Mel Torme, Marty Paich and Vo-Cool-izing

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

If you are a hip, slick and cool Jazzer, you know that experiencing Mel Torme’s vocals are a real treat and that nobody ever wrote better Jazz arrangements than Marty Paich.

You also know that encountering Mel and Marty together is an ineffable musical happenstance.

And if you are in the mood to thank the Jazz Gods for leaving us the legacy of four - FOUR!!!! - albums that they made together from about 1955-1960, please be my guest.

Any thank them, too, for showcasing their talents ably aided and abetted by Jack Sheldon on trumpet, Frank Rosolino on trombone, Art Pepper on alto sax, Jack Montrose, tenor sax, Victor Feldman, vibes, Barney Kessel, guitar, Joe Mondragon, bass, Mel Lewis on drums and a host of other West Coast Jazz musicians in their prime.

The music on the four recordings that Mel and Marty made together is a national treasure.

If you haven’t heard it, buy ‘em all and treat yourself to one of the most glorious listening experiences available in recorded Jazz.

Because Mel Torme was born 1925 [in Chicago], he missed the height of the band era, getting in only at its tail end. Like his colleagues Mickey Rooney Buddy Rich, and Sammy Davis, Jr., he began as a child performer who grew up into a high-energy performance dynamo.

Ben Pollack, the impresario-bandleader who was to Chicago whites what Fletcher Henderson was to New York blacks, put Torme in Chico Marx's all-juvenile orchestra when the pianist-comic fronted a dance band to pay off some gambling debts (and also toyed with the idea of building a similar kid band arour.: Torme).

Not long after Torme broke into pictures (he had previously played child parts on radio soaps) and a few month before his enlistment, he put together his first edition of the Mel-Tones and recorded with them on Jewell and Decca.

After the war, Torme rejoined the group, got them on Musicraft  Records, where they made a series of sessions with and without Artie Shaw and brought the vocal group into modern jazz.

After "giving up the ghost" (Mel's term) with the Mel-Tones, Torme for a time seemed destined to become a "big-time bobby-socks idol" (Look magazine's term), when Carlos Gastel — who had helped make stars of Nat Cole and Peggy Lee, and put Stan Kenton and Anita O'Day together —moved him up to Capitol Records and MGM Pictures. He had hits, which incurred the resentment rather than the respect of the older showbiz communly (prior to the baby-boom young adults rarely became singing stars) at his ill-planned New York debut at the Copacabana.

If anything, Torme's records for Musicraft and the much bigger Capitol Records were too successful: They led his managers and A&R men to think Torme could be converted, like so many other talented artists, into a mere cog in the hit-making machinery. But he had, in William Blake's words, learned what was enough by first learning what was more than enough.

After a few years of bobby-sox idolatry, Torme decided to stick with smaller labels and classier music. His first long-playing record had also been the first Capitol LP, his own most spectacular stab at an extended composition, The California Suite (on Discovery DS-900), a thirty-five-plus-minute work that extols the virtues of the Sunshine State in eleven parts, all being songs but none fitting traditional thirty-two-bar AABA patterns.

Torme made his first conventional album, Musical Sounds Are the Best Songs [1954, Coral], in which he says goodbye to the big-band era in a set of nonsensical but very hard-swinging rhythm numbers. He followed Musical Sounds with lush ones on It's a Blue World [1955, Bethlehem], which shows how much better his ballad singing had gotten since the Musicrafts and Capitols.

The vo-cool era, then, begins at its highest point, Mel Torme and the Marty Paich Dek-Tette, which leads to four other Torme-Paich collaborations, the second also on Bethlehem, Mel Torme Sings Fred Astaire (1956), and the others on Verve: Torme 1958), a flawless collection of unlush ballads with a small string section; Back in Town (1959), the Mel-Tones' reunion album; and the climax, not only of the Torme-Paich relationship but of the whole cool genre, Mel Torme Swings Shubert Alley (1960).

Torme today dislikes the sound of his voice on these records, and, in fact, once offered to remake them for the current corporate owners of the Bethlehem catalog. But even though his voice is a finer-tuned instrument in the late eighties, I doubt that anything could improve these records, especially the first and the last. The original Dek-Tette recording set the greatest diversity of tempo and on more adventurous works such as "The Blues" [which is an excerpt from Duke Ellington’s extended suite Black, Brown and Beige] in which he translates the multileveled Ellingtonian sound into multileveled Torme-Paich sound.  

On "Lullaby of Birdland," Torme gradually flies farther and farther out, not by Ella-vating himself off the nearest chord progression but by building a scaffold of scat (and voice-horn interplay with the Dek-Tette) that he can climb as high as he wants.

All twelve songs on Shubert Alley, by contrast, come from the same source, the book-shows of post-Oklahoma! Broadway, and Torme and Paich reconfigure them all into the same medium-bright tempo. All have been thoroughly re-composed so that the familiar patterns of vocal-band-vocal and band-vocal-band are exceptions rather than rules, and only the closing chart, "Lonely Town" (the one track on Shubert Alley to use a piano), could have been sung by any other singer on any other album.

On two numbers, Torme and Paich postulate on the possibility of blues devices  in   other  kinds  of material,   as  when  Torme  gathers momentum by repeating the penultimate six notes of "Just in Time," over and over without the final tonic, until it assumes the shape of a Count Basie-Joe Williams blues, and when in "Too Darn Hot" they have trombonist Frank Rosolino and altoist Art Pepper not wait for the "instrumental" second chorus to solo but instead take their eight-bar turns after each of Torme's opening A sections—in other words, shaping a standard as if it were Billie Holiday's "Fine and Mellow."

Interpolations, of the kind that will eventually become a Torme perennial, figure on almost ever track, though they're not usually made by the singer but by the band behind him, as on the second chorus of "Once in Love With Amy," where Torme sings the first A and the Dek-Tette play "Makin' Whoopee," switching to "Easy Living" for the second A and also when Torme sings the Latinate "Whatever Lola Wants Lola Gets" and Paich and crew pay homage to Gerry Mulligan by way of "Bernie's Tune."

Its virtues could be extolled ad infinitum but the point is that the strength of the album does not lie in and of its individual elements, nor do certain tracks stand out above the others. Instead, from start to finish, Mel Torme Swings Shubert Alley is a masterpiece. Neither the vo-cool specifically nor vocalizing in general got any better than this, though a few contenders have come along in the interim.”

Sources:

Joseph Laredo insert notes to Mel Torme with the Marty Paich Dek-Tette [Bethlehem/Avenue Jazz R2 75732

Joseph Loredo insert notes to Mel Torme Sings Fred Astaire [Bethlehem/Avenue Jazz R2 79847]

Mel Torme original liner notes to Back in Town: Mel Torme with the Meltones [Jazz Heritage CD 515088L]

Lawrence D. Stewart insert notes to Mel Torme Swings Shubert Alley with The Marty Paich Orchestra [Verve CD 821-581-2]

Will Friedwald, Jazz Singing: America’s Great Voices From Bessie Smith to Bebop and Beyond.

Joyriding with Stanley, Oliver and Herbie

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“The late tenor saxophonist Stanley Turrentine (1934-2000) was a tough musician to pin down stylistically. His playing had a timeless quality when he first established himself as a recording artist in 1960, and that timelessness marked every note he played in the ensuing four decades. Harmonically and rhythmically he was clearly of his era; yet the size of his sound and the passionate directness of his ideas were identified with the more classic tenor stylists who established themselves before bebop took hold. The end result was a personal concept that combined swagger and sultriness, and left Turrentine captive to no particular school.”

- Bob Blumenthal, Jazz writer, critic and Grammy Winner

“Turrentine’s bluesy soul-Jazz enjoyed considerable commercial success in the 1960’s and after. His forte was a mid-tempo blues, often in minor keys, played with a vibrato as big as his grin.”

- Richard Cook and Brian Morton, The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6th Ed.

Joyride [Blue Note CDP 7 46100 2]marked an auspicious turning point in the career of Stanley Turrentine: his first record date backed by a fine, funky, swinging big band propitiously arranged and conducted by Oliver Nelson.

Nelson’s writing is so skillful that the big band texture of the music never loses any of the relaxed spontaneity made possible by the intimacy of Turrentine’s usual small group settings.

Oliver is a master of scoring a canonic interplay between brass and reeds that serves, along with a sterling rhythm section made up of Kenny Burrell on guitar, Herbie Hancock on piano, Bob Cranshaw on bass and Grady Tate on drums, to boot Stanley’s solos along while generating an atmosphere of gaiety and lightness. Listening to the music does make you feel like you are at a party, one that’s full of frivolity and glee. The title of the album is reflected in the sound of the music on it.

At the time of this recording, drummer Grady Tate was rapidly becoming one of the best all-round drummers on the New York scene. He has a supple, swinging beat, good taste, superior craftsmanship, and excellent ears, and he knows what the situation requires — be it trio or big-band work, he plays for the group.

And Herbie Hancock was making studio dates as a sideman on a large number of recording dates during this period. Be it for Jean “Toots” Thielemans, Paul Desmond or for Stanley, he seemed to be everywhere before launching a career that would make him an icon of Jazz-Rock fusion. Checkout his masterful solo on the Kettle of Fish track on the video montage at the close of this piece.

Here’s what the distinguished Jazz author and critic Leonard Feather had to say about the LP in the liner notes to the recording.

“Not too many years had passed — five, to be exact — since we heard the first of what turned out to be a long and rewarding series of small-combo albums under Turrentine's leadership. But in the interim he has acquired so many more devoted followers that the impact of that original session was comparatively small. In view of this, perhaps a brief recapitulation of the basic facts of Stanley's career is called for.

He was born April 5, 1934. in Pittsburgh. His first music teacher was another saxophonist by the name of Turrentine, first name Thomas. This of course was Stanley's father, who in the late 1930s played for a while with the Savoy Sultans, the same band that featured as its bassist the father of Grachan Moncur III.

As some traits of his current performances might lead you to suspect. Stanley has had some gutty rhythm and blues training; in fact, in his first professional job he played alongside Ray Charles in the Lowell Fulson band. This was in 1951. when Stanley was fresh out of high school.

His other credits include a stint with the late Tadd Dameron in Cleveland in 1953-4 (with brother Tommy Turrentine Jr. on trumpet); Earl Bostic's band; Uncle Sam's All Stars (more specifically, the 158th Army Band); and then, soon after his return to civilian life, the gig that proved decisive in launching him on the jazz scene: a year with the Max Roach combo, which took him on to New York, record dates, and the present status level of respect and admiration in which he is held by fellow musicians.

In his years with Blue Note, Stanley has been heard in a rich variety of settings: with the Three Sounds, with Les McCann, with Mrs. Turrentine (Shirley Scott) at the organ, and with a fine rhythm section (Horace Parlan, George Tucker and Al Harewood) that provided his backing on several of the early albums.

The big band context, it seems to me, was the next logical move. Glance through the pages of jazz history and you will find that sooner or later (more often sooner) all the truly important tenor men used a large ensemble as the resilient cushion for their horns. Coleman Hawkins came out of the Fletcher Henderson band, Lester Young out of Count Basie's; Ben Webster and Don Byas, traces of whom can still be discerned in the Turrentine style, had years of big band experience to their credit.

The use of a big accompanying group, far from burying the artist on center stage or inhibiting the chances for swinging, tends to provide him with a stimulus because of the richer range of tone color, the contrasts in volume and the diversity of moods that can be achieved. And to give these qualities the broadest possible dimensions there could hardly have been a more suitable candidate for the position of arranger-conductor than Oliver Nelson.

"Oliver was a wonderful choice to work on this album with me," says Stanley. "I've known him personally for just a couple of years, but I knew of him by reputation, and from his records, for quite a while before that.

"What makes him valuable, among other things, is his consistency. He does a lot of recording, but whoever he happens to be dealing with, you can tell that he has figured out each individual's personal groove, and has written accordingly.

That s what he did for me, and I couldn't have been happier with the arrangements. He did a superb job."

A few background details may be in order at this point. Nelson is about the same age as Stanley and, like him. is both a saxophonist and a composer. Born in St. Louis June 4, 1932, of a musical family, he began studying the saxophone at the age of eleven after five years of piano. He started out professionally very young, playing in the Jeter Pillars band at 15 and the George Hudson band at 16.

He was in New York in 1950 as a member of the big band led for a while by

Louis Jordan, and it was then that I recall first meeting him, though there was to be a very long gap until the next encounter. After a couple of years in the Marines with the Third Division band, he studied extensively in the areas of classical music, composition and theory at Washington University from 1954-7 and Lincoln U. from 1957-8.

Nelson's background is extraordinary. In addition to working with the bands listed above, and with others led by Erskine Hawkins, Louis Bellson et al., he has held a number of jobs outside music. When things weren't quite as active as they are today, he ran a street car and drove a bus in St. Louis. If they ever get tough again, he can take a job in the fields of taxidermy and embalming, in both of which he is reported to be an expert; but somehow, especially after listening to these sides, I doubt seriously that the necessity will ever arise.

In recent years, though still playing saxophone from time to time. Nelson has earned a reputation in New York as a skilled creator of polychromatic settings for a number of leading soloists and singers.

One important point should be stressed in an evaluation of the setting that Nelson provided here for Stanley Turrentine. It is not a "pick-up band" in the accepted sense of the term. Nelson has worked so much with a big band in the past year or two — in the recording studios and occasionally in person—that he has a regular group of men on whom he calls for all his dates. Most of the brass and reed men, as well as the rhythm section members, have worked together in previous Nelson-conducted albums. (It is interesting to note that coincidentally almost all the brass men worked with the Basie band at one time or another, and almost all the saxophonists are Benny Goodman alumni.)

In writing his charts for this orchestra, Nelson did an attractive and sensitive job of carrying out Blue Note's objective — namely, to provide Turrentine with a basically simple and funky background, neither too "commercial" nor too self-consciously sophisticated.”

Henry Mancini – “Making Yourself As You Go” [From the Archives]

© -  Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“If modern jazz becomes indelibly linked with manslaughter, murder, mayhem, wise­cracking private eyes and droll policemen, the brunt of the responsibility must be borne by composer Henry Mancini. Be­cause of him the point is rapidly being reached where no self-respecting killer would consider pulling the trigger without a suitable jazz background.

Seriously, Henry Mancini has become a pacesetter. Immediately after the first episode of the TV series "Peter Gunn," Mancini's modern jazz background score became a topic of general conversation. The Music from Peter Gunn, his first RCA Victor album (LPM/LSP-1956), rocketed into the nation's number one best-selling spot with the muzzle velocity of a police positive. Various recordings of the main theme music became top single records.

With all this excitement, it was inevitable that others should follow Mancini's lead. TV detectives now swash, buckle and make love to the strains of modern jazz.”

- Bill Olofson, liner notes to More Music From Peter Gunn [RCA LPM-2040]

Had it not been for a chance meeting with producer-director Blake Edwards, I daresay that Henry Mancini may not have had the opportunity to fulfill his lifelong dream of writing music for the movies.

There was no television when the dream first took shape in Henry’s mind after his father took him to see Cecil B. DeMille’s movie version of The Crusades.

The year was 1935. Henry was eleven-years old.

In the 23-years between that fateful day at the Lowe’s Penn Theater in Pittsburg, PA  and bumping into Blake as he was coming out of the Universal Studios barber shop in North Hollywood, CA, Henry Mancini had become a masterful composer-arranger. He did so with a minimum of formal education; essentially by learning through doing.

As the late, writer Ray Bradbury once put it: “You make yourself as you go.”

After serving as a rifleman in World War II,  Mancini married and, at his wife Ginny’s suggestion, he relocated to southern California to pursue his dream.  Once there, he landed a job in the music department at Universal Pictures.

Henry did every job imaginable at Universal’s music room from copying scores to writing incidental music to even writing scores for forgettable-at-the-time-later-to-become-cult-classic-“B”-films like The Creature from the Black Lagoon.

Henry, too, might have been forgotten if he hadn’t been for the advent of television as a popular form of entertainment in the 1950s.

And, a rendezvous with obscurity might have loomed even larger for Henry had he not run into Blake Edwards, an old acquaintance, that fateful day in 1958 on the Universal back lot.

What’s the old adage: “I’d rather be lucky than good[?]”

Henry Mancini was a couple of years younger than Blake at the time of there chance meeting [36 and 38, respectively].

The studio system that maintained staff orchestras and staff composer-arrangers was coming to an end and Mancini has just lost his job. He had a wife and three children to support.

As they were parting company, Blake asked Henry if he would be interested in doing a TV show with him.

“Sure,” said Mancini, “what’s the name of it?”

Edwards said “It’s called Peter Gunn.”

Mancini asked: “What is it, a Western?”

Edwards, replied: “You’ll see.”

The rest is history.

Starring Craig Stevens as the stylish private-eye, Peter Gunn was to become one of the most successful series in that genre.

Thanks to Mancini’s genius, it would also lead to major changes in how music was written for television and the movies.

For Peter Gunn, Henry Mancini wrote the first full score in television history.

Both Blake Edwards and Henry Mancini went on to have illustrious television and movie careers that resulted in fame and fortune, distinction and awards, and the comforts of a satisfying and stylish life.

But for me,  the epitome Henry Mancini’s composing and arranging always began and ended with his exciting and energetic work on the music for Peter Gunn.

The Jazz pulse with which he infused the music for that TV series has influenced and informed my Jazz consciousness for over fifty years.

One of my great treats in life is to return to this music and savor its timeless brilliance.

Much of the music that Mancini wrote for Peter Gunn features small group Jazz, but Blue Steel, which is from the second album – More Music for Peter Gunn – is composed for a full big band, one that certainly roars on this track.

Led by a trumpet section of Conrad Gozzo [lead], Pete Candoli [soloist], Frank Beach and Graham Young – can you imagine?! – and an orchestra that also includes five trombones, four French Horns, four woodwinds and four rhythm, Blue Steel is a veritable explosion in sound.

Hank’s music always seems to bubble with enthusiasm and humor; its bright, bouncy and bops along.

Blue Steel is only 3:39 minutes in length and yet it is brimming over with compositional devices – vamps, interludes and riffs that launch the soloists; half-step modulations and dynamics that are constantly building in the background until Hank rushes the band effervescently to the foreground; glissandos that probe and punctuate the arrangement; a throbbing walking bass that starts and stops to heighten suspense; vibes-guitar-piano playing mice-running-along-the-piano-keys figures to create a furtive sonority; flute “choirs” interspersed with vibes and then with a piano solo; a trumpet solo that soars over bass trombone pedal tones and ascending, and then, descending French Horns [see if you can catch Pete Candoli’s reference to Your Getting to Be a Habit With Me in his solo].

And just when you think the band is going to explode, Hank brings in a fanfare played by the orchestra in unison with Conrad Gozzo screaming out three, high note blasts to close the piece with a rush of orchestral adrenalin.

This is the music of a master orchestrator at work. Few arrangers have ever called upon a greater palette of colors in their arrangements. Mancini music always seem to have a mysterious gift of melody to it which provides him with a strong, inner core to build his scores upon.

Chuck Stewart, 1927-2017 - Jazz Photographer

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“Chuck Stewart, one of the most prolific and admired photographers in jazz — an intimate chronicler of many of its icons and milestones, including the historic recording session for John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme — died on Jan. 20, 2017 in Teaneck, N.J. He was 89.

His death was confirmed by his daughter-in-law Kim Stewart, who has handled the licensing of his images in recent years.

Over a distinguished career that spanned more than 70 years, Stewart shot countless artists in profile and at work, capturing resonant and unguarded images that also tell the story of the music. By his estimate, he shot the cover images for more than 2,000 albums, including a large portion of the Impulse! catalog. He also contributed photographs to a range of publications, including Esquire and the New York Times.

“In my portraits and improvisational shots, I’ve tried to unveil the soul of the artists I photographed and communicate the essence of their craft,” Stewart wrote in his official bio. “That’s why they trusted me: James Brown, John Coltrane, Candido, Miles Davis, Eric Dolphy, Judy Garland, Billie Holiday, Quincy Jones, Machito, Max Roach, Frank Sinatra, and many more. You know their names, but few people have known and photographed them as I have.”

Charles Hugh Stewart was born in Henrietta, Tx. and raised in Tuscon, Az., where he received a Box Brownie camera as a gift on his 13th birthday. It wasn’t long before he put it to professional use, photographing the great opera singer Marian Anderson during her visit to his school. He sold prints to teachers and his fellow students for two dollars apiece.

He attended Ohio University, one of the only colleges in the country to offer a fine arts degree in photography. It was there that he met the older photographer Herman Leonard, who fast became a mentor and friend.

Stewart served in the Army after graduation, working as a combat photographer; he was the only African-American to shoot the postwar atomic bomb tests in 1952. After his service, he accepted an invitation from Leonard to work in his New York studio: “I did a lot of the grunt work, where I learned to set up a shot, and understand what the photographer tries to translate to an audience.”

Eventually Stewart inherited the studio, carrying on Leonard’s legacy in his own language. His images often incorporate darkness as a backdrop, setting up the subject in dramatic relief. Last spring a gallery exhibition of his work ran at WBGO, and he spoke with Doug Doyle about his life and career.

He has also exhibited at Jazz at Lincoln Center, and published a collection called Chuck Stewart’s Jazz Files, on Da Capo Press. Among the honors he has received are the Milt Hinton Award For Excellence in Jazz Photography.

He is survived by a daughter, Marsha Stewart; two sons, David and Christopher; seven grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.”  - Nat Chinen - Obituary for WBGO

Some of Chuck Stewart's most famous photos of jazz musicians are now on display in the WBGO hallways. Stewart, born in 1927, is best known for his portraits of  jazz singers and musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, John Coltrane, Ella Fitzgerald, and Miles Davis, as well as artists in the R&B and salsa genres.

Stewart's photographs have graced more than 2,000 album covers.  Stewart, who lives in Teaneck, NJ, talked about the process of shooting a star musician:

“When you went to a recording studio, you could take pictures on two occasions. One, when they rehearsed everything before they made a take. And after the take, when they were listening to the playback to determine if whether they were satisfied or if they had to do it again.”

But his photographs were not just about music, he captured the images of great athletes as well as historic moments.

Chuck Stewart

When asked how taking photos has changed since his heyday:

“The digital thing would have put people like me out of business, because I had to know every aspect of what I was doing. My eyes said there is the picture the picture is here. Once I take the picture, how do I improve upon it if I have the time? Then I go into the dark room and improve some more. The final result is a picture I want people to see.”

Stewart takes great pride in his technique and his legacy:

“I wanted all of them (photos) to say that’s Chuck Stewart. Because in the first place, if you were to say Count Basie, there must have been a thousand photographers that have photographed him. Well I wanted my photo to say, this is a picture Chuck Stewart took of Count Basie.”

Doug Doyle’s in-depth interview with Chuck on WBGO can be heard here.

The Hot Record Society

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“Back in the mid 1930s, when jazz itself was as young as most of the musicians playing it, a handful of devoted fans banded together to share their love for this music with others. They were all record collectors who believed that jazz was more than just a passing fad and that its performers were more than mere entertainers.”

- Jack Sohmer, JazzTimes

Looking back through old issues of Down Beat, Metronome, Esquire, Melody Maker, The Jazz Review, etc., I’ve always enjoyed the colloquialisms of the times that were associated with different periods of Jazz. Words like “hot,” “jump,” and “killer diller” come to mind; I’m sure that those of you who have been around the music for awhile can add a few other choice words and expressions to this list.

I’m more from the “cool,” “groovy,” “bopin’ and burnin’” parlance - you dig?

Imagine my fascination, then, when Mosaic Records issued one of its superb boxed sets devoted to the Hot Record Society with the emphasis on “Hot.”

I am particularly indebted to Mosaic for the H.R.S. collection because it was my first significant introduction to Sidney Bechet. Although he is only represented on 10 tracks, I was so taken by his performance on China Boy, that I made it a point to add a number of his recordings to my collection.

If you can get past the nanny goat vibrato [something that held me back from a true appreciation of his playing for many years], you’ll find that Sidney is an inspiring and original soloist with technique to spare such that improvisational ideas flow out of his horn rapidly and flawlessly.

I’ve included China Boy as the soundtrack to the video montage that concludes this feature.

Jack Sohmer tells us more about the H.R.S. in the following review which appeared in the DECEMBER 1999 JazzTimes.

The Complete H.R.S. Sessions: Mosaic Records

By Jack Sohmer

“Back in the mid 1930s, when jazz itself was as young as most of the musicians playing it, a handful of devoted fans banded together to share their love for this music with others. They were all record collectors who believed that jazz was more than just a passing fad and that its performers were more than mere entertainers.

Modeled after discographer Charles Delaunay and critic Hugues Panassie's Hot Club of France, the Chicago Rhythm Club, begun in 1935 by Helen Oakley and Squirrel Ashcraft, was the first to produce racially mixed jam sessions, including the first public performance of the Benny Goodman Trio.

Meanwhile, at the same time in New York, Milt Gabler of the Commodore Music Shop and Stephen W. Smith founded the United Hot Clubs of America (U.H.C.A.). Two years later, in 1937, with an advisory board consisting of, among others, John Hammond, Marshall Stearns, Charles Edward Smith, Wilder Hobson, William Russell, Delaunay, Panassie, and Sinclair Traill (later founder of the British magazine Jazz Journal), Steve Smith initiated the Hot Record Society.

While U.H.C.A. specialized in the reissue of long unavailable jazz classics, H.R.S. concentrated on mail order auctions and sales of original jazz and blues 78s. In 1938, when both Columbia and Victor (on its 35-cent subsidiary, Bluebird) began their highly successful series of classic jazz reissues, Gabler and Smith decided to get into the business of making new records, with Commodore becoming the first and most prolific of the independents. (It was soon followed by Blue Note, Keynote, Signature, and dozens of others.)

In 1939, the same year that the influential book Jazzmen was published, Smith, one of its major contributors, opened the H.R.S. Record Shop in midtown Manhattan, where he sold both new and used jazz recordings, and, of course, copies of Jazzmen, The H.R.S. Society Rag, and the few other jazz books and magazines that were then available. The complete Commodore catalog has already been reissued in three mammoth LP sets by Mosaic, and the present collection represents their efforts on behalf of H.R.S.

After the dissolution of H.R.S., many of the sessions appeared on such LP labels as Riverside and Atlantic, as well as a slew of European bootlegs, but these repressings uniformly suffered from distortion, crackle, over modulation, and limited frequency reproduction, thereby making a less than favorable impression on listeners who had never heard the original 78s.

First reissued on muddy sounding, low-fi Riversides, selected titles were later picked up and "stereo-enhanced" for budget-priced marketing in department stores, supermarkets, and drug stores by even less conscientious labels.

Mosaic, however, has corrected all of these technical problems by having such top-rate remastering engineers as Malcolm Addey, Jack Towers, John R.T. Davies, and others go back to the source recordings and start from scratch, so to speak. The result is a reissue set that recaptures the warm, spacious sound of the originals at the same time as virtually eliminating the surface noise that plagued so many shellac recordings in the 1940s.

H.R.S. recorded 124 performances in 25 sessions between August 1938 and September 1947, and this set includes them all, even the eleven alternate takes that Smith never released. Musically, they run the gamut from the classic Chicago cum New Orleans jazz Pee Wee Russell's Rhythmmakers and The Bechet-Spanier Big Four, through small and big band swing, to the burgeoning modern touches of early bop. Russell's eight-piece jam combo with Max Kaminsky, Dickie Wells, James P. Johnson, and Zutty Singleton opens the set with six band tracks, including two alternate takes, and a majestic coupling by the clarinet/piano/drums trio of Pee Wee, James P., and Zutty. This is classic Pee Wee and should not be missed.

On an equal if not superior level of achievement are the ten 1940 tracks, inclusive of two alternates, by a quartet composed of soprano saxist/clarinetist Sidney Bechet, cornetist Muggsy Spanier, guitarist Carmen Mastren, and bassist Wellman Braud, who had also appeared on the Russell session. Using a handful of time-honored classics, Sidney and Muggsy join their ideally contrasted horns, one broad-toned and sweeping and the other concise and pungent, to produce yet one more example of the many textural varieties inherent in chamber jazz.

The next two sessions were also recorded in 1940 and feature stellar personnels under the leadership of Rex Stewart and Jack Teagarden, with featured soloists including Lawrence Brown, Barney Bigard, Ben Webster, and Billy Kyle. The widely esteemed Dave Tough is the drummer on both. As with the two preceding groups, an equally extended commentary could be made about the excellences of those closely related dates. Between them, they only produced eight titles, but they are virtually all winners.

Because of several already well-known factors, no commercial recordings were made by any label between August 1942 and late 1944, so H.R.S. did not resurface until 1945, when Smith recorded two sessions by a big band under the direction of Ellington-influenced guitarist/arranger Brick Fleagle; an excellent combo date by trombonist Sandy Williams featuring trumpeter Joe Thomas, Johnny Hodges, and Harry Carney; and a single coupling by trombonist J.D. Higginbotham with trumpeter Sidney DeParis and altoist Tab Smith. In light of the then common contractual practice-the production of at least four masters per each three-hour recording session-the absence of two titles poses a question as to the fate of these never listed, presumably flawed performances. (Assuming that all eight musicians were paid union scale for the four-tune date, then the cost for the rejected performances, including studio time, had to be assumed by Smith, no insignificant matter for an independent in those days.)

In 1946, with wartime shortages no longer a major problem, Steve Smith went on to record scads of fruitful combo dates, all of which centered around the mainstream jazzmen currently based in New York. The leaders of these invariably well-conceived and rehearsed sessions were arranger/pianist Jimmy Jones, Joe Thomas, Harry Carney, Dicky Wells, Sandy Williams, Buck Clayton (in a softly winging Kansas City-tinged quartet with Pres-like clarinetist Scoville Brown and guitarist Tiny Grimes), Trummy Young, Billy Kyle, Russell Procope, Brick Fleagle (this time with a quintet fronted by Rex Stewart), pianist Billy Taylor, Stewart once again with his own quartet, and bassist Billy Taylor (no relation to the pianist). Outstanding soloists not already mentioned include trumpeters Pee Wee Erwin and Dick Vance, clarinetist Buster Bailey, altomen Lem Davis and George Johnson, and tenormen John Hardee and Budd Johnson, who is especially forward looking on his quartet date with Jimmy Jones.

Mosaic has arranged this set so as to present almost all of the combo dates in chronological sequence, while reserving Brick Fleagle's uncharacteristic big band offerings for the final disc. One price paid for this admirable decision is the inclusion here of Fleagle's quintet date with Rex, but it is an understandable compromise.

Along with Mosaic's customarily complete discographical listings, Dan Morgenstern's well-researched background notes and session-by-session analysis will provide all of the many details of performance that this brief coverage cannot.”