"Walpurgis Night" - Whitney Balliett on Buddy Rich

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

“Whitney Balliett ... was above all a poet, who pursued poetry by other means. He wrote for The New Yorker magazine for almost fifty years, mostly about jazz, and what he wrote was so good that Philip Larkin, not an easy man to please about either jazz or poetry, called him a “master of language,” while, years later, the young Nicholson Baker still referred to him, in a wondering aside, as a “tireless prodigy.”

William Shaw his editor at The New Yorker said of him: ‘Whitney was about as pure a stylist as anyone who has written American English, yet his sentences were almost always about someone else’s art; that’s what gave his writing its modesty and its tensile strength.’

Reading through the books he made from pieces  … what delights and amazes is the quality of his line, what William Shawn, once called his ‘genius for saying in words how a particular musician or musicians sound. Whitney could place on the page the sound of someone playing — not the reasons the sound might matter to a historian, or even the way it felt to an enthusiast, but the way it really sounded, the way it was.'”

- Adam Gopnik, The New York Times

Given Whitney’s “genius for saying in words how a particular musician or musicians sound” we get the title of this piece - Walpurgis Night - which appeared in Dinosaurs in the Morning: 41 Pieces on Jazz by Whitney Balliett.

There was no reference to drummer Buddy Rich in the original title of Whitney’s piece - I added that.

I mean, how many of us know that in Germanic and Scandinavian folklore, Walpurgis Night or Walpurgisnacht is the night before May Day, a night when goblins, witches and sorcerers rule and make their presence felt with powerful storms made up of high winds, thunder and lightning.?

As you read the piece Whitney makes the connection between Buddy’s style of drumming and “thunder and lighting,” but it takes a while for the reader to get there.

While not a studied musician [he was an amateur drummer], Whitney substituted descriptive prose filled with literary allusions, allegories and analogies all of which provided an uncanny description of a particular Jazz musician and his style of playing.

There’s no doubt that Whitney got Buddy right in terms of his strengths and his weaknesses, but he doesn’t describe them in musical terms.

As Whitney states: “There was no doubt that Buddy Rich … [was] the greatest virtuoso in jazz drumming. And that during his lifetime few other drummers could match his technical prowess [although I would add Joe Morello’s name along with Louie Bellson’s to Whitney’s list of those drummers who could measure up to Buddy].”

And it is hard to disagree with Whitney when he asserts that:

“Overpowered by his astonishing gifts, Rich has become a captive of his own virtuosity. As a result, the felicities that have made less well-equipped drummers, such as Sid Catlett and Jo Jones, his superiors have been almost completely crowded out. He has little sense of taste, dynamics, and shading, and none of the elasticity essential to great drumming. His playing never changes, his solos are often militaristic and far too long, and in general he projects an uncompromising rigidity that tends to flatten rather than elevate his cohorts.

For all of Rich's energy and steadiness, he is a peculiarly dull accompanist.” ...

For many years, there was no selectivity in Rich's solos, no chance for the listener to sort out what was happening.. Casting aside all that has come before, he rotates, crisscrosses, and trampoline around his set, moving with incredible speed from snare to tom-tom to cymbals to snare to cymbals to tom-tom snare cymbals cymbals snare tom-tom snare tom tom tom. . . . Walpurgis Night. High winds. Thunder and lightning.”

Here’s the full text of Whitney’s piece so that you can put these remarks about Buddy in context.

“It is no longer fashionable or even polite to suggest that many Negro jazz musicians possess certain built-in gifts—a sense of rhythm, physical dexterity and grace, an aptitude for great improvisation— that are rarely granted their white colleagues. Indeed, to propose that Negro musicians are blessed with such characteristics has become a reverse heresy. Scientists, doing a variation on Lysenko, snort at the theory, while many jazz critics regard it as an admission of counteracting and less pleasant characteristics. Be that as it may, those misguided jazz admirers who are sufficiently brave to cross picket lines to give Negro jazz musicians their due have, if nothing else, irrefutable statistics on their side. Thus, there have been dozens of first-rate Negro musicians and, give or take a Gerry Mulligan or Stan Getz, only five comparable white musicians: Bix Beiderbecke, Dave Tough, Pee Wee Russell, Jack Teagarden, and Django Reinhardt. There have, however, been plenty of white jazz musicians who, lacking this or that elusive quality, have been almost men instead of merely highly talented boys. One of these is Buddy Rich, who remains the greatest virtuoso in jazz drumming.

A lithe, compact, nervous, temperamental man with close-cropped hair and a gladiator handsomeness, Rich has had an explosive history that began on the vaudeville stage when he was eighteen months old and that has carried him through the bands of Bunny Berigan, Artie Shaw, Tommy Dorsey, Count Basie, and Harry James, through Norman Granz's "Jazz at the Philharmonic,” through recording sessions with everyone from Art Tatum to Charlie Parker, and through innumerable groups of his own.

Rich came into prominence in the early forties with Dorsey, ran neck and neck for several years with his principal model, Gene Krupa, eclipsed him, and in turn was eclipsed by the tumultuous arrival of bebop and the new school of jazz drumming led by Max Roach. Nonetheless, Rich's influence, which has been considerable, is still visible. Among others, Louis Bellson, Ed Shaughnessy, and Shelly Manne have admired him, and so have latecomers like Joe Morello, Philly Joe Jones, and Frank Butler. Almost none of them, however, have matched his technical prowess (Bellson is the only exception).

Aside from his debt to Krupa, Rich's style is his own. It appears at first to be just about flawless. Monolithic and commanding, Rich has an infallible beat, and the exuberance to make that beat catching. His playing is clean and decisive, and he never misses a stroke. He is a proficient ensemble man and a frequently stunning soloist. But those qualities are not enough—or, rather, they are too much.

Overpowered by his astonishing gifts, Rich has become a captive of his own virtuosity. As a result, the felicities that have made less well-equipped drummers, such as Sid Catlett and Jo Jones, his superiors have been almost completely crowded out. He has little sense of taste, dynamics, and shading, and none of the elasticity essential to great drumming. His playing never changes, his solos are often militaristic and far too long, and in general he projects an uncompromising rigidity that tends to flatten rather than elevate his cohorts.

For all of Rich's energy and steadiness, he is a peculiarly dull accompanist. One reason lies in the way he tunes his drums. They give off a dry, stale sound that never blends tonally with the other instruments. Another reason is plain unimaginative-ness. Instead of sympathetic timbres behind a soloist (the ocean motion of Jo Jones's high-hat cymbals, Catlett's rimshots, the sleigh-bell tintinnabulations of Connie Kay's ride-cymbal figures), one is conscious only of a metronomic deliberation. His cymbal work is light and clear, but it evaporates before it has taken effect, while his accents on the bass drum and snare are limited to thuds and implacable rim shots, fired exactly where expected. All of Rich's accompanying has, in sum, a now-is-it-my-turn-yet? air. When his turn does come, his face exhibits agony, his body contracts, taking on a ball shape, his arms blur, his drumsticks break and rocket about.

For many years, there was no selectivity in Rich's solos, no chance for the listener to sort out what was happening. Recently, though, he has begun to construct them instead of merely spawning them. His best ones occur in middle tempos. He may begin on his snare with a series of I.B.M. beats arranged intensely on or near the beat (from which he never wanders far), insert cracked-knuckle rimshots and short rolls, drop Big Ben offbeats on the bass drum, intensify his snare-and-rimshot patterns, and, bringing his auxiliary arms into action, overlay these patterns with staccato cymbal strokes. Gradually, this duplex figure grows increasingly solid as he forces more and more beats into spaces seemingly already filled. By this time, his virtuosity has begun to devour him. Casting aside all that has come before, he rotates, crisscrosses, and trampoline around his set, moving with incredible speed from snare to tom-tom to cymbals to snare to cymbals to tom-tom snare cymbals cymbals snare tom-tom snare tom tom tom. . . . Walpurgis Night. High winds. Thunder and lightning. And even though what he is playing has ceased to make any musical sense, it has become the sort of high-wire exhibitionism that compels the listener to jump up and make foolish sounds. Then, a hypercrescendo is reached, and suddenly it is over. The roar drifts smartly away, the ball unfurls, the arms slip back into focus, the face smiles, and the ovation — a kind of coda to the solo itself — begins.

All that need be known about Rich can be found on two records, "Buddy and Sweets" (Verve) and "Rich versus Roach" (Mercury). "Buddy and Sweets," made with Harry Edison, Jimmy Rowles, and John Simmons, contains two of the best and most conservative solos Rich has recorded. (There are seven numbers in all.) These occur in "Yellow Rose of Brooklyn," which is taken at a very fast tempo, and in the medium "Barney's Bugle." In the second solo, which Rich holds down to five minutes, he pauses now and then before falling into his customary trance, and there are even a few round-the-set explosions, topped with silence, that suggest the timing of Catlett—a comparison that might not please Rich. Here is the pianist Billy Taylor reminiscing, in a book called Hear Me Talkin' to Ya, about Rich versus Catlett: "Sid was a great soloist and a great showman. He was completely at home musically in whatever he was doing. I remember once on the Coast, when Buddy Rich, Dodo Marmarosa, and Buddy De Franco were all with Tommy Dorsey, they used to come into the clubs and cut everybody. [Rich] was cutting all the drummers, but not Sid. It used to annoy Buddy so much. He'd play all over his head — play fantastically — and then Sid would gently get back on the stand, and play his simple, melodic lines — on drums — and he'd make his point."

The Mercury record is rewarding for the way in which Rich's rigidity and Roach's limpidity offset each other. There are eight numbers, in which two small groups led by Rich and Roach collaborate, giving way frequently for short exchanges and full-length excursions between the drummers. Rich comes through best in the medium "Sing, Sing, Sing (With a Swing)," where he is in a nervous rim-shot mood, and in the slower "Big Foot," a blues in which he matches double-time breaks with Roach. "Figure Eights" consists of four and one half minutes of Rich and Roach trading breaks at a tempo faster than the ordinary mortal can tap his foot to. The inevitable happens. After Rich's third break, a sensational bit of broken-field running, the two men attempt to quell one another by falling into a series of buzzes—Rich: zzzzzzzzzzz; Roach: zzZ-zzZZZzzZ; Rich: ZZZZZZZzzZZ, and so forth. But there has been no contest; a sundial doesn't stand a chance with a clock.”

Jack Teagarden & His All Star Group: Basin' Street Blues

Jack Teagarden

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

Jack Teagarden (1905-64)

TROMBONE, VOCAL

“A Texan, Teagarden took the trombone to new levels, with his impeccable technique, fluency and gorgeous sound, allied to a feel for blues playing which eluded many of his white contemporaries. He was also a fine, idiosyncratic singer. He was with Ben Pollack for five years from 1928, with Paul Whiteman in the 305, and finally led his own swing orchestra, though it left him broke in the end. He joined the Louis Armstrong All Stars in 1946, stayed till 1951, then led small groups of his own and toured for the rest of his life. He died in New Orleans….

Teagarden's star is somehow in decline, since all his greatest work predates the LP era and at this distance it's difficult to hear how completely he changed the role of the trombone. In Tea's hands, this awkward barnyard instrument became majestic, sonorous and handsome. By the time he began recording in 1926 he was already a mature and easeful player whose feel for blues and nonchalant rhythmic drive made him stand out on the dance-band records he was making.”

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

“But Teagarden was different, and defining what made him different calls for a brief digression. Creative jazz soloists seem to fall into two general types. There are the proteans, endlessly questing, discovering, reinventing, reshaping—all in pursuit of some half-glimpsed, fugitive perfection. Among these, Coleman Hawkins springs readily to mind: over four decades his basic style took various forms, from silken smoothness to something occasionally approaching brutality. Like composer Igor Stravinsky, he seemed to devise and perfect a given mode or approach only to desert it, again auf der Suche. [literally “in search;” with the connotation of a quest].

Others, by contrast, arrive relatively early at an effective mode of expression, then spend the rest of their days adjusting, refining, polishing their creation to a high luster. Beyond argument, Jack Teagarden belongs to, exemplifies, the latter group: his style "set" quickly, and thereafter changed only subtly. It included not only recognizable patterns but entire "master choruses" on familiar numbers, delivered often enough to become trademarks. There were certain blues solos, all the more beloved for their familiarity; pet cadenzas, richly decorated with lightning triplets and gruppetti of impeccably executed sixteenth notes; set routines on such standards as "Basin Street Blues," "The Sheik of Araby," "Rockin' Chair," and the aforementioned ' 'St. James Infirmary.”

- Richard Sudhalter, Lost Chords: White Musicians and Their Contribution to Jazz, 1915-1945.

“Because he was just the way he sounded — relaxed, warm and wonderfully creative — Jack Teagarden was one of the most beloved and most admired musicians in all of jazz history. He brought to music his own very personal, languid style, singing or swinging the blues on his trombone with a minimum of effort and a maximum of emotion. His admirers spanned two generations, beginning with fellow musicians like Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller and the Dorseys during the twenties and extending well into the sixties when a comparative youngster, Gerry Mulligan, proclaimed "He has everything a great jazz musician needs to have — a beautiful sound, a wonderful melodic sense, a deep feeling, a swinging beat, and the ability to make everything, even the most difficult things, sound relaxed and easy."”

- George T. Simon, The Big Bands, 4th Ed.

The emergence of Jack Teagarden as an important jazz stylist was a significant feature of the 1920s jazz scene. Big T, as he was affectionately known by his fellow musicians, brought a maturity and a solidity to the sound of the trombone and until late in his life played with a laconic grace that few, if any, on his instrument have equaled. His collaborations with Louis Armstrong — who rated their musical relationship higher than any he had known — was one of the great partnerships in Jazz history. The story of this funny, happy Texan is told with affection and detail in Jay D. Smith and Len Guttridge’s Jack Teagarden: The Story of a Jazz Maverick.

Originally published in 1960 by Macmillan and Company, Martin Williams, the esteemed Jazz author and critic, wrote the following forward to the paperback edition published by DaCapo Press in 1988.

“In 1950, on the occasion of his 50th birthday, Louis Armstrong granted a long and generally fascinating interview to the editors of a magazine called the Record Changer. The publication was read by jazz record collectors, so there were many questions about Armstrong's early days and about his musical relationship to his mentor Joseph "King" Oliver. It was the elder cornetist who first brought the young Armstrong out of New Orleans, and who was an early influence on his style. Louis, as usual, was properly respectful of "Papa Joe." But he made it clear that he also wanted to talk about his current "brass team," and about Jack Teagarden. He rated that later musical relationship most highly, higher than any such he had ever known, it is safe to say.

The meshing of Armstrong and Teagarden was a close one musically, no question. And it was partly a matter of Louis's own sizable effect on everybody's music. However much he was inspired by Oliver, Armstrong has offered music something new, something which Oliver, for all his accomplishments and importance, had merely hinted at  — a new rhythmic sense, a new momentum, a swing based on several things, even on a new way of sounding the individual notes. Jack Teagarden was one of the first trombonists to absorb that Armstrong sense of swing in the Armstrong manner.

Teagarden's musical personality and demeanor were distinctly and unmistakably his own, however. Indeed, what Louis contributed could inspire the singularly concentrated ease of a Jack Teagarden on the one band, and (let us say) the stark three-minute dramas of a Billie Holiday on the other. And it could allow each of those artists (and hundreds of others) also to be themselves.

As I say, Teagarden was himself. And he was, technically speaking, a superb trombonist, a superb brassman. In the late 1950s, composer-arranger Bill Russo, himself a trombonist, declared that he had decided that Teagarden was, after all, the best trombone-player — and this at a time when a J.J. Johnson-inspired bebop virtuosity reigned supreme on the instrument, especially among the young. Earlier, Teagarden's 1950 recording of his dazzling variations on Richard Rodgers's Lover (a Broadway waltz converted into an up-tempo 4/4) was admired by young and old alike. And by audiences as well, for Lover quickly became something of a set-piece for Jack, joining Stars Fell on Alabama, Basin Street Blues, St. James Infirmary and I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues as a standard part of his almost-nightly repertory.

Most of the Teagarden standards were slower than Lover, of course, and they partly depended on the singular character of what has been called "the Teagarden aura." However, in those slower vehicles Jack's techniques often showed themselves at their best. His was an art of flourishes and ornaments, but flourishes so discreetly conceived and placed as to enhance and never draw attention to themselves. And his ornaments were executed with perfectly controlled combinations of the right embouchure and slide co-ordination. Perhaps only Ellington's virtuoso trombonist Lawrence Brown could rival them. And they depended on such quick, flexible lip techniques that perhaps only a man like trumpeter Harry Edison, some years later, might have challenged them.

The "live" recordings made at the remarkable 1947 Louis Armstrong All Stars, and of which you'll read more in these pages, were later issued on LP, and they show Jack's art succinctly. Here was Teagarden, mind you, on stage with Armstrong, and Armstrong was the kind of performer who needed only to walk in front of an audience to gain its full attention. And who needed only to blow a few of his powerful, authoritative notes to confirm that attention. In Teagarden's half-chorus solo on Pennies from Heaven (an Armstrong vehicle, after all) Jack distilled that piece's melody line to a simple, all-but-original lyric statement, and then ornamented his own lovely phrases with superbly understated terminal flourishes. And of course he made it all sound paradoxically easy. Then Jack, at center stage, played and sang St. James Infirmary with such totally straightforward, cool concentration that one would be hard put not to hang on to his every note and phrase.

Talk about a Teagarden aura! As if to say, "There is Louis's power (God bless him) and here is mine, and you see they aren't the same."

Obviously a man like Teagarden, with his mastery of his instrument, might have stepped into almost any kind of music and made a career for himself. But one thing that Jay D. Smith's and Len Guttridge's book makes clear is that Jack could not have been any kind of musician except a Jazz musician. A Jazz musician simply has to make his music and dedicate his life to it, even though he may not tell you (or himself) why he has to. He may not, indeed, even be able to say why, or need to say why. The need is to make the music and, necessarily, lead the life that makes that possible. All of which has little or nothing to do with ego or acclaim or money. He needs to give his music to the world and he hopes the world will understand.

You will find out about that need in these pages. You will also find plenty of the pranks and boys-will-be-boys anecdotes that seem so prevalent, diverting, and (under the surface) necessary a part of the musical life.

I could say that Smith and Guttridge engaged in a labor of love in researching and writing their book for Jack. But I would also describe it as a labor of infatuation, and I offer that further description with respect.

— MARTIN WILLIAMS October 1987”

If you are not familiar with the career and music of Jack Teagarden, you owe to yourself to check it out in all its manifestations and Jay and Len’s biography is a good place to start. [You may also wish to seek out Howard J. Walters, Jr., Jack Teagarden’s Music: His Career and Records although used copies of it are somewhat expensive].

Sure, Jack is one of “the old guys,” but when Jack was a young guy, he was one of the inventors of the music we institutionalize today as “Jazz.” He was a courageous and brave man, who walked the talk and created the foundation for Jazz trombone in his lifetime along with the likes of Kid Ory and Miff Mole.

Imagine, night-after-night, standing next to Pops and playing Jazz!  Over the span of his brilliant career, Louis Armstrong didn’t share the stage with many, but there always was a spot for Big T.

Big T and Little Louie - when Giants Walked the Jazz World.

Bill and Buonaroti: "Empathy"

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

A reading of the Economist Magazine book review of Martin Gayford’s Michelangelo: His Epic Life brought to mind the concept of empathy in art.

Empathy means “feeling with” as compared to sympathy which denotes “feeling for.”

It has been said that great artists have empathy for their art [that’s why they become sculptors, painters, musicians, photographers, film-makers, et al] and empathy for the subject of their art [statues and busts, still life's and landscapes, Jazz or Classical music, nudes or portraits, film noir or documentaries, etc.]

Michelangelo Buonarroti, whom some consider the greatest sculptor who ever lived, was said to be able to “see” the human figure in an uncarved block of stone.

The late pianist, Bill Evans, “heard” in Jazz the influence of Debussy, Ravel, Satie and other early, 20th century French impressionist composers. For Bill, it became more a question of how to take this empathetic understanding of these Classical French composers and “voice” them into Jazz, chordally.

As was the case with the young Michelangelo in the Art world of Renaissancian Florence, most in the Jazz world upon first hearing Bill Evans knew that he was a special Jazz pianist.

Bill just seemed to burst onto the Jazz scene in the late 1950’s as if “out of nowhere.” When in 1959 Bill formed his trio with bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian, the music they created seemed to appear as if “out of magic.”

No one had ever used this approach to Jazz before; some even questioned whether Bill’s style was even Jazz.

And then, just as quickly, it was over when Scotty died in a 1961 automobile accident at the age of twenty-five.

The Jazz World almost lost Bill, too, when he descended into a deep depression and didn’t touch the piano for almost a year following Scotty’s death.

Drummer, bandleader and club owner Shelly Manne also mourned, but he did more than just grieve over the loss of Bill.

To help him out of his depression, Shelly brought Bill to California and booked him at his club, The Manne Hole, initially as a solo pianist.

Shelly’s professional and personal empathy for Bill was so strong that it also resulted in he and Monty Budwig, the bassist in his quintet at the time, flying back to New York together in August of 1962 and making Bill’s first recording with Verve Records which was appropriately entitled - Empathy [Verve CD 837-757-2].

It was just another empathetic action that Shelly undertook to help Bill get back on his feet and moving forward again.

It has been said that God sprinkles a few geniuses into each generation to inspire the rest of us.

While I missed Michelangelo Buonarroti by more than a few hundred years, I’m sure glad I didn't miss Bill Evans.

I guess to a large degree, I have Shelly Manne’s empathy to thank for that.

Here’s the review in The Economist, December 14, 2013 review of Michelangelo: His Epic Life, by Martin Gayford [London: Fig Tree, 2013] that prompted this piece.

© -The Economist, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“LORENZO DF MEDICI, ruler of the Florentine Republic, was so taken by a statue carved by an adolescent that he proposed to make the sculptor a member of his household. The boy's father was not impressed. He told Lorenzo that his family would be demeaned if his son were to become a stonemason. But the youth believed that he had been born to carve stone, and so the father relented. In the Medici court the young sculptor was given a violet cloak, paid five ducats a month and treated as an artist. As it turned out, the sculptor, Michelangelo Buonarroti, was also born to paint, write poetry and be an architect. He even showed considerable talent for military engineering.

Michelangelo died in 1564 at the age of 88. The scale, variety and quality of his work during his long life are staggering. Generations of historians and biographers have tried both to explain and describe it. He was the subject of two biographies during his lifetime, and he appeared prominently in Giorgio Vasari's "Lives of the Artists", a seminal work of 16th-century art criticism. In Martin Gayford's monumental new epic, the bibliography alone covers 15 pages. There will always be something worth saying about the man who sculpted a naked David 17 feet (5.5 metres) high and who painted the ceiling [see concluding video] and the awesome "Last Judgment" in the Sistine Chapel. He came to architecture late in life but his staircase to the Laurentian Library in Florence is so beautiful that it transforms an architectural detail into a dazzling work of art.

Recent biographies of artists such as Titian and Vincent van Gogh have not been light reading, in either the literary or the literal sense. To distinguish their work from earlier biographies, authors dig deep into the social and political context in which these artists worked, and so does Mr Gayford. A gifted popular art historian, he has also become a student of the papacy in the i6th century. He writes that Michelangelo, who worked for ten popes, also argued with them and sometimes refused to do their bidding: "highly unwise, but revolutionary," says Mr Gayford.

Only in Florence did the church authorities know how to cope with him. "His disposition is such that, if spoken to kindly, he will do everything," they told Pope Julius II, his patron. "It is necessary to show him love and favour him."

That was not easy. Michelangelo was the most uncompromising of men; he insisted that he had not been taught anything by anyone and he preferred to work alone. He was also a miserly curmudgeon, given to complaining about his tailor in Florence, for instance, who did not let him try on a doublet that turned out to be tight across the chest. Although he was entranced by handsome young men, he seemed to have had little appetite for sex. Eventually he quarrelled with nearly every one of his friends.

Although he was a contemporary-and unrelenting rival-of Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael, Michelangelo is an incomparable figure among artists, in a rarefied league with Shakespeare and Mozart. It is the job of a popular historian to remind each generation of the remarkable qualities of real genius. Mr Gayford's readable life does just that.”

The Washington Twist - Shelly Mann & Bill Evans

Edward “Kid” Ory: 1886-1973

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

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

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

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

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

- John McCusker

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Who was Kid Ory?”

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

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

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

 Life of an Overlooked Bandleader

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                  

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

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