Enjoyment of Jazz

In December of 1949, a striking full-page ad appeared in Down Beat touting the latest effort by producer and label owner, Norman Granz. This time it wasn't about another of his JATP tours. Instead, it promoted a unique album that Granz had created called "The Jazz Scene." It was a premium item, costing all of $25 for 12 sides. The illustration is by David Stone Martin.

Predicting the future is never easy. Predicting the future of this music we call jazz is darn near impossible. How many times have we heard "the big bands are back"? Or that X (insert "Dixieland," "soul jazz," "psychedelic," "fusion," "hip-hop," etc.) is the next big thing? Remember the Fender Rhodes? Steinways were the keyboard of the past. Anthony Braxton was the next Charlie Parker one year, unemployed and scuffling only a few years later.

So your guess is as good as mine when it comes to jazz's destiny. Who could have predicted Wynton Marsalis? Not me.

Norman makes a point.

But back in the late 1940s, jazz's leading impresario took a stab at jazz prognostication. Norman Granz decided to issue an album that would feature some of the music's finest talents and would offer a glimpse not only of the contemporary scene but also of what lay ahead for jazz. To grab the public's attention, Granz planned to market this recording as a special collector's edition, limiting the total pressing and selling it at a premium price. The records would be packaged in an elegantly designed case, accompanied by detailed notes and beautifully executed photographs by Gjon Mili of the artists involved.

This milestone Granz christened "The Jazz Scene." 

Released in early 1950, "The Jazz Scene" went for a stiff 25 bucks and was capped at 5,000 copies, with the stipulation that "no copies will be available after the first edition is sold." It was received with accolades by the jazz press and got a special two-page review in the industry's unofficial pub, Down

Down Beat's 1950 review of
"The Jazz Scene."

Beat magazine. To increase the album's appeal, Norman numbered and signed each copy. Buyers were secure in the knowledge that the music contained within was authorized and approved by jazz's Sol Hurok. The fans regarded the album as a must-have, though for many the price was prohibitive.

A portion of the music on the "Scene" was provided – no surprise – by members of Granz's stable of artists. Among them were Charlie Parker (recently signed), Lester Young, Bud Powell and Flip Phillips. Norman also recorded non-Mercury artists Willie Smith, Ralph Burns, Neal Hefti and George Handy. He seemed to have favored the arrangers on the album, hinting that at least some of jazz's future lay with writers rather than with improvisers. 

"The Jazz Scene" in its
original 78 rpm issue.

Of the compositions, George Handy's "The Bloos" stands out. It's at once anachronistic and startlingly original. It couldn't be written today, but it's unlike anything being written in 1949, too. Michael Levin called it a "satire" in his Down Beat review, and that seems about right. There are no solos, and it's the arrangement that gets top billing. Handy retired from music not long after this, claiming that the "music biz and all connected stinks."

Of the Parker contributions, "The Bird" is a piece based on "Topsy" (if I recall correctly) that runs almost five minutes – the longest performance Bird ever recorded in a studio setting. It's good, but not first rate Parker and kind of peters out at the end. According to Phil Schaap, Charlie was upstairs making "The Bird" when Neal Hefti was downstairs with the orchestra recording "Repetition" and "Rhumbacito." Parker stopped by on the way out of the studio and asked if he could sit in on the former tune. The result was Bird soloing over Hefti's arrangement during the latter half of "Repetition." A spontaneous collaboration and it works. 

Gjon Mili's photo of Harry
Carney at work.

The Ellington sides are really features for Harry Carney and an unnamed string section. Duke figures in only as the composer of the two tunes. My understanding is that Ellington did not like Granz and pretty much had nothing to do with him (until late in his career), so for Norman to credit these tunes as he does is a bit of false advertising. That said, Carney sounds great, and it's nice to hear Billy Strayhorn tickle the ivories.

The true gem on the album is Coleman Hawkins' stellar "Picasso." According to the notes, the Hawk spent many hours formulating this free-form, solo saxophone masterpiece, and it shows. Hawkins did two or three other solo improvisations after this first effort, but "Picasso" stands out as a remarkable document by jazz's elder statesman of the tenor sax. If you've never heard it before, you're in for a treat.

The album was originally released on 78 rpm discs with a Mercury/Clef imprint. Despite Granz's pledge, the recordings were eventually issued again (and again), first on various LPs and more recently on CD. These dubs were taken from an American Recording Society release. The ARS was a record club of the variety popular back in the '50s, and it had a special deal with Granz to reissue Clef and Verve releases for its members. Each ARS record came with detailed liner notes – something the originals often lacked.

The liner notes for the ARS release of "The Jazz Scene."

The sound quality of this album is very good considering its age. We've cleaned things up here and there, and you may notice the occasional click, but mostly these files are broadcast quality. As always, they were taken from the original vinyl.

The Jazz Scene

Various Artists

Mercury/Clef

New York, NY; Various dates, 1949

1. Repetition 

Neal Hefti Orchestra featuring Charlie Parker

2. I Want to Be Happy

Lester Young with Nat Cole, Buddy Rich

3. Tanga

Machito with Flip Phillips

4. Introspection

Ralph Burns Orchestra with Bill Harris, Herbie Steward

5. Sophisticated Lady

Willie Smith with Dodo Marmarosa, Red Callendar, Jo Jones

6. Frustration

Harry Carney with Billy Strayhorn, Oscar Pettiford and strings

7. The Bloos

George Handy

8. All God's Chillun Got Rhythm

Bud Powell with Ray Brown, Max Roach

9. Sono

Harry Carney with Billy Strayhorn, Oscar Pettiford and strings

10. The Bird

Charlie Parker with Hank Jones, Ray Brown, Shelly Mann

11. Rhumbacito

Neal Hefti Orchestra

12.Picasso

Coleman Hawkins

Find it here: http://www.mediafire.com/download/h2nc925q5r8qwaz/Jazz_Scene.rar

Jazz Royalty

I can't remember why I made this sketch – possibly it was for a display for the record store I worked in back in college. Whatever the reason, happy birthday, Yard!

August 27th and 29th are cardinal days in jazz culture, being the respective birthdays of Lester Young and Charlie Parker. I always do a special on my radio show for them, and I thought I'd mark the dates by posting an offering here at Gems as well.

Nothing need be said here about these two seminal figures – if you're into jazz, you already know the backstory. The President was the progenitor of a entirely divergent school of thought about the tenor saxophone and the Bird took flight on those ideas and made improvisation into an art music. 'Nuff said.

Lester as one of Walter Page's Blue Devils
in 1932. With him are Doc Ross, left, and
Buster Smith, right, the band's other reed
players. Pres does indeed look devilish with
whatever that is behind him.

These two LPs came into my possession when I was working in Boston at that Discount Records warehouse I mentioned many posts ago. The assistant manager of the company's Northeast region had offices there and I would see him occasionally on the phone behind his desk as I humped record cartons from the freight elevator to the delivery truck. He was about my age and was something of a party animal with high-waist bell bottoms, platform shoes, fitted nylon shirts and a severely teased mullet. He had a penchant for all-night revels, usually with a few of the hipper store managers in tow, and after one particularly wild weekend he never returned. The story went around that he'd burned too many bridges and had been asked to seek his fortune elsewhere. We heard he'd gone to L.A.

A few days after his departure, several skids of boxes were delivered to the warehouse. These turned out to be the former assistant manager's personal effects. The cartons contained clothes, shoes, toiletries, papers, nick-knacks and the like, and we were supposed repack them and ship them out to him when the word came down. I noted that along with all the personal stuff were a half dozen boxes of records. These intrigued me, because they were almost all rare and unusual imported jazz LPs. The manager, I knew, cared nothing for jazz and wouldn't have known John Coltrane from Chi Coltrane. How had these come into his possession?

Word never did come down on where to ship the boxes. The assistant manager's effects sat a the corner of the warehouse for months. My boss eventually tired of moving the cartons and got rid of them. But before he did, we were allowed to pick through the lot. I, of course, went for the records, and these two Queen Discs were among those I took.

The music contained in these records is probably available today on CD in one form or another, but back in the '70s these performances were ultra-rare. And they are, almost without exception, truly inspired.

The accepted take on Lester's playing following his devastating US Army stint is that it is inferior. His performances here disprove that canard. "Jumpin' with Symphony Sid" stands with the best of Pres, and "Lester Leaps In" is outstanding. Plus, you get to hear Lester introduce the tunes. 

The Bird LP captures Charlie in several unusual settings – including a version of "Groovin' High" with Lionel Hampton's keyboardist, Milt Buckner, playing organ. "Dance of the Infidels" finds Bird playing with the Massey Hall line-up minus Diz, probably right around the same time as the famed Toronto concert. It's astonishing for its intensity. And on the Bandbox aircheck, Bird corrects a confused Leonard Feather on tune titles.

So, happy birthday to Bird and Pres! Celebrate by enjoying these fine examples of their magnificent artistry. The files were, as always, ripped from the original vinyl with only a slight cleaning of sound.

By the way – how did the assistant manager come by these and the other remarkable jazz sides in his pile? I found out many years later that his father was one of the West Coast's leading rare jazz LP dealers. If you've been in the collecting game for a while, you've probably been a recipient of one of his record auction lists in the not-too-distant past ...

Charlie Parker

Charlie Parker

Parker, as; various groups, locations, dates (see cover for listings). 

Queen Disc 002

1. Anthropology

2. Cool Blues

3. Your Father's Moustache

4. Groovin' High

5. Star Eyes

6. Ornithology/How High the Moon

7. Diggin' Diz

8. Embracable You

9. Moose the Mooche

10. Cheryl

11. Dance of the Infidels

Find it here: http://www.mediafire.com/download/ypcumghzha4arzb/Bird_and_Pres_01.rar

 Lester Young

Lester Young

Lester Young, ts: various groups, locations, dates (see cover for listings). 

Queen Disc 001

1. Pennies from Heaven

2. Polka Dots and Moonbeams

3. Jumpin' with Symphony Sid

4. These Foolish Things

5. Three Little Words

6. Lester Leaps In

7. A Ghost of a Chance

8. Just You, Just Me

9. Sweet Georgia Brown

Find it here: http://www.mediafire.com/?rqeqjyy59ld7brc

The Collection

I got to thinking about recorded sound and collecting albums recently, and it occurred to me that music these days is atomic. By that I mean each musical performance, each piece or tune, exists as an entity unto itself regardless of the circumstances under which it was created. Each piece is a single atom, if you will, in a universe of like musical atoms, isolated from its fellows by today's technology. That technology is, of course, the same we use here on Gems – the Internet and file-sharing.

Take Charlie Parker's album of Cole Porter tunes, recorded for Verve in 1954. The tunes on that record were meant, I assume, to work together as a whole, as Bird's interpretation of the music of one of America's great song composers. But for most listeners today, who get their Charlie Parker via iTunes or other less orthodox digital sites, that context is lost. They type in "Charlie Parker" and a zillion files come up, everything from Bird's tragic "Loverman" on Dial to stuff by Supersax, and they cherry-pick the tunes of interest, download them and then listen to them as random iPod selections. Great jazz, yes, but divorced from any historical or organizing context. Atoms, see?

For me, and I'm guessing for the tens of visitors to this blog, the context is more than important. It's essential. That's why I bother to upload album covers and whole records even though a tune or two might be a dud, and that's why you take the time to download them, burn CDs, print out covers, etc. The music is the main thing, but knowing where it comes from, and who made it, and why and when, simply enhances the experience of listening. 

But ... maybe this is all changing? It seems like everyday more and more data are uploaded to the web. The Jazz Discography Project is doing an marvelous job building an Internet-based catalog of work by (thus far) major jazz artists, and nearly every rare and long-out-of-print record I can think of is available somewhere on the web, either commercially or through fan sites like Gems. So, pretty soon – maybe within our lifetimes – perhaps all of jazz's recorded output will reside in the Cloud, replete with detailed discographical information. That would be extraordinary!

And it might mean that collections like mine, and like all of yours, will become outmoded, as useless as the home encyclopaedia now is. An interesting thought, eh?

But to celebrate collecting, I put together a brief video about my magnificent obsession. Here is a good portion of my record collection, sans 78s, tapes and CDs. I had to Photoshop together all the shelves because they're too heavy to house in a single room (a potential floor collapse!). The covers are just some I grabbed off the 10- and 7-incher shelf – a good size for my little scanner – and the tune is by the marvelous Betty Bebop. Enjoy, and happy collecting! 

Charlie Parker at Home

This is the first photographic evidence of the great genius of the alto saxophone to appear in Downbeat Magazine (that I can find, at least). How 25-year-old Charlie Parker got included in this junket shall forever remain a mystery, but there he was with Trummy, Errol, Slam, Doc and the rest of the boys. Wouldn't we all love to hear an aircheck of that CKEY broadcast? From Downbeat, December 15, 1945.

Here's another treat from one of those '70s bootleg LPs I mentioned a while back. I only saw this one once, but I snatched it pronto before someone else nabbed it. I was working in Boston at the time, driving a delivery truck for Discount Records (that's another story) which meant I had access to a half-dozen first-rate record stores and all their remainders and overstock. A bunch of Boris Rose boots were dumped on the Harvard Square store, and this recording was in the pile.

Stearns

What we have here is Charlie Parker at home in his apartment on West 52th Street with his partner, Chan Richardson, and Chan's three-year-old daughter, Kim. Bird is being interviewed by music historian and professor Marshall Stearns for a book he was working on – the landmark "The Story of Jazz" (Oxford Press, 1956). With Stearns is his friend, Jim Maher. They are questioning Bird about his (then) mysterious past as a teen musician in Kansas City, and the conversation is casual and free-ranging. If you know Parker's story, in this clip you'll hear where some of the now-accepted truths about his early days come from.

The date is May 1, 1950 (thanks to Phil Schaap for that), and you'll occasionally hear the traffic in the street – a window must have been open. An intriguing reference is made to rehearsal sessions that Bird had participated in a few weeks prior to the interview. Chan brings up Gene Roland's massive big band – eight saxophones in the reed section alone –  and Bird describes it as sounding "wild!" Parker researcher and historian Tony Williams dug up the reels made during those legendary sessions back in the '70s and issued them on Spotlight. So, for your listening pleasure, I've included a brief excerpt of the Roland band's version "Stardust" with some soloing by Bird.

As always, these were ripped from the vinyl with no modification whatsoever (in this case).

Charlie Parker interview with Marshall Stearns:

Gene Roland Orchestra, "Stardust," April 3, 1950:

Two Charlies

In a 1951 edition of Metronome magazine, King took out a two-page ad featuring two stars of jazz who used their product. The "Two Charlies" at the top of the spread refers to Bird, seen here, and tenorist Charlie Ventura who was featured on the facing page. But we know Bird also played the bigger horn. Whether it was a King is anybody's guess. Photo by Gems of Jazz 

The king of the alto saxophone played a King. So proclaims this ad from an old Metronome magazine. Of course, jazz fans know that Bird's horn was often a thing of the moment – if not a King, than any alto that was available, including – once in Toronto – a white plastic marching band horn. It didn't seem to matter what Charlie Parker used to play his music – the result was always the same. Genius.

But Bird didn't always play alto. With Earl Hines in 1942 he held down the tenor chair. To disguise his sound for contractual reasons, he also played the bigger horn on a date with Miles Davis in 1953 for Prestige. And here's Bird at an unknown club date some fifteen months before his tragic passing, soloing on tenor.

Two Charlies indeed!

Charlie Parker was playing tenor on this gig, probably from late 1953 in New York City. The photo appeared in the February 1954 edition of Metronome magazine, accompanying a squibb about a recent rerelease of some of his Dial material. Wonder whose horn it was? Photo probably by Bob Parent