Rhythmstick

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

“Change the rhythm and you change the music.”

- Wynton Marsalis

The music on Rhythmstick [CTI- R2-79477] gets its name from Dizzy Gillespie’s famous walking stick.

As told by alto saxophonist Phil Woods to Gene Lees,

"…  Dizzy has such an important thing—the rhythm. That grabs people immediately. Dizzy is such-a master of rhythm, the Afro, the South American. He was the first cat to fuse the jazz and Cuban and the South American. Dizzy is the cat who discovered that, the first cat who used conga drums and all that, with Chano Pozo. That's a real big contribution of Diz, which is sometimes overlooked—not by musicians, of course. A lot of people know about the bebop part, but not the rhythm. He loves to play drums."

"That stick he carries—did you ever see that, that thing he made out of a stick and Coca-Cola bottle-caps?"

I had indeed. There's no name for this instrument of Dizzy's invention. It is a pole, like a piece of broomstick, with pop-bottle caps, hammered flat, mounted on nails along its length, like little stacks of finger cymbals. He can bounce it on the floor and kick it with his toe and stomp a beat with his foot or shake that stick in the air, setting up the damnedest swing you ever heard. I just call it Dizzy's Rhythmstick.

Phil said, "I once flew back with him on the Concorde. When you travel with Dizzy, it's -incredible. He was carrying that stick, right through the metal detector at the airport. The detector flipped out with a hundred Coca-Cola caps rattling. And all the control people cheered and applauded: here comes Dizzy with that silly stick. He plays it all the way through the airport; you can hear him a mile away."

Although he does not feature on all of the tracks, the music on Rhythmstick is intended as a tribute to Dizzy and most especially to all that Diz has meant to Jazz rhythm throughout his career. As Wynton Marsalis has stated: “Change the rhythm and you change the music.”

In his insert notes to Rhythmstick , Gene Lees goes on to describe the atmosphere at the recording date:

“When Dizzy arrived at Rudy Van Gelder's studio, the music that was in rehearsal stopped so that all the musicians could greet him. There was an aura about him. It wasn't exactly a matter of people lining up to pay tribute: jazz musicians are too democratic, the music itself is too democratic, for obeisance. But it certainly was an "homage;" in the way the French use that word.

The young revolutionary of long ago, with the horn-rimmed glasses and the beret and the goatee and the impish smile, had lived to be the elder statesman, the master, the sage of this music, and gathered about him were all these gifted players who were, directly or indirectly, his musical descendants.

‘Dizzy changed the way of the world,’ Phil Woods said. ‘That music means so much to so many people everywhere.”

With the help of the crackerjack graphics team at CerraJazz LTD along with the assistance of the production facilities at StudioCerra, we have compiled the following video montage based on the theme to one of the selections from Rhythmstick – tenor saxophonist Bob Berg’s Friday Night at the Cadillac Club.

Along with Bob, the other featured soloists on this musical recall of a rough-and-ready club in New Jersey where Bob once worked are trumpeter Art Farmer, alto saxophonist Phil Woods, guitarist Robben Ford and Jim Beard on the Hammond B-3 organ.  Booting things along in the drum chair is Marvin “Smitty” Smith.

MANTECA GRP ALL STARS BIG BAND LIVE

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles thought you might enjoy this stirring performance by an exceptional group of musicians. The soloists are Phillip Bent on flute, Dave Weckl on drums, Randy Brecker alternating with Arturo Sandoval on trumpet and Russell Ferrante on piano. Bob Mintzer wrote the arrangement of Dizzy Gillespie's Manteca.

Willie "The Lion" Smith and His "Son"

"We were on tour together. Willie opened the concerts playing solo piano, then the quartet went on. In Rotterdam we were backstage doing a television interview. When I signaled Willie that it was time for him to go on stage, he turned from the camera and walked towards me. But the commentator stopped him and asked, "Isn't it true, Mr. Willie 'the Lion' Smith, that no white man can play jazz? " Willie just kept coming towards me, then turned to the commentator, and said, "I want you to meet my son." - Dave Brubeck

Mark Murphy: Jazz Singer

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

For years, I’ve struggled with the term “Jazz singer.” 

What makes a “Jazz singer?” 

Is Bing Crosby a “Jazz singer?” How about Mel Torme or Frank Sinatra? Are they “Jazz singers?”

I’ve heard some make the argument that Anita O’Day was a Jazz singer, but that Ella Fitzgerald was a song stylist.

Others state the case that Tony Bennett sings in a Jazzy manner, but basically, he’s a vocalist who is really more conversant with popular songs.

Rosemary Clooney was considered a pop singer for much of her career, yet she recorded both bossa nova and Jazz CD’s for Concord Records in the closing years of her life.

I suppose, ultimately, what makes a Jazz Singer is largely a reflection of how one hears the music.

When it comes to Mark Murphy, however, there seems to be a universal consensus that he is indeed, a Jazz singer.

Mark worked at becoming a Jazz singer and he’s continued to do so for over 50 years.

He shared the following thoughts on the subject with Michael Bourne, DJ of the popular Songbirds program on WBGO radio:

“‘The definition of a jazz singer is a singer who sings jazz,’ said Mark Murphy with tongue-in-cheek, al­though, actually, he's a definitive jazz singer himself.

He scats with bravado. He improvises melodically, harmonically, rhythmically, and with the lyrics. He writes vocalese lyrics to jazz instrumentals and also writes his own songs. He can break hearts on a ballad, plumb the deepest blues, bossa like a Brazilian, or wing harder and hipper than just about anyone.

‘A lot of singers attempt to sing jazz, use aspects of jazz in their arrange­ments, but without really getting into the whole thing,’ he continued in a 1975 interview with me for notes on the al­bum Mark Murphy Sings.

‘l think the test is The Jazz Singer Test.  You take a singer and three musicians and you put them in a room, or a pub like I used to do in London. I had this trio. The piano player couldn't read. The bass player couldn't read. The drummer read, but it didn't matter. I gave them a list of tunes. We never rehearsed. We just got up. I gave them the keys, and I counted off, and it happened. Because we were all Jazz musicians. I think that's the test. If a singer can get up and cut that, he's re­ally doing it."

Of course, in his usual, irascible fashion, the late Jazz author and critic, Gene Lees, makes the whole point of what constitutes a Jazz Singer into a moot one when he writes in the insert notes to Mark’s album That’s How I Love The Blues [Riverside RLP-9441; OJCCD-367-2]:

“That long-standing argument on the subject of what (and who) is or is not a jazz singer has always struck me as par­ticularly pointless. The fact is that the singer's art is a sep­arate one, halfway between the musician's and the actor's. One could say that it partakes of both — but one would be wrong. For the contrary is actually the case: both acting and the playing of musical instrumental music derive from singing. On various occasions, Vladimir Horowitz and Bill Evans, both men of profound and acute musical wisdom, have commented to the effect that their function at the piano is to sing!)

The function of the singer is, and always has been, to tell stories in a musical context. This has been true in Elizabethan England, in the blues country of the South, in the Cumber­land hills, and in the modern nightclub. Whether or not a particular singer understands the nature of his function and can fulfill it well is another matter, but the function is nevertheless there. Maria Callas, recording One Fine Day from "Madame Butterfly," was faced with the same job as the late Billie Holiday recording Porgy: to bring out the dramatic poignancy of the situation expressed in the lyrics, and to do it in a musical way. And as far as I'm concerned, they have more in common with each other than Callas has with a symphony horn player or Billie with Bunk Johnson.

Now, a singer may choose to emphasize the dramatic aspect of his task (as Sinatra does), or the musical aspect of it (as Sarah Vaughan usually does), but he or she slights the other aspect at his own peril.

MARK MURPHY, it seems to me, has ‘roots’ — not just in the short-term way in which jazz buffs use that term, but in the longer run of history. That is to say, he is, whether consciously or otherwise, in touch with the tradition of musical story-telling. If it happens that he stresses the musi­cal side of the art, it is his prerogative to do so. But he doesn't ever slight the dramatic.

My respect for Mark's work has increased considerably in the few years since I was first made aware of him by other singers who were talking about him all the time. And the stature of his work has also increased. He was always an incredibly musicianly singer, but he has begun to achieve a relaxation that is permitting the dramatic potential of his performances to emerge more and more strongly.”

Actually, what brought about this brief visit with the work of Mark Murphy was the following excerpt from Ted Gioia’s recently published The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire [New York: Oxford University Press, 2012] on the subject of On Green Dolphin Street:

“On Green Dolphin Street illustrates the sometimes unexpected sources of the standard Jazz repertoire. The song first appeared in a mostly forgotten film of the same name from 1947 …. Yet Jazz musicians ultimately embraced it because of its engaging chord changes, which alternate between eight bars of floating pedal point and eight bars of harmonic movement. …

Vocalists occasionally tackle this song, but the lyrics suffer from shallowness. If you fell in love, would you sing about your beloved or just her address? Singers who insist in going down this path are perhaps best advised to adopt a tone of hip nonchalance, which adds some plausibility to this paen to a place. A good example can be found on Mark Murphy’s 1961 recording from his Rah album [Riverside RLP-9395; OJCCD 141-2].”

You might keep Ted’s thoughts in mind while you listen to Mark Murphy sing On Green Dolphin Street [in a hip, nonchalant way, of course] as you view the following video tribute to him.

"Blue Monk" - J.J. Johnson and Kai Winding

Except for the 12-bar structure of the tune, there's really nothing "blue" about this performance by trombonists J.J. Johnson and Kai Winding. On the contrary, accompanied by pianist Bill Evans, bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Roy Haynes, the solo work by Jay and Kai on this video is guaranteed to put a smile on your face. Music from a time [1960] when Giants Walked The Earth.

Kenny Clarke: No Flash, Man.

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

 “Of all the rhythm section instruments, the drums are the most difficult to learn from books and even records. With drums, you have TO BE THERE … one has to see and feel the music, more so than for other instruments whose techniques could more easily be assimilated by studying available recordings … .”

- Dave Liebman, Jazz saxophonist and composer

‘He had one cymbal; it wasn't very big. We used to call it the magic cymbal because when somebody would sit in on drums and use his set, it would sound like a garbage can. But when he played it, it was like fine crystal. He kept the cymbal level like a plate and played with a short, side-to-side wrist motion. It was a very graceful thing to watch.”

- Dick Katz, pianist

“Kenny Clarke virtually invented modern jazz drumming, as the first player to use the ride cymbal for timekeeping and the left hand and right foot for accents, as early as 1937 when he was with the Teddy Hill band.

One of the top figures in be-bop's development, he is responsible in some way, shape and form for the way every percussionist plays today.

- Dr. Bruce Klauber

“What he did made the most complex things sound simple. This was his genius. He was an absolute monster. I loved him to death.”

- Grady Tate, drummer

For those of you with a literary bent, the “Flashman” allusion in the above subtitle does not refer to the Rugby bully in Tom Browne’s School Days, nor to the fictional continuation in the novels by George MacDonald Fraser of what may have happened to Tom after he was expelled from Oxford in disgrace.

Rather, it refers to Kenneth Spearman Clarke, who is almost universally acclaimed as the father of modern Jazz drumming.

In Drummin’ Men: The Heartbeat of Jazz – The Bebop Years ,Burt Korall noted in summarizing a key element of Kenny’s style:

“… the Clarke-Boland Big Band albums – a laudable legacy – contains some of his most inspiring performances. Playing softer than most drummers in a large ensemble, feeding the surge, doing the work of the great accompanist he has always been, Kenny Clarke consistently proved that flash is totally irrelevant.

My early years in the World of Jazz drumming were pretty much as described by Dave Liebman in the opening quotation: full of observations and an incessant flow of questions to any drummer I could get within two feet of.

I mean, you gotta be young and very naïve [stupid?] to pump Stan Levey full of questions. Stan was a bear of a man who hated, and I mean absolutely hated, to talk about technique, basically because he was self-taught and very self-conscious of the fact that he was limited in “drum-speak.”

He shouldn’t have been because what I found out later from many other teachers who were a lot more conversant with the language of drums was that Jazz drumming can be learned, but it really can’t be taught.

Not surprisingly, as a young drummer, I was caught up in the flash associated with the instrument.

I mean, faster was better, louder was better. My motto became: “Play every lick you know in the first four bars of every tune.”

It got so bad that one night I inserted Art Blakey‘s famous press roll after the 4^th opening note of the ballad, Laura, coming down with a cymbal crash on the 5^th. It was a trio gig and the piano player got up and walked off the bandstand!

The man who saved me from myself and from inflicting any more of this kind of pain on others was Bill Schwemmer, a gracious and soft-spoken man, who somehow found himself in the role of my first drum teacher.

Bill was newly married and lived in a modest little house in Santa Monica.  I drove down to his place, set-up my drums and turned on the “flash.” After a few minutes, he signaled me to stop and to listen to an LP that he had on his turntable.

I didn’t touch the drums again that day.

The album was Walkin’ The Miles Davis All-Stars [Prestige P-7076;OJCCD-213-2].

After we had listened to the opening track, a 13:26 minute version of Richard Carpenter’s Walkin’, Bill asked me what I had heard in drummer Kenny Clarke’s playing and I responded that “He hadn’t played anything; he just kept time.”

Bill loaned me the LP and also his copy of Miles Davis and The Modern Jazz Giants [Prestige P-7150; OJCCD-347-2] and suggested that I try to spend as much time as possible listening exclusively to them.

He specifically suggested that I concentrate on Kenny Clarke’s ride cymbal beat.

Thanks to Bill, Kenny Clarke changed my life [and probably saved it, too, from irate piano players].

It was almost as though Bill had become a Zen drum master who had imposed a insoluble intellectual problem for me, kind of like the “What’s the sound of one hand clapping” or “What was your true nature before your mother and father conceived you” koans or riddles that Zen is famous for.

The quest to find a way to solve the riddle of Kenny Clarke has continually been with me since Bill Schwemmer first posed it and I have taken great delight over the years in finding how others have explained what makes Kenny’s drumming so special.

It does begin with Kenny’s ride cymbal beat which many have tried to copy, but very few have mastered.

Here are some descriptions of how other musicians perceived it, as well as, Kenny's special qualities as a drummer.

Jake Hanna [drummer]: “It sounds like a straight line—"1-1-1-1." But the skip beat is in there—but very light. The Miles Davis records with Kenny Clarke were the first things I heard where the rhythm section sounds as if it's airborne, Nobody's doing anything. Kenny puts his left hand in his pocket; the bass and piano also are into a sparse thing. And they're off the ground.”

Burt Korall [drummer, author]: “Clarke's right hand is truly blessed. Playing on a relatively small ride cymbal—very likely a seventeen-inch Zildjian—set flat, he makes magic with his wrist and fingers, and the time unfolds as naturally as a flower in spring.”

Dick Katz [pianist, author]: “I didn't really pay much attention to Kenny Clarke until one day in 1953 or 1954. I was riding in the car and a record came on the radio—a tune from one of the first MJQ albums. I damn near fell out of the car. I had never heard a cymbal beat like that in my life.

When we worked together at the Cafe Bohemia in Greenwich Village in 1955, I got a chance to see just how Kenny played on the cymbal. He held his arm straight, horizontal over the cymbal, and used this side-to-side wrist motion. The way he used his left foot also was quite unusual.”

Ed Shaughnessy [drummer, percussionist]: “A good deal of the time, Kenny closed the hi-hat lightly, four beats to the bar. accenting "2" and "4" slightly. He was very skillful. It took quite a bit of control of the left foot to make it work just right. Kenny's time technique was in direct contrast to what most of the other drummers were doing. They closed the hi-hat hard, on "2" and "4," to push the pulse along. What Kenny did was quite sophisticated—remember, it was the 1940s.”

Interestingly, Georges Paczynski begins the second volume of his prize winning Une Historie De La Batterie De Jazz with a feature on Kenny Clarke under the subheadings - L’Histoire de la Cymbal Ride and Un Art de L’accompagnement – two phrases which neatly sum up Kenny Clarke primary roll in Modern Jazz drumming.

Kenny Clarke’s approach to drumming was marked by “clarity, economy and unity of conception [Burt Korall].”  Kenny didn’t play the drums, he accompanied others on them.

Since so much of what was Kenny Clarke’s style of drumming was encapsulated, the editorial staff thought it might be fun to honor the memory of this pioneering musician with a series of short quotations by other Jazz players who worked with him over the years about his significance.

Perhaps, the place to start would be with the manner in which Kenny viewed his own approach to Jazz drumming.

“I never was a soloist. I thought it was stupid. I concentrated on accompaniment. I always thought that was the most important thing.  I stuck with that. And I think that's why a lot of musicians liked me so much, because I never show off and always think about them first.”

Jimmy Gourley [guitarist based in Paris for many years]: “I had a seventeen-year tenure with Kenny. He got a beau­tiful, musical sound on the instrument and played for the music, the soloists. He was the best drummer I ever heard or worked with. Just about everyone performed on a higher level when he was back there on drums. He locked in behind you, and his tempo remained unchanged from beginning to end. That's tough, believe me. You could count on him in every circumstance.”

John Lewis [pianist, on Kenny with Dizzy Gillespie’s 1948 big band]: “Clarke's head was really in the music, his senses very much alive. He hit hard with the band, enhancing its sound and impact. He danced and decisively punctuated on the bass drum. Openings in each arrangement were imaginatively filled. His conception and execution of what was central to each arrangement made for rare performance unity.”

As a participant in one of three influential Miles Davis Birth of the Cool sessions for Capitol, he played with a memorable nine-piece group—a miniature of the Claude Thornhill band—on Gerry Mulligan's "Venus de Milo," John Carisi's "Israel," John Lewis's "Rouge," and the Miles Davis-Gil Evans collaboration "Boplicity." Clarke's work on this project—and many others during this period—brought together, in appropriate ratio, intelligence, emotion, and instinct. He quietly gave the music a sense of design and swing.

John Carisi [trumpet player, composer-arranger]: “The most important thing that Kenny Clarke did was to involve himself in the color aspects of drumming. Another thing. Kenny’s time was really something; you could sit on it! Keeping your own time wasn’t necessary. You just stayed with him.”

Walter Bishop, Jr. [pianist, composer]: “His name was one that rang among drummers. I was impressed by the way he conducted himself on and off the bandstand. He was my role model when I was coming up. There was something classy and very likeable about Kenny, his deportment, his image. Bebop and all who played it were struggling with image.”

Rudy van Gelder [recording engineer]: “I benefited from his expertise. He was so subtle, delicate, musical. He just knew how to hit the drums to make them sound beautiful and make life great for me.”

Billy Higgins [drummer]: “I really liked the sound Kenny Clarke got out of his instrument. He was not only an accompanist, he integrated the drums into music.”

Benny Golson [saxophonist, composer-arranger]: “The thing that was outstanding about Kenny Clarke was his ability to swing at any tempo. There are many drummers who are good time-keepers – but it’s not the same thing. I can’t conceive of Kenny Clarke playing and not swinging. It was an intuitive thing.”

Benny Bailey [trumpet player]: “He was a neat, clean player and if you hear him on record, you know immediately that it’s him. There are not too many drummers who are that identifiable.”

Ray Brown [bassist]: “As a drummer he was totally distinctive – you can always recognize Klook [Kenny’s nickname] immediately; his style and his sound were as personal as a human voice.”

Donald Byrd [trumpet player]: “Kenny was the bridge between swing and bebop. He was the first bebop drummer and a fantastic musician. … Kenny was the drummer who turned everything around. And his time was impeccable.”

Joe Wilder [trumpet player]: “The thing that impressed me most about Kenny was that he was one of the first guys I heard play a drum solo in which you could follow the melody; you could hear by what he was doing that he always had the melody in mind, and you could always tell where he was in the tune.”

Ronnie Scott [tenor saxophonist and club owner who performed with Kenny in the Clarke-Boland Big Band]:  “It didn’t matter what the tempo was, he always swung. He had incredible poise and a marvelous sound. You can always recognize that cymbal beat.”

Horace Silver [pianist, composer-arranger]: “Way back when, during an intermission break I asked him – “Klook, how did you get your style, the unique way you play?’ And he said: ‘When I was living in Pittsburgh, as a young guy I used to practice all the time with this bass player who kept telling me to stay out of his way. That’s how I developed my style because he was always on my back about staying out of the way.

Kenny Drew [pianist]: “Kenny had a fantastic musical concept and was his own special kind of drummer. His swing and the lightness of touch were his own. He could make music swing like nobody else and he had a feel for the dynamics that gave a great lift to the music.”

Milt Jackson [vibraphonist]: "He was one of the most swinging drummers I ever met. He had a perfect concept of swing – and that’s what Jazz is all about. When he played behind you it was inspirational – he made you play the best you possibly could.”

Pierre Michelot [bassist]: “I worked with Kenny regularly over a period of fourteen years. When we played together we achieved a kind of creative complicity that made it so satisfying. He would have this marvelous smile on his face and he would give a little wink from time to time to indicate – On est bien, on est heureux; tout va bien. [literally “It is good; it is happy; all is well;” figuratively “It doesn’t get any better than this.”].”

Shelly Manne [drummer]: “I can always recognize him, in whatever company, just by the sound of his cymbal. A true master.”

Gigi Campi [producer and organizer/sponsor of the Clarke-Boland Big Band]: “Father Klook – I called him that because there was always a reassuring, paternal element about his presence. He was so well-balanced – both as a man and as a drummer. He became part of the drums when he sat behind them. To me he was, by far, the greatest drummer ever. I don’t know anybody who could play the cymbal like he did.”

Francy Boland [pianist, composer-arranger and co-leader with Kenny of their big band]: “He was very special.”

Grady Tate [drummer]: “What he did made the most complex things sound simple. This was his genius. He was an absolute monster. I loved him to death.”

Over the years, my main observation of Kenny was that he was able to cut through the murky process by which a drummer and the horn players build a bond of mutual trust.

The currency of this trust is listening.

Jazz musicians need to believe that their drummer understands what they are doing, and that their drummer will do what’s necessary to help their individual efforts make a difference.

The drummer needs to live in the music, listen and contribute so that it feeds back into how the horn players hear each other.

While it can be awe-inspiring to watch technically gifted drummers spin their magic on the instrument, when it comes to laying it in there and making it happen, no Jazz drummer has ever done it better than Kenny Clarke. No flash, Man, indeed!

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles is indebted to the following as the source for the above-referenced musicians quotations about Kenny: [1] the drummer world website, [2] Modern Drummer magazine, [3] Mike Hennessey, Klook: The Story of Kenny Clarke, [4] Burt Korall, Drummin’ Men: The Heartbeat of Jazz – The Bebop Years, [5] Georges Paczynski Une Historie De La Batterie De Jazz and [6] Downbeat magazine.

Bob Crosby, His Orchestra and The Bobcats – “The Best”

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

The big band era largely blossomed during the decade of the 1930’s bringing the Swing Era into existence.

The circumstances of the World War II [1939-1945], including the recruitment into the armed forces of many of the musicians who played in them, essentially ended the era of big bands. The economics of the postwar era also had a great deal to do with their demise.

But those who experienced the heyday of the big bands, never forgot the pleasure they derived from listening and dancing to them.

Everyone had their favorites: Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Artie Shaw, Harry James. Some fans were such avid followers that they even knew the names of who held down the 3^rd trumpet chair in their favorite band.

Every so often, a big band would come along that wasn’t a huge commercial success, but one that nevertheless developed a close following for the quality of its music.

Such was the case with Bob Crosby’s Orchestra and the small band embedded in it which he called – The Bobcats.

My Dad was one such Bob Crosby fan and when I discovered his stash of Decca 78 rpm’s of the band and asked him about them, he simply said: “You’ll like listening to them; they were The-Best-of-The-Best!”

Richard Sudhalter offers some reflections on why the Bob Crosby aggregations were thought of so highly in the following excerpts from his seminal Lost Chords: White Musicians and Their Contributions to Jazz, 1915-1945 [New York: Oxford, 2000, pp. 382-384, excerpted].

“Above all," [bassist] Bob Haggart recalled, "we were like a family. We worked together, socialized together. Thought musically together. Most other bands—well, to tell the truth, we didn't pay much attention to what everybody else was doing. To us most of the time, they just sounded as if they were trying to steal from one another."

Meet that wonder of the musical 1930s, the Bob Crosby Orchestra. In the whole colorful decade there wasn't another band like it, and in certain ways there may not have been another nearly so good.

For chronicler George T. Simon, they were an ensemble "with tremendous spirit, one filled with men who believed thoroughly in the kind of music they were playing and, what's more, who respected and admired one another as mu­sicians and as people."

Few bands, however brilliant, approached that degree of unanimity with any consistency. It extends beyond mere skill, beyond originality—even beyond a leader or arranger's inspired vision. Neither Benny Goodman's virtuosity nor the faultless precision of his orchestras ever quite transformed their efforts into the expression of a single collective will. Artie Shaw came closer, his various bands driven by the strength and singularity of his vision: but Shaw's musicians re­mained his employees. Much the same could be said even for Red Norvo's ex­traordinary 1937 band, breathing, whispering, exulting as extensions of both its leader's xylophone sound and Eddie Sauter's ensemble concept.

The Crosby orchestra had an extra dimension. It lives in such words as "en­semble," when describing tightly knit group acting, or "team," in the finest athletic sense; the idea of a collective entity, each component interacting con­stantly and creatively with the others to shape, to determine the whole. Gestalt, a single consciousness compounded of many.

In that rarified context only the Duke Ellington Orchestra comes to mind as in any way comparable. But an Ellington orchestra, any Ellington orchestra, as­sumed its finished shape through the leader's (and often Billy Strayhorn's) cod­ification of an ongoing fusion and fission among its individual members. The Crosby orchestra, by contrast, began with unanimous, shared dedication to a single stylistic ideal. Its name, most often popularly (and imperfectly) identified, I was "dixieland." But the word fails to describe either a stylistic predisposition or a rhythmic foundation, not to mention a wide palette of orchestral color and texture.

Better by far, and more accurate, to remember that the band led by Bing Crosby's younger brother was built around a core of New Orleans musicians, whose shared background and affinity determined its musical direction.

Historically, New Orleans jazzmen away from home shared a bond, a ca­maraderie, that seemed to transcend class, education, politics, even race. Meeting in New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles, they were often simply homeboys together, carrying their environment with them in a way that seemed to render differences among them irrelevant, or at least secondary. It may be that way with i musicians from St. Louis, Boston, or San Antonio, but not to that degree; and on the evidence it's anything but that with New Yorkers. …

Whatever it was, and by whatever name its music was known, the band had sparkle, spontaneity, and lift and left a legacy of distinctive records, which have easily withstood the shifting winds of musical fashion.”

Here is an audio-only track to help afford you with a sampling of the Bob Crosby Orchestra’s style of music.

Dave Holland 5tet - Metamorphos [1999]

The musicianship on display in this video by Dave Holland on bass, Billy Kilson on drums, Steve Nelson on vibes, Robin Eubanks on trombone and Chris Potter, making a rare appearance on alto saxophone, his original instrument, is awesome to behold. Program music based around tonal points, chromaticism, motifs and riffs and rhythms. It's the way a lot of young guys hear the music these days. Stick around for Chris' solo beginning at 9:14 minutes. Charles Mingus must be smiling. The tune is Prime Detective.