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
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
In celebration of Pride month 🏳️🌈 all of my posts this month will feature the music of LGBTQ+ artists of the 78 rpm era!
I mentioned in my last post that the amazing Gladys Bentley recorded her four sides for Okeh records in 1928-29 – well before her peak as a performer in the 1930s, for which no recordings exist. This was due to her notoriously ribald lyrics that were considered “indecent” and “perverse” by some at the time – along with her penchant to “send up” popular songs in parody, running afoul of copyright protections.
However – one recording from the 1930s does exist – a 1930 session in which Bentley scatted to a washboard jazz band backing led by Harold Randolph and Bruce Johnson which also featured an early appearance of guitarist Teddy Bunn, who had started his recording career with Duke Ellington and Jimmie Johnson in 1929.
This tune finds Bentley in an exuberant state – showing off her scatting abilities right off the bat at 0:06 and again at 2:15. The driving frenetic rhythms of the band keep things in high spirits throughout and a splendid time is had by all.
Bentley actually performed with the Washboard Serenaders at the Harlem Opera House in the 1930s – where she often was featured as the headliner. Bentley became a celebrated fixture of the Harlem community, performing at many popular Harlem clubs, including the Clam House, the King’s Terrace, the Ubangi Club, and even the Apollo Theatre.
“Gladys Bentley is grand. I heard her three nights, and will never be the same.” – Eslanda Robeson
“For two or three amazing years, Miss Bentley sat, and played a piano all night long, literally all night, without stopping – singing songs like ‘St. James Infirmary’ from ten in the evening until dawn, with scarcely a break between the notes, sliding from one song to another, with a powerful and continuous underbeat of jungle rhythm.” – Langston Hughes
“When Gladys sings ‘St. James Infirmary,’ it makes you weep your heart out.” – Harold Jackman
While these unrecorded performances of the 1930s can only be imagined, this record at least gives us a brief glimpse of Bentley in true form: a commanding performer unapologetically herself.
Indeed, her celebrity and reputation as a performer gave her the confidence to express her sexuality and gender in very public ways. “She could be seen any day marching down Seventh Avenue attired in men’s clothes and she seemed to thrive on the fact that her odd habits was the subject of much tongue wagging.” – Wilbur Young, 1939
Thank you, Gladys Bentley for courageously being yourself!
Happy Pride!! 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️
Recorded in New York City on March 24, 1930. Originally released in the U.S. as Victor V-38127. Released in the U.K. as His Master’s Voice B.6114
Credits: Gladys Bentley – vocals Harold Randolph – kazoo Clarence Profit – piano Teddy Bunn – guitar Bruce Johnson – washboard, vocals
Sources: Jazz and Ragtime Records (1897-1942), Brian Rust, 6th Ed “In My Well of Loneliness: Gladys Bentley’s Bulldykin’ Blues” from Bulldaggers, Pansies, and Chocolate Babies: Performance, Race, and Sexuality in the Harlem Renaissance, James F. Wilson, University of Michigan Press, 2010 [By the way – EXCELLENT book – highly recommended!]
In celebration of Pride month 🏳️🌈 all of my posts this month will feature the music of LGBTQ+ artists of the 78 rpm era!
One of my favorite artists of the Harlem renaissance is Gladys Bentley – a wildly popular black lesbian who performed in men’s clothing and sang cleverly worded risqué songs that scandalized and enthralled listeners.
Unfortunately for us, only a small part of her career found her actively recording her music. This disc was one of four that Bentley recorded for Okeh in 1928-1929. During the height of her career in the 1930s – when she was at her most transgressive – no recordings exist.
Here, we find Bentley singing about a male partner who is stingy with money and love.
“He don’t buy no clothes – he don’t keep his laundry clean. He’s short on his lovin’ – stingiest man I ever seen!”
Though singing about a heteronormative relationship, Bentley positions herself as the breadwinner who financially supports and puts up with her man’s insistence on “red beans and rice” though she yearns for chicken. She undermines the power of the heteronormative relationship by enumerating the many unsatisfying aspects of it and further hinting at her own unspoken desires.
Recorded in New York City on March 26, 1929. Released as Okeh 8707.
Credits: Gladys Bentley – vocals J. C. Johnson – piano
Sources: Jazz and Ragtime Records (1897-1942), Brian Rust, 6th Ed “In My Well of Loneliness: Gladys Bentley’s Bulldykin’ Blues” from Bulldaggers, Pansies, and Chocolate Babies: Performance, Race, and Sexuality in the Harlem Renaissance, James F. Wilson, University of Michigan Press, 2010
I love all the Benny Goodman small combo sessions in the late 30s – early 40s – the trios, the quartets, the sextets… Goodman always chose stellar collaborators.
I read somewhere that the jazz standard “Moon Glow” has been recorded hundreds of times since it was written in 1933. This is one of my favorite versions.
Enjoy!
Recorded in Hollywood, California on August 21, 1936. Released as Victor 25398.
Credits: Benny Goodman – clarinet Teddy Wilson – piano Lionel Hampton – vibes Gene Krupa – drums
