Edward “Kid” Ory: 1886-1973

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

“There is no confusion these days about what New Orleans "tailgate" trombone playing is all about. Most modern practitioners of that venerable style tend toward an exaggerated down-home aesthetic: screaming yawps, wild-man growls, howling blasts, blaring gutbucket smears. That is, all the unsubtle tricks and tropes that make people think of the trombone as a carnival novelty act.

If the current state of trad jazz trombone is any indication, then the philosopher was right-history does repeat itself as farce. But the first time around, New Orleans slip-horn playing was not the self-parody it has become. All the proof you could ever need is to be found in a new box set from Mosaic records: The Complete Kid Ory Verve Sessions. Recorded in the late 1950s, when Ory was in his early 70s, the Verve sides compiled by Mosaic demonstrate that Kid Ory's Creole trombone playing may not have been particularly complex or harmonically challenging, but for all its rambunctiousness, his music is nonetheless subtle and lyrical.”

- Eric Felten, JazzTimes review of The Complete Kid Ory Verve Recordings [Mosaic Records]

“Kid Ory is neither celebrity nor myth. He was a flesh-and-blood jazzman who arrived on the scene in New Orleans at the same time as the music itself. The man and the music came up together, reached maturity together and, ultimately, faded from the scene together.”

- John McCusker

“Then Jack Teagarden introduced the daddy of the tailgate trombonists, Edward “Kid” Ory. This septuagenarian strolled on stage looking extremely dapper in his white jacket and performed as though he might have been a “kid” for real.

His featured number was the great old standard he himself wrote about 40 years ago – “Muskrat Ramble” – and just to show he was riding with the times, he even shouted out a vocal using the lyrics written just a few years ago by Hollywood writer, Ray Gilbert.

Then Higginbotham and Teagarden joined Ory for a three-‘boned blast at that other perennial favorite – “High Society.”

- Bill Simon, liner notes to the 1957 Newport Jazz Festival appearance by Red Allen, Kid Ory, & Jack Teagarden with J.C. Higginbotham, Buster Bailey and Cozy Cole [Verve MGV-8233].

I had no idea who Kid Ory was when I first encountered him on the evening of July 4, 1957 at the Newport Jazz Festival.

But that wasn’t unusual in those days as I was still finding my way through Jazz. [Frankly I still am.]

The only familiar member of the group Kid Ory played with that night was fellow trombonist Jack Teagarden, whom my father idolized and was probably the reason why he picked that night for us to attend the NJF.

Perhaps another reason was that all of the groups appearing that evening were doing so in celebration of Louis Armstrong’s 57^th birthday.

I found out much later that there was a strong connection between Kid and Pops as Ory had been a member of Armstrong Hot Five when it produced the monumental records that ignited the Jazz world in 1925-1927.

I gather, too, that all of the other musicians on the stand that night in Freebody Park had played in one of the many bands that Pops had over the years including New Orleans-born trumpeter Henry “Red” Allen who had always idolized Louis.

J.C. Higginbotham on trombone, Buster Bailey on clarinet, Claude Hopkins on piano and Cozy Cole on drums all had historical connections to Pops and bassist Arvell Shaw was a member of Pops’ current band in 1957.

Kid Ory’s performance that night was the first time I saw and heard the “tailgate” trombone style that had developed when the first Jazz bands were towed around New Orleans in a horse-drawn wagon and the trombonist was seated at the end of the wagon with its tailgate down to allow clearance for the trombone slide to reach the lower positions on the horn.

By comparison, it was fascinating to watch Teagarden whose trombone slide rarely extended beyond the bell of the horn as Jack had developed a technique that allowed him to lip the lower positions without extending the slide at arms length. This technique involved less slide movement in general and allowed Jack to play the trombone easier at faster tempos.

A year or so after the concert I was a fortunate to find a Verve LP of this concert which was simply entitled Red Allen, Kid Ory, & Jack Teagarden with J.C. Higginbotham, Buster Bailey and Cozy Cole [MGV-8233].

Over the years, I picked-up a little information about Kid Ory from Gunther Schuller’s Early Jazz and Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff’s Here Me Talkin’ To You, but I didn’t really understand his significance in terms the development of Jazz from the death of Buddy Bolden until the advent of the first Jazz recordings by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band in 1917.

Before he left New Orleans for the West Coast in 1920, Kid Ory maintained one of the hottest bands in the Crescent City which was responsible for giving many young players their start in the music, including giving Louis Armstrong his first gig.

Kid Ory, then, was a trombonist, composer, recording artist, and early New Orleans jazz band leader. Creole Trom­bone: Kid Ory And The Early Years Of Jazz tells his story from birth on a rural sugar cane plantation in a French-speaking, ethnically mixed family, to his emergence in New Orleans as the city’s hottest band leader.

In 1925 Edward “Kid” Ory moved to Chicago, where he made records with King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, and Jelly Roll Morton that captured the spirit of the jazz age. His most famous composition from that period, “Muskrat Ramble,” is a jazz standard. Retired from music during the Depression, he returned in the 1940s and enjoyed a reignited career.

In Creole Trom­bone: Kid Ory And The Early Years Of Jazz (University Press Of Mississippi), author John McCusker tells the story of a jazz musician arriving on the scene in New Orleans at the same time as the music itself. The man and the music came up together, reached maturity together and, ultimately, faded from the scene together.

The tale covers the years between 1900 and 1933 and that period is the book’s main focus. Kid Ory’s remembrances carry the story only to this point, and it would have been difficult to fill the remaining years without his voice. While the tale of his career revival in the forties is interesting, it is far less so than the earlier period and less relevant to the historical question:

“Who was Kid Ory?”

By way of background on the writer of the book that attempts to answer this question, John McCusker spent nearly 30 years as a staff photographer for The Times-Picayune. He was part of the team that shared the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service Journalism for coverage of Hurricane Katrina and its immediate aftermath. He was recently hired as staff photographer of the New Orleans bureau of The Advocate. Throughout his career, John has documented the people and places that gave New Orleans one of its many nicknames – The Cradle of Jazz.

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles found this insight review of John McCusker’s Creole Trom­bone: Kid Ory And The Early Years Of Jazz (University Press Of Mississippi) in the June 2013 edition of Downbeat.

© -  Jennifer O’Dell/Downbeat, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

 Life of an Overlooked Bandleader

“The way the story of early New Orleans jazz is often told, there's a gap between Buddy Bolden, whose brief career ended with his institutionalization in 1907, and the recordings made by Joe "King" Oli­ver, Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong in the early '20s. What gets glossed over are key facets of the music's development: With Bolden suddenly out of the picture, how did his danceable blues and gutbucket wails continue to inspire bands to play "hot," polyphonic music interspersed with so­los? What made that music catch on and spread beyond race lines and outside of the Crescent City? What legacies from this early period later contributed to the death of the Jazz Age?

As John McCusker writes in Creole Trom­bone: Kid Ory And The Early Years Of Jazz (University Press Of Mississippi), the life of one largely overlooked bandleader is a testa­ment to this turning point in jazz that helps an­swer these questions. McCusker states, this is the "story of a jazz musician arriving on the scene at the same time as the music itself. The man and the music came up together, reached maturity together and, ultimately, faded from the scene together."

A longtime photojournalist for the New Or­leans Times-Picayune who moonlighted as a jazz history tour guide, McCusker's pursuit of infor­mation about Ory began in the mid-'90s after someone in his group challenged his dismissive remarks about the trombonist's importance. Mc­Cusker consulted with Bruce Raeburn at Tulane University's Hogan Jazz Archive, who agreed with the tourist, positing that Edward "Kid" Ory's ca­reer was vital to the development of jazz. Raeburn's suggestion prompted a 15-year research odyssey for McCusker, who worked through— and in part, inspired by—the loss of his home and possessions in 2005, and of his wife just a few years later.

Using oral histories, recordings and what he describes as "loose pages" from an unfinished Ory autobiography, McCusker pieces together the story of a driven young musician who helped usher in the era of so-called "hot" playing, cher­ry-picked and nurtured the talents of Armstrong and Oliver, and eventually made the first record­ings by an all-black New Orleans jazz band. Ory's early recordings, both as a leader and in bands led by Armstrong and Morton, are covered here (along with an in-depth discography), as is his role in the 1940s revival of traditional New Or­leans jazz. But the picture McCusker paints of Louisiana's music scene from 1900-1919 is the book's highlight.

An early follower of Bolden and an astute student of both the music and the music busi­ness, Ory's path was self-determined. He formed a band in his rural hometown of LaPlace, La., with homemade instruments and wrangled gigs at fish fries and picnics until he could buy real in­struments for his young group, who frequently stole off into the night in search of visiting bands such as those led by Bolden or John Robichaux.

Ory showed leadership skills from the out­set, taking careful notice of variances in style, set-building techniques and, in McCusker's words, the "cutthroat and bargain basement" na­ture of New Orleans' music scene. He combined the most successful elements of everything he learned and plowed ahead with a business acu­men as sharp as his musicianship.

During "cutting contests," where wagons carrying bands to advertise shows would battle one another with music, Ory became notorious for pushing his group to win. He promoted his own shows, finding crafty ways with few resourc­es to cut out competition. His tenacity in playing for diverse audiences helped him create what Armstrong called "one of the hottest jazz bands that ever hit New Orleans." (Giving Satchmo his first steady gig didn't hurt.)

McCusker also offers an honest picture of the murky meanings of the term "Creole" from one parish or one New Orleans neighborhood to another during that time. Sight-reading Cre­ole musicians in places like the Seventh Ward, for example, played a different style than the Up­town players Ory identified with, despite his own mixed-race heritage.

Creole Trombone fills a needed hole in re­search about one of the period's most important bandleaders. But the story of Ory's success — and, after his move to California in 1919, his slow movement out of the picture until the 1940s — tells as much about the artist as it does about the development of the music and of New Orleans as a cultural center, making it a crucial text in the canon of Crescent City jazz history.”

                  

You can order copies directly from the publisher ay www.upress.state.ms/.

The following video features Edward “Kid” Ory in performances from the concert that took place at the Newport Jazz Festival on the evening of July 4, 1957 when Kid was joined by Red Allen, Jack Teagarden, J.C. Higginbotham, Buster Bailey, Claude Hopkins, Arvell Shaw and Cozy Cole.  

Henry "Red" Allen

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

I met Henry “Red” Allen before I ever heard him play a note on trumpet. The venue was the luncheon buffet at The Viking Hotel in Newport, Rhode Island. The date was July 4, 1957. The occasion was the birthday celebration being held that night for Louis Armstrong at the Newport Jazz Festival.

Many of the musicians performing that evening were at the buffet including “Pops” himself. I never heard so much “Hey Daddy,” “Hey Gate” and “Hey Pops” before or since. These were all terms of endearment that Louis Armstrong used for his best buddies; they were also substitute greetings that Pops and friends used to greet people whose names they’d forgotten or never knew in the first place.

It was all so heartwarmingly informal: the feelings of respect and genuine affection that all of these fabulous musicians felt toward one another just hung in the air of that fan-cooled hotel banquet room and the joyousness would continue well into the hot and humid night on the bandstand that was temporarily erected in Freebody Park.

I didn’t know who “Red” Allen was but as I was to observe about many “big guys” over the years, I was impressed by his gentleness and kindness. He seemed to go out-of-his-way to ask me questions about my nascent interest in the music. The usual questions about “favorites” came up and when he asked me who my favorite drummer was I mentioned Krupa, Papa Jo Jones [whom I’d met earlier that day on the hotel’s veranda] and Davy Tough.

“Where did you hear those guys,” he asked. “On Benny Goodman, Count Basie and Woody Herman records,” I replied. And when he asked about my favorite trumpet player and I answered “Harry James,” he just threw back his head, howled with delight and said to no one in particular: “This young man really knows his trumpet players.” Little did I know at the time that Harry James idolized both Pops and Red.

Later that evening, after hearing his performance at the festival, I added another trumpet player to my list of favorites - Henry “Red” Allen. I’ve been collecting his records ever since that first meeting.

Man could that guy bring it!

Henry “Red” Allen was born in 1907 New Orleans, LA. His flamboyant and exploratory trumpet style was among the leading alternatives to Louis Armstrong's in the early and mid-1930s. His continuity of line, rhythmic flexibility, and harmonic conception were ahead of their time. In fact, Red's restless ear led contemporaries to accuse him of playing wrong notes, many of which would in later years be considered appropriate. His influence on other trumpeters was limited by the fact that he played in the shadow of Armstrong for much of his career although Roy Eldridge who influenced Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis is said to have been an admirer of Red’s. In addition to his interpretive skills as a trumpeter, Allen also possessed an "engaging baritone voice" and was a competent jazz singer.

After studying various instruments, including violin and E-flat alto horn (a miniature tuba), Red took trumpet lessons from his father, Henry senior, leader of the renowned Brass Band of Algiers (a neighborhood in New Orleans). He also listened to several New Orleans trumpeters, including Bunk Johnson and King Oliver, rehearse in his living room. At ten years old, Red was marching in his father's band. He played his first steady job with saxophonist John Handy at age seventeen (1925). In 1927 King Oliver invited Red to New York to join his new band, which soon failed, so Red returned to New Orleans to work on riverboat bands with Fate Marable.

In 1929 Allen was again invited to New York as Victor Records' answer to Louis Armstrong, who was recording for Columbia. Red was hired by Luis Russell, the pianist who had taken over the King Oliver band, and recordings both for Russell and under his own name established Allen's reputation. "Biffly Blues" reveals that although Allen was obviously influenced strongly by Armstrong, he possessed a clearer, more polished sound and slower vibrato, as well as a personal sense of time. In contrast to his sensitive instrumental and vocal reinterpretation of the ballad "Roamin'," Allen displays the confident bravura of a Swing Era lead trumpeter on "Shakin' the African."

Fletcher Henderson enticed Allen to join his band in the summer of 1933, and Allen's agile, flowing solos with Henderson would influence trumpeter Harry James's work on the Henderson charts later commissioned by Benny Goodman. After he left Henderson's group in 1934, Allen's popularity peaked. From 1934 to 1937, while he was employed in the Mills Blue Rhythm Band, he also free-lanced extensively, recording over eighty sides in three years for the Vocalion label.

In 1936 Red performed in the Eddie Condon—Joe Marsala group, one of the first racially integrated bands on Fifty-second Street. In 1937 Allen joined the Luis Russell Orchestra, which was an organization built around the popularity of its featured soloist, Louis Armstrong. Allen had to serve as Armstrong's warm-up act, a somewhat demeaning role considering Allen's originality and technical mastery of the trumpet. Allen endured this role— while also freelancing around Fifty-second Street — until 1940, when the Russell Orchestra was fired by Armstrong's manager.

In 1940 Allen formed his own sextet and opened at Cafe Society. As a leader Allen proved to be good-natured, professional, and a good showman without compromising his music. The sextet featured a fellow Russell and Armstrong alumnus, trombonist J. C. Higginbotham. From the mid-1940s to the early 1950s, Allen was forced to travel extensively as the appeal of bebop reduced his popularity in New York. Occasionally, he juxtaposed traditional New Orleans — influenced phrases and bebop-flavored figures ('The Crawl").

Following the breakup of his sextet, Allen became the house bandleader at the Metropole in New York (1954), which remained his musical headquarters until 1965. On a 1957 recording of "I Cover the Waterfront" with Coleman Hawkins, Allen displays a more deliberate, mature approach than is evident in his 1930s work, employing fewer notes and adroitly exploring his trumpet's extreme lower register. In 1965 modernist Don Ellis praised Allen's unflagging inventiveness and mastery of various moods and tonal effects: "[He] is the most creative and avant-garde player in New York . . . a true improviser." After a tour of Great Britain, Allen died of cancer in 1967.

Whitney Balliett, one of the preeminent writers on the subject of Jazz was a great fan of Henry “Red” Allen and visited him often at the Metropole Cafe’ while writing about him frequently for The New York Magazine.

You can read one of the shorter pieces that Whitney did on Red below and locate a lengthier profile on Allen in Whitney’s American Musicians: 56 Portraits in Jazz [Oxford].

Cheers for Red Allen

Dinosaurs in the Morning: 41 Pieces on Jazz [Lippincott]

“THE PRE-EMINENCE of Louis Armstrong from 1925 to 1935 had one unfortunate effect: it tended to blot out the originality and skill of several contemporary trumpeters who, though they listened to Armstrong, had  pretty  much  gone their own  way by  1930. These included, among others, Bobby Stark, Joe Smith, Jabbo Smith  (no relation), Bill Coleman, and Henry (Red) Allen. Stark and Joe Smith are dead. Jabbo Smith, a scarifying musician, lives in Milwaukee and performs rarely. Coleman, in Europe, still displays much of his grace. But Allen, the most steadfast of the three, and a distinct influence on Roy Eldridge, who taught Dizzy Gillespie, who taught Miles Davis, and so forth, is playing (usually in New York) with more subtlety and warmth than at any other time in his career. This is abundantly evident in two fairly recent and rather odd releases, Red Allen Meets Kid Ory  and We've Got Rhythm: Kid Ory and Red Allen (Verve), in which Allen, lumped with second- and third-class musicians, plays with a beauty and a lets-get-this-on-the-road obstinacy that transform both records into superior material.

A tall, comfortably oval-shaped man of fifty-four, with a deceptively sad basset-hound face, Allen, born in Algiers, Louisiana, has had a spirited career, despite the shadows he has been forced to work in. He played briefly with King Oliver in 1927, and two years later he joined Luis Russell, another Oliver alumnus. Russell's band was possibly the neatest, hottest, and most imaginative group of its time. It was also, thanks to Russell's arrangements and rhythmic innovations and to Allen's already exploratory solos, a considerably advanced one.

In 1933, Allen joined Fletcher Henderson, with whom he continued his avant-garde ways, and after a period with the Blue Rhythm Band he came face to face in 1937 with Goliath himself when he had become a practically silent member of Louis Armstrong's you-go-your-way, ril-go-mine big band, a group kept afloat by Sid Catlett, J. C. Higginbotham, Charlie Holmes, and the leader. Since 1940, Allen has led a succession of often excellent small groups, which have included Higginbotham, Edmond Hall, Don Stovall (alto saxophone), and Alvin Burroughs.

Allen's recording activity has been prolific; he was particularly active during the thirties, when he set down fifty or sixty numbers with small groups, some of which were unabashed attempts to make money ("The Miller's Daughter Marianne," "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down," "When My Dream Boat Comes Home") and some of which were, and are, first-rate jazz records ("Why Don't You Practice What You Preach," "There's a House in Harlem for Sale," "Rug Cutter's Swing," "Body and Soul," and "Rosetta"). Lamentably, only two or three of these, along with two classic sides made in 1939 with Lionel Hampton, are now available.

Allen's style had just about set by the time he joined Russell. There were traces in it of Oliver and Armstrong, but more apparent were its careless tone, its agility, and a startling tendency to use unprecedentedly long legato phrases and strange notes and chords that jazz musicians hadn't, for the most part, had the technique or courage to use before. Allen's playing also revealed an emotion and a partiality to the blues that often seemed to convert everything he touched into the blues. But his adventurousness and technique weren't always in balance; he hit bad notes, he blared, and he was ostentatious. Once in a while he would start a solo commandingly and then, his mind presumably going blank, would suddenly falter, ending his statement in a totally different mood and tenor, as if he were attempting to glue parts of two unmatchable solos together.

By the mid-forties, Allen's work had, in fact, turned increasingly hard and showy — he fluttered his valves, used meaningless runs, and affected a stony tone — and this peculiar shrillness continued into the fifties. Then, six or so years ago, Allen made a pickup recording with Tony Parenti, the clarinetist, for Jazztone, and, not long after, one for Victor with Higginbotham, Coleman Hawkins, and Cozy Cole, and a remarkable new Allen broke into view. Perhaps sheer middle-aged physical wear—a reluctance to blow so hard, a reluctance to try and prove so much — was the reason. Or perhaps he had been listening to younger and milder trumpeters like Miles Davis and Art Farmer. For his tone has become softer and fuller, he shies away from the upper register (he spends a good deal of time inflating sumptuous balloons in the lowest register), his customarily long figures are even longer, his sensuous, mid-thirties affection for the blues has again become dominant, and he often employs harmonies that would please Thelonious Monk.

In short, he gives the impression not of hammering at his materials from the outside but, in the manner of Lester Young and Pee Wee Russell, of transforming them insistently if imperceptibly from the inside, like a mole working just under the grass. The results, particularly in slower tempos (the old shrillness sometimes recurs at faster speeds), can be unbelievably stirring. An Allen solo in a slow blues may go like this: He will start with a broad, quiet, shushing note, pause, repeat the note, and, using almost no vibrato, fasten two more notes onto it, one slightly higher and one slightly lower, pause again (Allen's frequent use of silences is another new aspect of his work, as is his more expert use of dynamics), repeat and enlarge the second phrase a little way down the scale, and, without a rest, get off a legato phrase, with big intervals, that may shatter into a rapid run and then be reformed into a dissonant blue note, which he will delightfully hold several beats longer than one expects; he then finishes this with a full vibrato and tumbles into a quick, low, almost under-the-breath flourish of half a dozen notes. Such a solo bears constant re-examination; it is restless, oblique, surprising, lyrical, and demanding. It seizes the listener's emotions, recharges them, and sends them fortified on their way.

The pairing of Allen with the venerable Kid Ory is curious, to say the least. Allen is a modernish swing musician, and Ory is one of the last representatives of genuine New Orleans style. His solos are gruff paraphrases of the melody, while Allen's are intricate temples of sound. Moreover, Allen's leisurely, independent melodic lines are far too spacious to fit within the limitations of the New Orleans ensemble. But perhaps all this is to the good. Ory's sandpaper tone and elementary patterns tend to set off Allen's housetop-to-housetop swoops, and since Allen can't, or won't, adapt himself to the ensemble, he simply solos throughout most of the recordings, which gives us twice as much of him. By and large, the first of the Verve records is the better. Of the seven numbers, all standards, three—

"Blues for Jimmy," "Ain't Misbehavin’ and "Tishomingo Blues"—present Allen at his peak. In fact, his single-chorus solo in the slow "Blues for Jimmy" is faultless. This is nearly true of his work on the Waller tune, which is full of blue notes and wind-borne figures. (Puzzlingly, neither of the two vocals is by Allen, who, in addition to his other merits, is one of the handful of true jazz singers. His voice is in between Armstrong’s and Jelly Roll Morton's, and because of its almost feline, back-of-the-beat phrasing it has long foretold his playing of today.) The second session contains seven more standards, which are notable for Allen's playing in "Some of These Days," in which he tries a few teetering but generally successful auld-lang-syne upper-register handstands; for, in "Christopher Columbus," his muted chorus, which is followed by an open-horn one that begins in his lowest, or trombone, register; and for his three remarkably sustained choruses in the medium-tempo "Lazy River." The rest of the band stands around and watches, so to speak, and only the drummer, Alton Redd, gets in the way.”

The following video feature Red with Fletcher Henderson Orchestra in a 1934 version of Fletcher’s original composition Wrappin’ It Up.

Henry "Red" Allen by Martin Williams

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

There are two things that are important about the following feature.

The first is that it is about Henry “Red” Allen, who, among all of the trumpet players of the generation that was first influenced by Louis Armstrong, consistently expressed Pops’ fiery passion in his playing.

And second, that it was written by Martin Williams, one of the Deans of Jazz writers.

As I re-read this piece, I was struck by the fact through appearances at clubs, European tours and on recording dates that it was still possible in the early 1960’s to earn a living as a working Jazz musician.

I met Henry “Red” Allen before I ever heard him play a note on trumpet. The venue was the luncheon buffet at The Viking Hotel in Newport, Rhode Island. The date was July 4, 1957. The occasion was the birthday celebration being held that night for Louis Armstrong at the Newport Jazz Festival.

Many of the musicians performing that evening were at the buffet including “Pops” himself. I never heard so much “Hey Daddy,” “Hey Gate” and “Hey Pops” before or since. These were all terms of endearment that Louis Armstrong used for his best buddies; they were also substitute greetings that Pops and friends used to greet people whose names they’d forgotten or never knew in the first place.

It was all so heartwarmingly informal: the respect and genuine affection that all of these fabulous musicians felt toward one another just hung in the air of that fan-cooled hotel banquet room and the joyousness would continue well into the hot and humid night on the bandstand that was temporarily erected in Freebody Park to feature the music of the festival.

I didn’t know who “Red” Allen was but as I was to observe about many “big guys” over the years, I was impressed by his gentleness and kindness. He seemed to go out-of-his-way to ask me questions about my nascent interest in the music. The usual questions about “favorites” came up and when he asked me who my favorite drummer was I mentioned Krupa, Papa Jo Jones [whom I’d met earlier that day on the hotel’s veranda] and Davy Tough.

“Where you’d hear those guys,” he asked. “On Benny Goodman, Count Basie and Woody Herman records,” I replied. And when he asked about my favorite trumpet player and I answered “Harry James,” he just threw back his head, howled with delight and said to no one in particular: “This young man really knows his trumpet players.” Little did I know at the time that Harry James idolized both Pops and Red.

Later that evening, after hearing his performance at the festival, I added another trumpet player to my list of favorites - Henry “Red” Allen. I’ve been collecting his records ever since that first meeting.

Man could that guy bring it!

Source -

August 30,  1962

Down Beat

“Condition Red - Allen, That Is”   

“TRUMPETER Henry (Red) Allen Jr. has been recording as leader of his own groups since 1929, but, like many a veteran professional, he still approaches record dates with a bit of apprehension and a slightly nervous determination that everything shall go well. At least he did have such apprehension when he was to do a date for the Prestige/ Swingville label recently, using the quartet he has been working with in clubs like the Embers in New York City and the London House in Chicago.

The session had been set up by Prestige's Esmond Edwards for 1 p.m. in the New Jersey studios of Rudy Van Gelder, across the George Washington Bridge from Manhattan Island.

Red Allen, with his group, pulled up in his car in front of Van Gelder's 45 minutes early. He wanted everything to be relaxed and easy. Van Gelder—more used to lateness than earliness—was surprised and a bit dismayed by the arrival. But with a firm reminder that the date would not begin until 1, he opened his door to the quartet. "Early—this group is always early," said drummer Jerry Potter, with a half-smile that didn't exactly reveal his feelings on the matter.

The day itself had held little promise as a day. The sky was overcast, there was a drizzle, and by late afternoon, when the date had ended, a heavy rain was falling. But inside the high-ceilinged, wooden-beamed studio there was plenty of time to set up the drums, plenty of time to get acquainted with the room, and even time for Allen to go over his lyrics and review the list of tunes he wanted to make. He leaned over on the back of the studio piano and scanned his papers, wearing a pair of glasses that gave him a studied air, an air that few who have watched the exuberantly powerful Red Allen on the bandstand would recognize.

As the men waited, there was a casual exchange at the piano bench. Not once did the group's pianist, Lannie Scott, sit down to noodle. It was the bassist, Frank Scaate, who played first, and later Allen played. Musicians take this sort of thing for granted—nearly everyone plays some piano and enjoys it—but it is frequently surprising to outsiders.

A little before 1 p.m. Edwards arrived, also a bit surprised that the group was fully assembled. He took his place inside Van Gelder's booth, behind the large glass panel which is broad and high enough to take in the whole barnlike studio at a glance, and laid out his note paper and recording data sheets. Van Gelder soon had his machines threaded with tape and was seated behind his complex control panel.

The date was officially ready to begin. On the other side of the glass, the musicians began running through the first piece, Cherry, to warm up and to check the placement of the microphones. Allen was swinging from the first bar, and his very personal, often complex, phrases rolled out of his horn with an apparently casual ease. He was showing his fine control of the horn too. He would begin with an idea at a mere whisper of trumpet sound and develop it to a powerful shout at the end of his phrase—the kind of dynamics that few trumpeters employ.

After the run-through, Cherry was ready to go onto the tape. Take 1 had an inventive opening by Allen, but he stopped after his vocal, saying, "I goofed the words all up." Another take, but the bass wasn't balanced. First numbers on a record date usually go that way.

Then — Cherry No. 3. Everyone was working, and the group was concertedly alive. Allen was truly inventive, for he used only one brief phrase that he had played in any previous version of Cherry that day.

"That man really improvises,” someone in the booth said. Edwards and Van Gelder nodded agreement. "I wonder if he could repeat himself, even if he wanted to?"

As the ending rang out through the wooden rafters and across the mikes, warmly echoing the power and drive of the performance, Edwards was laughing and saying,

"They don't play like that any more!"

"Can we hear that back?" Allen asked at the end.

A bit later they began running through Sleepy Time Gal. Allen's lines were weaving in unexpected but logical directions, and he was beginning to show his command of the full range of his horn, with the perfectly played low notes that are almost his exclusive property. His melodies were still gliding over the rhythm section and the time with sureness and inner drive and no excess notes.

The first take of Sleepy Time Gal was much simpler than the run-through, and there was some trouble with the introduction. Allen is still more used to recording for the flat acetate record blanks than for the more recent magnetic tape, and he had been counting off the tempos to the group at a whisper. But with tape it's easy to remove a spoken count-off. "You can count it off out loud, Red,'' Edwards reminded him.

At the end of another take, Edwards apparently saw something was about to happen, and he reached for his mike to ask over the studio loud-speakers, "How are the chops? Can we do one more right away?"

"Yeah, sure, my man!" Allen said immediately. And then they did the best Sleepy Time Gal yet,

This time Allen came into the engineering booth to hear the playback and sat beside Van Gelder's elaborate array of dials and knobs. He raised and curved his eyebrows at a particularly lyric turn of phrase in his own improvising, pretty much the way any listener would m following the music.

By 2 p.m. they were into I Ain't Got Nobody, and on his vocal Allen was getting in as many as six notes just singing the word "I."

After the run-through, Edwards suggested Allen blow another trumpet chorus on the final take. Again, Allen's ideas were fresh and different each time they ran the piece down, and he still glided over the time with perfect poise. His trumpet alone might make the whole group swing. He counted them off loudly now for the final take: "One! Two!" And at the end, after the reverberations had settled, there was the inevitable Red Allen genial cry, "Nice!"

Then a short break as visitors arrived. Van Gelder immediately gave them a firm invitation to sit quietly in the studio and stay out of the booth. Drummer Potter came in to ask for a little more mike on his bass drum: "Can you bring it up a little? Then I can relax. I have to keep leaning on it otherwise. Like playing in a noisy club."

"Okay, we'll try ," Van Gelder said. "It's not easy to do."

IN THE studio, a photographer, there to get a shot for the album cover, had his lights and shutters going. Allen wasn't bothered. Nervous or not, he had been taking care of business from the beginning, and he was obviously impatient to get back to work.

Later, they were well into There's a House in Harlem, with Allen getting deep growl effects on his horn without a plunger. Again, every version was different. Van Gelder remarked for about the third time that they should be recording everything, including the warm-ups and run-throughs, and again shook his head in appreciation of how well Allen was playing.

Edwards stopped the take, remarking on the intro, and pianist Scott and bassist Scaate worked it out together before the tape rolled again.

They began Just in Time. "Everybody plays that thing now," a visitor remarked. "I guess it's become a jazz standard already. I heard Art Farmer do it the other day."

There was some trouble again with the intro so Allen took it himself, unaccompanied. They went through the piece once, and Allen was after Potter: "Let me hear a little more of that bass drum, please."

Another break. This one was officially called by Edwards. Allen still was eager to get back to work, and he toyed around on his horn with the next piece he wanted to do, Nice Work If You Can Get It.

"Johnny Hodges has a record of that," remarked Scott. "Did you hear it?"

A bit later, when Edwards suggested they go back to work, Allen had relaxed at least long enough to be showing a visitor a color picture he has of his mother, himself, and his granddaughter — four generations of the Allen family. But he broke off abruptly and went back to his mike.

On the take of Nice Work, piano and bass took it partly in "two" (ah there, Miles Davis). "Make it clean," Edwards had encouraged them during the run-through. Allen's variations rolled off easily and with a rare and personal symmetry.

The quartet then began to run down a piece that seemed both familiar and not familiar, a piece that sounded like the blues and was not exactly the blues, and 32 bars. When they got the routine set, Edwards asked for the title. Biffly Blues, said Allen — so it was a new version of the first record he ever did under his own name. One take, and for the time being everyone agreed with Edwards' comment, "That's it. It won't go down any better than that."

As they were running through St. Louis Blues, there was talk in the booth about "still another record of that one." But Edwards decided that if they did something different with it, then it should be recorded. They did.

It was getting late, nearly 4 p.m, and Edwards did some quick calculations from the timings recorded in his notes on the session

"Red, why not stretch out with a few more choruses on this," he said into the studio mike. "We'll have enough time for it on the LP."

While the tapes were rolling, Allen suddenly played very low on his horn again, growling out notes for almost two choruses. One take — as usual — did the blues.

The date was nearly over now. Edwards made more calculations on timing, and then stepped into the studio to suggest to Allen they do a longer version of Biffly Blues. Agreed.

"What does that title mean, Red?" a visitor asked hurriedly, hoping to get his question in before the tapes rolled again. "My nickname — when I was a kid," he smiled. "My folks used to call me Biffly when I wanted to be a baseball player. You know — biff — hit. Wham!"

After a rough start, occurring because Allen had placed his horn and set his chops too quickly, they got through a long taping of Biffly Blues, with Edwards conducting and encouraging through the glass of the booth — waving his arms emphatically at the rhythm section, as Allen concentrated on his solo choruses. (Creative a&r work, it's called.)

"You know," offered Potter at the end, "that Biffly Blues is the kind of piece that could hit."

"It is," said a visitor, "Anyway, it sounds just as fresh as when he first did it 30 years ago."

"No, fresher," said another onlooker softly. "Because Red is fresher. You can't date that kind of talent. And he's himself, and that means he's got things nobody else could pick up on.""