Parker, an alto saxophonist,
had been a heroin addict since he was a teenager in Kansas City and
was unreliable, which is why he was not recorded on Keynote by Harry
Lim, who admired him. Lim?s operation was based on efficient use of
studio time, and Parker might not show up; he had been fired by Harlan
Leonard and went in and out of Jay McShann?s band. In 1978 James Lincoln
Collier, in his otherwise unremarkable history of jazz
The Making
of Jazz
(1978), speculated that the reason Parker died young, while
Gillespie lived twice as long, was that Parker had less character. This
is ridiculous. Gillespie and Parker were both black, both the same age,
both from poor families and both brilliant musicians, but Gillespie?s
stern, loving father lived until Dizzy was ten years old, while Parker
was spoiled by his mother, and his father, like many other African-Americans,
had to be a travelling man, for practical purposes no father at all.
The importance of the presence of both parents in the family has been
too well established to be thrown away so easily.
As for Gillespie, he had
not acquired his nickname for nothing. He was fired from Calloway?s
band for throwing a spitball, and had been guilty of too many pranks
to be believed when he professed his innocence (though it seems to have
been Jonah Jones who was guilty); afterwards he nicked Calloway with
the knife he carried at the time. A good marriage no doubt helped Gillespie
to survive, and what made this possible, again, was his earlier experience
of a stable family life.
Parker tried to play in
Kansas City clubs as a teenager, but was not ready. Having been treated
with derision, he went away and practised until he could modulate from
any key to any other key, perhaps, it has been suggested, because he
did not know that he did not need to know that much to play in a band.
He was nicknamed Bird after Yardbird, meaning chicken, one of his favourite
foods. (Dizzy called him Yard.) On his first visit to New York in 1939
he washed dishes in a club while Art Tatum was playing out front; soon
after, while playing ?Cherokee? at a gig, he began to improvise on the
higher intervals of the chords, instead of the lower. This required
new harmonic resolutions, and was in effect a new tune: he was playing
the music he had already heard in his head.
Parker recorded with McShann?s
band in 1940-41. He played tenor in the Earl Hines band, which also
included Gillespie and Billy Eckstine, for decades one of America?s
favourite vocalists. Eckstine left to form his own band, with Parker,
Gillespie and Sarah Vaughan. Again, there were no studio sets by these
epochal outfits, but recordings made in a hotel room in 1943 captured
Parker on tenor and Gillespie and Eckstine on trumpets, just as the
new music was being born.
Dan Morgenstern, in his
notes for the complete Commodore recordings, describes one of the recording
sessions as ?prototypical mature swing at its finest hour- just before
bebop would change things forever?. He is referring to a 1944 date led
by drummer Big Sid Catlett, with John Simmons on bass, Ben Webster on
tenor saxophone and the interesting Marlowe Morris on piano; any of
these men could have played with anybody at the time. Morgenstern is,
of course, quite correct; all the same, the changes were already in
the air (even at Commodore, which recorded a good deal of what most
people thought was dixieland, though it was essentially the Chicago
style of the Austin High School Gang). It is easy to make too much of
a distinction between ?modern jazz? and the Swing Era, as though we
still have a hangover of the awful and ridiculous war of words that
went on at the time between the ?mouldy figs? (those who thought that
the original New Orleans style, and its Chicago offshoot, were the only
true Jazz) and the beboppers. The evolution was under way.
The Benny Goodman Sextet
sides of 1939-40 (with Christian) already show a tightness and a forward
energy, and Georgie Auld on tenor saxophone an insouciance, which was
a portent. The Flip Phillips sessions recorded in 1944-by Bob Thiele,
using sidemen from Woody Herman?s band, were an example of music which
is already modern, in comparison with any similar session of only a
few years earlier, in the smoothness of the rhythm section, the stylishness
of the riffs and other essential features. But it is true that it was
in 1943-4 that the most dramatic turning point seems to have been reached,
by the young black musicians who were ready to take things another step
further- at precisely the time when the music was not being recorded.
The new music came to be
called bop, short for bebop or rebop, onomatopoeic in origin from the
music itself. The musicians used altered chords and wider intervals,
and insisted on choosing a wider range of notes, a process that had
been going on in classical music for centuries. Syncopation seemed to
disappear altogether in the new, smoother rhythm section, but there
were new accents within bars and even between notes, together with phrases
of unusual lengths, so that even the rhythmic nature of jazz changed:
an intense and technically brilliant music was created, full of pride,
sardonic wit and fierce joy. The scene was accompanied by attitudes
and language incomprehensible to outsiders; some of this had been pioneered
by Lester Young, an influence in more ways than one, but the zany wit
of Gillespie was also important.
Tempos were often furiously
fast or very slow, but even when the tempo was slow the soloist might
play fast, using what sounded to the swing fan like machine-gun runs
of semiquavers. At the time the big bands were playing fewer tunes for
dancers, and bop was not for dancers either. (Gillespie protested that
he could dance to bop, and we do not doubt it, but most people did not.)
All the independent record
labels of the early years of the industry - Paramount, Gennett, Okeh
and Black Swan, for instance - had long since disappeared or been swallowed
up. The 1940s was the second era (and not the last) in which independent
labels were formed to serve an industry whose largest companies were
geared towards serving the majority. It is remarkable that so many record
labels were formed during the war.
Capitol, the first major
label to be located on the West Coast, was formed in 1942 by record
retailer Glenn Wallach and songwriters Buddy DeSylva and Johnny Mercer.
That year it had a hit with ?Cow Cow Boogie?, by Freddie Slack and his
band and with a vocal by Ella Mae Morse. (Pianist and vocalist Cow Cow
Davenport eventually got some money for his tune.) Capitol quickly became
the most innovative company in the industry. The sound of the recordings
made in Hollywood in 1945 by Coleman Hawkins, for example, was outstanding
for the period; Capitol was the first to record everything on tape,
the first to give free records to disc jockeys (not an unmixed blessing,
in retrospect) and later the first to issue records at all three speeds.
Even more impressive was
the number of labels formed expressly to serve the black community.
Apollo was formed in the same year as Capitol in Harlem by Ike and Bess
Berman to record black gospel music, and soon diversified into jazz
and rhythm and blues. (John Chilton, however, writes that Apollo was
formed by Teddy Gottlieb and Hi Siegel from their Rainbow Music Store.)
Savoy was formed in Newark, New Jersey, by Herman Lubinsky, another
record retailer. National was formed by A. B. Green in Manhattan in
1944, and its A&R director was Herb Abramson, later to be a co-founder
of Atlantic. Syd Nathan left the department store business to form King
in Cincinnati in 1945. DeLuxe was formed around 1944 in Linden, New
Jersey, by Jules Braun and his brothers; Fred Mendelsohn formed Regent
in 1947, Deluxe was sold to King and the Brauns and Mendelsohn formed
Regal in 1949. (Mendelsohn formed Herald in 1952, and ended up succeeding
Lubinska at Savoy.) On the West Coast, Specialty was formed in 1944
by Art Rupe, Black and White in 1945 by Paul and Lillian Reiner, Modern
by Jules and Saul Bihari (soon to include subsidiaries Kent, Crown and
Flair). At about the same time Leo, Edward and Ida Mesner formed Philo,
which changed its name to Aladdin in 1946.
Evelyn
and Charles Aron formed
Aristocrat
in Chicago in 1947, joined by tavern owner Leonard Chess, who bought
them out in 1948 and changed the name to Chess in 1950.
Mercury had been formed
in Chicago in 1945-6, and ten years later it had the first rhythm and
blues hit to reach number one on the national pop chart: ?The Great
Pretender? by the Platters. Don Robey formed Peacock in Houston, Texas,
in 1949, which was perhaps the first black-owned label since Black Swan,
and more ?indie? labels followed in the early 1950s. But another remarkable
thing about the independent labels listed in the last paragraph is that
they were all formed by Jews, who in those days did not find it easy
to make their way in mainstream business in the USA. (It was in 1947
that Laura Z. Hobson?s best-selling novel about genteel American anti-semitism,
Gentleman?s Agreement
, was filmed; unfortunately it was a dull
movie.) The Jews who formed the classic indies in the 1940s lived and
worked in black neighbourhoods, and knew and understood the music better
than anyone at a larger company could (with the possible exception of
Jack Kapp at Decca, who recorded much minority music). If they had not
taken the risks and done the work, the Lester Youngs on Aladdin and
other priceless jazz, to say nothing of scores of wonderful rhythm and
blues hits, would not exist. And these independents were the first to
record bop.
Hawkins encouraged the
boppers, employing them on recordings. Jazz historians have decided
that the first bop recordings were made at a Hawkins session in February
1944 for Apollo, by a twelve-piece group which included Max Roach on
drums, Oscar Pettiford on bass and Dizzy Gillespie in the trumpet section,
as well as Don Byas in the reeds. (One of the most interesting transitional
figures, who was at home in any decade?s style, Byas spent his later
life in Europe.) At a quartet date on another label in October Hawkins
used Thelonious Monk; it was Monk?s first recording session. A year
later, on Savoy, Parker made his first recordings as a leader, with
Miles Davis and Gillespie on trumpet (Gillespie played piano on some
tracks), Roach on drums and Curley Russell on bass. The cats were well
and truly out of the bag.
Cab Calloway called it
?Chinese music?. Boppers often flattened the fifth note of a chord,
inventing short routes between keys; Eddie Condon said, ?We don?t flatten
our fifths, we drink ?em.? But Stravinsky had used flattened fifths
in 1910, and Earl Hines, Bubber Miley and others in the 1920s. Bop was
very obviously a black music, and the USA was not ready for black pride
just yet. There were white boppers in black combos, for example trumpeter
Red Rodney and pianists Al Haig, George Wallington and Joe Albany; but
pressure on leaders to practise Crow Jim (the reverse of American racism,
dubbed ?Jim Crow? from the early minstrel act) soon sent them into obscurity.
(Some made comebacks as bop became repertory music in the 1970s.) It
is said that bop left jazz in a shambles, but that is nonsense: the
jazz content of pop music was decreasing anyway, and bop was not a revolution,
but a further flowering of an art form already decades old, leading
towards the emancipation of black music from ballrooms and taverns by
making demands on the listeners. Bop was a natural musical evolution,
though there must also have been a feeling on the part of the young
players that they were taking their music back.
Bop was great fun for anyone
prepared to listen, and the records are still selling today. The music
business, however, mishandled it. The sudden success of Benny Goodman,
then Tommy Dorsey and the others had come as a surprise to the industry
in the mid-1930s, but those leaders were already insiders and good businessmen.
The boppers were musicians (mostly black) who needed the patronage of
the American music business, from the major labels to the disc jockeys,
and they did not get it. The major label that recorded the most bop
was young and feisty Capitol (run by musicians). Gillespie formed the
Dee-Gee label in 1951 and went broke, but the recordings he made hold
up better than most of the pop music of the period. The music business
(including broadcasters) co-opts and tries to control (or ignore) whatever
it does not understand, as it did with rock?n?roll ten years later.
The first frenetic flowering
of bop was temporary; the ?hot modern? music soon began to cool off,
leading to several styles - modern jazz, cool jazz, hard bop and so
on - as the classic New Orleans style had immediately begun to evolve
two generations earlier. In the meantime black popular music already
had two tributaries. If bop can be seen as the art music of the black
American audience of, say, 1949, in that year the name for its pop music
was officially changed: Jerry Wexler, then a reporter at
Billboard
,
convinced them to change the name of the ?Race Records? charts to ?Rhythm
and Blues?.
For the black audience
there was so much new music to listen to that the ferment crossed over
to some extent. Some of Lionel Hampton?s big-band hits, with their strong
backbeat, were not far removed from the R&B hits of later years,
and in 1946 ?Hey! Ba-ba-re-bop? parleyed its bop-derived nonsense lyrics
to the number one spot on the black chart for sixteen weeks. Helen Humes
(whose beautiful ballad with Basie a half-dozen years before had been
?Blame It On My Last Affair?) had a big hit in 1945 with ?Be Baba Leba?
on the new Philo label, backed by a Bill Doggett octet, and followed
up in 1950 with the salacious ?Million Dollar Secret?, which was recorded
live with drummer Roy Milton?s band in August. In November of that year
she was backed in her live act by another jump band led by Dexter Gordon.
A jump band was a small group that combined the beat and the drive of
the big jazz band with the repetitious chorus associated with the blues,
in effect making something new out of the Swing Era?s predilection for
riffs. Herb Morand was the trumpeter and manager of the Harlem Hamfats,
one of the first jump bands, which began recording in Chicago in 1936;
a ?hamfat? was a musician newly arrived from the South who used fat
to grease the valves in his horn, and such a group purposely retained
the flavour of the South in their sound.
Far more successful than
the Hamfats was Louis Jordan, who had worked in Chick Webb?s band, occasionally
singing as well as playing alto saxophone. In 1938 he formed his Tympany
Five (actually larger than a quintet); his showmanship brought him to
the fore, and he had nearly fifty top ten hits in the black charts in
less than ten years, about twenty of which crossed over to the heretofore
lily-white pop chart. ?Caldonia? was covered by Woody Herman in 1945
(and his ?Inflation Blues? by B. B. King in 1983); his version of Jack
McVea?s novelty ?Open the Door, Richard? (1947) was one of the most
popular. His skill as a leader and his innovative vocal style not only
made wonderful good-time music, but also may be seen in retrospect as
an early example of a new black consciousness. The attitudes expressed
in his vocals on many titles, such as ?That Chick?s Too Young To Fry?,
?Jack, You?re Dead?, ?I Know What You?re Puttin? Down? and ?Ain?t Nobody
Here But Us Chickens?, were redolent of a southern heritage, as well
as of the rich humour and
joi de vivre
of the increasingly large
urban black population.
Joe Liggins was a pianist,
vocalist and bandleader whose goal was to create a big-band sound with
a smaller combo; his own ?The Honeydripper? was number one for eighteen
weeks in the black chart in 1945, and was followed by a string of hits
up to 1951; his younger brother, guitarist Jimmy, was also in the charts
from 1948. Lucky Millinder?s band shrank until by the early 1950s it
was essentially a jump band. Drummer and pianist Tiny Bradshaw had formed
his own band in 1934, and finally had chart success from 1950 to 1953;
among Bradshaw?s tenor saxophones were Red Prysock and Sil Austin. The
saxophone was the most important sound in the jump band era, and has
retained an important role in R&B and rock?n?roll to this day.
Guitarist, vocalist and
composer of novelty hits Slim Gaillard wrote ?Flat Foot Floogie?, which
was a hit in 1938 for Slim and Slam, Gaillard?s duo with bass player
Slam Stewart; several cover versions were also hits, notably that of
Benny Goodman. Gaillard was a success in clubs on the West Coast during
and after the war, and claimed years later that one of his fans had
been film star Ronald Reagan; having invented a hip ?vout oreenie? language,
he compiled a dictionary of it. In 1945 he recorded ?Floogie? again
in Hollywood, with a small group including Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie
and tenor saxophonist Jack McVea. One of the other tracks was a bit
of laid-back jive called ?Slim?s Jam?: the men come in one at a time;
Gillespie is in a hurry to get to another session; Parker borrows a
reed from McVea, who knocks on the door as he enters, saying, ?Open
the door, Richard!?
This was a reference to
a comedy routine by Dusty Fletcher, one of the biggest stars in black
variety: the comic arrives home late and somewhat the worse for wear
and finds himself without a key; he cannot raise Richard, his flatmate,
to open the door, because Richard is busy doing something he is loath
to interrupt. McVea subsequently composed a riff and turned ?Open the
Door, Richard!? into a jump band set-piece which swept the USA in seven
hit versions in 1947, among them those of Basie, Jordan, Fletcher and
McVea. The novelty became so obsessive that a radio station in New York
finally banned the tune, as well as the DJs? Richard jokes.
Most of the small-group
sessions recorded in the 1940s seem to have been saxophone-led, and
the music is extraordinarily rich: there was a spectrum from pure jazz
at one end to good-time exhibitionism at the other. The ?swingtets?
from Blue Note, led by Ike Quebec and John Hardee, were beautiful tracks
aimed at jukeboxes, as were Bob Thiele?s Signature discs.
Earl Bostic played alto
saxophone; his compositions for big bands include Gene Krupa?s 1941
hit ?Let Me Off Uptown? and he then had his own success in the late
1940s and early 1950s. Bostic had recorded some superb solos as a sideman
at Commodore in 1945. He was also highly regarded as a technician and,
in fact, had the reputation of sacrificing tone for technique. (Art
Blakey later remarked that if John Coltrane had worked for Bostic, he
must have learned a great deal: ?Nobody knew more about the saxophone
than Bostic ... and that includes Bird.?) Bostic was among the first
to employ Coltrane, as well as Benny Golson and Stanley Turrentine,
and later wrote albums for Ella Fitzgerald and others.
Big Jay McNeely was the
foremost practitioner of the acrobatic, honking R&B saxophone; his
biggest hit was ?Deacon?s Hop? in 1949, but he remained a legend in
clubs well into the 1980s. Illinois Jacquet began with Lionel Hampton?s
big band, but recorded with his ?Black Velvet? combo for RCA; his main
success was ?Port of Rico? on Mercury in 1952 (with Count Basie on organ).
Arnett Cobb was another Texas tenor saxophonist whose ability to please
a crowd obscured his excellent ballad playing. Johnny Hodges, who never
honked, left Duke Ellington in 1951 and for five years led his own smaller
group. His was certainly a jazz-oriented band, but his ?Castle Rock?
was a hit in 1951, a good year for alto saxophones: Bostic?s ?Flamingo?
and Tab Smith?s ?Because of You? were also hits. Jimmy Forrest was an
underrated tenor saxophonist whose jump combo had a great success in
1952 with ?Night Train?, actually an Ellington riff, which then became
required learning for every embryo high-school rock band in the country.
The valedictory hit of
the jump band era came in 1956, in time to let a whole new generation
in on the secret: Bill Doggett?s ?Honky Tonk? was number one for thirteen
weeks in the black chart, and stuck at number two (for three weeks)
on the national pop chart. Doggett, born in 1916, had played piano in
many a big band when he formed a combo in 1952 and recorded this two-part
instrumental with Clifford Scott on tenor and Billy Butler on guitar.
Its inexorable rocking lope made it one of the biggest hits the King
label ever had.
Electric guitars and pure
blues became increasingly stronger in the commercial market. Composer,
bass player, guitarist, vocalist and ex-boxer Willie Dixon formed the
Five Breezes and recorded for Bluebird in 1940, then with the Four Jumps
of Jive on Mercury and the Big Three Trio on Columbia. He did not have
a hit of his own until 1955, but meanwhile became Leonard Chess?s right-hand
man in the studio, as Chicago developed a blues scene of extraordinary
power, headed by Muddy Waters, who brought the country blues to town.
Muddy?s first hit in the black chart was ?(I Feel Like) Going Home?
in 1948 on Aristocrat. John Lee ?Sonny Boy? Williamson, born in Tennessee,
paved the way for a whole generation of Chicago blues harmonica players
and had a high entry in the black chart with ?Shake the Boogie? in 1947,
the year before he was murdered. Guitarist and harmonica player Aleck
Ford (also known as Rice Miller) had already worked as Sonny Boy Williamson
in the early 1940s on the radio; now he adopted the name permanently,
and, apart from having hits of his own, played on Elmore James?s ?Dust
My Broom? (on the tiny Mississippi Trumpet label) in 1952, which represents
another direct link from the delta to the south side of Chicago. Chester
Burnette acquired the apt stage name of Howlin? Wolf; his hits in the
black chart began in 1951 with ?Moanin? at Midnight?. Riley ?Blues Boy?
King recorded for Nashville?s Bullet label in 1949; his ?Three O?Clock
Blues? was enormously popular in 1951.
Vocal groups were coming
up and inventing a whole new tradition of unaccompanied doo-wop, named
after the ?doo-wah? vocal device commonly used in backing harmony. As
their grandfathers had sung in barber-shops, so the young groups in
the post-war years sang on street corners to get the girls; they rehearsed
in hallways and alleys where they liked the echo, and they made uncounted
numbers of obscure records on obscure labels. There were bird groups
(the Crows, Penguins, Flamingoes) and car groups (the Cadillacs, the
Lincolns, the Coup De Villes, the V-eights); there were Velvetones in
New York and Chicago, the Vibranairs in Baltimore and the Vibranaires
in Asbury Park. The Ravens reached the black chart in 1948 with ?Write
Me a Letter? on National, the Robins in 1950 with ?If It?s So, Baby?
and the Dominoes, with Billy Ward and Clyde McPhatter, in 1951 with
?Sixty-minute Man?, which was number one in the black chart for fourteen
weeks. Italian-Americans also loved the tradition, and vocal groups
both black and white became ubiquitous.
All this was in addition
to solo singing, which ranged from beautiful barroom crooning to shouting
Kansas City blues: Ray Charles was in Seattle imitating Nat Cole in
the late 1940s; Kansas City?s singing bartender Big Joe Turner had his
first hit, ?My Gal?s a Jockey?, on National in 1946; pianist and vocalist
Amos Milburn?s long run of big R & B hits began in 1948. Pianist,
singer and songwriter Ivory Joe Hunter had his first hit in 1945 with
Johnny Moore?s Three Blazers. He was later backed on records by members
of Duke Ellington?s band, and his singing of his songs, for example,
?I Almost Lost My Mind? and ?Since I Met You Baby?, achieved such crossover
success that he was welcomed on the Grand Ole Opry before he died in
1974. Guitarist Johnny Moore?s trio had years of popularity from 1946,
with vocalist Charles Brown, who sang as a soloist on ?Get Yourself
Another Fool? on Aladdin in 1949 (and toured as far as Scotland in 1990).
Roy Brown?s ?Good Rockin? Tonight? appeared in 1948 on Deluxe, and Ruth
Brown?s ?So Long? in 1949 on Atlantic. Black pop retained its emphasis
on honest entertainment and could always be danced to, but white pop
was flying around in smaller and smaller circles until it almost disappeared.
During and after the war
much good music was still being played by big bands, among the best
being that of clarinettist and vocalist Woody Herman, who started in
show business at the age of six. He formed a band in 1933, but it failed.
He worked for Gus Arnheim and then Isham Jones; when Jones retired,
the band became a cooperative and each member owned shares. ?The Band
That Played the Blues? had an integrity of its own from 1937 on the
Decca label. ?At the Woodchopper?s Ball? was a hit, ?Blues in the Night?
was sung by Herman and the band?s theme, ?Blue Flame?, was named after
a locker-room prank involving the lighting of naturally produced methane
gas with a match.
As the original members
left the band, a process accelerated by conscription, Herman bought
their shares until he owned it. During the musicians? strike ?Woodchopper?s
Ball? was reissued and was again successful. Decca was one of the first
major labels to settle with the musicians? union, but of twenty-four
Herman titles recorded in 1944, only four were released. Meanwhile,
the band that began recording for Columbia was entirely transformed.
Bass player Chubby Jackson and pianist-arranger Ralph Burns had joined
in 1943 (both from Charlie Barnet), and Jackson helped recruit most
of the rest. Guitarist Billy Bauer had replaced the last remaining member
of the old band; other key members were drummer Dave Tough (soon replaced
by stand-in Buddy Rich, then Don Lamond), trumpeter/arranger Neal Hefti,
tenor saxophonist Flip Phillips, trumpeter Pete Candoli and trombonist
Bill Harris. Vocalist Frances Wayne?s hits with the band included ?Saturday
Night is the Loneliest Night of the Week? (on Decca), ?Happiness is
Just a Thing Called Joe? and ?Gee, It?s Good to Hold You? (Columbia);
Herman sang on the frenetic ?Caldonia?. But it was on the instrumentals
that this band romped, stomped, swung and screamed, without ever going
over the top: ?Apple Honey?, ?Northwest Passage?, ?The Good Earth?,
?Your Father?s Mustache?, ?Blowin? Up a Storm?, ?Sidewalks of Cuba?
and the more relaxed ?Goosey Gander? represented a new generation of
young white jazz musicians who had done all their homework and knew
how to share the joy with the listener. Burns?s ?Bijou (Rhumba a la
Jazz)? featured Harris, who wrote the beautiful ?Everywhere? (arranged
by Hefti). Margie Hyams played vibraphone, but was replaced by Red Norvo,
precipitating a new, modern edition of the Woodchoppers, the band within
a band: the nonet - which included Herman on alto as well as clarinet,
Jimmy Rowles on piano and the bright new trumpet star Sonny Berman -
recorded ?Steps?, ?Igor?, ?Four Men on a Horse? and similar unique soundscapes.
As early as mid-1944 Candoli?s sixteen-year-old brother Conte played
in the band during his summer holidays from high school. The band gave
a famous concert at Carnegie Hall in 1946.
Pianist Claude Thomhill
had arranged and recorded ?Loch Lomond? with vocalist Maxine Sullivan
in 1937; Thomhill?s theme was his own composition, the impressionistic
?Snowfall?. Among the musicians he hired were trumpeter Conrad Gozzo
(later one of the most sought-after studio musicians), Irving Favola
and Lee Konitz on reeds and trumpeter Red Rodney, a young bopper who
also recorded with Charlie Parker. In the 1940s Thornhill?s innovative
arrangements (many by the young Gil Evans) caught the ears of musicians
and they were influential for decades. The quirky ?Portrait of a Guinea
Farm? (1941) had a six-strong reed section; a choir of clarinets played
a tune that could have been a Russian dance by Rimsky-Korsakov. The
band?s hits in the late 1940s included ?A Sunday Kind of Love?, a good
pop song with a vocal by Fran Warren, who in 1947 also recorded a sung
version of ?Early Autumn? (written the year before by Ralph Burns as
one of the four parts of ?Summer Sequence? for Woody Herman). In the
same year the band recorded Parker?s ?Thrivin? on a Riff?, ?Donna Lee?,
?Yardbird Suite? and ?Robbins? Nest? (a tribute to a DJ which became
a sort of jazz classic, written by Sir Charles Thompson and Illinois
Jacquet), as well as experimenting with such fare as ?La Paloma? (a
Spanish song first published in the USA in 1877) and ?Warsaw Concerto?
(an effective British film theme by Richard Addinsell), and such standard
dance band material as ?Polka Dots and Moonbeams?. By this time Thornhill
was using two French horns, a tuba and occasionally a bass clarinet,
and also a crooning vocal group called the Snowflakes. Much post-war
jazz, especially of the ?cool school?, was influenced by Thornhill?s
willingness to experiment with textures and harmonies, all the while
running what the public thought was a successful sweet band.
Pianist, arranger and composer
Stan Kenton made his debut with his own band in 1941. He presented,
successively, three of the era?s best girl singers in Anita O?Day (?And
Her Tears Flowed Like Wine?, 1944), June Christy (?Tampico?, 1945) and,
in the early 1950s, Chris Connor; his sidemen in 1944 included Stan
Getz and in the late 1940s Kai Winding (trombone), Vido Musso (tenor
saxophone), Art Pepper and Bud Shank (alto saxophones), Maynard Ferguson
and Shorty Rogers (trumpets) and Shelly Manne (drums), and in the early
1950s Lee Konitz (alto saxophone): most of the best white musicians
in West Coast jazz. Apart from twenty or so pop hits, such instrumental
tracks as ?Eager Beaver? and a frenetic ?Peanut Vendor? were highly
rated. Kenton later turned to pretentious original music beloved of
high-school bandmasters, and was prone to futile disparaging remarks
about country music (?a national disgrace?) and the Beatles (?children?s
music?). In the 1940s his music was seen both as good pop and as good
jazz, and indeed, a compilation on four Mosaic CDs of the arrangements
of Bill Holman and Bill Russo (1951-63) revealed much beauty and fine
playing, an admonishment to those of us who may have given up on Kenton
too easily. But he insisted that his music be given parity with European
classical music, which led to Kenton?s most infamous album: Wagner played
by a huge jazz orchestra. Self-conscious art and commerce do not mix
well; Kenton was a good bandleader and talent scout, but not himself
a particularly inspired composer, arranger or pianist.
Saxophonist Boyd Raeburn
led a sweet band when he left college, but in New York in 1944 built
a band full of young boppers; he could not record during the strike
and henceforth recorded only for tiny labels. He became renowned for
hiring such modernists as Sonny Berman, Al Cohn, Oscar Pettiford, pianist
Dodo Marmarosa and clarinettist Buddy DeFranco. Dizzy Gillespie, Budd
Johnson and Tadd Dameron all wrote for the band.
And there were up-to-date
black big bands trying to play bop, though it is questionable whether
a big band can play bop at all, just as Luis Russell could not play
in the New Orleans style with a largish band twenty years earlier. Nevertheless,
Billy Eckstine had one of the biggest, deepest and smoothest voices
of all time, and with Budd Johnson had encouraged Earl Hines to hire
progressive young musicians; in 1944 he and Johnson formed a band which
until 1947 employed trumpeters Gillespie, Miles Davis, Fats Navarro
and Kenny Dorham; Parker, Gene Ammons, Dexter Gordon and Lucky Thompson
on reeds; and Art Blakey on drums. It played arrangements by Dameron,
Johnson and Eckstine, and featured vocalists Sarah Vaughan and Lena
Horne. The band made few recordings, and its only hits were vocals by
Eckstine, who sensibly made a career as a solo singer; his lovely work
for MGM includes duets with Vaughan.
Dizzy Gillespie, a composer
as well as the most influential trumpeter after Armstrong, an engaging
vocalist and a great showman, led exciting big bands between 1946 and
1949, recording for Musicraft, RCA and Capitol. If the line-up of sidemen
was not quite as stellar as that of the earlier Eckstine band, it was
more than adequate; among the reedmen alone at various times were Budd
Johnson, Cecil Payne, Jimmy Heath, John Coltrane, James Moody and Paul
Gonsalves. The arrangements by Johnson, John Lewis, Tadd Dameron, Gil
Fuller, George Russell and others were influential as well as interesting.
Cuban-born conga drummer and vocalist Chano Pozo, according to Gillespie,
could play in one rhythm, sing in another and dance in a third, all
at the same time. When they both worked for Cab Calloway, Gillespie
had shared lodgings with Cuban trumpeter Mario Bauza (later Machito?s
music director), who introduced him to Latin music; Afro-Cuban jazz
has been an enduring element to this day. Machito (Frank Raul Grillo)
led one of the most popular Latin bands, whose music was often jazz-flavoured,
and recorded with Parker, among others. Pozo was something of a roughneck,
and was shot to death in a Harlem bar, but he wrote ?Tin Tin Deo? with
Fuller and ?Manteca? and ?Cubana Be, Cubana Bop? with Gillespie and
Russell, and played on Gillespie?s recordings of the last two. In spite
of everything, however, the band was not a great commercial success.
And anyway, the big bands were about to disappear from mainstream popular
music.
As a result of the wartime
rationing of fuel, tyres and batteries, and the conversion of car factories
to war production, it was increasingly hard for the dancers to get to
the ballrooms and dance halls where the bands played. Furthermore, many
young people had other things on their minds, such as letters from the
local draft board. A stiff wartime entertainment tax made life more
difficult for ballroom operators and booking agents, and was not lifted
until well into the 1950s, long after most of the clubs and dance halls
had closed. Despite the popularity of the bands, and the image we all
have of Glenn Miller playing for large numbers of service men and women,
the primary purpose of going to war was not to entertain: there was
not that much work for musicians on the military bases, where many of
the dancers had gone. Even making recordings was difficult during the
war (when Petrillo was not trying to prevent it) because of a shortage
of the main ingredients of 78s. (Capitol signed a young, not-very-good
bandleader because his father owned a warehouse full of shellac.) The
labels also bought old records and ground them up to make new ones;
quality fell as virgin shellac was mixed with the recycled material.
After the war the decline of the Big Band Era was hastened by social,
economic and demographic factors.
Films made in the late
1980s, such as
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
and
Good Morning, Babylon
featured the famous Los Angeles ?red car?; in the beautiful Californian
climate a great deal of dancing took place in outdoor pavilions, and
before the war young people used one of the best public transport systems
in the world to get there: they could take a trolley-car clear across
Los Angeles for 5 cents. The red cars (the Southern Pacific Railroad)
and the yellow cars (a smaller system, the Los Angeles Railway Company)
together operated over 1,000 miles of track. A great many towns had
similar networks knitting together suburbs and amusement parks, a good
number of which had dance pavilions. They in turn gave employment to
many a local musician, as well as to touring name bands.
In 1936 National City Lines
had been created by a cartel including Standard Oil, Phillips Petroleum,
Goodyear Tire and Rubber and General Motors, for the purpose of buying
up streetcar lines and making bus routes out of them. Those who thought
this should be prevented by introducing subsidies for public transport
were labelled ?Reds? by newspapers like the Los Angeles Times, whose
reactionary owner, Harry Chandler, sat on the board of directors of
Standard of California and had interests in road construction. An affiliate
of National City Lines began taking the red cars out of service and
tearing up the track, and after the war most of the damage had been
done: few young people in the late 1940s could afford to buy cars, so
the decline of public transport was another nail in the coffin of live
music. Today Los Angeles has one of the world?s few twenty-four-hour
traffic jams, and is thinking about how to get rid of the internal combustion
engine.
The country filled up with
ex-soldiers who set about starting families at the time of the rise
of television. It was easier to stay at home and watch TV than it was
to go out, and the end of the ballrooms also saw the decline of the
cinema. (This was the beginning of the ?baby boom?: an interesting corollary
is that the preceding generation of teenaged girls was relatively small;
readers of a certain age will remember that the difficulty of obtaining
a babysitter was a stock joke in television sitcoms of the 1950s.) Add
to all these problems the fact that after the war it was simply uneconomic
to run a big band. Before the war Bob Wills could make good money playing
at dance halls full of people who had paid only 75 cents to get in;
but afterwards the cost of keeping a band together was much higher,
while the takings were lower: there were fewer dance halls and fewer
dancers. In January 1947 the big bands of Woody Herman, Harry James,
Benny Goodman, Les Brown, Tommy Dorsey, Benny Carter and Jack Teagarden,
as well as the all-girl band of glamorous Ina Ray Hutton, all folded.
Some of these re-formed from time to time, especially Herman?s, but
that month was seen by the music business as terminal.
From 1939 clarinettist
and arranger Les Brown had led a popular band, which had two number
one hits: ?Sentimental Journey? in 1945, with a vocal by Doris Day,
and ?I?ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm?, which was recorded in 1946;
during Petrillo?s second strike against the record companies it reached
the top of the charts at the end of 1948. Everybody knew it was the
last number one instrumental of the Swing Era. It had been a heady time,
when popular music was good and good music was popular, but it was over.