Count Basie by Alun Morgan - Part 4

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

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 Four

“For much of the first half of 1940 Basie worked around New York and Boston. He was at the Apollo Theatre on at least three occasions and the Golden Gate Ballroom, both venues in New York City, and at Boston's Southland Ballroom, from which latter location an excellent broadcast transcription dating from February 20 has been released on a number of labels. By now the powerful trumpet of Al Killian had replaced Shad Collins and the distinctive Vic Dickenson had joined the trombones, taking the place of Benny Morton who left to join pianist Joe Sullivan's band.

In May Milton Ebbins took over as manager from Jack Kearney and Tab Smith was in and out of the band as a fifth saxophonist. The band was still being booked through MCA but Willard Alexander's move to the William Morris agency was having an effect on Count's business. It was not that the band had no work, it was simply that it was not getting the air time which Alexander had considered so important. There have been a few indications that, away from the piano keyboard, Basie's acumen and sense of timing left a lot to be desired. Apart from the unfortunate terms of the Decca contract Basie entered into, the sharp nose-dive of his fortunes with MCA once Alexander left was most noticeable. Both Count and his manager. Milt Ebbins, formally accused MCA of serious charges and the November 15, 1940 issue of Down Beat carried the news that Basie felt the agency was guilty of:

a.   Failure to book the band into spots with radio wires.

b.   General handling of the band: for example it was recently booked for the Paramount Theatre (LA) for two weeks. 'It was the only date we played out there, and it cost us two thousand dollars to send the band there. It doesn't make sense.'

c.   Long jumps on tour: 500 miles a night 'not unusual. We've jumped from New York to Chicago in one night'.

d.   The band has been a big grosser everywhere it's played (including a recent Southern tour) but 'MCA got some nineteen thousand dollars in commission last year. Basie got seven thousand himself and the band got five thousand. Does that make sense?

Basie threatened to break up his band, presumably in order to sever his relationship with MCA. Count did a number of one night stands with

Benny Goodman (and played on some of Benny's sextet recording dates) while the rest of the Basie men 'loafed around New York'. Manager Milt Ebbins said he was taking the mismanagement case to James Petrillo, head of the American Federation of Musicians. 'We haven't had a location job with air time for a year. Some weeks we work every night, jumping 500 miles a night. Other weeks we lay off No one seems interested in Basie at MCA'.

By the end of the year an uneasy truce was proposed with MCA taking less commission from the band's bookings. But Basie suffered another setback a couple of weeks before Christmas. Columbia had set up a recording session for Friday, 13th December, 1940 in order to record four titles (It's the same old South, Stampede in G minor, Who am I? and Rockin' the blues); on the day of the session Basie's star soloist, Lester Young, failed to show up. Rumour has it that he objected to making records on Friday The Thirteenth but those close to the event deny it. In any case Basie was forced, at short notice, to bring in Paul Bascombe on loan from the Erskine Hawkins band, and to allocate the tenor solos on the date to Buddy Tate. It was the parting of the ways, at least temporarily, for Lester and Basie and while the precise reasons for Young's departure may never be known, it is worth recording that Lester's wife, Mary, wrote a letter to Down Beat magazine stating the Lester left Basie of his own accord and was not fired.

Another Down Beat report of interest occurs in the January 15, 1941 issue referring to the months of wrangling between Basie and MCA. Count bought his release from the agency for ten thousand dollars and joined William Morris. 'Willard Alexander, Morris band department executive, will personally guide Basie and the band just as he has been doing for the past four years, even though he and Basie were with rival booking offices. Also in the picture is Milton Keith Ebbins, youthful Basie road manager and former band leader, who now becomes personal manager of the Basie outfit. Alexander and Ebbins together will accept or reject all bookings offered. Basie's band hasn't been working much lately. On January 3rd he started a theatre tour, opening at the Apollo in Harlem - the first job to be booked by Morris'. Following the departure of Lester Young, Count used a number of temporary substitutes in his reed section then, at the end of February, 1941, Don Byas took over on a permanent basis.

With Willard Alexander now officially back at the helm the bands fortunes improved. Most of its work was still in ballrooms and theatres where it was expected to provide music not only for dancers but also as the backing for all manner of variety acts and vocalists. What happened in the recording studios was not always necessarily a true reflection of the working band schedule. Jimmy Rushing and Helen Humes were a great success as singers with the band but Helen found the strain of touring too great and left around the time Don Byas came into the band. 'I used to pretend I was asleep on the Basie bus' Helen told Stanley Dance, 'so the boys wouldn't think I was hearing their rough talk. I'd sew buttons on, and cook for them too. I used to carry pots and a little hot plate around, and I'd fix up some food backstage or in places where it was difficult to get anything to eat when we were down South. Playing cards was the best way of passing time on those long trips, but sometimes when I won money from them I found I had to lend it back! I wasn't interested in drinking and keeping late hours, so that part didn't hurt me. But my kidneys couldn't stand the punishment of those long rides. I was too timid to ask the driver to stop when I should have. Then, too, I got tired of singing the same songs year after year.’

Miss Humes's eloquent statement tells us more about the reverse side of the show-biz coin than a wealth of conjecture. Life on the road with a touring band has never been good but for girl singers the pressures were greater.

Basie brought in Pearl White, a former singer and dancer at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem, as a temporary replacement for Helen and later in the year, Lynne Sherman, one-time vocalist with the Sonny Burke band and now married to Basie's manager Milt Ebbins, sang with the band at an engagement at Boston's Ritz-Carlton. (Lynne also recorded a couple of sides with the band at the end of 1941.) But Jimmy Rushing was still the major attraction in the vocal department, singing the blues and generally giving the band its deeply committed Kansas City sound. Ballads on records were handled by Earl Warren, who was also leading the sax team. The Okeh releases of 78rpm discs usually had an Earl Warren vocal on one side and a more extrovert instrumental number on the other. British EMI, which then had a contract with American Columbia, parent company of Okeh, released Basie records in Britain during World War Two on its Parlophone label and invariably cross-backed the instrumentals, omitting most records with a vocal. One Basie performance with a singer which was issued both in the US and Britain was the two-sided King Joe, a somewhat unexpected pairing of the Count's orchestra and the vibrant voice of Paul Robeson.

Some of the arrangements for the vocals brought in unexpected names; Hugo Winterhalter, for example, scored some of the Earl Warren features. Basie was also using compositions and arrangements from unusual sources for his instrumentals too; Stampede in G minor was written by Clinton P. Brewer, a convicted murderer then serving a 19 year jail sentence while Beau Brummel was by the diminutive Margie Gibson. It is likely, however, that many of the titles which the band recorded for Okeh/Columbia were seldom played in public for the band was still working predominantly hotel ballrooms and theatres where the programme of music was certainly less experimental.

Years later the same pattern could be observed when comparing the band's recorded output with any listing of tunes played in public. Metronome magazine's Bill Coss spent some time travelling with the band at the end of 1956 and his observations are probably typical of almost any period in the orchestra's existence: 'It's interesting to look through the band's arrangements. There are about 180 scores in the library and, at most, only sixty of these are played. Out of that number, there are perhaps twenty or thirty which are played over and over;-the others are mostly dance arrangements, ballads by Edgar Sampson, etc. Of that outside figure of thirty, there are only two or three which have any real musical worth; those the musicians really like to play, but they generally have to badger the Count into playing them. Basie doesn't like to play new arrangements. Like most of jazz, like most jazz musicians, the arrangements written and played are of familiar blues and standard tunes. Aside from the fact of sheer boredom and over-familiar material, many of the musicians have an artist's interest in new material; but to no avail. Yet they accept it with fortitude, knowing that that is very much the way it is, turning with a wry smile when I would ask them about any new arrangements being in the book and answering "Yep, there's a new arrangement of Moten swing"'

Basie, like Duke Ellington, may have felt that he was working for two audiences, those who paid at the door to hear the band 'live' and those who wanted a more permanent reminder of the band on record. During the nineteen-forties the band was recording excellent scores by men such as Jimmy Mundy (Fiesta in blue, Something new, Feather merchant etc.), Eddie Durham, Buster Harding, Buck Clayton and, occasionally, Skip Martin, Tadd Dameron and Tab Smith. Most of the writers seemed to write with the established sound of the band in mind. (Perhaps they knew that such scores had a better chance of finding their way into the book!) Basie was very much the leader, rejecting anything which he did not feel was right. Buck Clayton told Stanley Dance '(Count) was nice to work for, but he always knew what he wanted from the band and the arrangers. At the beginning, it used to take us so long to get through the arrangements. We'd have to help guys who didn't do so much reading, but who were great soloists and were accustomed to the head arrangements. The only reason I played all those things with a mute with Basie was because he asked me to, and as he was the leader his wishes were like commands. When I came out of the army I was my own judge and I played like I wanted to. The funny thing about Basie was that he'd ask me to record with a mute, but when we got on one-nighters he'd have me play the same thing open'.

Clayton stayed with Basie until November, 1943 when he was called up by the US Army. The Count's band lost a number of men to the armed forces but there is evidence that the US authorities called more whites than Negroes, proportionately speaking, and some of the white bands of the day suffered greater losses of key personnel than either Basie or Duke Ellington.

When the V Disc programme of recordings was launched, Ellington and his men made it clear that they were not prepared to take part, as a protest against the way coloured troops were treated. (The Ellington material which does exist on V Disc is generally from public concerts.) Basie, on the other hand, took part in a number of these sessions, a fact which enables us to hear the development of the band during an extended ban on commercial recordings which commenced on August 1,1942 and, in the case of Basie's recording company, did not end until December, 1944. During this period a number of important personnel changes took place. Don Byas left and Lester Young took his place, having presumably patched up his previous difference with Basie.

Buddy Tate remembers that Byas left after an incident one night when Ben Webster sat in with the Count. 'I never heard anyone sound like that in my life, and all the cats flipped over Ben. Poor Don went across the street and got stoned!' Lester came into the band in December, 1943 and stayed until the following September when the army almost literally took him off the bandstand. Lester had been ignoring his call-up papers, using the excuse that, as a member of a touring band, the papers had not reached him. 'When we opened in Los Angeles that year,’ recalls Tate, 'there was a sharp young cat there who kept looking at Prez and Jo Jones. That wasn't unusual because they were stars. He sat there drinking whiskey all night, but when we got though he came over and said "You, Lester Young, and you, Jo Jones, I have to serve you with these papers. Be down at the Induction Centre tomorrow morning!" '. Their places were taken immediately by drummer Buddy Rich (who succeeded in playing with Tommy Dorsey in the early part of each evening then with Basie at ten o'clock) and Artie Shaw, who played Lester's tenor parts on clarinet. This was, of course, only a temporary arrangement until Shadow Wilson and Lucky Thompson, on drums and tenor respectively, joined on a more permanent basis. 'When Lucky arrived, he continued the Byas approach' maintains Buddy Tale. 'Lester had naturally been featured more than me, and Lucky was in his chair. Lucky quit when he decided he wanted to stay on the Coast'. Basie's visits to Los Angeles had given him the opportunity of working in films and as early as April, 1943 Down Beat was reporting that 'the Basie band can currently be seen in three films, "Hit Parade of 1943" (Republic), "Reveille With Beverley" (Columbia) and "Stage Door Canteen" (United Artists)'.

The following August the band was working on three film assignments at Universal, the Donald O'Connor comedy musical 'Man Of The Family' (also known as 'Top Man'), the Olsen and Johnson sequel to 'Hellzapoppin' titled 'Crazy House' (and sometimes 'Funzapoopin') and a Will Cowan short.

But perhaps the most significant event was that on November 5, 1943 Count Basie opened at the Lincoln Hotel in New York for an eight week engagement. On the face of it this may seem fairly innocuous but it was the breaking down of a number of barriers. It was Count's first booking into a New York hotel and the first time the Lincoln had ever played host to a coloured band. No doubt Willard Alexander was the power behind the move and the Lincoln booking was an immediate success. In fact the band returned again later and a number of excellent broadcast transcriptions exist from the Lincoln's 'Blue Room' which indicate that Basie did not have to make any concessions to the hotel guests; numbers such as Harvard blues, Kansas City stride, Dance of the gremlins and Rock-a-bye-Basie abound.”

To be continued ….

"‘Sophisticated Giant’ Review: Long Tall Tenor Man" by Clifford Thompson

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

“Dexter Gordon tastes like coarse rye bread, parsley and cellar-chilled vodka. The basic tastes, pure and strong. He is elementary but with power. When you have listened to him you tell nothing but the truth for a long while.”

- Swedish writer Svante Foerster, “Klasskämpen”

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles will present a synopsis of Sophisticated Giant: The Life and Legacy of Dexter Gordon [Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2018, $29.95] on these pages at a later date, but in the meantime, we thought you’d enjoy this review of the book by Clifford Thompson that appeared in the Nov. 1, 2018 edition of the Wall Street Journal.

Gordon combined the power of a foghorn with the elegance of a flutist, his sound singular and inimitable.

“The tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon, who died in 1990 at 67, stood apart from other jazz musicians — even other famous ones — and not just because he stood 6 feet 5 inches. While he was roughly the contemporary of those 1940s revolutionaries who gave us the light-speed, chord-hopping jazz known as bebop (Gordon was three years younger than Charlie Parker), his playing instead brought to mind the big-sound tenor men, such as Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster, born at least half a generation earlier. Yet Gordon was “sort of the bridge between Charlie Parker on the alto [saxophone] and what became possible on the tenor,” as one who ought to know — the tenor-sax icon Sonny Rollins — told Maxine Gordon, the author of the brief, valuable “Sophisticated Giant: The Life and Legacy of Dexter Gordon.” Mostly, Gordon was Gordon, combining the power of a foghorn with the elegance of a flutist, his sound both instantly recognizable and inimitable.

Maxine Gordon, the saxophonist’s third wife, widow and — for seven years beginning in the mid-1970s — manager, has produced a story of Dexter’s life that is also about the challenge of portraying a reluctant subject. It was not that Gordon didn’t want his story told; toward the end of his life, in fact, he began constructing it himself, writing in pencil on legal pads and asking Maxine to finish the book if, as would be the case, he could not. The trouble had to do with the large chunks of his life that he stubbornly refused to talk about. When Maxine argued that they should be included, the saxophonist told her that if she wanted an all-inclusive book, “you will have to write it yourself” — and with “Sophisticated Giant,” she has picked up the gauntlet.

Dexter Gordon’s early years were straightforward enough. His widow writes that “the portrayal of jazz musicians as tragic figures was something that always bothered him,” and the circumstances of the saxophonist’s youth certainly belie the stereotype of the hard-luck idiot savant that often attaches itself like a groupie to African-American jazzmen. Gordon was born in 1923 and grew up in Los Angeles, the only child of a music-loving physician who counted Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton among his friends. Dexter took up the alto sax at 14, switching at 15 to the tenor that his mother bought him to fit his tall frame. At Jefferson High School he excelled in English—as an adult he would teach himself to read French and devour novels such as “Les Misérables”—and came under the tutelage of the influential band director Sam Browne. Then fate (and its pal, connections) stepped in.

The musician Marshal Royal, given the task of finding a last-minute replacement tenor for Hampton’s band, called the 17-year-old Dexter, who was both the son of Royal’s doctor and the classmate of his younger brother. Gordon played in Hampton’s band from 1940 to 1943, then joined the orchestra of an even bigger legend: Louis Armstrong. In 1944 he moved on again, to Billy Eckstine’s band, getting fired the following year, Maxine Gordon writes, for coming late to rehearsals and “show[ing] signs of being high.” By then Gordon had established a reputation of his own, soon signing recording contracts, first with Savoy and then with Dial Records. His playing on recordings from the mid- and late 1940s, such as “It’s the Talk of the Town,” “Mischievous Lady” and his storied duet with fellow tenor man Wardell Gray, “The Chase,” suggest a blend of the older figures Hawkins, Webster and the groundbreaking Lester Young.

Then came the period that presented Maxine Gordon with such a challenge. The 1950s, during which Dexter married his first wife and fathered two daughters, also saw drug use get the better of him. Because he refused to discuss that period, beyond his admission that he had “messed up [his] family life,” Maxine was “forced to reconstruct it by examining two sets of documents: his discography and his California prison records.” She is an able detective, tracing Gordon’s trips to and from jail and cataloguing the details of the recordings that he was nonetheless, and somewhat miraculously, able to make during those years.

While it is generally fallacious to attribute a jazz musician’s artistry to his self-inflicted suffering, one is tempted to wonder, in Dexter Gordon’s case, whether there is a grain of truth in that dangerous old cliché. To listen to the much-lauded albums he made with Blue Note Records beginning in the early 1960s, once he had (mostly) left drugs and prison behind, is to hear the work of a saxophonist who has found his voice. On “Dexter Calling . . .” (1961), “Go!” (1962), “Our Man in Paris” (1963) and others, he eschews the million-note approach of the beboppers while embracing other bebop elements, and though Gordon’s tone is every bit as full as those of Hawkins et al., it is also every bit his own—a voice speaking at once plainly and beautifully. In 1962 he went to Europe for a concert date that stretched to 14 years, most of them spent in Copenhagen, where he made great live recordings at the club Jazzhus Montmartre. Just when he was in danger of being forgotten in America, Maxine appeared and engineered his triumphant return to the U.S., culminating in the double album “Homecoming: Live at the Village Vanguard” (1977).

“Sophisticated Giant” (which shares its title with a Gordon album) is affectionate, enjoyable and informative, painting a portrait of a handsome, elegant, easygoing person and artist who refused to agonize about his past. Like the man himself, however, the book fails to discuss some things the reader may wonder about. We learn that, in addition to his daughters, Dexter fathered a son from his second marriage (a union that did not survive his return stateside) and had two others with women he met in Europe; but we hear next to nothing of his thoughts about these children he didn’t raise or (in one case) ever meet. Attentive readers will note that Maxine Gordon’s relationship with the trumpeter Woody Shaw, who plays on “Homecoming” and with whom she had a son, ended in 1983—the very year that, as she mentions much later, she got together with Dexter. What’s the story there? What kind of stepfather was Dexter? Don’t look to “Sophisticated Giant” for answers.

Perhaps more important, the word “legacy” in the subtitle is misleading. Maxine Gordon clearly regards as her husband’s crowning achievement his lead performance as the fictional musician Dale Turner, based on the pianist Bud Powell, in Bertrand Tavernier’s 1986 film “Round Midnight,” for which Gordon was nominated for an Oscar. Jazz fans, though, might be more interested in Gordon’s stylistic influence on other musicians, one obvious example being Sonny Rollins. Maxine Gordon relies on quotes from others for that, and even those are sparse. But to quote Spencer Tracy, what’s there is choice. The best is from the Swedish writer Svante Foerster’s novel “Klasskämpen”: “Dexter Gordon tastes like coarse rye bread, parsley and cellar-chilled vodka. The basic tastes, pure and strong. He is elementary but with power. When you have listened to him you tell nothing but the truth for a long while.”

—Mr. Thompson writes regularly on jazz for the Threepenny Review.

Charles Mingus 'Jazz in Detroit,' 1973 a new box set features nearly 4 hours of excellent material recorded on a single night.

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

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.”

Miles and Coltrane - In the Beginning

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

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 …”

To be continued ….

Count Basie by Alun Morgan - Part 3

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

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.”

To be continued ….