A few of my audiophile friends have wondered about just how good the 78 rpm format can sound. Well, here is exhibit A: a VERY clean virtually unplayed copy of an EmArcy disc from 1954 that I got at the Austin Record Convention earlier this summer from Justin from the Antique 78 rpm Record Shop. Justin has a store in Wichita Falls, Texas that I hope to visit some day.
I did not do *any* declicking, gain adjustment, compression, or summing to mono to this transfer. Pretty much the raw transfer with equalization adjusted.
This is almost a perfect record to really critically listen to, as there are both quiet sections with Blakey’s drums or Heath’s bass solo and louder passages with Henry Durant’s tenor sax. You can also hear Blakey shouting out encouragement to the band in the background.
This tune was originally released on 7″ 45 rpm and 10″ 78 rpm only. It finally made it to LP/CD in the late 80s, where it was included with the eight songs on the 10″ LP “Blakey” from 1955 and presented as “The Complete Art Blakey on EmArcy”.
Recorded in New York City on March 24, 1954. Released as Emarcy 16007.
Credits: Henry Durant – tenor sax Horace Silver – piano Percy Heath – bass Art Blakey – drums
A swingin’ number from a North Carolina territory band that will rouse you from your sleepy Sunday morning!
This outfit played jazzy western swing and recorded two sessions for Victor/Bluebird in 1937 and 1938. Trumpet player Dave Durham was also a regular, but is not listed as performing on this side.
This one has a Lang-Venuti feel – rollicking rhythm and real virtuosity on the violin. A great listen!
Buck Houghins is listed as both the tenor sax and violin player on this number. At first listen I felt it was so instructive to hear his melodic mind at work within the confines of both instruments on the same tune.
Then sharp listener Dan Weinstein noted that toward the end of the song, the tenor sax can be heard playing legato notes in the background as the fiddle solos. So now I wonder: Is that Buck Houghins on fiddle or tenor sax? And if so, who is playing the other instrument?
Recorded in Charlotte, North Carolina on August 2, 1937. Released as Bluebird B-7160
Credits: Buck Houghins – tenor sax, violin Jerry Collins – piano Larry Dowing – guitar Cliff Stein – string bass
Sources: Jazz and Ragtime Records (1897-1942), 6th Ed., Brian Rust
Here we have a composition by Elmer Schoebel recorded as a novelty number by Tampa Blue Jazz Band. The train conductor’s voice at the beginning of the recording is not identified.
The song was recorded by many bands in 1923, including Original Memphis Five, Frank Westphal’s Orchestra, Lanin’s Roseland Orchestra, and Ben Bernie’s Orchestra.
Tampa Blue Jazz Band was essentially the same lineup as Joseph Samuels’ Jazz Band and the Synco Jazz Band (on Pathé).
We hear a trombone solo starting at 1:26 followed by Levy on cornet (mostly playing it straight) starting at 1:44 and Samuels on clarinet at 2:12. Some delightful ensemble playing rounds out the tune. A train whistle is heard throughout, punctuating the air above the music.
Recorded in New York City circa March, 1923. Released as Okeh 4816.
Credits: Jules Levy, Jr. – cornet Ephraim Hannaford – trombone Joseph Samuels – clarinet, bass sax, violin Larry Briers – piano Unknown artist – drums, train whistle
32 years before Carl Perkins warned listeners to “stay off of my blue suede shoes”, tin pan alley songwriters Henry and Charles Tobias wrote “Keep Off My Shoes”. In the lyrics to this song, a woman pleads with a male partner “your dancing may be good – but my feet ain’t made of wood – so keep off my shoes!”
The tune was recorded in 1923 by Nora Bayes, Ernest Hare, Kaplan’s Melodists, and Tampa Blue Jazz Band.
Tampa Blue Jazz Band was essentially the same lineup as Joseph Samuels’ Jazz Band (also on Okeh) and the Synco Jazz Band (on Pathé).
We hear some jazzy breaks and ensemble playing in this version – Samuel’s clarinet and Hannaford’s sliding trombone are showcased.
Recorded in New York City circa March, 1923. Released as Okeh 4816.
Credits: Jules Levy, Jr. – cornet Ephraim Hannaford – trombone Joseph Samuels – clarinet, bass sax, violin Larry Briers – piano Unknown artist – drums
One last video to celebrate Pride Month, though I’m late posting it.
Bessie Smith, one of the most popular and prolific of the early blues singers of the 1920s, was known, like her mentor Ma Rainey, to be bisexual.
She was also reportedly “quite religious” and would often attend Sunday morning services while on tour. Drummer Zutty Singleton once said that Bessie “was real close to God, Very religious.”
Her music often took on the characteristic of preaching, and here, in her original composition, “Preachin’ the Blues”, Ms. Smith lays down a sermon for her flock of faithful:
“I will learn you something if you listen to this song. I ain’t here to try to save your soul Just want to teach you how to save your good jelly roll.”
Angela Davis argues, in her excellent book, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism, that this song “juxtaposes the spriit of religion and the spirit of the blues, and contests the idea of the incontrovertible separateness of these two spheres.”
Smith’s song combines the evangelical spirit of her religious upbringing with the worldly pleasures of the blues lifestyle. The song “advises women to take control of their sexuality and implicitly challenges the church’s condemnation of sexuality.”
This open celebration and affirmation of sexuality, given in the context of blasphemously “preaching” a “sermon”, was quite radical and progressive for this time period. It was, as a teenage friend of mine in the 80s would have called it, “totally punk rock”.
We owe Bessie Smith and other bisexual female blues singers of the 1920s a debt of gratitude for their courage to sing their authentic truth to the world.
Once more: Happy Pride Month! 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️ I didn’t get to explore as many artists as I had planned – but as the month progressed, I found myself out celebrating Pride and neglecting the channel. That’s ok – that leaves more artists to feature next year!
Recorded in New York City on February 17, 1927. Released as Columbia 14195-D
Credits: Bessie Smith – vocals James P. Johnson – piano
Sources: Bessie, Chris Albertson, Yale University Press, 2003 Blues Legacies and Black Feminism, Angela Y. Davis, Pantheon, 1998
In celebration of Pride month 🏳️🌈 all of my posts this month will feature the music of LGBTQ+ artists of the 78 rpm era!
This week we will focus on the amazing black women who were among the first to freely express their lesbian sexuality and bisexuality on record. These artists were 50+ years ahead of their time and ahead of the world when it comes to embracing alternative sexualities and gender norms. We all owe them so much for their artistry and empowered advocacy.
While the guitar-based male artists of the following decade often get the lion’s share of credit for pioneering the blues, it is critically important to note that black women were the first to popularize the blues – and their success allowed them an empowering level of self-expression in the songs they recorded.
Ma Rainey’s “Prove It On Me Blues” is an assertive and proud anthem that celebrates lesbian sexuality and gender nonconformity – while daring the world to try and prove what happens behind closed doors. Rainey, who wrote the lyrics, openly declares her preference for women, wearing male-coded clothing, and behaving in male-coded ways.
“Went out last night, had a great big fight, Everything seemed to go on wrong. I looked up, to my surprise, The gal I was with was gone.
Where she went, I don’t know, I mean to follow everywhere she goes. Folks said I’m crooked, I didn’t know where she took it, I want the whole world to know.
They say I do it, ain’t nobody caught me, Sure got to prove it on me. Went out last night with a crowd of my friends, They must’ve been women, ’cause I don’t like no men.
It’s true I wear a collar and a tie, Make the wind blow all the while. They say I do it, ain’t nobody caught me, They sure got to prove it on me.
Say I do it, ain’t nobody caught me, Sure got to prove it on me. I went out last night with a crowd of my friends, They must’ve been women, ’cause I don’t like no men.
Wear my clothes just like a fan, Talk to the gals just like any old man. ‘Cause they say I do it, ain’t nobody caught me, Sure got to prove it on me.”
The song had some direct biographical inspiration from an incident in 1925 when Rainey was drinking with a group of young women. “They made so much noise that a neighbor summoned the police. The impromptu party was getting intimate, and as bad luck would have it, the law showed up just as everyone began to let their hair down” [Albertson, p. 116]. Rainey was arrested and spent the night in jail. Bessie Smith bailed her out the next morning.
The advertisement in the Chicago Defender promoting this record shows Rainey wearing a collared shirt, tie, vest, suit jacket, and fedora. She openly flirts with two lithe young ladies while a police officer espies the situation from across the street. The ad states: “What’s all this? Scandal? Maybe so, but you wouldn’t have thought it of ‘Ma’ Rainey – But look at that cop watching her! What does it all mean?”
In her book “Blues Legacies and Black Feminism”, Angela Davis writes: “The blues women openly challenged the gender politics implicit in traditional cultural representations of marriage and heterosexual love relationships. Refusing, in the blues tradition of raw realism, to romanticize romantic relationships, they instead exposed the stereotypes and explored the contradictions of those relationships. By doing so, they redefined women’s ‘place.’ They forged and memorialized images of tough, resilient, and independent women who were afraid neither of their own vulnerability nor of defending their right to be respected as autonomous human beings.”
Though this disc has been a holy grail of mine ever since I first heard it, the original Paramount release is quite rare, and the few copies I’ve seen available at auction often go for several hundreds of dollars.
Luckily, I do have this bootleg reissue on the Ristic label was made by the young jazz musician and audio engineer John R. T. Davies sometime around 1949-50. He released an edition of 100 copies – and as you can see from the label, I have #57.
I’m so thankful for the beautiful, authentic, and empowered black women of the 78 rpm era!
Happy Pride Month! 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️
Recorded in Chicago, Illinois on Tuesday, June 12, 1928. Originally released as Paramount 12668. This U.K. unofficial reissue dub was released as Ristic 6.
Credits: Ma Rainey – vocals Carl Reid – jug Georgia Tom Dorsey – piano Martell Pettiford – banjo Herman Brown – kazoo, washboard, tub drum
Sources: Mother of the Blues: A Study of Ma Rainey, Sandra R. Lieb, University of Massachusetts Press, 1981 Blues Legacies and Black Feminism, Angela Y. Davis, Pantheon Books, 1998 Bessie, Chris Albertson, Yale University Press, 2003 Blues & Gospel Records 1890-1943, Robert M. W. Dixon, John Godrich, and Howard Rye, 4th Ed., Clarendon Press Oxford, 1997
In celebration of Pride month 🏳️🌈 all of my posts this month will feature the music of LGBTQ+ artists of the 78 rpm era!
Of all the tunes Billy Strayhorn wrote for Duke Ellington’s Orchestra, “Take the A Train” – while a more straightforward swing number that was atypical of Strayhorn’s usual style – stands out as a shining example as his most successful composition. The proto-bop intro riff and Ray Nance’s trumpet solo at 0:51 are real highlights.
“Take the A Train” was adopted by Ellington as the signature tune of his orchestra, who literally played it “virtually every day for decades.” Scholars have counted over 1100 recorded performances by the Ellington band alone. “To the general audience the piece became virtually synonymous with Duke Ellington.”
It is worth discussing the importance of Duke as an true ally to Strayhorn. I’ll quote from a long passage in Lush Life to illustrate this:
“Famously egalitarian, Ellington accepted Strayhorn’s homosexuality much as he had long embraced gifted musicians regardless of their backgrounds or idiosyncrasies. ‘Pop never cared one bit that Strayhorn was gay,’ said Mercer Ellington. ‘He was never prejudiced against anybody he thought was really worthy… Pop knew the story. He backed up Strayhorn all the way.’”
“Another gay musician who was a close friend of Strayhorn’s evoked the virtue of Ellington’s patronage empathetically. ‘For those of us who were both black and homosexual in that time, acceptance was of paramount importance, absolutely paramount importance. Duke Ellington afforded Billy Strayhorn that acceptance. That was something that cannot be undervalued or under-appreciated. To Billy, that was gold.’”
“The most amazing thing of all about Billy Strayhorn to me was that he had the strength to make an extraordinary decision – that is, the decision not to hide the fact that he was homosexual. And he did this in the 1940s, when nobody but nobody did that… He wasn’t afraid. We were. And you know what the difference between us was? Duke Ellington.”’ [Lush Life, p. 79]
In Duke Ellington’s on words, Strayhorn was “the biggest human being who ever lived, a man with the greatest courage, the most majestic artistic stature, a highly skilled musician whose impeccable taste commanded the respect of all musicians and the admiration of all listeners… He was a beautiful human being, adored by a wide range of friends, rich, poor, famous, and unknown.”
Happy Pride! 🏳️🌈 🏳️⚧️
Recorded in Hollywood, California on February 15, 1941. Released as Victor 27380.
Credits: Duke Ellington – piano, director Billy Strayhorn – arranger Wardell Jones, Ray Nance – trumpet Rex Stewart – cornet Joe Nanton, Lawrence Brown – trombone Juan Tizol – valve trombone Barney Bigard – clarinet Johnny Hodges – clarinet, soprano sax, alto sax Harry Carney – alto sax, bass sax Ben Webster – tenor sax Fred Guy – guitar Jimmy Blanton – string bass Sonny Greer – drums
Sources: Lush Life Something to Live For: The Music of Billy Strayhorn, Walter van de Leur, Oxford University Press, 2002 Jazz and Ragtime Records (1897-1942), Brian Rust, 6th Ed. Homophobia in Jazz – JazzTimes – https://www.jazztimes.com/features/profiles/homophobia-in-jazz/
In celebration of Pride month 🏳️🌈 all of my posts this month will feature the music of LGBTQ+ artists of the 78 rpm era! Today, we continue our showcase on composer and pianist Billy Strayhorn.
Chelsea Bridge is a composition inspired by the impressionistic paintings of James McNeill Whistler. Take a look at a Whistler painting such as “Nocturne in Black and Gold, the Falling Rocket” or perhaps more relevantly, “Nocturne: Blue and Gold – Old Battersea Bridge” to get an idea of the aesthetic spirit from which Strayhorn developed his stylistic motifs.
Chelsea Bridge has often been framed as classical in approach – most commonly compared with the work of French composer Claude Debussy. It stands out as something very different from the typical Ellington sound, though Ellington himself had been experimenting with a new styles of jazz composition influenced by modernistic classical music in works from the 1930s such as Mood Indigo or Reminiscing in Tempo.
While bebop would dominate jazz in the year’s after the war, the effect of Strayhorn’s work would go on to have a huge effect on the upcoming next generation of jazz artists who rose to prominence in the 50s and 60s.
Gerry Mulligan wrote, “When Strayhorn came on the scene, he just blew us away, because he was doing very complicated, sophisticated things, and they didn’t sound complicated to the ear at all – they sounded completely natural and very emotional. To bring all that complexity to bear and have it be so beautiful was something incredible to everybody who knew anything.”
Composer and arranger Gil Evans – who famously collaborated with Miles Davis on such exquisite records as Miles Ahead and Sketches of Spain wrote: “From the moment I first heard ‘Chelsea Bridge,’ I set out to try to do that. That’s all I did – that’s all I ever did – try to do what Billy Strayhorn did.”
The moody and melodic tones of Chelsea Bridge suggest a contemplative state of impressionistic moments. Childhood friend Mickey Scrima offered his explanation of what was called the Strayhorn Sound: “The guy went through a lot of shit in his life, from his father right on through school – the kids calling him a sissy, you know. He kept it all in and put on a big front that everything was fine, nothing bothered him. Then he sat down and wrote all that music with all that emotion. All his feelings came out in the music. That’s what made his stuff so incredible and different from Duke’s. It was great music, like Duke’s was, and it was so full of dark feelings.”
As Duke Ellington wrote in 1967 after Strayhorn’s passing: “God Bless Billy Strayhorn.”
Happy Pride! 🏳️🌈 🏳️⚧️
Recorded in Hollywood, California on December 2, 1941. Released as Victor 27740.
Credits: Duke Ellington – piano, director Billy Strayhorn – arranger Wardell Jones, Ray Nance – trumpet Rex Stewart – cornet Joe Nanton, Lawrence Brown – trombone Juan Tizol – valve trombone Barney Bigard – clarinet Johnny Hodges – clarinet, soprano sax, alto sax Harry Carney – alto sax, bass sax Ben Webster – tenor sax Fred Guy – guitar Junior Raglin – string bass Sonny Greer – drums
Sources: Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn, David Hajou, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1996 Something to Live For: The Music of Billy Strayhorn, Walter van de Leur, Oxford University Press, 2002 Jazz and Ragtime Records (1897-1942), Brian Rust, 6th Ed.
In celebration of Pride month 🏳️🌈 all of my posts this month will feature the music of LGBTQ+ artists of the 78 rpm era!
Today we’ll continue with our focus on Billy Strayhorn – with his arrangement of Flamingo, a song written by Romanian-born Ted Grouya, who brought the song to Ellington via Herb Jeffries and Billy Strayhorn, who arranged the song after Ellington heard. him playing it.
The arrangement he came up with is considered a breakthrough revelation. composer John Lewis said that Flamingo “had nothing to do with what had gone on in jazz at all before. It sounded as if Stravinsky were a jazz musician.” and Ellington himself called Flamingo “A turning point in vocal background orchestration, a renaissance in elaborate ornamentation for the accompaniment of singers.”
Compositionally, what Strayhorn has achieved is beyond my capacity to articulate – but Walter van de Leur does a fine job describing its innovations – involving compmlex modulations between keys to create “tonal detachment,” along with the vocalist’s participation in that modulation at one point.
The record was also a hit for the Ellington band and a boon to the career of vocalist Herb Jeffries, who made it his theme song and later named a nightclub in Florida “The Flamingo Club” after the song.
Happy Pride! 🏳️🌈 🏳️⚧️
Recorded in Chicago, Illinois on December 28, 1940. Released as Victor 27326.
Credits: Duke Ellington – piano, director Billy Strayhorn – arranger Wardell Jones, Ray Nance – trumpet Rex Stewart – cornet Joe Nanton, Lawrence Brown – trombone Juan Tizol – valve trombone Barney Bigard – clarinet Johnny Hodges – clarinet, soprano sax, alto sax Harry Carney – alto sax, bass sax Ben Webster – tenor sax Fred Guy – guitar Jimmy Blanton – string bass Sonny Greer – drums
Sources: Something to Live For: The Music of Billy Strayhorn, Walter van de Leur, Oxford University Press, 2002 Jazz and Ragtime Records (1897-1942), Brian Rust, 6th Ed.
In celebration of Pride month 🏳️🌈 all of my posts this month will feature the music of LGBTQ+ artists of the 78 rpm era!
Starting us off with week two of our Pride month celebration, we introduce the work of composer and arranger Billy Strayhorn.
William “Billy” Strayhorn was born in Ohio in 1915 to working class parents and grew up in Pittsburgh. Encouraged by his grandmother, a church organist, he saved his money working at a drug store to buy a used piano and began taking piano lessons in the classical tradition. He was a fast learner and wrote his first composition, Concerto for Piano and Percussion, in 1934.
That same year, he saw the Duke Ellington orchestra perform in Pittsburgh and became fixated on a particular chord played during one of their numbers. He soon became enamored with jazz and began composing and arranging tunes in a small jazz combo. He wrote timeworn jazz classics like “Lush Life” when he was barely 21.
His fortunes changed after meeting Duke Ellington in 1938 during an engagement at the Stanley Theatre in Pittsburgh. Strayhorn was still working as a soda jerk at a drug store at the time. Strayhorn played a few of his original tunes and before you know it, Ellington was giving him arrangement assignments.
For the next twenty five years, Strayhorn would work with Ellington as an arranger while also collaborating with the Duke on works and composing his own pieces. Ellington said of Strayhorn: “Billy Strayhorn was my right arm, my left arm, all the eyes in the back of my head, my brain waves in his head, and his in mine.”
Here we find Strayhorn’s vibrant arrangement of the melancholic “Chlo-e (Song of the Swamp)” an old show tune from the late 20s revived in 1937 with new interpretations by Benny Goodman and Art Tatum, among others.
What is most striking about this arrangement is how elegantly Strayhorn had internalized the sound of the Ellington band.
“On first hearing, the piece sounds like a genuine Ellington arrangement, with Joe Nanton’s ‘jungle style’ talking trombone and Blanton’s bass breaks mirroring the earlier Jack the Bear… to the careful listener the overall structure of the score by means of an imitated melody fragment, followed by another caesura-less modulation to Bb after the tenor solo, and the short but integrated coda that rounded out the piece, were not Ellingtonian.”
While here we hear subtle glimpses of Strayhorn’s arrangement prowess and musical sensibility, it would not be long before his musical vision would more fully reveal itself with original compositions, including one of the most popular jazz standards in history.
Happy Pride! 🏳️🌈 🏳️⚧️
Recorded in Chicago, Illinois on October 28, 1940. Released as Victor 27235.
Credits: Duke Ellington – piano, director Billy Strayhorn – arranger Wardell Jones, Cootie Williams – trumpet Rex Stewart – cornet Joe Nanton, Lawrence Brown – trombone Juan Tizol – valve trombone Barney Bigard – clarinet Johnny Hodges – clarinet, soprano sax, alto sax Harry Carney – alto sax, bass sax Ben Webster – tenor sax Fred Guy – guitar Jimmy Blanton – string bass Sonny Greer – drums
Sources: “Something to Live For: The Music of Billy Strayhorn”, Walter Van De Leur, Oxford University Press, 2002 “Music Is My Mistress”, Duke Ellington, Doubleday, 1973
