicians passed
on from one to another. This was to change quickly in the fall of 1925.
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A week after his return to Chicago he played a studio session with a pianist
named Richard M. Jones, accompanying the singer Chippie Hill. Jones, besides his work
as a pianist, was a talent scout for the OKeh Records race label, and he convinced his
company that they should record Armstrong. After some negotiations it was agreed that
the budget for the sessions would be for five musicians, Armstrong would be named as
leader, and his wife, Lil, would be one of the musicians on the dates. To fill out the band
they called three New Orleans friends who were also working in Chicago, trombonist Kid
Ory, clarinetist Johnny Dodds, who had been with them in the Creole Jazz Band two
years before, and banjoist Johnny St. Cyr. All of them were associated with other groups
and they were involved with their own recording careers so there was never any idea that
they were creating a working band. As Armstrong said later the sessions were “. . . just a
gig to us.” Although they never performed together in public, Louis Armstrong and his
Hot Five, as they were called on the record labels, turned jazz upside down. The rhythm
section of piano and banjo was doggedly stiff, and already Armstrong had expanded the
role of the cornet so that Dodds sometimes had to struggle to find space around him, but
with Armstrong’s vocals and soaring cornet solos, including the first “scat” vocal in the
song “Heebie Jeebies,” when Armstrong - who later pretended that he had dropped the
lyric sheet for the song - filled out the chorus with raw clumps of sound, jazz had its first
major African American star.
The group was so successful that they continued to do studio sessions, and two
more musicians, drummer Baby Dodds, Johnny’s brother, and tuba player Pete Briggs,
were added to turn the smaller band into the Hot Seven. It was with the Hot Seven that
Armstrong created the immortal “Potato Head Blues” solo in May, 1927. By the end of
the year, however, his marriage to Lil was breaking up, and Armstrong, who had
switched from cornet to the brighter sound of the trumpet, had simply outgrown the lusty
New Orleans-style ensemble of the original group. In June, 1928 the Hot Five recorded
again, but with new members, and the band’s title was eventually changed to The Savoy
Ballroom Five. Most of the new musicians were less individually talented than Ory or
Dodds, but the pianist, Earl Hines, was Armstrong’s equal, and their interaction brought
the group to a new level. Their duet, piano and trumpet alone, on “Weather Bird,” was
the second time that another musician had pushed Armstrong to his limit, and it was with
Hines that he created the brilliant opening cadenza to “West End Blues.”
LOUIS ARMSTRONG - LP, The Hot Fives, Volume 1 Columbia, 1988. Dodd LP 755
Titles:
My Heart
(Yes!) I’m In The Barrel
Gut Bucket Blues
Come Back, Sweet Papa
Georgia Grind
Heebie Jeebies
Cornet Chop Suey
Oriental Strut
You’re Next
Muskrat Ramble
Don’t Forget To Mess Around
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I’m Gonna Gitcha
Droppin’ Shucks
Who’Sit
King Of The Zulus
Big Fat Ma And Skinny Pa
LOUIS ARMSTRONG - LP, The Hot Fives and Hot Sevens, Volume 11 Columbia, 1988.
Dodd LP 756
Titles:
Lonesome Blues
Sweet Little Papa
Jazz Lips
Skid-Dat-De-Dat
Big Butter And Egg Man
Sunset Cafe Stomp
You Made Me Love You
Irish Black Bottom
The Hot Seven Recordings
Willie The Weeper
Wild Man Blues
Alligator Crawl
Potato Head Blues
Melancholy
Weary Blues
Twelfth Street Rag
Keyhole Blues
LOUIS ARMSTRONG - LP, The Hot Fives and Hot Sevens, Volume 111 Columbia,
1988. Dodd LP 757
Titles:
The Hot Seven
S.O.L. Blues
Gully Low Blues
That’s When I’ll Come Back To You
The Hot Five
Put ‘Em Down Blues
Ory’s Creole Trombone
The Last Time
Struttin’ With Some Barbeque
Got No Blues
Once In A While
Blues guitarist Lonnie Johnson is added to the group
I’m Not Rough
Hotter Than That
Savoy Blues
The Hot Five, or Savoy Ballroom Five, with Earl Hines
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Fireworks
Skip The Gutter
A Monday Date
Don’t Jive Me
LOUIS ARMSTRONG - LP, The Louis Armstrong Story, Volume 3 Louis Armstrong and
Earl Hines Columbia, nd. Dodd LP 758
The Savoy Ballroom Five
Titles: Basin Street Blues
Weather Bird
No, Papa, No
Muggles
St. James Infirmary
Tight Like This
West End Blues
Skip The Gutter
Two Deuces
Sugar Foot Strut
Squeeze Me
Don’t Jive Me
(“Muggles” was musicians’ slang for marijuana cigarets.)
THE 1930S
This selection is representative of Armstrong’s many sessions during the
Depression years. The music scene was changing rapidly, and with the rise of the great
swing orchestras and their exciting soloists his role had become more and more that of an
entertainer, rather than a jazz innovator. He made his first trips to Europe, and thanks to
a camera team in Copenhagen, Denmark, we have a documentary of his playing with his
own band in 1933. Most of the musicians were competent, and many younger
instrumentalists passed through the band on their way to important careers, among them
pianist Teddy Wilson and drummer Chick Webb. The show they presented, however,
was entirely Armstrong, his trumpet and his singing.
LOUIS ARMSTRONG - 2 LPs, Young Louis Armstrong 1932-1933 Bluebird, 1977.
Dodd LP 759a/b
Titles:
That’s My Home
Hobo You Can’t Ride This Train
I Hate To Leave You Now
You’ll Wish You’d Never Been Born
Medley - When You’re Smiling, St, James Infirmary, Dinah
You Rascal You
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Sleepy Time Down South
I’ve Got The World On A String
I Gotta Right To Sing The Blues
Hustlin’ And Bustlin’ For Baby
Sittin’ In The Dark
High Society
He’s A Son Of The South
Some Sweet Day
Basin Street Blues
Honey Do
Snow Ball
Mahogany Hall Stomp
Swing You Cats
Honey Don’t You Love Me Anymore
Mississippi Basin
Laughin’ Louie
Tomorrow Night
Dusky Stevedore
There’s A Cabin In The Pines
Mighty River
Sweet Sue, Just You
I Wonder Who
St. Louis Blues
Don’t Play Me Cheap
That’s My Home
I Hate To Leave You Now
THE ALL STARS YEARS and A MUSICAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY
The changing economic climate after the war, linked with shifts in the nation’s
musical tastes, made it difficult for any of the major swing era stars to continue to pay
salaries for fifteen to twenty musicians, as well as the expenses for their continual
traveling and one-night engagements. Following the success of their first engagement in
1947 Armstrong’s new small group, Louis Armstrong and his All Stars, became a
permanent fixture in the world of popular American entertainment. Over their long years
of touring the All Stars went through a wide variety of musicians, and their recordings
appeared under many different names. The earliest of the groups was truly an all-star
band, with Jack Teagarden playing trombone, Earl Hines, piano, and Barney Bigard, long
a featured soloist with Duke Ellington, on clarinet. I first heard them during their
opening weeks at Billy Berg’s Night Club in Hollywood, where the appearances had
been widely reported in the national press and on network radio. Each set was a long
series of solos by the featured artists, but there was so much excitement at seeing
Armstrong working again in a small group that the critics revelled in the experience.
As the band continued its perpetual touring, and the original featured artists were
replaced with sturdy back-up musicians like trombonist Trummy Young, clarinetists
Edmond Hall, or Joe Darensbourg, pianist Billy Kyle and a succession of bass players
and drummers, some of the old criticisms of Armstrong surfaced again. His producer
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was now Milt Gabler, the same man who was trying to find some kind of contemporary
sound for Billie Holiday. Like Armstrong she was recording for the Decca label. The
Autobiography, which Armstrong recorded over a period of several months in the mid1950s, was an unexpected, ambitious contrast to the more commercial recordings he was
doing at the same time. In his notes to the set Satchmo: A Musical Autobiography, Peter
Vacher wrote that Gabler “ . . . may have conceived the project as an answer to Louis’s
critics. Too many commentators were inclined to write off Armstrong as something of a
spent force, worn out by the endless grind of tours and one-nighters, shackled to a routine
which made creativity impossible. Others spoke of Armstrong as an ‘Uncle Tom,’
claiming that his on-stage antics and personal style were, in some way, demeaning to
blacks. Whatever Gabler’s original motivation, the quality of Armstrong’s performance
soon gave the lie to these criticisms, whether musical or personal. The trumpeter rises
magnificently to the challenges involved, revisiting his old repertoire with vigour and
sensitivity, playing with sustained flair and at times producing improvisations whose
quality exceeds those of the original.”
The three CD set of the Autobiography that has been assembled from these Gabler
sessions in 1956 and 1957, and augmented with live recordings featuring the original All
Stars, is a startling achievement. It is an in-depth recreation of a thirty year musical
career, beginning with compositions Armstrong recorded with King Oliver and concludes
with the latest songs he was performing with the current band. He introduces each of the
numbers with his reminiscences about the circumstances of its original recording, and
then he performs it again with one of the many permutations of the All Stars represented.
The playing is often as exciting as the writer of the album notes suggests, and there is no
finer summary of these decisive moments of the Armstrong years than these triumphant
recordings
LOUIS ARMSTRONG - 3 CDS, Satchmo: A Musical Autobiography Jazz Unlimited,
1993. Dodd CD 474 Vol. 1-3
Volume 1
Dippermouth Blues
Canal Street Blues
High Society
Frog-I-More Rag
Of All The Wrongs You’ve Done To Me
Everybody Loves My Baby
Mandy Make Up Your Mind
See See Rider
Reckless Blues
Courthouse Blues
Trouble In Mind
New Orleans Function
Gut Bucket Blues
Cornet Chop Suey
Heebie Jeebies
Georgia Grind
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Muskrat Ramble
King Of The Zulues
Volume 2
Snag It
Wild Man Blues
Potato Head Blues
Weary Blues
Gully Low Blues
Struttin’ With Some Barbecue
Hotter Than That
Two Deuces
My Monday Date
Basin Street Blues
Knockin’ A Jug
I Can’t Give You Anything But Love
Mahogany Hall Stomp
Some Of These Days
When You’re Smiling
Song Of The Islands
Volume 3
I Can’t Believe That You’re In Love With Me
Dear Old Southland
Exactly Like You
If I Could Be With You
Boy And Soul
Memories Of You
You Rascal
When It’s Sleepy Time Down South
I Surrender Dear
Them There Eyes
Lazy River
Georgia On My Mind
That’s My Home
Hobo, You Can’t Ride This Train
On The Sunny Side Of The Street
THE ALL-STARS
LOUIS ARMSTRONG - CD, Masters of Jazz, Vol. 1 Storyville Records, 1987.
Dodd CD 475
The date of the concert on this CD is August 1, 1962, which means it is two years before
the release of “Hello Dolly!”, which gave Armstrong his first Number One hit single.
His other popular hits are included, however; “Mack The Knife,” “Blueberry Hill,” and
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“La Vie En Rose.” This is a complete show by the All-Stars, with the usual blend of
parody and humor, along with Armstrong’s always impressive trumpet choruses and his
characteristic singing.
Titles:
When It’s Sleepy Time Down South
Indiana
Give Me A Kiss To Build A Dream On
The Bucket’s Got A Hole In It
Mack The Knife
Blueberry Hill
When The Saints
Ole Miss
Tiger Rag
High Society Calypso
C’Est Si Bon
La Vie En Rose
The Faithful Hussar
When It’s Sleepy Time Down South
LOUIS ARMSTRONG - CD, The Gold Collection Fine Tune, 1997. Dodd CD 476
This is a budget compilation of material from the All Stars’ later years of touring. None
of the players are identified, though from the sound it is probably Trummy Young on
trombone, and either Edmond Hall or Barney Bigard on clarinet. The drummer could be
Barrett Deems, “The World’s Fastest Drummer,” who stayed with the tour for years, or
Danny Barcelona. The group’s regular vocalist Velma Middleton sings the rushed 75
second version of “Bill Bailey.” Most of the standard favorites are included, and the
large audiences obviously love every minute of it.
Titles:
I Love Jazz
Ole Miss
Sweet Georgia Brown
Mack The Knife
When It’s Sleepy Time Down South
Mahogany Hall Stomp
Rocking Chair
Indiana
Tiger Rag
Hello Dolly!
Cabaret
St. James Infirmary (mislabeled. The take is actually another version of “Ole
Miss”)
Bill Bailey
When The Saints Go Marching In
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See also Armstrong’s accompaniments to other classic women blues artists, among them
Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, in the Blues section of the Archive.
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III A. THE JAZZ COMPONENT: THE JAZZ MAKERS
III A2. BIX BEIDERBECKE
Leon “Bix” Beiderbecke, the younger son of a conservative German American
family in the small midwestern city of Davenport, Iowa, is a classic tragic figure of the
1920s - a supremely gifted musician who became an idol for hundreds of younger jazz
performers, both white and black, even though he was only in his early twenties himself
when his recordings created a new jazz standard. Louis Armstrong, who was about the
same age and first heard him play in New York City in 1924, said that Beiderbecke was
the only one he heard who took his playing as seriously as he did himself. At the same
time, Beiderbecke was unable to handle his success and to find some psychological
defense against his own family’s dismissal of everything he achieved as a jazz artist. As
he became more and more popular he struggled helplessly against a paralyzing addiction
to alcohol. He became the featured jazz soloist with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, the
most commercially successful jazz orchestra of the 1920s, but a few years ago when
copies of original Whiteman arrangements were found, someone noticed in the scores
that before Beiderbecke was to take a solo one of the other trumpet players had written,
“Wake Bix.” Whiteman was forced to hospitalize him for alcohol abuse and Beiderbecke
was living alone in a shabby apartment in a New York suburb when he died in the
summer of 1931 at the age of 28. When a friend and fellow musician Eddie Condon was
asked what caused his death Condon shrugged and said, “Bix died of everything.”
Beiderbecke’s career lasted only a few brief years, and he sometimes struggled
against the limitations of the musical situations where he found himself, but the
joyousness of his playing left its imprint on hundreds of artists who bought or listened to
his records. At the end of the century, as jazz has virtually ceased to have any major role
in the contemporary world of popular music, it is still the lyric freedom of Beiderbecke’s
cornet that is the model for thousands of professional and semi-professional musicians
playing in traditional and main stream jazz groups everywhere in the world. In the early
1970s I was driving on a back road in northern Sweden, and I stopped at a country gas
station to ask for directions. When I located the mechanic in the repair garage he had the
radio tuned to a station that was playing Beiderbecke’s recording of “Royal Garden
Blues.” It is impossible to know what kind of career Beiderbecke might have had if
alcohol and exhaustion hadn’t taken their toll. He had begun composing for the piano,
and his first recorded solo, “In A Mist,” was as enthusiastically admired and imitated as
his early cornet playing. One of his cornet solos, on “Singin’ The Blues,” had already
been copied by dozens of young musicians, and it was recreated and recorded,
transcribed note for note, by ambitious white bands and black swing orchestras
everywhere in America.
The various compilations of Beiderbecke’s music that are in the Archive represent
a virtually complete collection of every one of his recordings, although it is complicated
to sort through the titles and place them in the context of his career. Like many of the
best known musicians of the period he took part in many studio sessions under the names
of different leaders, and generally there were no personnel listings made at the time to
clarify who was playing. There are still wrangling disputes over Beiderbecke’s presence
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on some of the more obscure titles included in the compilations, although his tone and
attack in the best known recordings - some of them released under the name “Bix and his
Gang” - are unmistakable.
For many musicians it was Beiderbecke’s advanced harmonic concepts, as well as
his complex melodic ideas, that were his most important contribution to the growing
sophistication of jazz in the early 1920s, but what everyone remembered was that he
expressed these ideas with a unique, softly lyric cornet tone he’d taught himself as he sat
in his bedroom in his family’s home in Davenport, Iowa, fingering to the recordings of
the Original Dixieland Jazz Band. Probably the most unforgettable thing said about him
was Eddie Condon’s attempt to describe his tone,
“The sound came out like a girl saying ‘yes.’”
THE WOLVERINES - Included on CD by The New Orleans Rythym Kings, The
Complete Bix’ Wolverines 1924 King Jazz, 1982. Dodd CD 485
It was with the Wolverines, a young, enthusiastic Midwest band that played on college
campuses and at country roadhouses, that Beiderbecke first attracted attention. Although
they were influenced by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, who had recorded the first
“jass” compositions only a few years before, their 1924 recordings for Gennett Records
in Richmond, Indiana, were musically more advanced than almost any other group
recording at the time, and led to an engagement at the Roseland Ballroom in New York
City where Armstrong, working down the street with the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra,
first heard Beiderbecke play.
Titles: Fidgety Feet
Jazz Me Blues
Oh Baby
Copenhagen
Riverboat Shuffle
Susie (two takes)
I Need Some Pettin’
Royal Garden Blues
Tiger Rag
Sensation
Lazy Daddy (two takes)
Tia Juana
Big Boy
THE JEAN GOLDKETTE ORCHESTRA
Beiderbecke had made such an impression with the Wolverines that he was hired
away in the fall of 1924 by a larger and more ambitious orchestra from Detroit under the
nominal direction of Jean Goldkette. Goldkette, however, was involved in a number of
activities and simultaneously had several orchestras with his name playing in the
midwest. Beiderbecke was let go after a few months, because of his limited music
reading skills, but in July, 1925 he was brought back into the band and a few weeks later
the group was turned over to a newly hired musical director, Frank Trumbauer.
Trumbauer, who played a light toned C-melody saxophone, functioned as Beiderbecke’s
musical alter ego, and was closely associated with him for the rest of his career. The
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band that Goldkette assembled and left to Trumbauer to direct was one of the most
talented jazz groups in the country, but Goldkette trusted their recordings to a Victor
Records recording director named Eddie King. It isn’t often that we know the names of
the villains who frustrate everyone’s best intentions at an important moment of history,
but Eddie King is a name that - as has been said on another occasion - will live in infamy.
He hated jazz and had a particular dislike for Beiderbecke.
The Goldkette jazz stars were brought into the studio to record some of what their
excellent arranger Bill Challis the “stinking-est” songs ever written, but it was impossible
to completely disguise their abilities. One of their jazz numbers featured the brilliant
bassist Steve Brown, a New Orleans musician who was one of the first players on his
instrument to drive a band with an elastic, springing beat. Most bands, including Fletcher
Henderson and other Harlem bands, still used a tuba to carry the bass line, with its heavy,
lumbering quality. It was the lighter attack of the string bass that became the standard
sound of the swing era that followed in the 1930s. The band’s recording of “My Pretty
Girl,” with Brown prominently placed in the sound balance was probably intended as his
special number. The arrangement takes off behind him, and in its final heady sweep of
riff patterns could be considered the first swing recording. It is only on one other
Goldkette recording, “Clementine,” that the orchestra has a chance to show its jazz skills.
BIX BEIDERBECKE with THE JEAN GOLDKETTE ORCHESTRA
BIX BEIDERBECKE - 2 CDs, Dejavu Retro Gold Collection Recording Arts, 2001.
Dodd CD 486
This is a double CD overview of Beiderbecke’s career, and it includes later recordings
with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra not included on other compilations. These selections
are listed below under the Whiteman recordings. The following titles are by the
Goldkette orchestra.
Titles:
I Didn’t Know
Idolizing
Sunday
Hoosier Sweetheart
My Pretty Girl
Sunny Disposish
Clementine
The orchestra came to New York in 1926 as part of a Roseland Ballroom “Battle of
the Bands” opposite the Fletcher Henderson orchestra. As Rex Stewart, Henderson’s
trumpet soloist ruefully described the contest, “They creamed us. Those little tight-assed
white boys creamed us.”
BIX AND TRAM, the WHITEMAN RECORDINGS and the NEW YORK YEARS
The Goldkette orchestra was too expensive to keep on the road, and for a brief
period Trumbauer managed to keep some of the stars together for a series of
engagements, and - more importantly - for a series of studio sessions which show both
Trumbauer and Beiderbecke at their best. It is always difficult to introduce a new band,
however, and Trumbauer couldn’t find enough work to keep them going. For an even
briefer period the bass saxophone player Adrian Rollini included them in the orchestra
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he’d put together for a New York night club, but in a short time they were out of work
again. In an inspired move the dominant figure in the world of 1920s popular music,
Paul Whiteman, scooped up the Goldkette stars and added them to his large concert
orchestra, along with arranger Challis to create the music for them. In the exciting world
of American popular music Beiderbecke had reached the top of the ladder. He was
highly paid and enthusiastically reviewed, but he spent most of his time as one of the four
trumpet players in the Whiteman brass section, dutifully reading harmony parts or
listening to the string section while he waited for the occasional moments when he and
Trumbauer and the other soloists from their original group had an opportunity to stand up
and perform one of the orchestra’s “hot specialities.” Perhaps the joyous mood of the
small group recordings he made during the years with Whiteman were an expression at
his sense of freedom at being able to play his own music.
RECORDINGS with TRUMBAUER, WHITEMAN, and in the NEW YORK STUDIOS
It is complicated to sort out Beiderbecke’s recording career, since nearly all
compilations combine sessions that he did with Trumbauer with the occasional titles he
recorded with New York studio groups, as well as arrangements he and Trumbauer
recorded with the Whiteman Orchestra. Also, since he accompanied Whiteman’s popular
new vocalist Bing Crosby on several of the Challis arrangements the titles sometimes
emphasize Crosby’s presence. There is considerable overlapping on these CDs and LPs,
but each of them also includes titles or information that are useful in tracing
Beiderbecke’s short, tumultuous career.
BIX BEIDERBECKE - CD, Vol. 1 Singin’ The Blues
Titles: Trumbology
Clarinet Marmalade
Singin’ The Blues
Ostrich Walk
Riverboat Shuffle
I’m Coming Virginia
Way Down Yonder In New Orleans
For No Reason At All In C
Three Blind Mice
Blue River
There’s A Cradle In Caroline
In A Mist
Wringin’ And Twistin’
Humpty Dumpty
Krazy Kat
The Baltimore
There Ain’t No Land Like Dixieland To Me
There’s A Cradle In Caroline
Just An Hour Of Love
I’m Wonderin’ Who
Columbia, 1990. Dodd CD 487
BIX BEIDERBECKE - CD, Vol. 2 At The Jazz Band Ball. Dodd CD 488
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Titles:
Three Blind Mice (two takes)
Clorinda (two takes)
I’m More Than Satisfied (two takes)
At The Jazz Band Ball
Royal Garden Blues
Jazz Me Blues
Goose Pimples
Sorry
Cryin’ All Day
A Good Man Is Hard To Find
Since My Best Gal Turned Me Down
Sugar
There’ll Come A Time (Wait And See)
Jubilee
Mississippi Mud
Oh Gee! Oh Joy!
Why Do I Love You?
Ol’ Man River
Our Bungalow Of Dreams
Lila
With Trumbauer or as Bix and his Gang
Some of these titles were originally merchandised under names like The Broadway
Bellhops or Benny Meroff and his Orchestra.
BIX BEIDERBECKE - 2 CDS, Dejavu Retro Gold Collection Listed above
Many of these titles are duplicated by other compilations, but it is useful to hear them in
this selection.
Titles:
At The Jazz Band Ball
Ol’ Man River
Rhythm King
Clarinet Marmalade
Singin’ The Blues
Ostrich Walk
Riverboat Shuffle
I’m Coming Virginia
Way Down Yonder In New Orleans
Three Blind Mice
Krazy Kat
Baby Won’t You Please Come Home
PAUL WHITEMAN
It is difficult to characterize Paul Whiteman and his music. Although many other
musicians and band leaders have now been given more prominent roles in the musical
history of the 1920s, and his music is sometimes dismissed as stiff and overblown, the
reality is that Whiteman, more than any other figure of his time, dominated the world of
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jazz. He made hundreds of successful recordings, he led his orchestra in a series of
popular films, and for an extended period he had his own program on network radio that
ended only with his retirement to his estate in New Jersey after World War II. His 1924
concert in New York that introduced George Gershwin and the composition Whiteman
had commissioned for the concert, Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” is still considered a
landmark in American musical history.
Whiteman toured with a twenty-seven piece orchestra that included a string section
and classical woodwind instruments and could perform almost any kind of music including small group jazz. Even Gershwin toured with the orchestra, giving nightly
performances of his rhapsody. The first recording of the Rhapsody in Blue is their
twelve minute 1924 “jazz band” version. Whiteman’s shows were a kind of musical
vaudeville, with something for every taste - often within a single arrangement. Among
his musicians were most of the talented jazz soloists who had made the Jean Goldkette
orchestra so distinctive, but they usually were presented in brief cameo appearances.
Probably the most bizarre of the titles included in the first compilation is a piece titled
“Gipsy,” which features a Hungarian folk instrument, the cembalon, a gypsy violin, a
strained vocal - and a truncated, brilliant muted solo by Beiderbecke, with the rhythm
section suddenly coming to life behind him. One of the more ambitious of the jazz pieces
is an extended arrangement which was released on a 12” single disc, instead of the usual
10” discs and presents a very young Hoagy Carmichael, who plays the piano and sings
the dryly understated vocal on his own composition, a black washerwoman’s lament
titled “Washboard Blues.”
BIX BEIDERBECKE - 2CDS - Dejavu Retro Gold Collection
Titles: Washboard Blues
Lonely Melody
Dardanella
My Melancholy Baby
‘Tain’t So Baby, ‘Tain’t So
Gipsy
Sweet Sue
China Boy
Oh, Miss Hannah
From Monday On
Listed above.
Another recent compilation featuring Beiderbecke and Bing Crosby is titled “Paul
Whiteman and His Dance Band,” but most of the selections are the orchestra’s familiar
stage show numbers.
PAUL WHITEMAN and HIS DANCE BAND - CD, Vol. 1, featuring Bix Beiderbecke &
Bing Crosby Naxos Nostalgia 2000. Dodd CD 489
Titles: You Took Advantage Of Me
Mississippi Mud
My Pet
Oh, Miss Hannah
Changes
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Lonely Melody
Ol’ Man River
There Ain’t No Sweet Man That’s Worth The Salt Of My Tears
Makin’ Whoopee
Muddy Water
I’m A Dreamer, Aren’t We All
San
I’m In Love Again
Wistful And Blue
Louise
I’m Coming Virginia
From Monday On
Dardanella
THE COLUMBIA REISSUES
For many jazz collectors of the 1950s and 1960s it was the LP reissues by
Columbia Records - now Sony Records - of the original titles on the Columbia and OKeh
labels that brought Beiderbecke’s music to them. Although there is considerable
duplication with the CD compilations listed above there is useful information on the back
liner notes, and the presentation helps set Beiderbecke into a broader musical context.
THE BIX BEIDERBECKE STORY - LP, Vol. 1, Bix and His Gang Columbia Records,
nd. Dodd LP 783
This was a studio band drawn from the musicians of the Whiteman Orchestra.
Because of a limited recording budget there is no bass present on many of the selections,
which led to a choppy rhythmic pulse. The bass saxist Adrian Rollini provided a bass
line for some of the titles, but the steady, propulsive beat of bassist Steve Brown, who
worked with them in the orchestra and was featured in their arrangements, would have
strengthened the rhythm.
Titles: The Jazz Me Blues
Louisiana
Sorry
Thou Swell
Ol’ Man River
Somebody Stole My Gal
Royal Garden Blues
At the Jazz Band Ball
Since My Best Gal Turned Me Down
Wa-Wa-Wa
Goose Pimples
Rhythm King
THE BIX BEIDERBECKE STORY - LP, Vol. 2, Bix and Tram Columbia Records, nd.
Dodd LP 784
573
Although the album was the second in the series, most of the selections were
recorded the previous year, 1927, when Beiderbecke was working with Trumbauer’s
orchestra.
Titles: Singin’ the Blues
Clarinet Marmalade
Way Down Yonder in New Orleans
Mississippi Mud
For No Reason At All in C
There’ll Come A Time
I’m Comin’ Virginia
Ostrich Walk
A Good Man Is Hard To Find
Wringin’ and Twistin’
Crying All Day
Riverboat Shuffle
THE BIX BEIDERBECKE STORY - LP, Vol. 3, Whiteman Days Columbia Records,
nd. Dodd LP 785
This selection includes songs done with Trumbauer’s band, but there are also
several of the classic Whiteman arrangements. Also included in the album is the
remarkable piano solo “In a Mist,” which Beiderbecke recorded as an untitled
improvisation on the insistence of his friends.
Titles: Margie
In a Mist
Take Your Tomorrow
Borneo
Bless You! Sister
Baby, Won’t You Please Come Home
‘Taint So, Honey, ‘Taint So
That’s My Weakness Now
Sweet Sue
China Boy
Because My Baby Don’t Mean Maybe Now
Oh, Miss Hannah
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III A. THE JAZZ COMPONENT: THE JAZZ MAKERS
III A3. DUKE ELLINGTON
Although this basic library of recordings by Duke Ellington and his Orchestra
includes nearly 550 titles and covers several periods of his creative activity from 1924 to
the 1960s in considerable depth, there is probably no way to present the entirety of his
musical achievement short of a complete collection of every recording he ever made, as
well as film selections and interview material. In this introduction, however, listeners
will find his first appearance as a piano roll artist, early blues accompaniments, the first
recordings by his very young band The Washingtonians in 1924, as well as a complete
gathering of all of the band’s recordings - including many of their classics - from 1924 to
1929.
In the Depression years the band made its first appearances in Europe, and
continued to record, though without the distinctive success of the previous decade. At
the end of the 1930s, however, there was a renewed creativity in Ellington’s music. The
Archive includes 66 titles from this period, the complete output, by what became known
as the Webster-Blanton Band, after Ellington met arranger and composer Billy Strayhorn
and they began their lifelong collaboration. At the same time as Strayhorn began to take
over some of the arranging and composition Ellington brought tenor sax giant Ben
Webster and brilliant young bassist Jimmy Blanton into the orchestra and with Strayhorn
created a brilliant series of showcase compositions for the new soloists. Their period of
success began in 1940 and ended only with the two year recording ban that was the
culmination of a dispute over royalties between the radio broadcasters and the musician’s
union in 1942. The 1944-1946 band is represented by 58 titles, including selections
from the ambitious suite “Black, Brown, and Beige.” Other extended compositions
include the “Harlem Suite” from 1951, the “Liberian Suite” from a live recording on the
stage of Carnegie Hall in December, 1947, and the critically acclaimed suite based on the
characters of William Shakespeare’s plays, “Such Sweet Thunder,” from 1957.
The studio recordings are augmented by extensive live documentary performances
by the orchestra, including the staggering solo by tenor player Paul Gonsalves on
“Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue” at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1956, which
brought the band back to the general public’s attention after a period when the excitement
over the new Bop styles had overshadowed the popularity of the band’s endless touring.
A recording from a dance in Olympia, Washington, in April, 1952 documents their own
approach to the new Bop idiom in a performance of “How High The Moon,” featuring
trumpeter “Cat” Anderson.
Among the unusual selections is a true LP stereophonic recording from February,
1932, of two medleys of the orchestra’s best known compositions. It was produced as an
experiment utilizing two acetate discs recording different sound configurations of the
band on synchronized turntables. The discs were discovered by Ellington enthusiasts in
the early 1980s, who then spent several months creating the technical process to re-record
the selections in modern high fidelity. The extensive notes to the album describe the
details of the recording, including diagrams of the placement of the musicians and the
instruments in the studio. The medleys were also originally recorded at 33 1/3 rpm,
575
making the releases - as transcriptions for radio play - among the earliest stererophonic,
long playing jazz recordings. The technique was promising, but the Depression was too
much of an obstacle, and along with the fledgling television technology, introduced only
a short time later, the stereo LP had to wait for the new economic climate that followed
World War II.
Ellington also encouraged his talented soloists to record on their own and there are
selections by small bands led by Rex Stewart, Barney Bigard, Johnny Hodges, Cootie
Williams, and Ben Webster. There have been too many tributes to Ellington to single out
any that are more important than so many others, but an album by the Luv You Madly
Orchestra has been included because it has a performance of Ellington’s first
composition, “Soda Fountain Rag,” written when he was a Washington, DC, teenager.
Ben Webster’s later performances of some of his featured arrangements with the band
recall the excitement of the band in the Webster-Blanton years.
THE FIRST RECORDINGS
This unique collection presents everything Ellington recorded as a very young soloist
or blues accompaniest following his arrival in New York in 1924.
DUKE ELLINGTON - CD, The Birth Of A Band, Volume 1, 1924-1926 Hot ‘N’ Sweet,
1988 Dodd CD 477
Piano roll
Jig Walk
Accompanying Alberta Prime
It’s Gonna Be A Cold, Cold Winter
Parlor Social De Luxe
With The Washingtonians - the first band recordings
Choo Choo
Rainy Nights
With Joe Trent and the Deacons
Deacon Jazz
With Sonny and the Deacons
Oh, How I Love My Darling
Accompanying Florence Bristol
How Come You Do Me Like You Do?
With the Hotsy-Totsy Boys
Everything Is Hotsy Totsy Now
With the band as the Washingtonians
I’m Gonna Hang Around My Sugar
Trombone Blues
Georgia Grind
Parlor Social Stomp
You’ve Got Those “Wanna Go Back Again” Blues
If You Can’t Hold The Man You Love
(I’m Just Wild About) Animal Crackers
L’il Farina
As The Ellington Twins accompanying Alberta Jones
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Lucky Numbers Blues
I’m Gonna Put You Right In Jail
As Duke Ellington & His Kentucky Club Orchestra
East St. Louis Toodle-Oo
Birmingham Breakdown
Immigration Blues
The Creeper (two takes)
THE ESSENTIAL ELLINGTON - All Instrumental Recordings in Chronological Order,
November, 1924 - January, 1929.
This series of albums documents all of the orchestral recordings made by Ellington
and his orchestra, using a variety of names. Although the material duplicates some of the
selections on the CD listed above, there are important recordings which are included only
on one or another of the discs. These sessions cover the period between November,
1924, when Ellington made his first recording with his “Washingtonians” to January 8,
1929, when he recorded as Duke Ellington and his Cotton Club Orchestra. Often the
orchestra recorded several versions of their most successful arrangements, releasing
them under various pseudonyms on competing record labels, and the sound quality of the
sessions varied widely, depending on the economic resources of the company supervising
the recording. Many of the compositions were intended for the night club shows that
were the band’s usual job. They didn’t work as a dance band, like the Fletcher
Henderson Orchestra, their chief rivals for the African American audience in New York
City. The uptempo show pieces usually accompanied a tap dancing team or a fast chorus
routine. The slow “jungle” numbers, with growling trumpets and trombones,
accompanied exotic tropical dancers. The audiences for the Cotton Club were strictly
segregated, so Ellington and his musicians spent most of their time performing for parties
of white tourists, and his manager, Irving Mills, tirelessly exploited this aspect of
Ellington’s music.
THE ESSENTIAL DUKE ELLINGTON - LP, November, 1924 to March 14, 1927 VJM
Records, 1978. Dodd LP 760
Titles: Choo Choo
Rainy Nights
I’m Gonna Hang Around My Sugar
Trombone Blues
Georgia Grind
Parlor Social Stomp
(You’ve Got Those) Wanna-Go-Back-Again Blues
If You Can’t Hold The Man You Love
Animal Crackers
L’il Farina
East St. Louis Toodle-Oo
Birmingham Breakdown
Immigration Blues
The Creeper (two takes)
New Orleans Lowdown
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Song of the Cotton Field
Birmingham Breakdown
East St. Louis Toodle-Oo
THE ESSENTIAL DUKE ELLINGTON - LP, March 22, 1927 to December 19, 1927
VJM Records, 1979. Dodd LP 761
Titles: East St. Louis Toodle-Oo
Hop Head
Down In Our Alley Blues
Black and Tan Fantasy
Soliloquy
Washington Wobble
Creole Love Call
The Blues I Love To Sing (two takes)
Black and Tan Fantasie (sic)
Washington Wobble
What Can A Poor Fellow Do?
Black and Tan Fantasy (two takes) (Jabbo Smith)
Chicago Stomp Down
Harlem River Quiver (two takes)
East St. Louis Toodle-Oo
Blue Bubbles (two takes)
THE ESSENTIAL DUKE ELLINGTON - LP, December 29, 1927 to October 1, 1928
VJM Records, 1985. Dodd LP 762
Titles: Red Hot Band
Doin’ The Frog
Sweet Mama
Stack O’Lee Blues
Bugle Call Rag
Take It Easy
Jubilee Stomp
Harlem Twist
Take It Easy
Black Beauty (Whetsol)
Black Beauty (Miley)
Jubilee Stomp
Got Everything But You
Yellow Dog Blues
Tishimingo Blues
Diga Diga Doo
Doin’ the New Lowdown
Black Beauty
Swampy river
The Mooche
578
THE ESSENTIAL DUKE ELLINGTON - LP, October 1, 1928 to January 8, 1929 VJM
Records, 1988. Dodd LP 763
Titles: Move Over
Hot and Bothered (Lonnie Johnson, Baby Cox)
The Mooche
Hot and Bothered (Johnson and Cox out)
Move Over
The Mooche
Louisiana
Awful Sad
The Mooche
I Can’t Give You Anything But Love
No, Papa, No
Bandanna Babies
Diga Diga Doo
I Must Have That Man
The Blues with a Feelin’
Goin’ To Town
Misty Mornin’
Hottentot
Misty Mornin’
Doin’ the Voom Voom
THE ESSENTIAL DUKE ELLINGTON - LP, January 8, 1929 to April 4, 1929 VJM
Records, 1989. Dodd LP 764
Titles: Tiger Rag (Part 1, 2, 3)
Flaming Youth
Saturday Night Function
High Life
Doin’ the Voom Voom
Japanese Dream
Harlemania
Rent Party Blues
Paducah
Harlem Flat Blues
The Dicty Glide
Hot Feet
Sloppy Joe
Stevedore Stomp
Saratoga Swing
Who Said “It’s Tight Like That”?
I Must Have That Man
Freeze and Melt
In the following collections there is often an overlap of material, but each of the albums
also includes selections not otherwise available.
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DUKE ELLINGTON AND HIS ORCHESTRA Volume 2 (1928- 1929) - LP, Hot In
Harlem MCA Records, 1973. Dodd LP 765
Titles: The Mooche
Louisiana
Awful Sad
Doin’ the Voom Voom
Tiger Rag (Parts 1 and 2)
Rent Party Blues
Paducah
Harlem Flat Blues
(What Did I Do To Be So) Black and Blue
Jungle Jamboree
Jolly Wog
Jazz Convulsions
Oklahoma Stomp
DUKE ELLINGTON and THE JUNGLE BAND Volume 3 (1929-1931) - LP, Rockin’
In Rhythm MCA Records, 1980. Dodd LP 766
Titles: Sweet Mama
Wall Street Wail
Cincinnati Daddy
When You’re Smiling (The Whole World Smiles With You)
Admiration
Double Check Stomp
Cotton Club Stomp
Runnin’ Wild
Mood Indigo
Home Again Blues
Wang Wang Blues
Rockin’ In Rhythm
Twelfth Street Rag
Creole Rhapsody
Is That Religion?
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The 1932 Band in True Stereo
DUKE ELLINGTON and HIS FAMOUS COTTON CLUB ORCHESTRA - LP,
Reflections in Ellington Everybodys, 1985. Dodd LP 767
Titles: Medley: Mood Indigo
Hot and Bothered
Creole Love Call
Medley: East St. Louis Toodle-Oo
Lots O’ Fingers
Black and Tan Fantasy
The remainder of the album is compiled from radio broadcasts by the 1940 band. See
listing below.
DUKE ELLINGTON - CD, Classic Recordings Vol. 2: 1930-1934 It Don’t Mean A
Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing Naxos, 2001. Dodd CD 478
Titles: Sing You Sinners
St. James Infirmary
It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)
St. Louis Blues (two takes)
Creole Love Call
Lazy Rhapsody
Blue Ramble
Stormy Weather
Lightnin’
Sophisticated Lady
Harlem Speaks
Hyde Park
I’ve Got the World on a String
Solitude
Creole Rhapsody (Parts 1 and 2)
DUKE ELLINGTON - Double LP set, The Immortal 1938 Year, Braggin’ In Brass
CBD Records, 1989. Dodd LP 768a/b
The entire set is devoted to the orchestra’s studio recordings between January 13 and
December 22, 1938.
Titles: Steppin’ Into Swing Society
Prologue to Black and Tan Fantasy
The New Black and Tan Fantasy
Riding on a Blue Note
Lost in Meditation
The Gal from Joe’s
Skrontch
I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart
Braggin’ in Brass
Dinah’s in a Jam
You Gave Me the Gate (And I’m Swingin’)
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Rose of the Rio Grande
Pyramid
When My Sugar Walks Down the Street
A Gypsy without a Song
The Stevedore’s Serenade
A Blues Serenade
Love in Swingtime
Please Forgive Me
Lambeth Walk
Prelude to a Kiss
Hip Chic
Buffet Flat
Mighty Like the Blues
Jazz Potpourri
T. T. on Toast
Battle of Swing
Blue Light (two takes)
Boy Meets Horn
Slap Happy
DUKE ELLINGTON and HIS ORCHESTRA - LP, 1939-40 Alamac Records, 1972
The album is made up of two live performances. Dodd LP 769
Titles: Jazz Potpourri
Something to Live For
Old King Dooji
Pussy Willow
You Can Count on Me
Way Low
Grievin’
Little Posey
The Gal from Joe’s
Tootin’ Through the Roof
Day In Day Out
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REFLECTIONS IN ELLINGTON - See listing above
The material is taken from broadcasts made in July, August, and September, 1940.
Titles: Harlem Air Shaft
I Don’t Mind (All Too Soon)
Rose of the Rio Grande
Riding on a Blue Note
Boy Meets Horn
Rose Room
Stompy Jones
Jig Walk
Little Posey
Warm Valley
DUKE ELLINGTON - 4 LP Set, The Blanton-Webster Band, 1940-1942 Bluebird, 1986
The package includes a 16 page booklet. Dodd LP 770a/b/c/d
The orchestra - and Ellington himself - had lost a great deal of creative momentum as
they watched the growing popularity of Cab Calloway, Benny Goodman, and Count
Basie during the Depression years. To change the public’s perception that his musicians
had lost their edge Ellington found first a new young arranger, Billy Strayhorn, who
joined the band in 1939, then he hired a fifth reed player, the fiery tenor soloist Ben
Webster, who had been with, among others, Fletcher Henderson and Cab Calloway. The
last crucial addition was a young bass player named Jimmy Blanton who was playing in
an after hours club in St. Louis when some of the band members heard him and passed
the word on to Ellington. Blanton was the first “modern” bass player - with a melodic
approach that was unique to his instrument. With Strayhorn Ellington entered into a new
creative period, and the compositions and arrangements they developed together
revitalised the band’s style.
Titles: You, You Darlin’
Jack the Bear
Ko-Ko
Morning Glory
So Far, So Good
Conga Brava
Concerto for Cootie
Me and You
Cottontail
Never No Lament
Dusk
Bojangles (A Portrait of Bill Robinson)
A Portrait of Bert Williams
Blue Goose
Harlem Air Shaft
At a Dixie Roadside Diner
All Too Soon
Rumpus in Richmond
My Greatest Mistake
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Sepia Panorama
There Shall Be No Night
In a Mellotone
Five O’Clock Whistle
Warm Valley
The Flaming Sword
Across the Track Blues
Chloe (Song of the Swamp)
I Never Felt This Way Before
The Sidewalks of New York
Flamingo
The Girl in My Dreams Tries to Look Like You
Take the “A” Train
Jumpin’ Punkins
John Hardy’s Wife
Blue Serge
After All
Bakiff
Just A Settin; and A Rockin’
The Giddybug Gallop
Chocolate Shake
I Got It Bad (And That Ain’t Good)
Clementine
The Brown-Skin Gal (In the Calico Gown)
Jump for Joy
Moon Over Cuba
Five O’Clock Drag
Rocks in My Bed
Bli-Blip
Chelsea Bridge
Raincheck
What Good Would It Do?
I Don’t Know What Kind of Blues I Got
Perdido
The “C” Jam Blues
Moon Mist
What Am I Here For?
I Don’t Mind
Someone
My Little Brown Book
Main Stem
Johnny Come Lately
Hayfoot Strawfoot
Sentimental Lady
A Slip of the Lip (Can Sink a Ship)
Sherman Shuffle
584
Due to the recording ban from 1942 to 1944, the band did not go into the studio with
its customary regularity, but as soon as a royalty agreement was reached between the
radio broadcasters and the musician’s union Ellington immediately began recording
again.
DUKE ELLINGTON and HIS ORCHESTRA - 4 LP Set, Black, Brown & Beige, The
1944-1946 Recordings Bluebird, 1988. Dodd LP 777
Titles: BLACK, BROWN and BEIGE
(Work Song, Come Sunday, The Blues, Three Dances - West Indian Dance,
Emancipation Celebration, Sugar Hill Penthouse)
I Ain’t Got Nothin’ But the Blues
I’m Beginning to See the Light
Don’t You Know I Care (Or Don’t You Care To Know)
I Didn’t Know About You
Carnegie Blues
Blue Cellophane
Mood To Be Woo’d
All of a Sudden (My Heart Sings)
Kissing Bug
Everything But You
(Otto Make That) Riff Staccato
Prelude to a Kiss
Caravan
Black and Tan Fantasy
Mood Indigo
In a Sentimental Mood
It Don’t Mean a Thing
Sophisticated Lady
Tonight I shall Sleep (With a Smile on My Face)
I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart
Solitude
Black Beauty
Every Hour on the Hour (I Fall in Love with You)
THE PERFUME SUITE
(Balcony Serenade, Strange Feeling, Dancers in Love, Coloratura)
Things Aint’ What They Used to Be
Tell You What I’m Gonna Do
Come to Baby, Do!
I’m Just a Lucky So-and-So
Long, Strong and Consecutive
The Wonder of You
Rockabye River
Suddenly It Jumped
Translucency
Just Squeeze Me (But Don’t Tease Me)
585
A Gathering in a Clearing
You Don’t Love Me No More
Pretty Woman
Hey Baby
Back Home Again in Indiana
Blue is the Bight
Lover Man
Just You, Just Me
Beale Street Blues
My Honey’s Lovin’ Arms
Memphis Blues
I Don’t Stand a Ghost of a Chance with You
St. Louis Blues
Swamp Fire
Royal Garden Blues
Esquire Swank
Midriff
DUKE ELLINGTON and HIS ORCHESTRA - CD, Play 22 Original Big Band
Recordings Hindsight Records, 1987. Dodd CD 479
These titles are taken from radio transcription discs.
Titles: Take the “A” Train
Crosstown
Passion Flower
Perdido
Pretty Woman
9:20 Special
One O’Clock Jump
Moon Mist
How High The Moon
Just Squeeze Me
Happy Go Lucky Local
Come Rain Or Come Shine
Just You Just Me
Double Ruff
The Mooche
Swamp Fire
Blue Lou
On The Alamo
Frisky
Tea For Two
Who Struck John
Park At 106th
The following three albums are all compiled from radio broadcasts.
586
DUKE ELLINGTON and HIS ORCHESTRA - LP, Uncollected, 1946, Vol. 1 Hindsight
Records, 1978. Dodd LP 771
Titles: Take the “A” Train
Crosstown
Passion Flower
Magenta Haze
Everything Goes
The Eighth Veil
Riff N’ Drill
Blue Abandon
Translucency
Rugged Romeo
Jennie
Sono
Jeep is Jumpin’
DUKE ELLINGTON and HIS ORCHESTRA - LP, Uncollected, 1946, Vol. 2 Hindsight
Records, 1978. Dodd LP 772
Titles: Perdido
Tip Toe Topic
Rockabye River
Pretty Woman
Gatherin’ in a Clearing
You Don’t Love Me Any More
Just Squeeze Me
Hey, Baby
Suddenly It Jumped
Come Rain or Come Shine
Fickle Fling
9:20 Special
One O’Clock Jump
DUKE ELLINGTON and HIS ORCHESTRA - LP, Uncollected, 1947, Vol. 5 Hindsight
Records, 1978. Dodd LP 773
Titles: Swamp Fire
How High the Moon
Blue Lou
Violet Blue
Royal Garden Blues
Jumpin’ Punkins
Frustration
Blue is the Night
Jump for Joy
Far Way Blues
Embraceable You
Frisky
587
Park at 106th
Take the “A” Train
DUKE ELLINGTON and HIS ORCHESTRA - 2 LP Set, Carnegie Hall Concert,
December 27, 1947 Prestige Records, 1977. Dodd LP 774a/b
Titles: The New Look
Blue Serge
Triple Play
Harlem Airshaft
A Johnny Hodges Medley
(Wanderlust, Junior Hop, Jeep’s Blues, Jeep is Jumpin’, Squatty Roo,
The Mood to be Wooed)
Mella Brava
Kickapoo Joy Juice
On a Turquoise Cloud
Bakiff
LIBERIAN SUITE
Cotton Tail
Theme Medley
(East St. Louis Toodle-Oo, Echoes of Harlem, Black and Tan Fantasy,
Things Ain’t What They Used to Be)
Basso Profundo
New York City Blues
The Clothed Woman
Trumpets No End (Blue Skies)
DUKE ELLINGTON and HIS ORCHESTRA - LP, Ellington Uptown Columbia
Records, nd. Dodd LP 775
The recordings are from 1951 and 1952.
Titles: Take the “A” Train
The Mooche
THE HARLEM SUITE - A Tone Parallel to Harlem
Perdido
THE CONTROVERSIAL SUITE Part 1 and 2
Skin Deep
DUKE ELLINGTON and HIS ORCHESTRA - 2 LP Set, First Annual Tour of the
Pacific Northwest, Spring 1952 Folkways Records, 1983. Dodd LP 776
The original recordings were made on location at a series of dance engagements by San
Francisco sound technician Wally Heider.
Titles: Take the “A” Train
Fancy Dan
Time On My Hands
588
On the Sunny Side of the Street
Tea for Two
Blue Skies
It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)
Lady of the Lavender Mist
How High the Moon
The Tatooed Bride (Aberdeen)
Love You Madly
Bensonality
Don’t Worry ‘Bout Me
Deep Purple
Caravan
Cottontail
Solitude
“C” Jam Blues
Happy Birthday
Sophisticated Lady
Chelsea Bridge
Mood Indigo
The 1956 Newport Recording with Paul Gonsalves’ solo
DUKE ELLINGTON and HIS ORCHESTRA - CD, Ellington at Newport Columbia
Records, nd. Dodd CD 480
The original recording was made at the Newport Jazz Festival, July 7, 1956.
At the time of this performance Ellington had been a major jazz figure for 30 years,
and there was beginning to be a kind of ennui about the band’s appearances. With this
performance of his “Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue” his career took on a new
dimension, and the album became his best selling release. As the band launched into the
arrangement, one of its standard show numbers, Jo Jones, the imperious drummer for the
Count Basie band, appeared offstage, but in view of Ellington’s rhythm section, and
began beating out a Basie-style pulse with a folded up newspaper. Responding to the
new urgency in the beat the tenor player Paul Gonsalves stepped to the microphone and
erupted into an epochal solo that continued for more than twenty choruses and left the
audience, and the Ellington men themselves, in a state of frenzied disbelief. Gonsalves
found himself being called upon to repeat the solo at almost every band date that
followed, but this moment was a revelation that in an essential way could not be
duplicated.
Titles:
NEWPORT JAZZ FESTIVAL SUITE
(Festival Junction, Blues To Be There, Newport Up)
Jeep’s Blues
Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue
DUKE ELLINGTON and HIS ORCHESTRA - CD, Such Sweet Thunder, Columbia
Records, 1999. Dodd CD 481
589
This is an expanded CD devoted to the ambitious suite that Strayhorn wrote and
arranged from Ellington’s sketches for the Shakespeare Festival of Ontario, Canada. The
piece was premiered at New York’s Town Hall on April 28, 1957, and it was a much
discussed critical and public success. With this piece the orchestra continued the popular
run that had begun with their triumph with “Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue” at the
Newport Festival the summer before. In the suite Ellington and Strayhorn tried to
capture the essence of some of the best known Shakespearean characters, and the music
was praised for its fresh concept as well as its musical achievement. Although Ellington
continued to be listed as composer for much of the material the band recorded during the
Strayhorn years he was too engaged with the routine of touring and performing to have
more than a perfunctory involvement in scoring and developing the music, and much of
the repertoire, particularly the more ambitious suites, were actually Strayhorn’s work.
The band’s well-known theme song, “Take The A Train,” was one of the Strayhorn
compositions for which he was credited.
The CD release includes additional note material by one of Ellington’s musicians and
reissue producer Phil Schaap explaining the problems of assembling a stereo master of
the original recording.
Titles: Such Sweet Thunder (Cleo)
Sonnet For Caesar
Sonnet For Hank Cinq
Lady Mac
Sonnet In Search Of A Moor
The Telecasters
Up And Down, Up And Down (It Will Lead Them Up And Down)(Puck)
Sonnet For Sister Kate
The Star-Crossed Lovers (aka Pretty Girl)
Madness In Great Ones (Hamlet)
Half The Fun (aka Lately)
Circle Of Fourths
BONUS TRACKS (Not on the original LP version)
The Star-Crossed Lovers (aka Pretty Girl) - Stereo master
Circle Of Fourths - Stereo master
Suburban Beauty
A Flat Minor - Preferred take
Cafe Au Lait - Preferred take
Half The Fun - alternate take
Suburban Beauty - alternate take
A Flat Minor - Out take
Cafe Au Lait - Out take
Pretty Girl - First recording
DUKE ELLINGTON and HIS ORCHESTRA - CD, Master of Jazz, Vol. 6 Storyville
Records, 1986. Dodd CD 482
This CD is made up of two different recording dates, and it is particularly useful
because it devotes more time to Ellington as a pianist. On the first date, January 9, 1962,
the band recorded arrangements from their current repertoire in New York City. On the
590
second, February 25, 1966, in Paris, he performed as a piano soloist. Ellington didn’t
consider himself to be a soloist, but the long medley of some of his best known
compositions is musically effective and his audience is very responsive. The second long
piano selection, “New World A-Comin’” has extended passages that lack any clear focus,
and it suggests that perhaps his estimate of his own abilities had some justification. One
of the orchestra arrangements, “Kinda Dukish,” is a piano solo with rhythm
accompaniment and Ellington sounds much more comfortable working with the familiar
sound of his band behind him.
Titles: Take The A Train
Blow Boy Blow
Piano Medley:
It Don’t Mean A Thing
Satin Doll
Solitude
I Got It Bad
Don’t Get Around Much Anymore
Mood Indigo
I’m Beginning To See The Light
Sophisticated Lady
Caravan
Kinda Dukish
Things Ain’t What They Used To Be
Satin Doll
New World A-Comin’ (piano solo)
VIP Boogie/Jam With Sam
The Good Years Of Jazz
DUKE ELLINGTON and HIS ORCHESTRA - CD, The Private Collection, Vol. 10
Saja Records, 1989. Dodd CD 483
Studio Sessions, New York & Chicago, 1965, 1966, & 1971
Ellington often recorded sessions for his own archival purposes, and these titles are
from acetates in his own collection.
Titles: Black
Come Sunday
Light
West Indian Celebration
The Blues
Cy Runs Rock Waltz
Beige
Sugar Hill Penthouse
Harlem
Ad Lib on Nippon
DUKE ELLINGTON and HIS ORCHESTRA - LP, The Best of
Dodd LP 778
Pablo Records, 1980.
591
Although the album is titled “The Best” it is actually a set of late recordings produced by
jazz impresario Norman Granz for his Pablo label. The extended suite is a joint
composition by Ellington and Strayhorn.
Titles: QUEEN’S SUITE
(Sunset and the Mocking Bird, Lightning Bugs and Frogs, Le Sucrier,
Northern Lights, The Single Petal of a Rose, Apes and Peacocks)
Layin’ on Mellow
Bateau
Goof
Black Butterfly
Mendoza
Representative Small Group Sessions
THE DUKE ELLINGTON SMALL BANDS - CD, Back Room Romp CBS Records,
1988. Dodd CD 484
Rex Stewart & His 52nd Street Stompers
Titles: Rexatious
Lazy Man’s Shuffle
Back Room Romp
Love’s in My Heart
Barney Bigard & His Jazzopators
Titles: Clouds in My Heart
Frolic Sam
Caravan
Stompy Jones
Johnny Hodges & His Orchestra
Titles: Pyramid
Swingin’ in the Dell
Jitterbug’s Lullaby
The Rabbit’s Jump
Cootie Williams & His Rugcutters
Titles: I Can’t Believe That You’re in Love With Me
Blue Reverie
Echoes of Harlem
Swing Pan Alley
592
JOHNNY HODGES - LP, Masters of Jazz, Vol. 9. Storyville Records, 1984.
Dodd LP 779
Titles: Cambridge Blue
Brute’s Roots
Bouncing With Ben
One For The Duke
Walkin’ The Frog
Rabbit Pie
On The Sunny Side
Good Queen Bess
Jeep Is Jumpin’
Things Ain’t What They Used To Be
BEN WEBSTER - LP, Plays Duke Ellington. Storyville Records, 1988. Dodd LP 780
Although Webster’s career extended far beyond his short period with Ellington he
continued to perform some of the material he played with the band, including his classic
feature “Cotton Tail.” This collection was put together from Ellington material he
recorded in Europe between 1969 and 1971.
Titles: Cottontail
Johnny Come Lately
Perdido
In A Mellow Tonw
Bojangles
Rockin’ In Rhythm
Things Ain’t What They Used To Be
Stompy Jones
Cottontail
COOTIE WILLIAMS - LP, no title Storyville Records, nd. Dodd LP 781
These titles were recorded by Williams with a sextet including a very young Bud
Powell and with a large swing group that presented Pearl Bailey as vocalist. The sessions
were held in New York in 1944, and released originally on Majestic Records.
Titles: You Talk A Little Trash
Floogie Boo
I Don’t Know
Do Some War Work Baby
My Old Flame
Sweet Lorraine
Echoes Of Harlem
Honeysuckle Rose
Now I Know
‘Tess’s Torch Song
Red Blues
Things Ain’t What They Used To Be
Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t
593
Somebody’s Gotta Go
‘Round Midnight
Blue Garden Blues
A Tribute Band
Among the pieces performed is Ellington’s first composition, “Soda Fountain Rag.”
LUV YOU MADLY ORCHESTRA - LP, no title Salsoul Records, 1978. Dodd LP 782
Titles: IN THE BEGINNING
(Medley: Take the “A” Train, Satin Doll, I Let A Song Go Out of
My Heart, Caravan, Mood Indigo, Melancholia)
Moon Maiden
Love You Madly
Hippo Hop
Rocket Rock
Fleurette Africaine
Soda Fountain Rag
Fountain Bleu Forest
Lotus Blossom
594
III A. THE JAZZ COMPONENT: THE JAZZ MAKERS
III A4. BILLIE HOLIDAY
It is a well worn myth to describe history as an immutable past - which we can
neither change nor entirely comprehend. The reality is that the messy grabbag of the past
is continually being ransacked for whatever we need from it. This kind of malleability is
a particular aspect of any discussion of the popular arts. There is no way to quantify the
effect of a musical performance on any audience, and even the usual commercial
indications - record sales and concert fees - don’t help a lot. In other words - if we go
back to the musical era of the late 1930s and the 1940s and we look for Billie Holiday,
“Lady Day,” as she was sometimes called, we find her name among an illustrious crowd
of other successful women singers - from Mildred Bailey and Lee Wylie to Ella
Fitzgerald and Helen Humes. If we turn to the last years of her troubled life and career,
the 1950s, we find ourselves in the glittering world of Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughn,
who were arguably the most revered women jazz artists of that era. There would be
nothing to indicate to us that a half century later it would be Holiday who had become the
measure for the women vocalists of the Swing Era. But listening today we find in the
first lines and phrases of any her recordings the same raw, singed quality in her voice,
and the wry, knowing consciousness of her lyrics, that has made her an essential figure
for our culture.
In earlier years it would have been difficult to assemble a comprehensive
presentation of Holiday’s work on record, but in this golden age of reissue packages
Holiday is available to us in virtually every phase of her career. The collection in the
Archive has 330 titles, including her entire recorded output, with alternate takes and
previously unissued versions, from her first recording as a very young vocalist with the
Benny Goodman Orchestra in 1933, to the end of her contractual arrangement with
Decca Records in 1950. All of the master takes of the sixteen songs she recorded for the
small jazz label, Commodore Records, in 1939 and 1944, are here, among them her first
recording of “Strange Fruit,” the bitter song of racial protest which came to be identified
with her. Her last years with smaller labels, as both her voice and her career were
beginning to fray, are documented in a selection of thirty-five of the songs gathered as a
Verve Records collection, under the title Lady in Autumn. Also featured in these
reissues are useful essays by jazz critics and historians discussing the songs and the
recording sessions that produced them, including an extensive interview with the
producer of the Commodore and Decca sessions, Milt Gabler.
Although the essays and discussions in the reissue materials also tell us some of the
story of her life, the printed pages seem almost redundant. Yes, we read about her
struggles with her squalid ghetto childhood, her alcoholism and undependability, her
drug addictions, and her equally destructive addiction to abusive men. In the 1950s she
was imprisoned for a year for heroin addiction, and as a result of her imprisonment she
was denied her crucial New York City cabaret card, which restricted her singing to
venues where alcohol wasn’t served. Dealing, though, with all these sad details seems
redundant since everything that happened to her is there in her pained, brave voice. The
final selection of the Verve collection is her unforgettable rendering of one of the lesser
595
known classic songs of her first years as an artist, “Don’t Worry About Me,” and
somehow, only a few months before her death, she makes us believe the song’s lyrics.
A great deal has been written about Billie Holiday, but nothing comes closer to
capturing what she meant to an entire generation than Frank O’Hara’s poignant poem
“The Day Lady Died.” In the poem O’Hara describes an ordinary summer day in July,
1959 when he’s rushing around New York City doing errands before he goes out to a
dinner party on Long Island. The poem ends,
. . . for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE
Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and
then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue
and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and
casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton
of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it
and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of
leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT
while she whispered a song along the keyboard
to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing
This gathering of Billie Holiday’s art has been presented to the Archive by Ann
Charters as an expression of her thanks for Billie’s genius.
THE COMPLETE BILLIE HOLIDAY ON COLUMBIA 1933-1944 Dodd CD 490
Almost all of these songs were recorded in what were called “Sing-Swing”
sessions, and the performances have all the virtues and the disadvantages of these record
dates. During these years a contract vocal artist like Holiday was expected to turn out a
steady stream of single releases for their company, and the recordings were produced in
the standard musician’s union format of four songs in three hours, the total amount of
recorded music not to exceed fifteen minutes. In other words, two 78 rpm singles, which
could be pressed for the neighborhood general merchandise stores - the “5 and Dimes” where most of these releases were sold, ideally came out of every session.
There were no rehearsals before the groups came into the studio, and usually the
musicians were picked up from the bands that happened that week to be in New York,
where most of the sessions were done. Sometimes the singer would bring in material, but
generally the songs were handed to the musicians and the vocalist when they arrived at
the studio. The group ran down the arrangement, which gave the singer a chance to to
work on the melody. Usually Holiday got the song on the first take, though generally the
studio producer did a second take for safety’s sake, since the acetate disc cut at that
moment became the actual production master for the manufactured recording. It was, of
course, not technically possible to do overdubs, so the vocals had to be recorded along
with the accompaniment. Editing also wasn’t possible, so a take had to be technically
acceptable, as well as musically exciting. It was a demanding world restricted to the
most versatile and skilled jazz artists and the most adaptive and creative singers.
596
The positive side of this kind of production was that the informality of the sessions
often produced a loose and free-wheeling spontaneity, and on the best of the recordings
there is a richly creative symbiosis between the singer and the accompaniests. On
Holiday’s first small band date, which produced the classics “I Wished On The Moon,”
“What A Little Moonlight Can Do,” and “Miss Brown To You,” there are brilliant solos
by Benny Goodman, pianist Teddy Wilson, tenor player Ben Webster, and trumpeter Roy
Eldridge. Since the sessions were so informal it was also possible to use any musicians
that available for the afternoon. For most of these Holiday’s sessions the back-up groups
are listed as Teddy Wilson and his Orchestra, or Billie Holiday and her Orchestra, but
Wilson was touring with Benny Goodman and didn’t have an orchestra of his own, and
Billie was often out on the road with large swing bands, among them Count Basie and
Artie Shaw. “Teddy Wilson and his Orchestra” could be members of Goodman’s band,
the Basie Band with Goodman added on clarinet, or a collection of artists, white and
black, from half of the swing bands working in New York. “Her” orchestra could be
several members of Duke Ellington’s band, Artie Shaw and sidemen from his young
group, or soloists from the Cab Calloway Orchestra. Whatever circumstances served to
bring her into the studio with musicians of the caliber of Wilson, Goodman, Webster,
Buck Clayton, Eldridge, Bunny Berigan, Cootie Williams, Artie Shaw, Lips Page, and
Johnny Hodges could only be positive, and her legendary association in the studio with
Basie’s tenor soloist Lester Young brought out the finest musical qualities in each of
them.
The negative aspect of the sessions was that sometimes the studio material was
terrible, and occasionally the arrangements sounded under-rehearsed. Holiday was often
required to perform substandard, ephemeral songs, and it would perhaps be more
comfortable for today’s listener if she were singing in some other language so the lyrics
would be incomprehensible. Sometimes, as in the often cited 1937 recording “A Sailboat
In The Moonlight,” the other musicians - in this instance Lester Young - plow blithefully
ahead, as though the lyrics had some meaning, but she is still left with some of the most
banal lyrics that ever surfaced on a commercial recording. One of the most useful
elements of this reissue package is the commentary by Michael Brooks on every song in
every session. Not only has he seemingly heard every other version of most of the songs,
he has also seen the films from which some of the most dire compositions emerged, so he
can set the stage for the music. Holiday, of course, brings her distinctive phrasing and
unforgettable sound to everything she was handed in the studio, and these qualities are
enough, by themselves, to justify the presence of any of the performances in this
superlative collection of her work.
Disc 1
Your Mother’s Son-in-Law
Riffin’ The Scotch
I Wished On The Moon
What A Little Moonlight Can Do
Miss Brown To You
A Sunbonnet Blue (And A Yellow Straw Hat)
What A Night, What A Moon, What A Girl
I’m Painting The Town Red
It’s Too Hot For Words
597
Twenty Four Hours A Day
Yankee Doodle Never Went To Town
Eeny Meeny Meiny Mo
If You Were Mine
These ‘N’ That ‘N’ Those
You Let Me Down
Spreadin’ Rhythm Around
Life Begins When You’re In Love
It’s Like Reaching For The Moon
These Foolish Things
I Cried For You
Guess Who
Did I Remember?
No Regrets
Summertime
Billie’s Blues
Disc 2
A Fine Romance
I Can’t Pretend
One, Two, Button Your Shoe
Let’s Call A Heart A Heart
Easy To Love
With Thee I Swing
The Way You Look Tonight
Who Loves You?
Pennies From Heaven
That’s Life I Guess
I Can’t Give You Anything But Love (Baby)
One Never Knows, Does One?
I’ve Got My Love To Keep Me Warm
If My Heart Could Only Talk
Please Keep Me In Your Dreams
He Ain’t Got Rhythm
This Year’s Kisses
Why Was I Born?
I Must Have That Man
The Mood That I’m In
You Showed Me The Way
Sentimental And Melancholy
My Last Affair
Disc 3
Carelessly
How Could You?
Moanin’ Low
Where Is The Sun?
598
Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off
They Can’t Take That Away From Me
Don’t Know If I’m Comin’ Or Goin’
Sun Showers
Your And Mine
I’ll Get By
Mean To Me
Foolin’ Myself
Easy Living
I’’ Never Be The Same
Me, Myself And I
A Sailboat In The Moonlight
Born To Love
Without Your Love
Getting Some Fun Out Of Life
Who Wants Love?
Travelin’ All Alone
He’s Funny That Way
Disc 4
Nice Work If You Can Get It
Things Are Looking Up
My Man
Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man
My First Impression Of You
When You’re Smiling
I Can’t Believe That You’re In Love With Me
If Dreams Come True
Now They Call It Swing
On The Sentimental Side
Back In Your Own Backyard
When A Woman Loves A Man
You Go To My Head
The Moon Looks Down And Laughs
If I Were You
Forget If You Can
Having Myself A Time
Says My Heart
I Wish I Had You
I’m Gonna Lock My Heart (And Throw Away The Key)
The Very Thought Of You
I Can’t Get Started
I’ve Got A Date With A Dream
You Can’t Be Mine
Disc 5
599
Everybody’s Laughing
Here It Is Tomorrow Again
Say It With A Kiss
April In My Heart
I’ll Never Fail You
They Say
You’re So Desirable
You’re Gonna See A Lot Of Me
Hello, My Darling
Let’s Dream In The Moonlight
That’s All I Ask Of You
Dream Of Life
What Shall I Say?
It’s Easy To Blame The Weather
More Than You Know
Sugar
You’re Too Lovely To Last
Under A Blue Jungle Moon
Everything Happens For The Best
Why Did I Always Depend On You?
Long Gone Blues
Disc 6
Some Other Spring
Our Love Is Different
Them There Eyes
Swing, Brother, Swing
Night And Day
The Man I Love
You’re Just A No Account
You’re A Lucky Guy
Ghost Of Yesterday
Body And Soul
What Is This Going To Get Us?
Falling In Love Again
I’m Pulling Through
Tell Me More-More-And Then Some
Laughing At Life
Time On My Hands (You In My Arms)
I’m All For You
I Hear Music
The Same Old Story
Practise Makes Perfect
St. Louis Blues
Loveless Love
Let’s Do It
600
Georgia On My Mind
Disc 7
Romance In The Dark
All Of Me
I’m In A Low Down Groove
God Bless The Child
Am I Blue?
Solitude
Jim
I Cover The Waterfront
Love Me Or Leave Me
Gloomy Sunday
Wherever You are
Mandy Is Two
It’s A Sin To Tell A Lie
Until The Real Thing Comes Along
Saddest Tale
No Regrets
The Way You Look Tonight
Who Loves You?
Pennies From Heaven
That’s Life I Guess
They Can’t Take That Away From Me
Don’t Know If I’m Comin’ Or Goin’
I’ll Get By
Disc 8
Me, Myself And I
Without Your Love
They Can’t Take That Away From Me
Swing, Brother, Swing
I Can’t Get Started
My First Impression Of You
When You’re Smiling
I Can’t Believe That Your In Love With Me
If Dreams Come True
Now They Call It Swing
On The Sentimental Side
Back In Your Own Backyard
You Go To My Head
The Moon Looks Down And Laughs
If I Were You
Forget If You Can
Having Myself A Time
Says My Heart
601
I Wish I Had You
I’m Gonna Lock My Heart (And Throw Away The Key)
I Can’t Get Started
I’ve Got A Date With A Dream
Disc 9
April In My Heart
They Say
You’re So Desirable
You’re Gonna See A Lot Of Me
Hello, My Darling
Let’s Dream In The Moonlight
I Cried For You
Jeepers Creepers
That’s All I Ask Of You
More Than You Know
You’re Too Lovely To Last
Under A Blue Jungle Moon
Night And Day
Falling In Love Again
Laughing At Life
I’m All For You
I Hear Music
The Same Old Story (two takes)
Practise Makes Perfect (three takes)
Disc 10
St. Louis Blues
Loveless Love
Let’s Do It
Georgia On My Mind (two takes)
Romance In The Dark (three takes)
All Of Me (two takes)
God Bless The Child (two takes)
Am I Blue? (two takes)
Jim
Gloomy Sunday
Wherever You Are
Mandy Is Two
It’s A Sin to Tell A Lie (two takes)
Until The Real Thing Comes Along
Do Nothing ‘Till You Hear From Me/I’ll Get By
I Love My Man
THE COMMODORE MASTERS 1939, 1944 Dodd CD 491
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The Commodore sessions were supervised by the owner of New York’s
Commodore Record Shop, Milt Gabler. He had turned his store into a gathering place for
jazz artists, and when he began doing his own recordings in the late 1930s he was a
friend of most of the city’s fine collection of musicians. “Strange Fruit,” a searing
indictment of southern lynchings, was too strong for Columbia Records, but it had made
a strong impact at the Cafe Society club in New York, where Holiday was performing.
Columbia released her for one date with Gabler, which included the song. In 1944 she
was released for three additional sessions, again recording material she was performing at
the club.
Strange Fruit
Yesterdays
Fine And Mellow
I Gotta Right To Sing The Blues
How Am I To Know?
My Old Flame
I’ll Get By
I Cover The Waterfront
I’ll Be Seeing You
I’m Yours
Embraceable You
As Time Goes By
He’s Funny That Way
Lover, Come Back To Me
Billie’s Blues
On The Sunny Side Of The Street
BILLIE HOLIDAY, THE COMPLETE DECCA RECORDINGS 1944-1950
Dodd CD 492
Gabler moved on to Decca Records as pop Artist director, and he became
Holiday’s producer for the next five years. The sessions unfortunately managed to
straddle Holiday between the soft pop market and the jazz market, without successfully
putting her into either category. The tempos were slow, and often there were string
sections that managed to sound awkward playing the simplest arrangements. Even the
sessions with jazz artists were sluggish, and often the section writing for the larger
groups had an edge of uncertainty. Holiday was having serious personal problems during
this period, and this also is reflected in the music. Gabler conceived the idea of taking
her back to her vocal roots, and he recorded her doing versions of songs which Bessie
Smith had recorded in her last session in the early 1930s, among them “Do Your Duty”
and “Gimme A Pigfoot,” but the incongruous juxtaposition of the earthy lyrics and the
preening elegance of the arrangements still sounds as uncomfortable fifty years later as it
did in the studio.
Disc 1
Lover Man
No More (two takes)
That Old Devil Called Love
Don’t Explain (two takes)
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Big Stuff (five versions and takes)
You Better Go Now
What Is This Thing Called Love?
Good Morning Heartache
No Good Man (two takes)
Baby, I Don’t Cry Over You (two takes)
I’ll Look Around (two takes)
The Blues Are Brewin’
Guilty (three takes)
Deep Song
There Is No Greater Love
Disc 2
Easy Living
Solitude (two takes)
Weep No More
Girls Were Made To Take Care Of Boys
I Love You Porgy
My Man (two takes)
‘Tain’t Nobody’s Business If I Do
Baby Get Lost
Keeps On A-Rainin’
Them There Eyes
Do Your Duty
Gimme A Pigfoot (And A Bottle Of Beer)
You Can’t Lose A Broken Heart (duet with Louis Armstrong)
My Sweet Hunk O’ Trash (with Armstrong)
Now Or Never
You’re My Thrill
Crazy He Calls Me
Please Tell Me Now
Somebody’s On My Mind
God Bless The Child
This Is Heaven To Me
LADY IN AUTUMN: The Best of the Verve Years, 1946-1959 Dodd CD 493
As is immediately clear from the noisy audience reception on the first tracks of this
collection, Holiday was now touring with the very popular Jazz At The Philharmonic
shows, which meant that night after night she was performing a handful of her best
known songs with jam session artists working behind her regular pianist. She no longer
was contracted to a major label and the recordings were released on smaller
independents, Clef, Verve, and MGM. The final recording of this compilation was made
only a few months before her death. There has always been considerable controversy
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about these last recordings. The tempos are slow, the voice is husky, and most of the
material is made up of songs she’s repeated hundreds of times. Miles Davis disagreed
with the commentators who criticized them. He insisted, “I’d rather hear her now . . .
Sometimes you can sing words every night for five years, and all of a sudden it dawns on
you what the song means. . .” There is a quality of a life lived at the edge that also for me
makes the later performances unforgettable. At the end she was haunted in the way
Bessie Smith or Janis Joplin were haunted in their final recordings, and in each of them
the spectres that haunted them left an indelible stamp on their music. Somehow at the
end Lady Day has come to a full confrontation to the pain and disappointment and selfdestructive confusion that for so long had hung over her life.
Disc 1
Body And Soul
Strange Fruit
Trav’lin’ Light
All Of Me
There Is No Greater Love
I Cover The Waterfront
These Foolish Things (Remind Me Of You)
Tenderly
Autumn In New York
My Man
Stormy Weather
Yesterdays
(I Got A Man, Crazy For Me) He’s Funny That Way
What A Little Moonlight Can Do
I Cried For You
Too Marvelous For Words
I Wished On The Moon
I Don’t Want To Cry Any More
Prelude To A Kiss
Disc 2
Nice Work If You Can Get It
Come Rain Or Come Shine
What’s New
God Bless The Child
Do Nothin’ ‘Till You Hear From Me
April In Paris
Lady Sings The Blues
Don’t Explain
Fine And Mellow
I Didn’t Know What Time It Was
Stars Fell On Alabama
One For My Baby (And One More For The Road)
Gee Baby Ain’t I Good To You
Lover Man (Oh Where Can You Be?)
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All The Way
Don’t Worry ‘Bout Me
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III A. THE JAZZ COMPONENT: THE JAZZ MAKERS
III A5. JELLY ROLL MORTON
In the summer of 1938, with his career dragging to a disappointing conclusion
and his health deteriorating, Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton - jazz pianist, entertainer
extraordinaire, pool shark, eccentric dancer, tireless self promoter, occasional singer,
composer, band leader, unsuccessful night club owner - was asked to come to the Library
of Congress in Washington, where he working at the time, to record a few discs to
document the beginnings of jazz. Over a period of five weeks - as his asthma and his
time off from his latest poorly paid musician’s job permitted - he recreated, with just his
voice and his piano, the first sounds of the new music soon to be given the name “jass”at
the century’s beginning, as he had experienced it almost forty years before. His
presentation of the first stirrings of jazz and the world in which it appeared was so vivid,
so rich in memories and musical recreations, that in any final estimate of Morton’s career
it became difficult to understand what had led to the uneven path of his commercial
recording career. Virtually all of the music he created in recording studios between 1923
and 1940 is documented here in the Archive, however, and the story lies in the music and
the arrangements themselves.
For many younger musicians like myself who were swept into the heady jazz
revival of the 1940s, Jelly Roll was one of the handful of artists who defined jazz for us.
Already there had been some reissues of his original recordings from the 1920s, but we
bought these on 78rpm reissue discs, which had the distinction of generally sounding
worse than the very well produced originals. Now nearly every note Morton recorded
has been made available in one format or another. As more material surfaced there was
often dismay over the musical quality of some of the lesser known titles, but the critical
assessment finally has come to rest on his finest work and the unique achievment of the
Library of Congress recordings. Morton is now accepted as one of the major artists of
the first jazz decades.
CHICAGO - 1923-1926
Morton was born in New Orleans, and learned his trade as a teenage pianist and
singer in the brothels and cabarets of the city’s Red Light district, Storyville. When he
left New Orleans it was to spend a decade wandering the country; playing, singing,
working in vaudeville shows, and running the balls on pool tables everywhere he could
find an audience or a sucker. By the beginning of the 1920s he had been in Los Angeles
for several years, operating a series of small night clubs, polishing a uniquely individual
repertoire of piano compositions, and hustling the locals at pool. Two musical
entrepeneurs who were part of the local scene, the Spikes brothers, added a lyric to one of
his pieces, “Wolverine Blues,” and presented it to the world with themselves as cocomposers. In the wrangling that ensued Morton decided to travel to Chicago, where the
piece had been published by an enterprising young white publishing company run by two
brothers, Lester and Walter Melrose, and a partner, Marty Bloom. Morton swept into
their music store wearing a red bandana so they would know he was from California,
took over their piano, and proceeded to show them what he could do. They were
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impressed enough to agree to hire him as a staff artist, to publish his music, and once they
became his publisher they began a persistent campaign to arrange for recording sessions
which would promote their material.
Over the next two years the Melroses managed to set up sessions for Morton and
their compositions with a surprising variety of artists. There were solo piano sessions,
band recordings, duets with other artists, and an historical landmark - the first racially
mixed jazz recording, when Morton took over the piano bench for some of his own
compositions with the popular white group the New Orleans Rhythm Kings.
The most important of these first recordings which the Melroses set up were solo
piano sessions for Morton, in which he put on disc the basic repertoire he had honed in
hundreds of informal cabaret concerts and “cutting contests” in his years of wandering.
The notes were worked so deeply into his fingers that he managed to create nine of his
classic solo performances in a single afternoon in the studio - a musical feat that very few
artists of that period could have matched. The studio was the same Gennett facility in
Richmond, Indiana where both the young Louis Armstrong recorded at about the same
time with King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band and Bix Beiderbecke made his first recordings
with the Wolverines. The studio’ facilities were adequate for the small groups the
company brought in to record, but the building was beside a railroad spur, and it was
necessary to stop everything when a train went by. The studio’s advantage was that it
was less than a hundred miles from Chicago’s South Side, where many of the musicians
lived.
THE PIANO SOLOS
JELLY ROLL MORTON - LP, Piano Classics 1923-1924 Folkways Records, 1983,
Compiled and Annotated by David A. Jason. Dodd LP 789
All of the titles were recorded in the Gennett studio between July 17, 1923 and June 9,
1924. Jason presented the titles in their original order of recording for this reissue.
Titles:
King Porter Stomp
New Orleans Joys
Grandpa’s Spells
Kansas City Stomp
Wolverine Blues
The Pearls
Thirty-Fifth Street Blues
Mamanita
Frog-I-More Rag
London Blues
Tia Juana
Shreveport Stomp
Mamanita
Jelly Roll Blues
Big Foot Ham
Bucktown Blues
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Tom Cat Blues
Stratford Hunch
Perfect Rag
THE PIANO ROLLS
Although the piano roll has almost disappeared from our musical world, it was
one of the most important forms of home entertainment until the late 1920s. Prior to the
mid- 1920s recordings were still made acoustically - with a mechanical recording horn
close enough to the instrument or the voice to pick up the vibrations that were transmitted
to a cutting needle on the acetate master disc. Nothing sounded entirely convincing with
the majority of acoustic recordings, but the sound of a piano was particularly
disappointing, and since nearly every household that could afford a phonograph could
also afford a piano, the instrument was there in the room for comparison. What was
created for the family’s formal parlor was a piano that played paper rolls. The rolls were
spooled over a long metal strip which had a line of small holes, one for each of the
piano’s 88 tones. A bellows, which the “player” operated with foot peddles, pumped air
into the metal strip. At each place in the roll where a hole was punched in the paper the
air streamed through that opening in the metal strip, and a mechanism was tripped that
operated the piano key.
The early sound of a piano roll was clanging and crude, but it was at least a real
piano sound, and as the techniques became more sophisticated the rolls were much more
successful at reproducing the sound of a live performance. More expensive instruments
were created with electrically pumped bellows, instructions were printed on the rolls for
pedaling and dynamics, and “song” rolls printed the lyrics on the paper so anyone sitting
at the piano could sing along. In the living room where I grew up there was a tall, square
mahogany acoustic phonograph that had to be wound up for each play against one wall,
and across the room from it was the family’s player piano. Sometimes I was allowed to
help pump, but what startled me into wide-eyed silence was that the rolls could be played
at any tempo. If my mother or her sisters wanted to learn a new piece they simply ran the
roll very slowly, and followed the bobbing keys with their fingers.
In the classical field there were player pianos developed that used small
containers of liquid mercury which could match not only the note that was played but the
pressure the pianist applied to the key and the duration the key was held down. The rolls
were played through a bulky apparatus that was wheeled up to the keyboard of a concert
grand piano. Modern recordings made from these highly developed rolls have given us
startling glimpses into the pianism of major artists as diverse as Camille Saint-Saens,
Sergei Rachmaninoff, and George Gershwin. It wasn’t until the development of
electrical recording techniques in the mid-1920s, with their much improved sound
quality, that piano recordings began to replace the player piano and its paper rolls.
Since the Melrose brothers were trying to develop an audience for the Morton
compositions they were publishing it was only natural that they also involved him in
piano rolls. Some of the important ragtime figures, including Scott Joplin, had recorded
rolls, and “hand-played rolls,” as they were advertised, were a staple for most of the
younger New York stride and blues players. For this kind of “recording” the techniques
were much more primitive than the machinery used for concert artists. The pianist sat
down at a prepared instrument, the paper roll was turned on, and the performer played the
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piece. The machine attached to the keys marked the notes that were played on the paper,
and working with this rough template workers cut the notes out of the roll by hand to
create a master. It was a simple technical trick to add extra notes and extravagant
embellishments, and the most popular rolls were often so heavily overlaid that the
melodies almost were lost in the din. Morton’s rolls were left as he played them, but he
didn’t work with the cutters, and the rolls had wrong notes and some confusions in the
final arrangement of the piece. The advantage was in the extra time he had for the pieces
- the “Shreveport Stomp” on the roll is a minute longer than the 78 rpm single version and also it is instructive to compare these versions with the other performances he had
done for Gennett Records on their studio piano a few months earlier.
This documentation of Morton’s known rolls is particularly important because it
opens with a very early roll he made of one of his trade-mark numbers, “The ‘Jelly Roll’
Blues” in 1915. The changes over the nearly ten years before he recorded the piece again
show a maturing of his compositional skills.
JELLY ROLL MORTON - LP, Blues and Stomps from Rare Piano Rolls 1924-1926
Biograph Records, nd. Dodd LP 786
For this recording the rolls were “pumped and tempos selected” by one of the country’s
leading authorities on Morton’s piano roll output, Michael Montgomery, and the piano
used was a 1910 Steinway upright.
Titles:
The ‘“Jelly Roll” Blues
Mr. Jelly Lord
London Blues
Sweet Man
Grandpa’s Spells
Stratford Huntch (sic)
Shreveport Stomp
Tom Cat Blues
King Portor (sic)
Midnight Mama
Tin Roof Blues
Dead Man Blues
THE BAND SIDES
It is a disconcerting experience to listen to the band sides Morton made at this
same time, working as band pianist, leader, and arranger. The sophistication and
musicality of his solo recordings is largely lost in ineptly played and poorly arranged
performances by musicians who sometimes seemed to be barely of professional caliber.
It is difficult to know whether Morton was simply inexperienced in band arranging,
whether he had only a limited pool of musicians to draw from, or whether he had
underestimated the problems of small band jazz recording. Probably it is a combination
of all of these factors. Probably as a hangover from his vaudeville days he even recorded
a comedy version of his classic “Mr. Jelly Lord” with a quartet that consisted of comb,
kazoo, clown clarinet, and piano. The only comfort for him might have been that the first
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recordings by Duke Ellington’s young orchestra from Washington, D. C., made at about
the same time, sound even worse.
JELLY ROLL MORTON - LP, The Incomparable Jelly Roll Morton Classic Jazz Master,
nd. Dodd LP 787
The early singles were released under various band titles, including Jelly Roll Morton’s
Kings of Jazz, Jelly Roll Morton’ Steamboat Four, and Jelly Roll Morton’s
Incomparables.
Titles:
Big Fat Ham
Muddy Water Blues
Mr. Jelly Lord
Steady Roll Blues
Fishtail Blues
High Society
My Gal
Wolverine Blues
Mr. Jelly Lord
(The B side of the LP is devoted to piano solos from the Gennett sessions)
THE FIRST INTERRACIAL RECORDING
JELLY ROLL MORTON and THE NEW ORLEANS RHYTHM KINGS
The New Orleans Rhythm Kings was a talented young group of white musicians
who had come up the river from New Orleans to Chicago, like King Oliver and Louis
Armstrong, to work in the city’s popular cabarets. The Rhythm Kings were playing in a
cellar club called the Friar’s Inn, and they were a crucial influence on the entire jazz
world through their appearances in the club, their recordings, and their compositions.
They were also publishing their music through the Melrose brothers’ company, and it
seemed to be an obvious commercial idea to use them to play some of Morton’s music.
Since Morton turned up at the studio for the session, it also seemed obvious that he
would be used as the band’s pianist, despite the race prejudice that kept the black and
white musicians separated. There was no question that Morton’s name could be used on
the record, but jazz record collectors immediately to picked out his distinctive piano style
on several of the band’s titles, including the versions of his own compositions.
THE NEW ORLEANS RHYTHM KINGS - CD, The Complete Recordings, Volume 1
and 2 King Jazz, 1992. [not transferred]
Morton plays on the following tracks:
Sobbin’ Blues
Clarinet Marmalade
Wolverine Blues
Mr. Jelly Lord
London Blues
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Milenberg Joys
(Two members of the Rhythm Kings, clarinetist Leon Rappolo and cornetist Paul Mares,
were credited as co-composers for “Milenberg Joys,” which was named for a resort
outside of New Orleans.)
These titles are included in the New Orleans Rhythm Kings material, and they will also
be cataloged in the section THE WORLD OF JAZZ.
THE OLIVER DUETS
One of the small Chicago record companies attempting to market its singles to the
audience on the South Side was persuaded by the Melrose brothers to record two duets
by Morton and the South Side’s hottest cornet player, King Oliver. The two duets were
recorded in December, 1924. The sound quality is even poorer than the usual Chicago
acoustic studios of the period, and Oliver and Morton seem to have almost no affinity for
each other’s style. What might have been a historic recording becomes a stiffly played
and clumsily arranged performance of two of Morton’s pieces. The blues gives Oliver a
little more opportunity to play in his own style, but it would not be until four years later,
with the famed duet recording of “Weather Bird” by Louis Armstrong and and Earl Hines
that a trumpet, piano duet was musically successful.
JELLY ROLL MORTON and KING OLIVER - Included in the CD, The King and
Mister Jelly Lord. Rhapsody Records Ltd., 1989. Dodd CD 494
King Porter Stomp
Tom Cat Blues
These titles will also be listed in the King Oliver material in THE WORLD OF JAZZ.
THE RED HOT PEPPERS
CHICAGO and NEW YORK, 1926-1930
JELLY ROLL MORTON and his RED HOT PEPPERS, 1926-1930
This set of five cassettes includes all of the music Morton recorded under this
band name, as well as the piano solos he recorded for Victor records during the period he
was a contract artist.
Morton’s reputation as a jazz innovator rest on the best of his recordings with the
various studio groups that recorded under the name of the Red Hot Peppers. Like Louis
Armstrong’s Hot Five the Peppers never performed in public. All of the musicians were
involved with too many other projects to work exclusively with Morton - both the
groups, in fact, use the same trombone player, Kid Ory, and an early Peppers’ session
also includes Hot Five clarinetist Johnny Dodds. The first releases on Victor Records
were so successful that Morton was advertised for several years in the company’s
catalogs as “America’s Number 1 Hot Band,” and if he had demonstrated any apptitude
for the demands and exasperations of touring with a jazz orchestra he might have had a
career that matched Ellington’s or Fletcher Henderson’s. Certainly in 1926, when the
band did its first sessions, its music and the arrangements were ahead of what anyone else
in the country was doing.
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There is no question that the first eleven titles recorded by the group have a
sustained brilliance and invention that still sound as fresh now as it did when they were
first released. What is difficult to reconcile with Morton’s obvious strengths and
weaknesses as an organizer is that some of the compositions and the arrangements
include pieces that he had recorded with the poor groups of the previous three years.
What happened in the short months between the clumsy performances of his bands like
Jelly Roll Morton’s Incomparables and the polished sophistification of the Red Hot
Peppers?
The arrangements Morton’s musicians used are regarded as the classic small band
performances of the era, and they have long been considered the rock on which Morton’s
reputation rests, but when they were published by the Melrose Brothers they were
credited to another musician, Mel Stitzel. Stitzel was also a Melrose staff writer, and he
worked as a pianist for the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, so he and Morton had been
associated since Morton’s arrival in Chicago. One of the most distinctive of the Pepper’s
pieces, “The Chant,” is a Stitzel composition, and he certainly is responsible for the
arrangement. The group that was assembled included George Mitchell, a fine, sensitive
cornetist, who did not, however, improvise. His solos are written into the arrangements.
The clarinetist, Omer Simeon, was sweet toned and musically versatile, but he was only
seventeen years old and these were his first recording sessions. His solos were also
written into the scores. It is possible that some of the arrangements were done by Stitzel
as early as 1923, or at the same time as the New Orleans Rhythm Kings sessions, and
Morton simply used them with poorly rehearsed groups for the earlier recordings. The
arrangements for the rest of the eleven compositions were done at the time of the
recordings. The Peppers were not only much better musicians, the members of the group
remembered that they rehearsed for several days at Morton’s apartment before going into
the studio.
It is also a sign of Stitzel’s possible involvement with these first recordings that the
sound of Morton’s groups after he left Chicago changed drastically. If Morton finally
was doing his own arranging, by the time he expanded the group to the standard larger
band format of the late 1920s he was clearly over his head. Victor continued to record
him until 1930, probably because the first Peppers sides continued to sell, but the large
groups sounded more and more disorganized. The best of the New York sessions with
the Peppers, now including different musicians, titles like “Shoe Shiner’s Drag” - which
had been titled “London Blues” in the earlier recording of the arrangement - “Georgia
Swing,” and “Kansas City Stomps,” were crisply played and musically exciting. The big
band sides at their best have a distinctive tone, and Morton’s solo on “Deep Creek” is one
of the most beautiful statements he ever made on record. By the late 1920s, however, the
new bands like Ellington and Charlie Johnson, the Missourians, and the Gene Goldkette
Orchestra, which included Beiderbecke and other musicians associated with him, had
taken jazz to new levels of brilliance that Morton couldn’t follow.
Following his release by Victor Morton spent the next few years trying to put
together new groups and find someone to book his bands. These were the early years of
the Depression, however, and Morton was finding whatever he had to offer to the
dwindling public there was no way for him to continue. He still had a trickle of royalties,
and there were occasional jobs with whatever bands he could put together, but he seems
to have earned much of whatever income he had shooting pool. In the late 1930s, with
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the first stirrings of a revival of interest in his old recordings, he was hired as manager
and entertainer for a small, run-down night club in Washington, D.C.
THE JELLY ROLL MORTON CENTENNIAL, His Complete Victor Recordings 5 Cassettes, Bluebird, 1990. Dodd CA 836
Cassette 1
Black Bottom Stomp
Smoke House Blues
The Chant (two takes)
Sidewalk Blues (two takes)
Dead Man Blues (two takes)
Steamboat Stomp (two takes)
Someday Sweetheart (two takes)
Grandpa’s Spells (two takes)
Original Jelly-Roll Blues
Doctor Jazz
Cannon Ball Blues (two takes)
Hyena Stomp (two takes)
Billy Goat Stomp (two takes)
Cassette 2
Wildman Blues (two takes)
Jungle Blues (two takes)
Beale Street Blues (two takes)
The Pearls (two takes)
Wolverine Blues (two takes)
Mr. Jelly Lord
Georgia Swing
Kansas City Stomps
Shoe Shiner’s Drag
Boogaboo
Shreveport (two takes)
Mournful Serenade
Red Hot Pepper
Deep Creek
Pep (piano solo)
Seattle Hunch (two takes) (piano solo)
Cassette 3
Frances (piano solo)
Freakish (two takes) (piano solo)
Burnin’ The Iceberg (two takes)
Courthouse Bump (two takes)
Pretty Lil (two takes)
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Sweet Anita Mine (two takes)
New Orleans Bump (two takes)
Down My Way
Try Me Out
Tank Town Bump (two takes)
Sweet Peter (two takes)
Jersey Joe (two takes)
Cassette 4
Mississippi Mildred (two takes)
Mint Julep
Smilin’ The Blues Away
Turtle Twist
My Little Dixie Home
That’s Like It Ought To Be
Each Day (two takes)
If Someone Would Only Love Me
That’ll Never Do
I’m Looking For A Little Bluebird
Little Lawrence
Harmony Blues
Fussy Mabel
Ponchartrain
Oil Well (two takes)
Load Of Coal (two takes)
Crazy Chords (two takes)
Cassette 5
Primrose Stomp (two takes)
Low Gravy
Strokin’ Away (two takes)
Blue Blood Blues (two takes)
Mushmouth Shuffle
Gambling Jack (two takes)
Fickle Fay Creep
SESSIONS WITH OTHER LEADERS IN NEW YORK
Although he was signed to Victor Records as an exclusive artist Morton also
played occasional sessions with other band leaders and as a blues accompaniest.
JOHNNY DUNN and HIS BAND - CD, The King and Mister Jelly Lord Rhapsody
Records, 1989. (listed above)
Titles:
Sergeant Dunn’s Bugle Call Blues
Ham ‘N’ Eggs
Buffalo Blues
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You Need Some Lovin’
(Two of the titles, “Ham ‘N’ Eggs” and “Buffalo Blues” are Morton compositions, which
were also recorded under other titles.)
WILTON CRAWLEY and THE WASHBOARD RHYTHM KINGS - LP, Hot Jazz, Pop
Jazz, Hokum, and Hilarity RCA Victor, 1966. Dodd LP 791
Titles:
I’m Her Papa, She’s My Mama
She Saves Her Sweetest Smiles For Me
THE DEPRESSION YEARS
There was still considerable musical activity in Harlem, despite the Depression,
and although Morton continued to have a lingering reputation as a pianist and band leader
he had alienated nearly every musician he met with his tireless self-promotion and his
haughty dismissal of any other band leader. Even though he no longer had a recording
contract he was available for sessions as a sideman. In August, 1934, he did get a studio
call from the New Orleans trumpet player and musical personality Wingy Manone, and
he joined Manone’s pick-up group in the studio. Built around the easy assurance of fine
studio musicians, including clarinetist Artie Shaw and tenor saxophone soloist Bud
Freeman, the session is smooth and effective. Morton plays a characteristically
flourishing solo, but he wasn’t brought back for other Manone dates.
WINGY MANONE and HIS ORCHESTRA - CD, The King and Mister Jelly Lord
Rhapsody, nd. (see listing above for location of this cd)
Titles: Never Had No Lovin’
I’m Alone Without You
JELLY ROLL MORTON - LP, 1938, 1940 Alamac Record Company, nd. Dodd LP 790
Morton might have made these these recordings in Baltimore as an audition for a
job, or as rehearsal material. During this period he was living in Washington, D. C., only
thirty miles away. The musicians, some of them still unidentified, worked for local
Baltimore bands, and the material was not released until recent years.
Titles:
Honeysuckle Rose (three takes)
My Melancholy Baby (two takes)
I’d Do Anything For You
I Ain’t Got Nobody
The Pearls
Tiger Rag
After You’ve Gone
THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS SESSIONS
THE SAGA OF MR. JELLY LORD
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It is impossible to compare the Library of Congress sessions which Morton
created in 1938 with anything else in the world of music, since there is nothing like them.
The note to the first album of the sessions when they were released on LP in 1950 comes
as close as is possible to describing what the sessions represent.
One of the largest and most celebrated record sets ever issued was the
great American jazz documentary, The Saga of Mr. Jelly Lord, issued by Circle in
twelve albums. This sumptuous limited edition, that filled forty-five large
vinylite disks, was sold by private subscription only. So great, however, was its
musical and historical import, that The Saga attracted wide attention both popular
and critical and elicited a number of feature articles in various national
magazines, and, in 1950, was the subject of a full length book, Mr. Jelly Roll, by
Alan Lomax. Now the development of the long playing record makes possible
the compression of the nearly half a hundred twelve-inch records into a mere
dozen of the modern disks.
The composite playing length of The Saga of Mr. Jelly Lord is over seven
hours - the length of three grand operas, five full-scale musical concerts, or fifteen
complete symphonies - and it consists merely of the talking, piano playing and
singing of one man. This would seem to signify that this one man was of wide
and varied genius, a man of towering stature in the field. This is precisely what
The Saga does signify. The late Jelly Roll Morton is one of the immortals of jazz,
a unique figure in musical history. He is an American legend . . .
The writer of the note, the well known jazz historian Rudi Blesh, went on to
describe the circumstances of the recordings.
It was on May 21, 1938, that Jelly Roll Morton, a slender, graying,
distinguished looking man, came to the Coolidge Auditorium in the Library of
Congress at Washington. The then relatively unknown jazz pianist, composer,
and band leader came there on the invitation of the Folk Music Curator, Alan
Lomax. A grand piano and recording apparatus were ready on the stage, and a
few sessions were planned as a brief account of Morton’s life as a folk artist.
Only Morton, characteristically enough, seemed fully conscious of the
importance of the music, itself, and hence of the occasion. Few, in 1938, thought
as jazz as more than a minor folk-music. No one - unless it were Jelly himself recognized it as a fine art. Although for nearly twenty years previously it had
strongly influenced European music, its own pure values and intrinsic greatness
were still hidden. Full realization of these was not to come until a few years later
and after Morton’s own death, which occurred three short years after these
sessions. It must be laid to supreme good fortune that the sessions took place at
all, and that Morton was chosen instead of some minor popular figure of the day.
The first session began to unfold to amazed listeners the greatness that was in
Morton and his music. The “few sessions” grew into five weeks of recording,
intermittent because of the precarious state of the artist’s health. Jelly played only
on the days he felt like doing so, days in which he summoned all of his powers to
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a degree of sustained brilliance he had never equalled before or was ever afterward
able to attain.
The more than a hundred sides resulted from one of the most brilliantly
sustained and creatively inspired efforts in the annals of music and musical
recording. The sum of ninety sides chosen and edited for Circle by Harriet Janis
constitute what one of the most gifted men of our time had to say about music and
his life in music. Taken together, these records constitute a deeply moving selfportrait of a fascinating and utterly revolutionary music, and an intimate and
detailed history of a place and a time. They constitute, in short, a priceless
American document.
It is difficult to think of anything to add to Blesh’s introduction, except to explain
that due to the uncertainties of my life as the records were being released in the early
1950s I was only able to buy eleven of the albums. When I finally could buy the twelfth,
it was no longer available, and the later American reissue of the series slashed the
reminiscences that made the document so important. Sometime, perhaps, it will be
possible to complete the set.
Jazz Started in New Orleans. Jelly Roll Morton: The Saga of Mr. Jelly Lord, vol. 1.
From the Library of Congress Archives. Issued exclusively by Circle, under
arrangement with the estate of Ferdinand Joseph Morton, 1950. Circle L 14001.
2000-0105/LP1165
Volume 1 JAZZ STARTED IN NEW ORLEANS
Tiger Rag (The original quadrille)
Tiger Rag and Panama
Mr. Jelly Lord
Original Jelly Roll Blues
Ancestry and boyhood
Boy at the piano
The Miserere and boyhood memories
Hyena Stomp
Way Down Yonder... Jelly Roll Morton: The Saga of Mr. Jelly Lord, vol. 2. From the
Library of Congress Archives. Issued exclusively by Circle, under arrangement
with the estate of Ferdinand Joseph Morton, 1950. Cirlce L 14002.
2000-0105/LP1167
Volume 2 WAY DOWN YONDER . . . .
The Animule Ball, Part 1 and Part 2
Shooting the agate
See See Rider, Part 1 and Part 2
New Orleans Funeral, Part, 1, 2, and 3
Jazz Is…Strictly Music. Jelly Roll Morton: The Saga of Mr. Jelly Lord, vol. 3. From the
Library of Congress Archives. Issued exclusively by Circle, under arrangement
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with the estate of Ferdinand Joseph Morton, 1950. Circle L 14003.
2000-0105/LP1175
Volume 3 JAZZ IS . . . STRICTLY MUSIC.
Discourse on jazz, Part 1 and Part 2
Kansas City Stomps
Discourse on jazz, Part 3 and Part 4
Randall’s Rag
Maple Leaf Rag (St. Louis)
Maple Leaf Rag (New Orleans)
King Porter Stomp
You Can Have It
The Spanish Tinge. Jelly Roll Morton: The Saga of Mr. Jelly Lord, vol. 4. From the
Library of Congress Archives. Issued exclusively by Circle, under arrangement
with the estate of Ferdinand Joseph Morton, 1950. Circle L 14004.
2000-0105/LP1174
Volume 4 THE SPANISH TINGE.
Mama ‘Nita
Spanish Swat
New Orleans Blues
La Paloma
Creepy Feeling, Pt. 1, Conclusion
The Crave
Fickle Fay Creep
Bad Man Ballads. Jelly Roll Morton: The Saga of Mr. Jelly Lord, vol. 5. From the
Library of Congress Archives. Issued exclusively by Circle, under arrangement
with the estate of Ferdinand Joseph Morton, 1950. Circle L 14005.
2000-0105/LP1173
Volume 5 BAD MAN BALLADS.
Aaron Harris, Part 1, Part 2, and Conclusion
Robert Charles, Part 1 and Conclusion
Tough babies
Georgia Skin Game, Part 1, Part 2, and Conclusion
The Jazz Piano Soloist. Jelly Roll Morton: The Saga of Mr. Jelly Lord, vol. 6. From the
Library of Congress Archives. Issued exclusively by Circle, under arrangement
10 with the estate of Ferdinand Joseph Morton, 1950. Circle L 14006.
2000-0105/LP1172
Volume 6 THE JAZZ PIANO SOLOIST.
The Pearls, Part 1 and Conclusion
Pep
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Ain’t Misbehavin’
Bert Williams
Jungle Blues
Everyone Had His Own Style. Jelly Roll Morton: The Saga of Mr. Jelly Lord, vol. 7.
From the Library of Congress Archives. Issued exclusively by Circle, under
arrangement with the estate of Ferdinand Joseph Morton, 1950. Circle L 14007.
2000-0105/LP1171
Volume 7 EVERYONE HAD HIS OWN STYLE.
Sammy Davis, Tony Jackson, Pretty Baby
Alfred Wilson, Albert Carroll, etc.
Mamie’s Blues
Crazy Chord Rag
The game kid
Buddy Carter
Benny Frenchy, Part 1 and Conclusion
All That I Ask Is Love
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Jelly and the Blues. Jelly Roll Morton: The Saga of Mr. Jelly Lord, vol. 8. From the
Library of Congress Archives. Issued exclusively by Circle, under arrangement
with the estate of Ferdinand Joseph Morton, 1950. Circle L 14008.
2000-0105/LP1170
Volume 8 JELLY AND THE BLUES.
Wolverine Blues, Part 1 and Conclusion
Low Down Blues
Michigan Water Blues
The Murder Ballad
Winin’ Boy, No. 1
Alabama Bound. Jelly Roll Morton: The Saga of Mr. Jelly Lord, vol. 9. From the
Library of Congress Archives. Issued exclusively by Circle, under arrangement
with the estate of Ferdinand Joseph Morton, 1950. Circle L 14009.
2000-0105/LP1169
Volume 9 ALABAMA BOUND.
Jack the bear, Pt. 1, 2, and 3
Salty Dog
St. Louis
The Miserere
Alabama Bound, Part 1, Part 2
The Jazz Piano Soloist…2. Jelly Roll Morton: The Saga of Mr. Jelly Lord, vol. 10. From
the Library of Congress Archives. Issued exclusively by Circle, under arrangement
with the estate of Ferdinand Joseph Morton, 1950. Circle L 14010.
2000-0105/LP1168
Volume 10 THE JAZZ PIANO SOLOIST . . .2.
Sweet Peter
State And Madison
Freakish
My Gal Sal
King Porter Stomp
Original Jelly Roll Blues, Part 1 and Part 2
Volume 11 BUDDY BOLDEN’S BLUES. [not transferred]
The Broadway swells, Part 1 and 2
Bddy Bolden’s legend, Part 1 and 2
The marching bands, Part 1 and 2
Ungai Hai
Creole Song
If You Don’t Shake
A GRAMMY AWARD WINNING COLLECTION OF THE
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COMPLETE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS RECORDINGS
For nearly a generation Jelly Roll Morton’s Library of Congress recordings were
available only in the edited version by Harriet Janis that she and Rudi Blesh issued first
on 78s, then LPs on their own Circle label, with the limited edition on 78s appearing in
the late 1940s. The later LP issue on Riverside Records were repressings from the Circle
LP masters. Morton researchers were aware that there was material that had been
omitted and that the order of the sessions had been changed to create the 12 album
portrait of Morton that was Janis’s concept of the story. Many people with an interest in
the sessions were also aware that most of what Janis had omitted were Morton’s
renditions of songs that by the standards of the time could be subject to legal prosecution
for obscenity. Neither Janis nor Blesh agreed with the restrictions, but they made the
decision to release the material without an additional problem. There were two later CD
reissues using the Circle material. One, a pirated edition from Australia on Swaggy
Records, omitted all of the colorful stories from his wanderings that Morton narrated with
a delicate chorded piano background as he spoke. For some Morton aficionados the
stories about New Orleans pimps and gamblers and his memories of pianists and almost
forgotten musical “cutting” contests were as interesting as the piano solos. The second
reissue, on Boston’s Rounder Records also eliminated the stories, although there was a
much better sound quality and there was more documentation of the material.
The problem for any company issuing the recordings is that as documentary
recordings done by the Library of Congress they were free of copyright restrictions.
They were in principle the property of the people of the United States. For many years
people interested in the sessions simply stopped by the Library and listened to the
original aluminum discs, which meant that some of the more popular discs began to show
signs of serious wear. The Morton estate, through Morton’s friend and business associate
Roy Carew, insisted that the material belonged to Morton, and after some years of
negotiation the Library accepted this decision. It was finally Rounder which was able to
solve all of the legal and technical problems and for the first time bring all of the original
discs together in the order in which Lomax recorded them.
The package was issued in 2005, and it is an impressive presentation. The original
recordings take up seven CDs, and an eighth disc includes interviews Lomax had done
with veteran New Orleans musicians when he was collecting material for his groundbreaking Morton biography Mister Jelly Roll, originally published in 1950. (A copy is
present in the Archive) The Lomax biography was reprinted with a cover matching the
design of the new package and it is included with the CDs There is also a large format,
lavishly illustrated 80-page introduction to the recordings by jazz scholar John Szwed,
which includes as well fifteen pages of an autobiography Morton began at the time he
was working with Lomax. The CDs, the book, and the introduction are packaged in a
gleaming cardboard mock-up of a black grand piano, with a large portrait drawing of
Morton by the artist Robert Crumb. The recorded sound has been reengineered and is the
best of any of the various transfers from the old discs. The album richly deserved its
Grammy Award as the reissue package of the year. The introduction on the outside cover
of the package concludes, the recordings were “an essential document of American
culture,” which is certainly an accurate summation up Morton’s achievement.
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(A minority opinion is that although everything is here in order, it isn’t as exciting
a listening experience as Janis’s shaping of the story for the Circle releases, but since the
old LPs never made it to CD as they were originally presented, for today’s listeners
interested in Morton’s music the Rounder presentation will be the standard for the
present.)
JELLY ROLL MORTON – CD. The Complete Library of Congress Recordings by Alan
Lomax. Rounder Records, 2005. 2000-0105/CD 1881a-h
NEW ORLEANS MEMORIES
After his return to New York from Washington in 1939 Morton became involved
in a noisy public controversy over the beginnings of jazz - he claimed he’d invented it in
1902 - and whatever the virtues of the various arguments the dispute brought Morton
some attention. In May, 1940 he appeared on a popular national radio program, “The
Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street,” and French jazz critic Hughes Panassie
produced two sessions with Morton for his old label, Victor Records, using younger New
Orleans musicians Morton knew from his years in New York, where they all were living
and working. The Library of Congress sessions were clearly still in his thoughts, and he
turned to material he had reconstructed in the long sessions with Lomax.
JELLY ROLL MORTON – 5 Casettes, The Jelly Roll Morton Centennial Bluebird,
1990. Dodd CA 836
Jelly Roll Morton’s New Orleans Jazzmen
Titles: Oh, Didn’t He Ramble (two takes)
High Society
I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say
Winin’ Boy Blues (two takes)
Climax Rag (two takes)
Don’t You Leave Me Here (two takes)
West End Blues
Ballin’ The Jack
Some of the music Morton presented on the radio broadcast is included on this LP
released sometime in the 1960s.
JELLY ROLL MORTON - LP, From the NBC Broadcasts, with the orchestra of Henry
“Hot Lips” Levine Alamac Records, nd.
These two titles are included on the Dodd LP 1938, LP 1940 listed above. “Winin’Boy”
is by Morton with the NBC studio band, and the second title, a piano solo, also sounds as
though it were recorded at the NBC studio
Titles:
Winin’ Boy Blues
King Porter Stomp
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One of the young group of jazz writers who had been close to Morton in
Washington, Charles Edward Smith, and Gordon Edwards, a producer for a small
company called General Records, were interested in using the format of the Library of
Congress sessions for an album of Morton’s songs and compositions. Smith came
regularly to Morton’s Harlem apartment, and slowly they assembled the material for what
was to be one of the most successful recording projects Morton had ever done. There is
no way now to experience the New Orleans Memories set as it first appeared on General
Records in 1940, since it was created for five 10” 78 rpm singles which were assembled
in an album. Each of the singles had a vocal performance on the A side, and a piano solo
on the B side, and the performances carefully complemented each other. Morton’s
spoken introduction and poignant singing of “Mamie’s Blues,” the first song of the set “This is no doubt the first blues I heard in my life . . .” was to be included in nearly every
Best Record of the Year list - and the reverse of this early blues was Morton’s reworking
of the early Scott Joplin composition “Original Rags.” Each of the singles was balanced
skillfully between its blues and its instrumental composition, and Morton played and
sang brilliantly. In the selection of solos he moved through rags, stomps, tangos, and riff
tunes, adding a surrealistic piece that he described as a “naked dance,” something the
pianist in one of the New Orleans houses would play, hidden from the dancer, when one
of the girls danced naked for the customers. It was as though Morton had rethought the
entire Library of Congress project and distilled it into this handful of singles that
contained its essence.
JELLY ROLL MORTON - LP, New Orleans Memories Commodore Records, 1973.
Dodd LP 788a
This is one of two LPs in this later reissue set which include the entire output recorded by
Morton for General Records.
Titles:
Mamie’s Blues
Michigan Water Blues
Buddy Bolden’s Blues
Winin’ Boy Blues (Wineing Boy)
Don’t You Leave Me Here
Original Rags
The Naked Dance
The Crave
Mister Joe
King Porter Stomp
(“Mister Joe” was intended as a tribute to band leader Joe Oliver. In an earlier recording
with Johnny Dunn Morton had titled the piece “Buffalo Blues.”)
At the same time as Morton was planning the solo album he was also working on
arrangements for a new group of small band dates to follow up on the Bluebird sessions
of the year before. General Records didn’t have an extensive distribution system, but
there was a feeling that the records could be sold through juke box play. They were
released with the subtitle “General Tavern Tunes” printed below the company title.
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These sessions, on January 4 and January 30, 1940, were his last recordings as leader of a
group.
JELLY ROLL MORTON - LP, Last Band Dates Commodore Records, 1973.
Dodd LP 788b
This is the second LP of the set including all of the General recordings.
Titles:
Panama
Sweet Substitute
Big Lip Blues
Good Old New York
Get The Bucket
If You Knew (How I Love You)
Swingin’ The Elks (We Are Elks)
Dirty, Dirty, Dirty
Mama’s Got A Baby (Named Tee Nah Nah)
My Home Is In A Southern Town
Shake It
Why
(His last band solo is a characteristically restrained, lyric chorus on “Dirty, Dirty, Dirty.”)
In an effort to revive his career, as well as attend to some personal business with a
woman he had lived with on the West Coast years before, Morton drove to Los Angeles
late in 1940. There was some interest in his music, a session that produced two solos for
a small local jazz label, but by now he was too ill to carry any of his plans to completion.
He died of respiratory failure in the summer of 1941.
See also the book Mr. Jelly Roll, by Alan Lomax, in the book section of the Archive, as
well as the book Jelly Roll Morton’s Last Night At The Jungle Inn, by Samuel Charters,
which is also in the collection.
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