November 2, 2018 Rolling Stone Magazine by Hank Shteamer
Review: Charles Mingus’ ‘Jazz in Detroit’ Sheds Light on an Overlooked Era
A hefty new box set, recorded live in 1973, captures the legendary bassist at the helm of a short-lived yet top-tier band
“If you’re going by the bare facts alone, Jazz in Detroit / Strata Concert Gallery / 46 Selden is strictly for Charles Mingus completists. The new five-CD set includes nearly four hours of previously unreleased live material by the legendary bassist, all recorded on a single night in February 1973 for Detroit public radio. Unlike, say, John Coltrane’s recently unearthed Lost Album, Jazz in Detroit doesn’t date from a pivotal period in the leader’s career, feature an iconic lineup or introduce a wealth of unfamiliar repertoire.
But what looks marginal on paper turns out to be sheer joy coming out of the speakers, thanks in large part to Mingus’ lesser-known yet enormously gifted sidemen: tenor saxophonist John Stubblefield, trumpeter Joe Gardner, pianist Don Pullen and drummer Roy Brooks. Even Mingus aficionados likely won’t have heard this exact lineup, since only Pullen and Brooks worked with the bassist for more than a few months. Still, as heard in these performances of Mingus staples (“Pithecanthropus Erectus,” “Peggy’s Blue Skylight,” “Orange Was the Color of Her Dress, Then Blue Silk”) and a couple rarities, their grasp of the core elements of the bassist’s sound world — earthy swing; lush ensemble playing; roomy, impassioned solos — is extraordinary.
Pullen in particular nearly steals the show. The pianist would later become a star of the jazz vanguard, but at the time of Jazz in Detroit, one of his earliest documented performances with Mingus, he was still an up-and-comer. His prior experience playing everything from high-energy free improv to deep-pocket soul-jazz came in handy here. On “Celia,” a tender, melodious piece that dated back to 1957, his solo moves from crisp bebop to clanging, cyclonic expressionism and back, recalling the astounding technique of earlier Mingus pianist Jaki Byard. Later, underneath Stubblefield’s solo, the pianist tosses little firecrackers of abstraction the saxist’s way, urging his bandmate toward increasingly ecstatic peaks. And on a lengthy version of Duke Ellington’s “C Jam Blues,” he leads Mingus and Brooks into a wild free-jazz interlude.
The set’s more conventional moments are just as satisfying. “Dizzy Profile” — a piece apparently written for Dizzy Gillespie but not found on any other known Mingus recording — gives the players a chance to stretch out on an old-school ballad. Pullen plays a gorgeous rubato intro, leading into a dreamy, vocal-like theme led by Gardner. Solos by the trumpeter and Stubblefield show off each player’s timeless laid-back lyricism. Likewise, on the 26-minute “Noddin’ Ya Head Blues,” the whole band digs heartily into Mingus and Brooks’ slinky groove. (Late in the performance, the drummer puts down his sticks for a charmingly folksy turn on musical saw.) These pieces show that while many of Mingus’ peers had embraced plugged-in fusion by ’73, the bassist was still more than content with the fundamentals of acoustic small-group jazz.
Beyond the music itself, which sounds generally excellent for a live recording, Jazz in Detroit also has added historical value. A series of between-set radio segments interspersed with the music offer a window into the lively Detroit scene jazz at that time. We hear MC Bud Spangler, broadcasting from on site, giving directions to the Strata Concert Gallery — the home of Strata Records, an important local label of the period that DJ and Jazz in Detroit project coordinator Amir Abdullah has spent years researching and reviving — offering free admission to anyone who can bring a backup amp down to the show, bemoaning the sparse attendance and plugging upcoming installments in the Jazz in Detroit series, which also featured Herbie Hancock, Keith Jarrett and hometown luminaries like the Contemporary Jazz Quintet, for which Spangler was the sometime drummer.
Spangler also sits down for an extensive interview with Roy Brooks. Mingus’ then-drummer was a Detroit local and, as heard on this set, an outstanding player who by this time had also worked with jazz A-listers such as Wes Montgomery, Pharoah Sanders, Jackie McLean and Horace Silver. (Jazz in Detroit is sourced from Brooks’ own tapes, provided by the drummer’s widow, Hermine.) He describes the challenge of performing Mingus’ “very demanding” music — no doubt more so because Brooks was stepping into a role most often occupied by the bassist’s longtime drummer and musical soulmate Dannie Richmond — and the evolving audience for jazz at the time, marked by an influx of young fans who “a couple of years ago were really into the acid-rock scene.” His generally optimistic tone runs counter to the standard wisdom that jazz was on the rocks in the early Seventies.
This supplemental material only amplifies the sense that Jazz in Detroit is a niche document. As a slice of life, though, shedding light on both Mingus’ day-to-day activities during an overlooked period and the practice of jazz outside the New York limelight, it’s a treasure. Beyond the context, the music speaks for itself. Even a listener totally unfamiliar with Mingus, not to mention his undervalued collaborators, could jump into Jazz in Detroit‘s time machine and feel right at home in the bassist’s rich musical universe.”
Lewis Porter’s John Coltrane: His Life and Music [Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998] is considered by many in Jazz circles to be the definitive study of ‘Trane and his music.
The editorial staff at JazzProfiles is diligently at work preparing a long treatment on the work that will post to the blog in its entirety at a later date.
In the meantime, I thought I’d share with you some segments and/or excerpts from the book that I found to be of particular interest.
Chapter 10 - The Turning Point: Miles and Monk
“The period from the time Coltrane joined Miles Davis in late September 1955 through the end of 1957 was critical. This was his shot at the big time, and the beginning of his fame—and notoriety—as a soloist. But his drug problem was holding him back, and he finally had to make the commitment once and for all to try and beat it.
Davis had been working with Sonny Rollins, but Rollins had decided to take a year off from performing to rid himself of his own heroin habit. In early September, Davis had tried out John Gilmore, an innovative tenorist known for his work with Sun Ra, at a Philadelphia club, but he wasn't quite what Davis wanted. "And then," said Davis, "Philly Joe brought up Coltrane." They brought Coltrane to New York for several days of rehearsals—probably in early September—but he and Davis didn't quite click, musically or personally. Coltrane returned to Philadelphia to work with Jimmy Smith.1 But Davis already had gigs lined up as result of his success at Newport that July, and he and Philly Joe persuaded Coltrane to join. Davis said, "We practically had to beg him to come join the band," but he thinks Coltrane was playing hard to get (Miles, 195). (John got Odean Pope to take over with Smith at Spider Kelly's.) Coltrane joined the band at the Club Las Vegas in Baltimore, for a gig beginning Tuesday, September 27, 1955; Naima came down on the weekend. Soon, Davis recalled, "As a group, on and off stage, we hit it off together. . . . And faster than I could have imagined, the music that we were playing together was just unbelievable." He hadn't been sure about Coltrane, "But after we started playing together for a while, I knew that this guy was a bad motherfucker who was just the voice I needed on tenor to set off my voice. . . . The group I had with Coltrane made me and him a legend."
That's not to say that there was no controversy. Coltrane was only a few months younger than Davis, but whereas Davis had been recording since 1945 and had been featured with all the jazz greats, Coltrane was unknown to the public. So to the world at large, Davis was an established artist who had discovered this young talent Coltrane. Partly for this reason, that he was seemingly some young kid without strong credentials, Coltrane was an easy target for critics.
For example, Nat Hentoff, reviewing the first LP released by the group, delighted that Davis was in "wonderfully cohesive form," but criticized Coltrane for sounding too much like his influences, Gordon, Stitt, and perhaps Rollins, showing a "general lack of individuality."-'' An English critic named Edgar Jackson was guarded in his praise. Writing that Davis "can be a most exciting player at almost any tempo," he continues: "One can say much the same about John Coltrane—except that he will try to say too much at once, thereby tending to befog his meaning and lessen his impact." But Coltrane already had supporters as well. Bob Dawbarn, reviewing the Prestige LP Relaxin, wrote that "Coltrane and Garland are two of the most underrated musicians in jazz and Coltrane in particular plays magnificently throughout. I particularly like his lyrical solos on '[You're My] Everything' and aggressive swooping on '[I Could Write a) Book.'"'
Sy Johnson, composer and pianist, remembers that when the Davis quintet first came to Los Angeles to play at Jazz City early in 1956, "Nobody knew what to expect. It literally blew everybody out of the water. It destroyed West Coast jazz overnight. I had to convince people to listen to Coltrane. They would say, 'When that tenor player plays I just tune him out and listen to the bass player.' . . . One problem was that everybody [was sure| the tenor player was going to be Sonny Rollins." Johnson recalls that one night at Jazz City, Stan Getz sat in—a great musician whom Coltrane respected. He says that Davis had to order Coltrane not to leave the bandstand when Getz came on; Coltrane didn't want to get into a cutting session against the great Getz. But Getz was a little out of practice—having had recent drug problems—"and he had a tough time playing with that rhythm section, so Trane just mopped him up." People were impressed "to see Trane rise to the occasion and cut Stan," and this may have changed a few minds in favor of Coltrane.
"I got to know the entire band during those weeks," recalls Johnson. "Coltrane was very strung out (on drugs] but was quite willing to talk about his musical problems. He couldn't get the horn to work the way he wanted to—he was aware that he was not doing what he wanted to. Nevertheless, there were a few of us who got an immediate positive reaction to Trane. He wasn't the greatest tenor player I ever heard, but what he was doing was good and interesting and worked well with the band." Johnson also says Coltrane was glad to meet somebody who appreciated him.
At first Coltrane was apparently unsure what Davis wanted. Davis admitted in his autobiography that even at the first rehearsals, in September 1955, he
had been hard on Coltrane: "Trane liked to ask all these motherfucking questions back then about what he should or shouldn't play. Man, fuck that shit; to me he was a professional musician and I have always wanted whoever played with me to find their own place in the music. So my silence and evil looks probably turned him off."
Coltrane explained how that felt from his point of view: "Miles is a strange guy: he doesn't talk much and he rarely discusses music. You always have the impression that he's in a bad mood, and that what concerns others doesn't interest him or move him. It's very difficult, under these conditions, to know exactly what to do, and maybe that's the reason I just ended up doing what I wanted. . . . Miles's reactions are completely unpredictable: he'll play with us for a few measures, then—you never know when—he'll leave us on our own. And if you ask him something about music, you never know how he's going to take it. You always have to listen carefully to stay in the same mood as he!" (Postif).
In 1961, when a French critic asked Coltrane if he had played so far out because Davis told him to—thinking that "the public liked novelty"-"Coltrane stifled a silent laugh: 'Miles? Tell me something? That's a good one! No, Miles never told me anything of the sort. I always played exactly how I wanted.'"
Coltrane, always his own worst critic, had mixed feelings about his performance in the group. He was delighted to be with the group, saying in "Coltrane on Coltrane," "I always felt I wanted to play with Miles. He really put me to work." He was challenged in a positive way, but he wasn't quite pleased with himself: "I began trying to add to what I was playing because of Miles's group, Being there, I just couldn't be satisfied any longer with what I was doing. The standards were so high, and I felt that I wasn't really contributing like I should." And he also seemed regretful of time lost: "All the things I started to do in 1955, when I went with him, were some of the things I felt 1 should have done in "47-'48" ("Coltrane on Coltrane").
Later, in a little-known 1961 interview with Kitty Grime published in the English magazine Jazz News, he was downright self-critical: "When I first joined Miles in 1955 I had a lot to learn. I felt I was lacking in general musicianship. I had all kinds of technical problems—for example, I didn't have the right mouthpiece—and I hadn't the necessary harmonic understanding. I am quite ashamed of those early records I made with Miles. Why he picked me, I don't know. Maybe he saw something in my playing that he hoped would grow. I had this desire, which I think we all have, to be as original as I could, and as honest as I could be. But there were so many musical conclusions I hadn't arrived at, that I felt inadequate. All this was naturally frustrating in those days, and it came through in the music."
At this time, Davis was finishing out a commitment with Prestige Records and beginning what was to be a career-building relationship with Columbia …”
Born in Wales in 1928, Alun Morgan became a Jazz fan as a teenage and was an early devotee of the bebop movement. In the 1950s he began contributing articles to Melody Maker, Jazz Journal, Jazz Monthly, and Gramophone and for twenty years, beginning in 1969, he wrote a regular column for a local newspaper in Kent. From 1954 onward he contributed to BBC programs on Jazz, authored and co-authored books on modern Jazz and Jazz in England and wrote over 2,500 liner notes for Jazz recordings.
"I probably don't need to tell you that Alun Morgan was one of the most gifted and knowledgeable of all jazz writers. He wrote the most beautiful English and what he had to say was communicated flawlessly to his readers. He was comprehensively generous to other writers, and it was at his instigation that I wrote my book on Woody Herman. Once I decided to write it, he shovelled to me the information that he had acquired for his own use on Woody at an amazing rate. Try to find anything he has written and you will be deeply rewarded if you succeed. His book on Modern Jazz was an early primer on the subject, and you'll find the one on Basie, despite its great age, is as relevant as it ever was." - Steve Voce
Chapter Three
"The arrival of Helen Humes in July, 1938 was the last important addition to a band which had now become nationally famous. No longer could it be looked upon as a 'territory' unit which had tried to storm the bastion of the New York dance halls, scuttling back to Kansas City when it needed reassurance. Basie had made important changes to his personnel and with Helen and Rushing sharing the vocals the ensemble comprised Ed Lewis on lead trumpet with Buck Clayton and Harry Edison sharing the solos, trombonists Dan Minor, Benny Morton and Dicky Wells, Earl Warren on alto leading Herschel Evans and Lester Young on tenors and Jack Washington doubling baritone and alto plus the 'All American Rhythm Section' of Basie, Freddie Green, Walter Page and Jo Jones.
Prior to Basie's bookings in New York the Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway and Chick Webb bands held sway with Benny Goodman coming on strongly. It was the era when bands tried to 'cut' each other and one such contest took place at the Savoy Ballroom on January 16,1938, the night of Benny Goodman's Carnegie Hall concert at which Basie, Buck Clayton, Lester Young, Freddie Green and Walter Page had participated. Metronome magazine for February of that year reported 'Count Basie did it! For years, nobody was able to lick Chick Webb and his Chicks within the walls of his own Savoy Ballroom, but on January 16, notables such as Duke, Norvo, Bailey, Duchin, Krupa and Goodman heard the Count gain a decision over the famed Chick. It was a matter of solid swing to the heart triumphing over sensational blows to the head'.
Years later, during the Seventies when Charles Fox interviewed Basie on the radio and suggested that Webb had come second that night Count was vehement in his denial. 'Absolutely not! There was no cutting! We played together and we were lucky to get out with just a few bruises!' This is consistent with Basie's self-effacement and his outspoken admiration for men such as Webb, Duke Ellington and Oscar Peterson. But the fact remained that Basie's band was now a potent force in the hierarchy. Count based himself at New York's Woodside Hotel and held court in the basement, auditioning new arrangements from outsiders such as Don Redman, Jimmy Mundy and Andy Gibson. The turning point was the band's summer booking into the tiny 'Famous Door’ club at 66 West 52nd Street. 'The band first started clicking at the Famous Door' recalls Buck Clayton. 'We had made good changes and the band sounded well together. The place was small and we sat close together, and the low ceilings made the band sound beautiful, and it was a rocking place, and that's where business started picking up'.
The Famous Door was the second 52nd Street premises to bear the name; it measured 20 to 25 feet wide and 50 to 60 feet deep. Frank Driggs, who contributed a valuable sleeve note to Jazz Archives JA-41 Count Basie At The Famous Door 1938-1939 states that when the Columbia Broadcasting System did its regular broadcasts from the club, 'the patrons had to remove themselves to the sidewalk in order to achieve clear transmission from the cramped, mirrored club'. Basie played the Famous Door from July, 1938 to January, 1939 and it was a mark of Willard Alexander's faith in the band that he loaned the club 2,500 dollars to install air-conditioning to attract the customers during the hot summer months of 1938. Alexander also twisted a few of the most influential arms at CBS with the result that a radio network line was installed. Basie was paid about 1,300 dollars a week at the Famous Door but the extensive radio network coverage was of immense value. The surviving broadcast recordings from the Famous Door are revealing for a number of reasons, not the least being the excellence of Jack Washington as an improvising baritone soloist, at a time when such fluidity on the instrument was the prerogative of Harry Carney, or so it seems judged solely on the evidence of commercially made records.
Frank Driggs points out that it was the success and popularity of the contrasting tenor soloists which caused Basie to drop Washington from a prominent role as a soloist. The Famous Door transcriptions show also that Benny Morton was the chief trombone soloist probably because Dicky Wells had only recently come into the band. There is also another example of Lester Young's clarinet playing to add to the discographies. Basie's judicious fill-ins and occasional middle-eights sandwiched between ensemble passages helped to give the band a sense of contrast which few others possessed at the time.
The six month residency at the Famous Door was followed by a further six month engagement in Chicago and these extended bookings gave the band a feeling of stability. The new men had plenty of opportunities to familiarise themselves with the band library and their section colleagues. Record producers also found it useful to have so many outstanding jazz players in one place for so long. John Hammond recorded bands under the leadership of both Billie Holiday and Teddy Wilson during 1938 when the supporting musicians were nearly all taken from the Basie ranks.
Under his own name Count was fulfilling his Decca contract both with the full band and as leader of the 'All American Rhythm Section'. The titles Basie made in November, 1938 and January, 1939 give us rare opportunities to study the magic of this unique team. Hammond had been right in drawing Freddie Green to Basie's attention for seldom in jazz did two musicians complement each other better. The foundation of the team was the immensely strong and authoritative bass playing of Walter Page, a man who knew instinctively how every other instrumentalist in the band should play. Basie credits Page bringing out the best in Jo Jones and it was probably Page's idea that Jones scaled his sound down to the point where the beat was sometimes felt rather than heard. Jo Jones certainly knew how to paint rhythmic colours and was never boorish in his work behind band or soloists. In fact it was Jones who paved the way for the later 'cool school' drummers with his floating rhythmic pulse and beautifully controlled hi-hat cymbal. 'Jo Jones' said drummer Don Lamond, one of the finest of all big band drummers, 'reminds me of the wind. He has more class than any drummer I've ever heard and has been an influence on me ever since I first heard him with Basie. Man, he could drive that band! With Jo there's none of that damn raucous tom-tom beating or riveting-machine stuff! Jo makes sense'.
Jones started out as a carnival musician and had to be prepared to accompany all manner of acts and improvise backing at a moment's notice. All this served him in good stead when he came to work with Basie for he had the ability to listen to each soloist, modify his accents as necessary and, at the same time, fit in with the other members of the rhythm team. On Jones's right sat Freddie Green, probably the greatest rhythm guitarist in the history of jazz. He was called, with perfect truth, Basie's left hand. As he explained, 'Basie's piano certainly contributes to making the rhythm smooth. He contributes the missing things. I feel very comfortable working with him because he always seems to know the right thing to play for rhythm. Count is also just about the best piano player I know for pushing a band and for comping soloists. I mean the way he makes different preparations for each soloist and the way, at the end of his solos, he prepares an entrance for the next man. He leaves the way open'.
Sitting at the keyboard, watching and listening to every move made by his musicians, Basie played with deceptive simplicity. 'I don't want to "run it into the ground" as they say. I love to play, but the idea of one man taking one chorus after another is not wise, in my opinion. Therefore, I fed dancers my own piano in short doses, and when I came for a solo I did it unexpectedly, using a strong rhythm background behind me. That way we figured, the Count's piano wasn't going to become monotonous'. This magnificent and unique quartet of players came into being in March, 1937 and stayed together, week in and week out, until the summer of 1942 when Page left, following a disagreement. It formed the foundation to some of the finest examples of big band swing and was the envy of every other band leader.
While the Count Basie band was still appearing at the Famous Door, John Hammond arranged a concert presentation at Carnegie Hall for December 23rd, 1938. 'The concert should include, I thought, both primitive and sophisticated performers, as well as all of the music of the blacks in which jazz is rooted. I wanted to include gospel music, which I listened to in various storefront churches wherever I travelled, as well as country blues singers and shouters, and ultimately the kind of jazz played by the Basie band'. The two LPs issued years later from the 'Spirituals To Swing' concert are especially valuable for some small band titles by Basie, Lester Young, Buck Clayton and rhythm (even although the tracks on the LP were actually recorded six months earlier in a studio and have fake applause dubbed on) and a reunion between Basie and trumpeter Hot Lips Page. At the commencement of 1939 Decca set up five Basie dates within the space of a month. The recording contract was due to expire and Decca were anxious to retain the services of Basie; they sent Jack Kapp along to Basie with a thousand dollars as an inducement to sign for a further term. Although he needed the money, Count refused to stay with Decca and signed instead with Columbia, an arrangement which was to last in unbroken form until August, 1946.
With a new contract for making records, Basie found himself in direct competition with Duke Ellington. Duke's was the only Negro band on the Columbia label 'but because of Ellington's understanding with Columbia' wrote John Hammond later 'Basie's records had to be released on Okeh. When Basie finally moved to Columbia, Ellington left and went to Victor. I never understood the jealousy and resentment Duke seemed to feel toward other black band leaders. His place was secure, his genius recognized, yet he seemed to feel threatened. I do know that Basie worshipped him'.
Just prior to the conclusion of the Decca arrangement, Count was faced with the need to find another tenor soloist. The outstanding Herschel Evans collapsed while working with Count Basie at the Crystal Ballroom, Hartford, Connecticut in January, 1939. He was rushed to a New York hospital but died of a cardiac condition. Basie borrowed Chu Berry from Cab Calloway's band to complete his Decca dates then brought in another Texas tenor, Buddy Tate, as a permanent replacement. (Buddy became one of the longest-serving Basie sidemen; he joined the Count in February, 1939 and left in September, 1948.)
Although Basie had fostered the 'tenor battles' while Evans and Lester Young sat at opposite ends of the saxophone section, those who were close to the two men claimed that the so-called feuding bore no relation to their true feelings. 'Herschel Evans was a natural' said Jo Jones. 'He had a sound on the tenor that perhaps you will never hear on a horn again. As for the so-called friction between him and Lester, there was no real friction. What there was was almost like an incident you would say could exist between two brothers. No matter what, there was always a mutual feeling there. Even in Lester's playing today, somewhere he'll always play two to four measures of Herschel because they were so close in what they felt about music'. Evans left his stamp on a handful of the Decca sides, notably the gorgeous and sensitive statement on Blue and sentimental as well as more aggressive solos on One o'clock jump, Time out, Georgianna and his own arrangement of Doggin' around. (In all four latter titles Herschel is the first of the two tenor soloists.)
The first session for Columbia took place at United studios in Chicago on February 13, 1939 but none of the titles was issued until 33 years later. 'We cut these in a terrible studio and there was something wrong with the equipment' wrote John Hammond years later. 'When we finally cut the masters we couldn't get the records to track'. This was not a full band session but by an octet, with Jimmy Rushing singing on Goin' to Chicago, a track on which Basie played organ. Jo Jones recalls that 'the goddam organ wouldn't work properly and I had to get under it and kick it to make it go. It hadn't been played for close on ten years'. When these titles eventually appeared as part of a two-LP set titled Count Basie -Super Chief the jazz world was suddenly the richer by some magnificent Buck Clayton, Lester Young, Dicky Wells and Basie solos following the painstaking work of recording engineer Doug Meehan who went to endless trouble to overcome the original defects. From what might have seemed an inauspicious beginning, the Columbia contract blossomed into full flower a month later with an orchestra date and the band built steadily on the foundation of this success throughout the rest of the year. As the war clouds gathered over Europe Basie was recording gems such as Taxi war dance, Rock-a-bye Basie (a tune which Dizzy Gillespie later claimed was based on one of his riffs which Shad Collins took with him into the Basie band), Jimmy Mundy's arrangement of Miss Thing (which was spread across two sides of a 78) and Jump for me.
Two days after Britain declared war on Germany Count Basie's Kansas City Seven assembled in Columbia's New York studio to record two titles which soon became classics, Dickie's dream and Lester leaps in. Buck Clayton, Dicky Wells and Lester Young make up an unbeatable front line, superbly backed by the All American Rhythm Section. In the autumn of 1939 Rozelle Claxton (from Ernie Field's band) took Basie's place at the keyboard for a short time while the Count was off sick and the year finished with the band at the Casa Loma Ballroom in St. Louis. Metronome magazine asked its readers to vote in its second annual poll with the result that Basie came second on piano, Lester third on tenor and Walter Page, Jo Jones and Freddie Green occupying similar positions on their respective instruments. As a new decade began it looked as if Basie had been accepted, three years after that first booking outside the Kansas City limits. The Count was on his way.”
The editorial staff at JazzProfiles has been searching for a cogent and coherent treatment of Count Basie and his music; not surprisingly it found one from the pen of Alun which will be presented to you as a segmented blog feature in the coming weeks.
Born in Wales in 1928, Alun Morgan became a Jazz fan as a teenage and was an early devotee of the bebop movement. In the 1950s he began contributing articles to Melody Maker, Jazz Journal, Jazz Monthly, and Gramophone and for twenty years, beginning in 1969, he wrote a regular column for a local newspaper in Kent. From 1954 onward he contributed to BBC programs on Jazz, authored and co-authored books on modern Jazz and Jazz in England and wrote over 2,500 liner notes for Jazz recordings.
His writing style is succinct, accurate and easy to read and understand. It’s an honor to have Alun Morgan featured on these pages.
Chapter Two
“Towards the end of 1935 Benny Goodman brought his orchestra to Chicago for a triumphal return booking at the Congress Hotel, triumphal in the sense that in between its two Congress bookings, it had made history at the Palomar Ballroom across in Los Angeles. Benny was the 'King Of Swing" and the nation wanted to see and hear this vital and alive band. On hand was John Hammond, then 24 years of age and a keen, enthusiastic jazz fan. But Hammond was more than that; he was a Vanderbilt on his mother's side and had 'dropped out' of Yale in 1931 in order to promote jazz. He wrote for the British Melody Maker and had a contract to produce records for the British market. Despite his youth, Hammond was an influential figure in jazz circles. His friendship with Benny Goodman developed and the family relationship was completed in 1941 when Goodman married Hammond's sister Alice. But in the last week of November, 1935, when Benny's band was floating on the crest of a wave, John was out in the car park of the Congress hotel, sitting in his car which was fitted with a powerful radio. 'I had a twelve-tube Motorola with a large speaker, unlike any other car radio in those days' Hammond wrote in his autobiography. 'I spent so much time on the road that I wanted a superior instrument to keep me in touch with music around the country. It was one o'clock in the morning. The local stations had gone off the air and the only music I could find was at the top of the dial, 1550 kilocycles, where I picked up W9XBY, an experimental station in Kansas City. The nightly broadcast by the Count Basie band from the Reno Club was just beginning. I couldn't believe my ears'.
After that first hearing, an event which Leonard Feather has called 'the most momentous chance audition in jazz history', Hammond tuned in to W9XBY whenever he could. So intrigued was he by the sound of the band that he went down to KC to hear the music for himself. On his first visit to the Reno the first thing he saw was 'the high bandstand, at the top of which sat Jo Jones surrounded by his drums. Basie sat at the left with Walter Page and his bass crowded as close to the piano as he could get. In the front line were Lester Young, Buster Smith on alto, and Jack Washington on baritone. Behind them were two trumpets, Oran 'Lips' Page and Joe Keyes, and the trombone, Dan Minor. Jimmy Rushing, the famous Mr. Five-By-Five, sang the blues, and Hattie Noel, as big as Rushing and dressed in a ridiculous pinafore, was the comedienne and a fairly good singer'.
No recordings of broadcasts from the Reno Club have come to light but, from first-hand descriptions of the music and the very earliest known Basie recordings it is possible to make a judgement on how the band probably sounded. It made extensive use of riffs both behind soloists and as launching pads. The arrangements (perhaps routines would be a more accurate description) were sufficiently flexible to allow soloists to take extra choruses if it happened that the inspirational level was high. And Basie himself? John Hammond has noted that 'Basie had developed an extraordinary economy of style. With fewer notes he was saying all that Waller and Hines could say pianistically, using perfectly timed punctuation - a chord, even a single note - which could inspire a horn player to heights he had never reached before'. Although Hammond was writing of Count at the time of the W9XBY broadcasts his description could be applied to Basie at almost any period. At the same time it would be a mistake to assume that Count had lost the art of two-handed playing. Sandwiched in the middle of the 1957 Roulette recording of Kid from Red Bank, for example, there are a couple of choruses of stride piano which would do credit to any masters of the idiom.
Hammond's enthusiasm for the Basie band went further than writing about it in Down Beat magazine. He urged Dick Altschuler of the American Record Company to sign the band for his Brunswick label. Altschuler agreed but, by a clever piece of fast manipulation, Dave Kapp, brother to Jack Kapp, head of Decca, got to Count first. The contract Basie signed was for twenty-four 78rpm sides a year for three years with a payment of 750 dollars to Basie for each of the three years. There were to be be no royalty payments or, in fact, any further money for Basie. Hammond did his best to redress the situation on Count's behalf but the fact remains that Basie never received any further payments for the 61 tracks he made for Decca between January, 1937 and February, 1939. When one considers that, amongst those 61 titles, were the original versions of One o'clock jump, Topsy, Sent for you yesterday, Jumpin' at the Woodside, Jive at five, Blue and sentimental etc, the iniquity of the Decca move can be judged. On the brighter side, Hammond managed to get Willard Alexander of the powerful Music Corporation of America (MCA) so interested in the band that he signed Basie to an MCA contract. Alexander booked the band into the Grand Terrace Hotel in Chicago, up until then the stronghold of the Earl Hines and Fletcher Henderson bands.
With so much potential activity in the offing, Basie set about enlarging his band. Joe Glaser had signed Hot Lips Page to a separate contract, thinking Page had a bigger future than the Count. In his place Basie secured the services of Buck Clayton, who up to that time had not intended to stay in KC longer than a few days. (He was on his way east from California in order to join Willie Bryant's band.) 'I was with Basie two months at the Reno Club,' states Clayton. 'We left Kansas City Octobers 31,1936, Halloween Night, the same night we had played in a battle of bands with Duke Ellington at the Paseo Ballroom. In our minds, we thought we had won the battle, but when we got on the bus to leave there wasn't one single friend of ours on hand to assure us we had. So probably we didn't, and, knowing Duke as I know him now, I'm almost sure we didn't'.
If there was uncertainty about who won at the Paseo Ballroom there was no doubt about the Basie band's position when they opened at the Grand Terrace. 'They had us playing the Poet and Peasant Overture as our big show number' Basie recalled later. 'The band just didn't make it, and there was nothing in the show that gave us a real chance to display ourselves properly'. John Hammond was more forthright. 'Remembering those first nights at the Grand Terrace, I am astonished they were not fired. They struggled through Ed Fox's show arrangements, but the chorus girls loved the band because it was so easy to dance to. Jo Jones, a dancer himself, knew how to play for dancers. Fletcher Henderson came to the rescue, allowing Basie to use half his library of arrangements, one of the generous gestures which endeared Fletcher to so many musicians.'
The Basie band played the Grand Terrace from November 7, 1936 to December 3, a period in which owner Ed Fox claimed the Terrace did its smallest business in years. (He tried to cancel the Basie booking but MCA ignored his plea; the agency was more interested in the radio wire which the club had.) But the Grand Terrace booking was probably Basie's first and greatest hurdle. Pitchforked into an entirely new musical environment was like being thrown in at the deep end. Years later Jimmy Rushing blamed the Count for some of the band's shortcomings. 'It was Basie who couldn't read, and the troubles started when Tiny Parham had written an arrangement for the band of the William Tell Overture. Basie couldn't play the piano part so we had to call in a woman who was a music teacher, and she took over the piano'. Away from the Grand Terrace a small group from the band achieved greatness. John Hammond, incensed at Decca's signing of the band to a recording contract, decided to record Basie for himself, albeit as part of a group under someone else's leadership. The date for the session is usually given as October 8 or 9 but the band was still in Kansas City at that time. Years later Hammond gave the date of November 9, 1936 which seems far more likely. The records came out on the Vocalion label under the name 'Jones - Smith Inc.' and they contain the first (and some would claim the best) examples of Lester Young on record. The full band used Lady be good and Shoeshine boy as part of its repertoire; these small group versions allow Young to spin out long melodic lines of a character which was entirely fresh to those brought up to believe that the sound of the tenor saxophone was epitomised by the work of Coleman Hawkins.
After the Grand Terrace booking came to an end, Basie moved East, playing a series of dates prior to his engagement at New York's Roseland Ballroom just before New Year's day. The band's spirits must have been at a low ebb after the Grand Terrace debacle and, as Hammond reports, a one-night stand at New London, Connecticut, on the way to New York did little for morale. 'They played (New London) on the night of a terrible New England storm' remembers Hammond, 'in a ballroom which normally held about sixteen hundred. That night there were no more than four hundred'. In an attempt to broaden the band's appeal, the musicians knocked together arrangements of popular songs and found that they were also expected to play tangos and rhumbas. 'Woody Herman was playing opposite us at the Roseland' said Basie. 'He was breaking in his band too, but he was in there - he had made it. We had a rough time at the Roseland, but the manager there stuck with us - he believed in what we wanted to do'.
The New York booking also gave Decca the chance to record the band for the the first time, a unit which now boasted five brass (Buck Clayton, Tatti Smith and Joe Keyes on trumpets, George Hunt and Dan Minor on trombones), four saxes and four rhythm. Lead alto Buster Smith, suspicious of the MCA contract, had refused to leave Kansas City for the Chicago and New York engagements so Basie brought in Caughey Roberts, who had played in California with Buck Clayton. By now the band boasted two exceptional and contrasting tenors in Lester Young and the Texas-born Herschel Evans. Claude 'Fiddler’ Williams doubled guitar and violin (although he played only the former on the record date) and the band was completed by Reno stalwarts Jo Jones, Walter Page and Jack Washington. Those first four titles, Honeysuckle Rose (solos by Basie, Young and Tatti Smith), Pennies from Heaven (Rushing vocal), Swinging at the Daisy Chain (Basie, Buck Clayton, Herschel Evans, Walter Page and Jo Jones) and Roseland Shuffle (solos from Basie and Lester Young) give a very clear indication of the band's enormous capabilities and unrivalled solo strength.
At the Roseland Basie played before a segregated audience for the ballroom enforced its 'whites only' ruling so strictly that Puerto Ricans were discouraged. From the Roseland the band moved on to the Apollo Theatre on 125th Street. This Harlem entertainment centre had been a proving ground for talent since it first opened its doors in 1934 and Basie was apprehensive about the reception he could expect. Willard Alexander still had confidence in Basie's ability to succeed and he persuaded the Apollo management to spend extra money to promote the Count and his men. As John Hammond wrote later 'Nobody in Harlem will ever forget that opening. Basie passed the test. He was on his way'. But Alexander's next booking for the band cast them back in the melting pot for he moved them into the William Penn Hotel in Pittsburgh, the best hotel in the city which had never previously had a Negro band in residence. Fortunately for us an LP exists (Jazz Archives JA-16, The Count At The Chatterbox) recorded from the network radio broadcasts which were done from the hotel. One can now imagine the impact Basie's music must have had on the staid and sedate atmosphere. Hammond went to the opening and reported 'Bill did his best to accommodate the William Penn customers, muting the brass, keeping the guys on their best behaviour, but the band couldn't help swinging’. The 'Chatterbox' album is a valuable document for it is the earliest 'live' recording of the Basie band to appear. The music bursts with inner enthusiasm and although this was a thirteen-man ensemble it has the feel of a small group, so well-integrated are the backing riffs behind the soloists. The evidence is here that, by this date at least, Count had refined his own piano playing to the point where he only played the notes that mattered. The contrast between the full power of the band and Basie's relaxed keyboard figurations is a joy.
After the William Penn Hotel booking the band did a string of one-nighters gaining impetus at each date. The network radio broadcasts plus the first Decca releases, Pennies from Heaven coupled with Swingin' at the Daisy Chain and Honeysuckle Rose backed with Roseland Shuffle, all helped the band to establish its reputation. Lester Young and Herschel Evans now had their own groups of supporters at the various dance halls and Basie was not slow to feature the tenor 'battles'. This was the foundation for many similar musical wars of attrition in later years and for Basie's assertion that 'the band starts with the rhythm section then builds up to the tenors'. Jimmy Rushing sang the blues and the band was beginning to make some real money but MCA felt that it would be even more of a success with a girl singer on the payroll.
In March, 1937 Billie Holiday joined the band but, due to conflicting contracts, she was not allowed to make records with the Count. (Nevertheless she may be heard on a handful of titles which have appeared as parts of broadcast transcriptions dating from 1937.) Billie's stay with Basie lasted less than a year although she herself referred to it as 'almost two years' in her autobiography Lady Sings The Blues, a book which cannot be relied upon too much for factual matters. This was obviously an unhappy period for both Bill and Billie; Jimmy Rushing accused her of not acting in a professional way and Billie complained that the money she was paid did not cover her laundry bills and other expenses. Basie and Holiday parted company at the beginning of 1938 and Billie made no secret of the fact that she blamed John Hammond for her dismissal. Willard Alexander sprang to Hammond's defence; 'it was John Hammond who got Billie the job with Count Basie' he was reported as saying in Down Beat,' and he was responsible for Basie keeping her. In fact, if it hadn't been for John Hammond, Billie would have been through six months sooner. The reason for her dismissal was strictly one of deportment, which was unsatisfactory, and a distinctly wrong attitude towards her work. Billie sang fine when she felt like it. We just couldn't count on her for consistent performance'. Hammond was soon at work behind the scenes on Basie's behalf. Having convinced Count already that Freddie Green would make a greater contribution to the rhythm section than Claude Williams, he was directing Basie's attention towards a singer who was both consistent and professional, Miss Helen Humes.”
