Wardell Gray Memorial Album - Twisted

 

Remembering Wardell Gray [1921-1955] - Part 1 - The Ira Gitler Prestige Notes [From the Archives]

 © Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

SIDEMAN BLUES

He played in Vegas. Then he died there--his body found at the edge of the desert with a broken neck and a bloodstream full of smack. Now, thirty-seven years later, Evan Horne is looking into the death of tenor sax player Wardell Gray, a sharp-dressing sideman who rubbed someone very wrong.

Moonlighting from his job playing piano at the Fashion Show Mall - -his first gig since a debilitating hand injury -- Horne was doing a favor for a scholar by asking questions about Wardell Gray. Then the heat, glitz, and payback of Vegas came down hard, bringing Horne up against a former dancer with a sizzling secret in her past, a mobster whose hobby is dollhouses, and the little-known history of a 1950s black jazz club--a disturbing truth that still has the power to swing, smoke, and kill....

Death of a Tenor Man, [Book 2 of 7] in Bill Moody’s Evan Horne Jazz mystery series

“Nineteen fifty five will be remembered in the jazz world as a year which took a heavy toll of its musicians.  During its course men of different styles, from Charlie Parker to Cow Cow Davenport, died leaving behind the memory of their work in the form of gramophone records. Parker, whose passing was one of the greatest single losses in the entire history of our music, died after a heart attack which came as a delayed-action culmination to a protracted period of ill health; pianist Dick Twardzick died in Paris as a result of an excessive self-administered shot of heroin, white baritone saxist Bob Gordon was killed in a California car accident as he was travelling to fulfil a concert engagement. Both of these latter deaths serve as grim reminders of the internal and external hazards facing today's musicians.

On the 26th of May the most mysterious death came to light when tenor man Wardell Gray's body was discovered on some waste ground outside Las Vegas. He had died from a broken neck and injuries sustained to the head inflicted by an unidentified weapon.”

-Alun Morgan, Wardell Gray in Jazz Monthly, i/12, 1956

Sometimes Jazz musicians are as ethereal as the music itself - here one minute and gone the next.

The setting for the music - which was usually full of booze, gangsters and assorted vices - was hardly conducive to economic stability, good health and longevity.

Not surprisingly then, Jazz has more than its share of tragic falls from grace and one of the saddest of these stories is tenor saxophonist Wardell Gray who had the makings of a brilliant career when he suddenly disappeared into the Las Vegas desert and was found dead under circumstances that remain as mysterious as they are unsolved.

But as Ira Gitler reminds us in the following excerpts from his notes to the Prestige Records Memorial albums:

“The death of Wardell Gray has not been completely cleared up but it is not for us to attempt to solve any mysteries here. …. His life, rather than his death, is what concerns us.

Whatever he played swung, for primarily Wardell was a swinger. Moving along at up-tempo, he would still exhort the rhythm section to ‘bear down.’

Although one would imagine that there’s not much to write about in the life of a thirty-three year old Jazz musician, there are a number of fine pieces about him in Jazz literature.

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles has put together an initial effort to help remember and commemorate Wardell Gray on these pages. More pieces will follow in other blog features about him and the musical settings in which he performed.

To begin, here’s more from Ira’s notes to Wardell Gray Memorial Vols. 1 & 2 [Prestige LP 7008/7009; OJCCD -050-2; 051-2

Born in Oklahoma City in 1921, Wardell moved to Detroit where he studied music at Cass Tech High. After playing with the local bands of Jimmy Rachel and Benny Carew, he did his first name band work with Earl Hines, doubling on tenor and clarinet from 1943 to 1945. Then he was with Billy Eckstine's big band for a short spell before joining Benny Carter in 1946, Carter has always had great admiration for Wardell's playing and Benny is not lavish with praise for many of the modern jazzmen. With Carter, Wardell went out to the West Coast and decided to remain for a while, 1947 found him participating in many of the jazz concerts so popular there at that time. Through these appearances and recordings, he began to be more widely known.

The Lester Young style he had shown with Hines was still in evidence, a pure-toned driving style which underwent change in the following year. When Wardell came to New York in 1948 to become part of the Benny Goodman Sextet you could hear the shift to Charlie Parker's influence. Later that year he appeared at the Royal Roost with Tadd Dameron's group and Count Basie's band. In 1949 it was back to Goodman, this time the big band. By the time he had finished an engagement at the Orchid Club (the old Onyx) on 52nd Street with Sonny Stitt in early 1950, Wardell's style had changed completely over to the harder sound and crisper attack.

He returned to Detroit and spent several months there with his own quartet. When Count Basie formed a small band, Wardell answered his call. Until the end of 1951 when he settled in California, he played intermittently with Count in both small and large groups. We never saw him in the East after that. Outside of a few recording sessions (two of which are included in these volumes) he wasn't heard from. The West Coast may have been booming but not for all.”

Wardell is also referenced in Ira’s Jazz Masters of the 1940s in association with tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon:

“After playing in Hawaii with Cee Pee Johnson, Gordon settled in Los Angeles again. It was here that he and the late Wardell Gray became a team. It started at an after-hours place called Jack's Basket and at other weekly sessions. "There'd be a lot of cats on the stand, but by the end of the session, it would wind up with Wardell and myself," Gordon recalled. "The Chase grew out of this. Wardell was a very good saxophonist who knew his instrument very well. His playing was very fluid, very clean. Although his sound wasn't overwhelming, he always managed to make everything very interesting, very musical. I always enjoyed playing with him. He had a lot of drive and a profusion of ideas. He was stimulating to me."

Trumpeter Art Farmer has told me that at these sessions, Gordon and Gray would generate such excitement as they exchanged musical ideas that people would wind up standing on tables and chairs.”

In their chapter The Spreading Flame: New York and the West Coast in the Mid-Forties [Modern Jazz: A Survey of Development Since 1939 [Greenwood Press, 1956], Alun Morgan and Raymond Horricks] offer this overview:

“Wardell had been a member of the Earl Hines band and had worked alongside Charlie Parker for a short time. After engagements with Billy Eckstine, Benny Carter and Vernon Alley he settled in Hollywood to play in small groups. He was a heavily featured soloist at the Gene Norman concerts and a very popular musician at any musical gathering. He played in the amalgamated Charlie Parker-Lester Young style with a superb and consistent tone. 

He possessed an unruffled temperament which made him at home either in the recording studio or on the concert platform and he could never be accused of descending to the depths of crowd-rousing showmanship. So often the bugbear of the tenor and trumpet soloist is this playing to the gallery. Warden's sense of swing was literally unrivalled anywhere in the world of modern jazz, yet despite all these attributes he gained neither publicity nor the respect accorded to lesser musicians. 

He played on Parker's Relaxin' at Camarillo date and recorded a tenor chase under the title The Chase with the somewhat similarly styled Dexter Gordon. He worked with the Benny Goodman band at the end of 1948 and the beginning of 1949 and Benny was so impressed with his playing and sense of musicianship allied to his-high-grade jazz creation that he made him deputy leader. Wardell was more at home with Basie, whose band he joined after the Goodman engagement, and the Count featured him on his recording of Little Pony. 

The spring of 1955 witnessed the tragic death of Wardell under somewhat mysterious circumstances.”

Wardell’s career and style of playing are a bit more fleshed out in the following insert notes to Wardell Gray Quintet: Live at The Haig 1952 [Fresh Sound FSRCD 157] by Mike Baille:

“Gray was born in Oklahoma City in 1921, but actually grew up in Detroit where he studied clarinet at the celebrated Cass Tech, switching later to the alto saxophone. It was as an alto man that he joined the band of Earl Mines in '43, but after a couple of years he was playing the tenor saxophone. Like many others, he'd come under the spell of Lester Young. From Earl Mines he moved on to the Billy Eckstine band, and by '46, now living in California, he found regular work with Benny Carter, Dexter Gordon, Erroll Garner and Gene Norman. The latter was a highly successful promoter of jazz concerts in the Los Angeles area in the late 40's, who frequently featured Wardell Gray as a front line soloist, and because of that Gray came to the attention of Benny Goodman. Thus the years '48-'51 saw Gray based in New York and continually moving back and forth between the bands of Goodman and Count Basie, both leaders frequently in competition for his services.

He returned to California in '51, where he was held in very high esteem by fellow musicians such as Dexter Gordon, Hampton Hawes and Art Farmer, who considered the thin and bespectacled Gray something of an intellectual. (It was said he carried around with him the works of the French existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre.) Gray was also known to be against the use of drugs, yet he himself fell into the same abyss, his dead body being found in Las Vegas in very obscure circumstances. 

Gray is perhaps the Missing Link between Swing and Bop, for in his early days he played very much like Young (all of whose solos he knew note for note, according to Dexter Gordon) — then, by following Charlie Parker's musical thinking, he found his own style. He was certainly no copyist, and, blessed with a superb technique plus a fertile imagination he cruised effortlessly through the changes with a logical ease, producing consistently melodic music with an incredible swing, allied to a lovely warm tone. 

His solos were invariably beautifully rounded, moving inexorably from one climax to the next, and not necessarily with any change in volume — climaxes produced simply by the notes selected. He possessed a melodic conception second to none, an unrivalled sense of swing, plus there existed a certain kind of elegance in those long smooth swinging phrases. 

He appeared serene, with a rare grace and beauty in his playing that only a master musician is capable of producing. During his time in New York he made a considerable impression on 52nd St playing with Sonny Stitt in 1950, then later with Miles Davis and Bud Powell. And, of course, some excellent recordings were made with the bands of Basie and Goodman. 

But it was the West Coast where he became really prominent and universally known. There were some momentous concerts under the supervision of Gene Norman, in which his marathon tenor “battles” with Dexter Gordon became a talking point for both musicians and fans alike. These musical joustings with Dexter Gordon brought both tenor saxophonists national and international recognition, for each man would gleefully challenge the other in “combat”, and their recording of The Chase was a big seller.

The cream of the West Coast jazz scene of the time was certainly assembled one evening in September 1952 at The Haig, a small Los Angeles club run by John Bennet. And, thanks to Bob Andrews, who was there with his recording equipment, some of the music played that night has been preserved.

Bernie's tune swings at medium tempo and gets the album off to a fine start. Gray is at total ease with the changes, and Manne's brushwork really punctuates the proceedings, particularly behind Hawes' funky solo. Tadd Dameron's The Squirrel follows, with more smooth sailing from Gray, who builds a solo of compelling swing. Art Farmer is in something of a Milesian mode here, while Hawes brings a highly rhythmic and percussive colouring to his solo statement before a brilliant series of exchanges between the two horns closes the piece. Pennies from heaven and Taking a chance on love both feature Wardell Gray's tenor with just the rhythm section, and he floats gently through both numbers in a laid-back manner very reminiscent of Lester Young, enhancing each melody with his original variations. 

In between the two standards is a furious version of Donna Lee where Gray demonstrates that he can play just as immaculately at fast tempo, as does Hampton Hawes in his very articulate solo. Manne's cymbals positively sizzle on this one. Jackie is a blues, with some fine trumpet playing by Art Farmer, and some surprising Shearing-like block chording from composer Hampton Hawes. Get happy is exactly that — optimistic and bright — with Wardell Gray quite superb and Hawes playing some pure bebop piano. Shelly Manne shines on brushes behind Gray on Keen and Peachy where the guitar of Howard Roberts is added, and Hawes is absolutely brilliant in his solo spot. Roberts is still there for the final number, another Dameron opus — Ladybird — and the unknown Amos Trice takes over the piano chair from Hawes. For Art Farmer these were formative times, and on all the tracks where he is featured one can see an emerging style, with plenty of his own ideas coming through in that economical and unforced way of his.

However, there is no doubt who is the dominant voice in these important live recordings — Wardell Gray. He seems very much the leader here, always taking the first solo on every track, and by doing so setting the feel and the tone for the other musicians who follow — yet he somehow manages to be both self-effacing and authoritative at one and the same time. It's poignant to consider what might have been had Gray not died in May 1955, at the early age of thirty-one. An untimely death, and a most terrible loss to the jazz world. It wasn't only Wardell Gray's luck that ran out that fateful day in Las Vegas.”

Wardell is also one of the subjects in Michael James, Ten Modern Jazzmen: An Appraisal of the Recorded Work of Ten Modern Jazzmen [London: 1960]; Alun Morgan, Wardell; Gray in Jazz Monthly, i/12, 1956; H. Butterfield, Wardell Gray in Jazz Journal, xiv/10, 1961; Max Harrison, Backlog Ten: Wardell Gray in Jazz Monthly, viii/3 1962. He is also the focus of a discography by C. Schlouch published in Marseilles, France in 1983. These references are cited in Barry Kernfeld, ed., The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz which also contains an overview of Wardell’s career, a list of selected recordings and a bibliography as compiled by Lawrence Koch.

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles is in the process of acquiring copies of these chapters, articles and reviews  about Wardell and his music and will published them individually in future features on Wardell in order to establish a comprehensive online catalogue of materials about this extremely talented, but somewhat obscure, “Missing Link” between Swing Era and Bebop Era tenor saxophone styles. 

Jazz Piano Readers - An Unabashed Plug

 © Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

The 2020s - marks the 100th anniversary of a number of milestone developments in Jazz: New Orleans Jazz in the form of the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, the Original Dixieland Jazz Band and Joe Oliver’s group featuring Louis Armstrong coming “up the Mississippi River” and bringing its style of music to Kansas City, Chicago and ultimately to New York, the beginning of Duke Ellington’s residency at New York City’s Cotton Club.

But with a few exceptions [e.g.: Earl Hines’ work on some of Pops’ recordings], the piano was on the outside looking in.

However, just before and especially after World War II [1939-1945], the piano’s role in Jazz made up for lost time by assuming a huge presence in the music.

The big bands, in which the instrument could barely be heard, were on the wane as the Swing Era came to a close after the close of the war. In the small combos that came of age in the Bebop and Modern Jazz eras of the 1940s and 50s, the piano became a mainstay assuming a pivotal role as both a featured instrument and as an accompanist to the front-line horns.

In many of the supper clubs and small clubs that replaced the ballrooms which featured the large dance bands, pianists were also featured in trios with bass and drums and these piano-based rhythm sections also served to accompany the legions of male and female Jazz vocalists who became the name attractions that drew audiences into these venues.

By the late 1950s into the 1960s and 70s, many of the most popular Jazz groups were led by Jazz pianists including Oscar Peterson, Horace Silver, Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock and Keith Jarrett.

The Jazz Piano Readers Volumes 1, 2, 3 are loosely chronological anthologies and each contains an eclectic selection of articles, interviews and commentaries - some of which are very rare - about Jazz pianists whose music I’ve enjoyed over the years.

There’s the operative term - enjoyment.

And there’s plenty about Piano Jazz to enjoy as the combined three volumes contain 136 chapters and over 1,100 pages for your reading enjoyment.

With everyone so busy these days, most of the chapters can be read in 15-20 minutes.

Now that the initial costs of publication for the series have been met, 50% of all royalties will be donated to the local high school and community college district to help purchase musical instruments for individual students. I have also donated $500 to the Gerry and Franca Mulligan Foundation and a full drum kit to the Jazz big band at local community college from the proceeds.

Each volume is available as a paperback for $24.99, an audio book for $14.99 and an eBook for $9.99 exclusively at Amazon.com. Just enter my name in the search box under “Books.”

You can locate the Table of Contents for each volume by scrolling the sidebar [right hand column] of the JazzProfiles blog.

Thank you for your support.

Louis Armstrong: Views of "Pops" By 7 Jazz Trumpeters [From the Archives]

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

“Genius is the transfiguring agent. Nothing else can explain Louis Armstrong's ascendancy. He had no formal training, yet he alchemized the cabaret music of an outcast minority into an art that has expanded in ever-widening orbits for sixty-five years, with no sign of collapse. He played trumpet against the rules, and so new rules were written to acknowledge his standards. His voice was so harsh and grating that even black bandleaders were at first loath to let him use it, yet he became one of the most beloved and influential singers of all time.

He was born with dark skin in a country where dark-skinned people were considered less than human and, with an ineffable radiance that transcends the power of art, forced millions of whites to reconsider their values. He came from “the bottom of the well, one step from hell," as one observer put it, but he died a millionaire in a modest home among working-class people. He was a jazz artist and a pop star who succeeded in theater and on records, in movies and on television.

Yet until he died, he traveled in an unheated bus, playing one-nighters around the country, zigzagging around the world, demanding his due but never asking for special favors. He was an easy touch and is thought to have handed out hundreds of thousands of dollars to countless people down on their luck. Powerful persons, including royalty and the Pope, forgave him a measure of irreverence that would have been unthinkable coming from anyone else. Admirers describe him as a philosopher, a wise man, someone who knew all the secrets of how to live. …

But few people knew him well, and many of those who were most possessive about his art were offended by his popularity. The standard line about Armstrong throughout his career, rendered in James Lincoln Collier's 1983 biography, goes like this: Louis Armstrong was a superb artist in his early years, the exemplar of jazz improvisation, until fame forced him to compromise, at which point he became an entertainer, repeating himself and indulging a taste for low humor. …

A jazz aesthetics incapable of embracing Louis Armstrong whole is unworthy of him, and of the American style of music making that he, more than any other individual, engendered.”

- Gary Giddins, Satchmo

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles can’t get enough of “Pops” on these pages. The above quotations from Gary Giddins’ superb biography of Louis Armstrong and the following feature excerpted from the January 8, 1959 issue of Down Beat magazine are intended to add more archival materials to the blog about an artist of whom it can truly be said - “No him, no Jazz.”

“In the world of jazz, Louis Armstrong is more than king.

He is a living legend and a symbol of the music.

To gauge his influence, and to obtain a new perspective on him, Down Beat gathered opinion and recollection from seven top brassmen from all areas of jazz.

Assembled around the Down Beat roundtable are veteran cornetist Rex Stewart; trumpeter-arranger Quincy Jones; lyrical cornetist Bobby Hackett; modern trumpeter Art Farmer; the melodic Ruby Braff; trumpeter-bandleader Maynard Ferguson; and trumpeter, major influence on the horn, and close friend of Armstrong's, Dizzy Gillespie.

Gillespie: "The first time I ever heard Louis was in 1935, at Fay's theater, Philadelphia. I must have been about 17. My brother-in-law was a fan of his, but I wasn't too interested in him. I liked Roy [Eldridge]. I got to admit I was impressed. I don't think I had heard him on records before that. Records were scarce at home."

Hackett: "I remember listening to Louis' records as a kid in Providence. I've never been the same since. I was just starting to fool around with the horn. The first time I heard him live was at the Metropolitan theater in Boston. We went up on the bus and stayed the whole day. He used to close the show with a spiel for the musicians in the audience. He tell us he was going to hit 400 high Cs, and he'd do it. He'd end up on a high F."

Jones: "Louis' was one of the first name bands I ever saw. That was in Bremerton, Wash., and I was about 14 or 15. I remember I was in the high school band, and I sneaked in the back door of the dance carrying my baritone horn. He wasn't so much of a legend then as he is now. And I guess I hadn't read the book on him."

Stewart: "I first heard him on records. It was in 1923 or 24 when I first heard him. What did I do? I flipped! I'm not sure what the tune was, maybe it was Mabel's Dream."

Braff: "When I was a little kid, I used to listen to the 920 Club on the radio in Boston. One guy would play 15 minutes of records by an artist. That's where I first heard him. In person, the first time was at Mahogany Hall, downstairs from Storyville."

Farmer: "I guess I first heard Louis about 1948, in person. On records, I'd heard him a lot earlier."

Ferguson: "I was about 13 when I first saw Armstrong. He came to Montreal with a big band, and played in the auditorium that's now the Bellview Casino. I had heard him on records prior to that. My mother bought me his theme song, Sleepy Time Down South, and I also had Struttin' With Some Barbecue."

At this point, everyone agreed on the scope of Louis' influence.

Braff: "He influenced everyone's playing. Lester Young . . . everyone.”

Farmer: "His playing was an influence on mine, but not directly. It's like hearing someone who plays good, and who makes you want to get the most out of your horn."

Ferguson: "I never really had one hero, but quite a few of them. Louis was one. I felt he enjoyed what he was doing more than the others."

Stewart: "He's an influence on everyone who plays a horn. He definitely influenced my playing. I think most in the conception. He taught the world how trumpet should be played."

Jones: "At first, I think he did influence me. For the first few years, anyway, in things like attack and the living part of his playing. But this was just before the era when it became hip to be cool . . . about 1948. Right after that, I went over to Diz."

Gillespie: "Louis' playing influenced mine in a roundabout way, through Roy. Roy got a lot from Louis' conception, and I got a lot from him."

Hackett: "His playing influenced everybody. His conception, his ideas . . . everything. To me, he's the perfect hot trumpet player."

There was less general agreement on Armstrong's biggest contribution to jazz.

Hackett: "I think it's his performance. He's been heard all over the world, and he has influenced anyone who is interested in music."

Gillespie: "His music is his biggest contribution, for my personal taste."

Jones: "I wish I had been around more. I'd like to have been around 45 years and be about 16 years old now. But I'd say Louis biggest contribution is that he was first. He wrote the book on trumpet. There's a lot of things in his playing that you've got to respect today."

Farmer: "Louis' contribution, I think, has been that he was really playing horn at a time when not many people were doing it. He was a good instrumentalist; one of the first and one of the greatest. And he started something . . ."

Stewart: "Well, I'd say his biggest contribution was getting me the job with Fletcher Henderson. Seriously, I really feel that without his influence, I couldn't imagine what trumpet   playing   would be like. He showed there was more range than high  C, and more  drive  than  the syncopation used before him. He did so many things.”

Ferguson: "Since Louis is associated with the word, jazz; he has made the public conscious of jazz. That shouldn't be ignored or put down. People love Louis. He's the hot jazz trumpeter off the river boat. He has a very beloved name."

Braff: "His biggest contribution was in just being. He happens to be the mother and father of music. And he's more important than Bach."

As it must in every conversation about Armstrong, the subject soon becomes a treasured performance. Sometimes it's a record. Sometimes it's an in-person appearance.

But always it's a memory to be relished for trumpet men.

Ferguson: "I guess I like Struttin' With Some Barbecue because the band is out of tune and raggedy, but Armstrong is carrying the whole thing, and he's wailing."

Stewart: "My favorite is Hotter Than That. Fireworks! And that came from the period I enjoyed him most in."

Farmer: "I can't right now think of the name of the tune, but it was made around 1927, and I always liked it because it sounded contemporary as far as his line of melody and his sound was concerned."

Jones: "I was in Hamp's band, and we were playing opposite Louis in Washington, D.C. This was in 1952. The song was Indiana, and Louis just amazed me. He played high G’s, and he was just smoking. I like his record of Chinatown, and, of course, West End Blues."

Gillespie: "I like the way Louis sings. I like his record of that French tune, C'est Si Bon. He reminds me of a conversationalist singing. He sort of talks in different ranges. It sounds like he's talking to me. Now, that's the way I'd like to sing . . . if I could sing. That phrasing, like the way I talk ... I'd like to sing that way. Louis sings the way he talks."

Hackett: "I just like everything he touches. Struttin' with Some Barbecue on Decca . . . the things with Luis Russell's band ... for vocals, I like If Could Be With You.

Braff: "For me, there's no such thing as a favorite performance by Louis. Anything with his name on it, that's all. The only things that make them weak are, maybe, the other people on them. But he always played the greatest with the weakest and corniest background. It's as if he can turn off the band he's with. He seems to be constantly playing with another band. I wish I could hear that band!"

Our round-tablers dig Armstrong for more than his music. Many are personal friends, with whom Armstrong has had good times off-stand as well as on.

Hackett: "I think he's just about the greatest guy who ever lived. When he's in town, I go over to his house and we sit around and talk about a hundred things. There's another wonderful thing about him that nobody knows. He's a very generous person. He gives to a lot of charities. And he likes to help people, and not exploit them."

Gillespie: "Louis is not two-faced. He's one of the most sincere people you'll find. You always know what he thinks. He doesn't bite his tongue, although sometimes he puts his foot in his mouth. But he's honest. That's the quality I admire in him."

Stewart: 'I'd like to say I feel Louis truly was the direct turning point . . . the reason for this wonderful music. He was the creator, the innovator, and at the same time one who gave the world much more than he received."

Jones: "He has been one of the most original figures ever on the scene. He's been a very strong voice in jazz."

Braff: "That cat is loved all over the world. And better than any of the political leaders.""

Winner of the 2025 Jazz Journalist Association Special Citation for Historic Writings, Steven Cerra is a professional Jazz drummer and the author of anthologies on Gerry Mulligan, Bill Evans, Stan Kenton, Dave Brubeck, Shelly Manne, Jazz West Coast Readers Vols. 1-3, Profiles in Jazz, Vol.1, Jazz Drummers Vols. 1-2, Jazz Saxophonists, Vol. 1, 2 & 3, and Jazz Piano, Vols. 1, 2 & 3. He also hosts the jazzprofiles.blogspot and cerra.substack blogs.

Klook: Kenny Clarke and The Beginnings of Modern Jazz Drumming

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

How did the Jazz world get from Gene Krupa to Philly Joe Jones?

The answer to that question is as central as asking how it got from Benny Goodman to Charlie Parker, or from Louis Armstrong to Dizzy Gillespie or from Earl “Fatha” Hines to Bud Powell or from Jimmy Blanton to Charlie Mingus.

Melodically and harmonically, Parker, Gillespie, Powell and Mingus created the basic musical structures of modern Jazz.

Kenny Clarke who acquired the nickname of “Klook-mop” which was later shortened to “Klook” created the rhythmic foundation over which the convoluted and fast moving Bebop lines - melodies- could ride unimpeded by the thump-thump-thump of the swing drum beat with its heavily accented 4-beats to the bar bass drum beat.

[Klook-mop was derived from the sound of the snare-to-bass-drum chatter that early Bebop drummers played behind the ride cymbal beat.]

Kenny’s modern style of drumming seemed to spring forth as a fully formed conception during the early jam sessions at Minton’s Playhouse from about 1941 onwards.

In fact, Kenny was piecing his approach together over a four year period from about 1937-1941.

In probing for the sources of modern jazz styles, one is not likely to come upon a more influential figure than drummer Kenny Clarke.

Without Clarke's creative drum developments, there is a good possibility that the bebop phase would not have attained its musical importance and gone on to contribute to contemporary jazz forms. Two European critics have succinctly evaluated Clarke's importance. England's Max Harrison: "He built the rhythmic foundation of the new music." France's Andre Hodeir: "His rhythmic imagination has stimulated the melodic genius of others."

More than a decade ago, Max Roach, considered by many the greatest of the modern drummers, pointed out that a drummer should be able to compose, and he mentioned Clarke as an example. Roach said, "Clarke knows his harmony, melody, and has a million ideas." In the 1959 Down Beat drum issue Roach again spoke of his friend as follows: "I've been partial to Clarke. He doesn't borrow; you don't hear the way he plays anywhere else. It's not African or Afro-Cuban; it's unique."

Kenneth Spearman Clarke's conceptual individuality came to the fore early in his career. He was born Jan. 9, 1914, in Pittsburgh, Pa. His father was a trombonist, and Kenny had a younger brother, Frank, who played bass. Kenny studied piano, trombone, drums, vibra-harp, and theory in high school. His knowledge of keyboard harmony, obtained in those early years, was to be an important aspect of his future development.

His first professional job was with Leroy Bradley's Pittsburgh band for about five years. This was followed by a time with the Eldridge brothers, whose home also was in Pittsburgh. Trumpeter Roy had come in from the road about 1933 and with his late brother, Joe, an alto saxophonist and arranger, had formed a home-town band. It worked out well because if Clarke missed a date, Roy could take over on the drums, which he loved to do.

Clarke made his first trip out of town to join the commercial dance band organized by James Jeter and Hayes Pillars during 1934 in St. Louis, Mo. It is interesting to note that both Christian and Blanton served with the Jeter-Pillars Band about that time too.

Early 1937 found Clarke in New York City with Edgar Hayes' big band. He made his first recording, with Hayes, in March, 1937, and was to record regularly with the band on Decca for more than a year.

One interesting 78-rpm that they made was Decca 1882, Star Dust and In the Mood. It was Hayes' version of Star Dust, performed at a slow to medium tempo, that revived the Hoagy Carmichael song, first recorded in 1927, and started it to the top of the hit list. The reverse side, written by saxophonist Joe Garland, then with the Hayes band, went along for the ride, no one paying it much notice. Two years later Glenn Miller's Bluebird record of In the Mood made it a best-seller.

While on tour in Europe (Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Belgium, and Holland) during early 1938 with Hayes, Clarke made some quintet sides in Stockholm under his own name.

This Hayes band was a forward-looking swing aggregation. Clarinetist Rudy Powell did some arrangements for the group, and several years later, young Dizzy Gillespie was to mention he was interested in Powell's work. The band recorded quite a few swinging originals such as Stomping at the Renny (Renaissance Ballroom in Harlem).

Tenor saxophonist Budd Johnson, while with Earl Hines in 1937, has recalled a battle of bands Hines had with Hayes in Dayton, Ohio. At that time, Johnson said, he noticed some unusual drumming by Clarke.

Clarke himself has said, "I was trying to make the drums more musical. Garland would write out trumpet parts for me to read, and I would use my discretion in playing things that I thought would be effective. These were rhythm patterns superimposed over the regular beat."

After returning from Europe, the drummer and Powell joined the long-established Claude Hopkins Band. Clarke stayed eight months with Hopkins and then went with the Teddy Hill Band, in which he first met Gillespie.

By this time Clarke was well along in evolving a style of his own. The Hayes, Hopkins, and Hill bands played frequently at the Savoy Ballroom. Clarke has said it wore him out trying to keep up the fast tempos required.

One of the numbers in the Hill repertoire that he gives as an example was The Harlem Twister (also known as Sensation Stomp).

To get relief, Clarke fell back on experiments he had been making with his top cymbal. He developed a technique whereby he transferred his timekeeping chore from the bass drum to the top cymbal, riding it with his right hand. His right foot was then free to play off-beat accents on the bass drum, a sort of punctuating function to become known as "bombs." He devoted his left stick to the snare drum, sometimes using it for accents and other times using it to help the cymbal carry the rhythm.

All this confused leader Hill, and Clarke was fired, but he was in the band long enough to make an impression on Gillespie. The trumpeter said he found it stimulating to improvise around Clarke's off-rhythms.

From the Hill band Clarke followed Panama Francis into Roy Eldridge's big band at the Arcadia Ballroom on Broadway. None of these bands — Hopkins, Hill, Eldridge — recorded while Clarke was with them.

In the summer of 1940 Clarke was working with Sidney Bechet's quartet at the Log Cabin in Fonda, N.Y. During the fall of that year Teddy Hill took over the management at Minton's and asked Clarke and trumpeter Joe Guy to bring in a small group. The astute Hill wanted to make the spot a hangout for musicians, and in this setting he was sympathetic to Clarke's experiments. Hill said the drummer's unique figures sounded to him like "kloop" or "klook," and he told Clarke they could play all the "klook-mop music" they wanted at Minton's. I guess it followed naturally that Clarke became known as Klook.

Several writers in discussing the Jerry Newman acetates made in May, 1941, at Minton's have pointed out that actually the only suggestion of the things to come emanated from Clarke's drums. Marshall Stearns, in mentioning the Newman sides in his Story of Jazz, said, ". . . drummer Clark is playing fully matured bop drums."

Clarke worked with Charlie Christian, Thelonious Monk, and Dizzy Gillespie in developing unusual chord changes. The drummer has a long list of original compositions registered with Broadcast Music, Inc., including Klook Returns; Blues Mood; Roll 'Em, Bags; I’ll Get You Yet.

Before he left for the service in 1943, Clarke was a regular at Minton's when in town. During that period he spent a short time in Louis Armstrong's big band, from which he was soon fired, and Armstrong begged Big Sid Catlett to return; five weeks with Gillespie in Ella Fitzgerald's orchestra, which the two joined together and from which they were fired together; Benny Carter's sextet on 52nd St.; and a comparatively long run with Red Allen's small band at the Downbeat Room in Chicago.

At the time Clarke went into service, the new music had not as yet acquired the name bebop. Like Charlie Parker, he was later to disapprove of the appellation and attendant jargon heartily.

The following discography was compiled about 25 years after Kenny's earliest recordings and on them you can hear Kenny evolving the modern style of Jazz drumming.

New York City, March 9, 1937

Edgar Hayes and His Orchestra—Bernie Flood, Henry Goodwin, Shelton Hemphill, trumpets; Bob Horton, Clyde Bernhardt, John Haughton, trombones; Stanley Palmar, Al Sherrett, Crawford Wetherington, Joe Garland, saxophones; Hayes, piano; Andy Jackson, guitar; Elmer James, bass; Kenny Clarke, drums. MANHATTAN JAM (201)

..........Variety 586, Vocalion 3773

Stockholm, Sweden, March 8, 1938

Kenny Clarke's Quintet — Goodwin, trumpet; Rudy Powell, clarinet; Hayes, piano; George Gibb, guitar; Coco Darling, bass; Clarke, drums, vibraharp; John Clay Anderson, vocals. ONCE IN A WHILE (6317)

..............Swedish Odeon 255509

I FOUND A NEW BABY (6318).........

..............Swedish Odeon 255509

YOU'RE A SWEETHEART (6319)

..............Swedish Odeon 255510

SWEET SUE (6320)

..............Swedish Odeon 255510

New York City, Feb. 5, 1940

Sidney Bechet and His New Orleans Feetwarmers—Bechet, soprano saxophone, clarinet, vocal; Sonny White, piano; Charlie Howard, guitar; Wilson Myers, bass, vocal; Clarke, drums. INDIAN SUMMER (46832). .Bluebird 10623 ONE O'CLOCK JUMP (46833)

.................RCA Victor  27204

PREACHIN' BLUES (46834)

.....................Bluebird  10623

SIDNEY'S BLUES (46835).. .Bluebird 8509

New York City, May 15, 1940

Mildred Bailey and Her Orchestra— Roy Eldridge, trumpet; Robert Burns, Jimmy Carroll, clarinets; Irving Horowitz, bass clarinet; Ed Powell, flute; Mitch Miller, oboe; Teddy Wilson, piano; John Collins, guitar; Pete Peterson, bass; Clarke, drums; Miss Bailey, vocals. How CAN I EVER BE ALONE?

(27302).............Columbia 35532

TENNESSEE FISH FRY (27303)

....................Columbia 35532

I'LL PRAY FOR You (27304)

....................Columbia 35589

BLUE AND BROKEN HEARTED (27305)

....................Columbia 25589

New York City, Sept. 12, 1940

Billie Holiday and Her Orchestra—Eldridge, trumpet; Georgie Auld, Don Redman, alto saxophones; Don By as, Jimmy Hamilton, tenor saxophones; Wilson, piano; Collins, guitar; Al Hall, bass; Clarke, drums; Miss Holiday, vocals. I'M ALL FOR You (28617)

................Okeh-Vocalion   5831

I HEAR Music (28618)

................Okeh-Vocalion   5831

THE SAME OLD STORY (28619)

......Okeh-Vocalion 5806, V Disc 586

PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT (28620)

.................Okeh-Vocalion 5806

New York City, March 11, 1941

Slim Gaillard and His Flat Foot Floogie Boys—Loumell Morgan, piano; Gaillard, guitar, vocals; Slam Stewart, bass; Clarke, drums.

AH Now (29913)...........Okeh 6295

A TIP ON THE NUMBERS (29914)

.........................Okeh 6135

SLIM SLAM BOOGIE (29915).. .Okeh 6135

BASSOLOGY (29916)..........Okeh 6295

New York City, March 21, 1941

Eddie Heywood and His Orchestra— Shad Collins, trumpet; Leslie Johnakins, Eddie Barefield, alto saxophones; Lester Young, tenor saxophone; Heywood, piano; Collins, guitar; Ted Sturgis, bass; Clarke, drums; Miss Holiday, vocals.

LET'S Do IT (29987)........Okeh 6134,

Columbia 30235, CL 6129, Blue Ace 206 GEORGIA ON MY MIND (29988)

Okeh 6134, Columbia 30235, C3L-21, Blue Ace 206, Jolly Roger 5020 ROMANCE IN THE DARK (29989)

........Okeh 6214, Columbia C3L-21,

Blue Ace 205, Jolly Roger 5020

ALL OF ME (29990)

.......Okeh 6214, Columbia CL 6129,

C3L-21, Blue Ace 205

New York City, May 8, 1941

Minton House Band (with guests)— Joe Guy, Hot Lips Page, trumpets; Ker-mit Scott, Don Byas, tenor saxophones; Thelonious Monk, piano; Charlie Christian, guitar; Nick Fenton, bass; Clarke, drums. UP ON TEDDY'S HILL (HONEYSUCKLE

ROSE)   ...............Esoteric ESJ-4,

Counterpoint 548 DOWN ON TEDDY'S HILL (STOMPING

AT THE SAVOY).........Esoteric ESJ-4

New York City, May 12, 1941

Same, except Scott, Byas, and Page are out. ^CHARLIE'S CHOICE (TOPSY)

.......Vox album 302, Esoteric ESJ-1,

Counterpoint 548 STOMPING AT THE SAVOY

......Vox album 302, Esoteric ESJ-1,

Counterpoint 548

* SWING TO BOP is the title on the Esoteric and Counterpoint LPs.

New York City, June 2, 1941

Count Basie and His Orchestra—Ed Lewis, Buck Clayton, Al Killian, Harry Edison, trumpets; Dicky Wells, Dan Minor, Ed Cuffey, trombones; Earl Warren, Jack Washington, Tab Smith, alto saxophones; Don Byas, Buddy Tate, tenor saxophones; Basic, piano; Freddie Green, guitar; Walter Page, bass; Clarke, drums. You BETCHA MY LIFE (30520)

.........................Okeh 6221

DOWN, DOWN, DOWN (30521)

.........................Okeh 6221

New York City, Oct. 6, 1941

Ella Fitzgerald—Teddy McRae, tenor saxophone; Tommy Fulford, piano; Ulysses Livingston, guitar; Beverly Peer, bass; Clarke, drums; Miss Fitzgerald, vocals.

JIM (69784)...............Decca 4007

THIS LOVE OF MINE (69785). .Decca 4007

Source:

Downbeat Magazine

March 28, 1963