Christiern

Wire Tap? Is that the Bush program?

Eliza was a fun program in the early Apple day--limited, but (for that time) amazing.

Here's my review of "Swing Shift" as it appeared in Crisis magazine around the time when the book was published: As Sherrie Tucker points out in her book, Swing Shift: All-Girl Bands of the 1940s, a number of all-female orchestras toured the country in the thirties and forties, struggling to survive and to be taken seriously as artists in a rough, male-dominated field. Most of these orchestras are long forgotten and, quite frankly, many of them were not very good. But novelty and the right exposure sometimes compensate for shortcomings. Thus, weekly radio broadcasts helped turn Phil Spitalny's rather ordinary Hour of Charm Orchestra into the most widely popular of the all-female instrumental groups, and made a star of his wife, the featured soloist billed as "Evelyn and her magic violin." Spitalny's polite doll-gowned group offered a repertoire played in a bland style that sharply contrasted with that of such female bands as The Prairie View Co-Eds, The Darlings of Rhythm, Sharon Rodgers' All-Girl Band, and a number of groups that more or less remained local. Among the most notable of the so-called all-girl swing bands were three whose style fit right into the Swing Era: The International Sweethearts of Rhythm, the Harlem Playgirls, and the Dixie Sweethearts. Their infectious rhythmic beat, growling trumpets, and virile tenor saxophones belied the image of women as dainty pianists and harpists. A book, recordings, and a film documentary in recent years have brought some attention to the International Sweethearts. The most prominent and probably best female aggregation of the big band era, the Sweethearts were actually not so much international as they were multi-ethnic, which made life on the road extra hard during treks through the segregated South. World War II took some of the best male jazz and dance musicians--and, indeed, whole bands--off the scene for military duty, opening the door wider for all-girl orchestras. For years, pianists like Lovie Austin, Lil Armstrong and Mary Lou Williams led male bands, and no one thought anything of it. Acceptance, however, did not come as readily when a woman played drums or a horn instrument, which was considered "unladylike" and was quickly dismissed as a novelty. Gender bias in the music business is a subject that has been touched on before but never dealt with in any depth. So Tucker's book, published last April by Duke University Press, promised to fill an important gap in the literature of American music. Unfortunately, it is a promise unfulfilled. Tucker has accomplished the seemingly impossible: writing a lusterless book on a subject that is anything but dull. Tucker clearly spent considerable time researching her subject, conducting interviews with surviving band members, and scouring books and periodicals for information. That is as it should be, and the book does, indeed, contain significant information. But its value is diminished when facts are mired in page after page of gender-biased vitriol. Readers, who are unfamiliar with the subject or lack historical perspective, will have a hard time discerning fact from the author's speculations. Time and again, Tucker reads complicity into simple statements, sometimes injecting conjecture so far fetched as to be laughable. The result is that the reader is constantly taken off track, and potentially absorbing stories become turgid political statements. Tucker repeatedly finds conspiracy and deceit where none is evident. She attacks the Rosie the Riveter figure of World War II as a symbol of anti-feminism, sees the term "Swing Era" as white propaganda designed to exclude black and female bands, and deplores the fact that a short film portrays the International Sweethearts as "courageous and remarkable" rather than as "victims." Three-minute shorts ("soundies") featuring the orchestra in a studio setting are labeled as deceptive because "we are not aware of the surveillance." According to Ms. Tucker, white police showed up for every booking of the Sweethearts and "studied" the musicians to determine "racialized physical differences." Thus, the film is "an atypical appearance" because it does not show "the ubiquitous white police" standing in front of the bandstand "trying to figure out if any of those light-skinned black women are, in reality, fallen white women breaking the color line." What did she expect? It's a Hollywood music short, nothing more. I am reminded of a long article in which a French critic sought to explain--in a complex, technical analysis--why Louis Armstrong switched from the cornet to trumpet. Not long after reading the piece, I asked Mr. Armstrong why he changed instruments. His reply was simple and logical: "I was in Erskine Tate's band, and he didn't think it looked good to have a trumpet section with one short horn and one long one." The book cites Bessie Smith among performers "whose lives were damaged or destroyed by various kinds of police harassment," the term "police" here including "everyone who acts on the social or institutional power to police other people." Having spent numerous years studying the blues empress, I wondered what Tucker was alluding to. A footnote gave me the surprising answer: my own biography of Ms. Smith. The problem is that I never even implied any such thing, which makes this a clear case of deliberate misinterpretation. Another example of bizarre interpretation is Tucker's rationale for female bands incorporating classical numbers into their repertoire. Her conclusion is worthy of double-talk comic Professor Irwin Corey. Describing how a bassist named Sias employed her bow on a featured classical-styled number, Trigger Fantasy, Tucker concludes that introducing a classical element "alleviates anxiety about white women playing music classed low or raced Negro" and "establishes the performer's respectability, whiteness, and parlor-culture womanliness." But of course. Much of Swing Shift reads like a cut-and-paste term paper. There is an attempt to lend it an air of academic importance, but even 34 pages of footnotes (many of them superfluous) and an additional 27 of source references cannot alter the fact that this is essentially a rambling, intellectually vacuous dissertation, a book of spins that should have been an important reference work. And the music? Well, the author devotes remarkably little attention to that.

In 1984, when I was in Tokyo with Toshiko Akiyoshi and Lew Tabackin, we visited a fascinating science fair. The people in charge asked Toshiko to bring sheet music of one of her compositions. She complied and they placed it in front of a robot that was seated at a piano. The robot (he wouldn't have won a beauty contest) gave the music a quick look, then proceeded to play. Every note was in place, but totally without emotion. I am often reminded of that when I hear a certain trumpeter play. You get the idea when you listen to

Good question, but it conjures up the most disgusting images. I will never again offer a visitor to "have a seat."

I don't recall when I wrote the following review, but it was probably about 20 years ago. The writing is my usual awkward kind, but I thought it might refresh memories regarding some of the overlooked women of jazz.--Chris WOMEN IN JAZZ Stereo Review Except as vocalists and pianists, women have been all but excluded from participation in jazz, a situation that becomes strikingly evident when one examines the “Women in Jazz” series recently released by Stash Records. Along with the previously released two-record set “Jazz Women: A Feminist Retrospective” (Stash ST 109), the three new discs contain performances by virtually every woman who ever played jazz, including previously unreleased recordings. Measure that against the more than 200,000 jazz recordings made since 1917 and you get the picture. The jazz world has always been male-dominated, even on the non-playing levels (can you name more than three female jazz critics?), and when women have been employed, it was often as a decoration or gimmick. “You weren’t really looked upon as a musician…. there was more interest in what you were going to wear or how your hair was fixed,” vibraphone player Marjorie Hyams remarked recently. They just wanted you to look attractive, ultra feminine—largely because you were doing something they didn’t consider feminine.” Hyams was a member of Woody Herman’s celebrated 1944-1945 orchestra—the so-called first “Herd”—and thus one of the few women to be hired as a regular instrumentalist in a major, otherwise all-male band. She is heard on six selections in the first volume of the Stash series, “All Women Groups,” and she solos on an aircheck of Herman’s Northwest Passage that is included in the third volume, “Swingtime to Modern.” A fine player of the Lionel Hampton school, Marjorie Hyams could certainly have had a longer, more rewarding career in jazz if attitudes had been different or if she’d been a man, and the same can be said of quite a few of the women represented on these records. L’Ana Webster—who became L’Ana Hyams after marrying Marjorie Hyams’ brother—was up against even greater odds, for she played the tenor saxophone (definitely not considered a lady-like instrument, even today). But there’s nothing wrong with her spirited solo on You’re Giving Me the Run-Around (Volume 3), one of four sides she cut for Decca with the otherwise all-male Mike Riley and His Round and Round Boys band in 1938. She is more subdued but no less effective on six sides by the Hip Chicks (Volumes 1 and 3), recorded for the Black and White label in 1945. Judging by those same selections, trumpeter Jean Starr had a great deal to offer; her work on Seven Riffs with the Right Woman is particularly effective. Speaking of trumpet players, Volume 1 also contains two decent examples of Norma Carson’s work, The Man I Love and Cat Meets Chick. But, good as those 1954 sides are, Carson played infinitely better at an informal jam session I attended in Iceland that same year, which brings up an important point: most of the women heard on these Stash releases were given little opportunity to display their talent on records, so it is quite possible that we are not hearing them here at their best. That. however, is not the case with Valaida Snow, a trumpeter and vocalist who had one of the most remarkable careers in jazz. Snow began performing professionally around 1920. She worked in Shanghai in 1926 and toured Russia, the Middle East, and Europe between 1929 and 1932, when she made her first recordings (with the Washboard Rhythm Kings). She went to England with the Blackbirds Revue in 1934, then made several Atlantic crossings during a period in which she played for films in Hollywood and cut records in London for Parlophone. The selections reissued here, Caravan and My Heart Belongs to Daddy (both Volume 3), were recorded for Sonora in Stockholm in 1939, and they show to full advantage both sides of Snow’s considerable talent, her hot, growling trumpet style contrasting with her soft, sweet voice. The following year she made six sides for the Danish Tono label before the Nazis sent her off to a concentration camp. Released in mid-1943, Snow was allowed to return to the U.S., where she resumed her career until her death in 1956. EMI would do well to reissue her Parlophone recordings. Two of the most satisfying recordings in a more modern vein are A Woman’s Place is in the Groove and Body and Soul (Volume 1), which were recorded in 1946 and feature extraordinary performances by trumpeter Edna Williams and a violinist identified as “Ginger Smock or Emma Colbert.” I don’t know either of them—and the liner notes on all three albums generally avoid biographical information—but they should not have been as neglected as they obviously were. Two big bands, the Mills Cavalcade Orchestra and the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, are represented. The Mills band, a mixed group led by trombonist George Brunis, is heard on Volume 3 in two recordings made for Columbia in 1935; it was a fairly dull band, playing dull arrangements as accompaniment to a dull vocal group. On the other hand, the Sweethearts of Rhythm—a band that boasted black, white, and Oriental members and had its origin in 1940 at Piney Woods College, Mississippi—was excellent. It played with precision, it swung, and it featured fine solo work, particularly by saxophonist Viola Burnside, who blows up a storm on Vi Vigor. As represented by two sides on Volume 1 and two even better sides on Volume 3, the group easily measures up to any all-male band. and it’s better than most. But where did they get a title like Digging Dyke? Obviously, I cannot mention all the women represented on these albums, but I would be remiss if I didn’t at least point out the excellent work by guitarist Mary Osborne on Volume 1, the fine piano performances of Beryl Booker (including one with Miles Davis) on Volumes 1 and 3, English tenor saxophonist Kathy Stobart’s superb reading of I Can’t Get Started on Volume 3, German pianist Jutta Hipp’s wonderfully free-flowing All the Things You Are (Volume 3), and the characteristically fine and unique performances by Mary Lou Williams on all three volumes. I have reserved mention of Volume 2, “Pianists,” for last, because it is, overall, the best album. That may well be because pianists were the most widely accepted of the female instrumentalists, and therefore also the ones who enjoyed the longest careers. This album features sixteen of them, ranging from Lovie Austin (recorded in 1924) to Toshiko Akiyoshi (recorded in 1961) and including only three performers—Una Mae Carlisle, Mary Lou Williams, and Jutta Hipp—heard on the other two volumes. It’s an interesting collection which mirrors the history of jazz from barrelhouse and the New Orleans style to bop and beyond, and it demonstrates in a most graphic and enjoyable way that women have had a place in jazz from the very beginning. How sad for all of us that they were denied their rightful equal status. Let’s hope that the release of this series will encourage more young women to pursue a musical career in jazz—and, for that matter, in jazz criticism. FINALLY, I should mention that the technical quality is generally good, but I wish more care had gone into the packaging; the covers are dreary, discographical information is incomplete and, in many instances, inaccurate, names are misspelled, and the labels give only song titles. This is an important release, and it deserves better. —Chris Albertson WOMEN IN JAZZ: Volume 1, All Women Groups. The International Sweethearts of Rhythm: Digging Dyke; Vi Vigor; Don’t Get it Twisted. Jean Starr: Sergeant on a Furlough; I Surrender Dear; Moonlight on Turhan Bay; Seven Riffs with the Right Woman. Mary Lou Williams: Timmie Time; Humoresque; Boogie Misterioso. Norma Carson: Cat Meets Chick; The Man I Love. Beryl Booker: Don’t Blame Me; Low Ceiling. Edna Williams: A Woman’s Place is in the Groove; Body and Soul. STASH ST 111 $6.98. WOMEN IN JAZZ: Volume 2, Pianists. Arizona Dranes: Crucifixion. Vera Guilaroff: A Cup of Coffee. Lovie Austin: Traveling Blues. Lil Hardin Armstrong: Put ’Em Down Blues. Mary Lou Williams: The Rocks. Una Mae Carlisle: Don’t Try Your Jive on Me. Cleo Brown: Mama Don’t Want No Peas an’ Rice an’ Coconut Oil. Hadda Brooks: Chopin Nocturne. Beryl Booker: Love is the Thing. Rose Murphy: My Blue Heaven. Nellie Lutcher: Hurry On Down. Dorothy Donegan: St. Louis Blues. Barbara Carroll: Morocco. Hazel Scott: Around Midnight. Jutta Hipp: Indian Summer. Toshiko Akiyoshi: Tempus Fugit. STASH ST 112 $6.98. WOMEN IN JAZZ: Volume 3, Swingtime to Modern. Mills Cavalcade Orchestra: Lovely Liza Lee; Rhythm Lullaby. Mike Riley and His Round and Round Boys: You’re Giving Me the Run-Around. Una Mae Carlisle and Her Jam Band: I Would Do Most Anything for You. Lulle Ellboj’s Orchestra, featuring Valaida Snow: Caravan; My Heart Belongs to Daddy. The International Sweethearts of Rhythm: Jump Children; Slightly Frantic. The Hip Chicks: Popsie; Striptease. Woody Herman Orchestra, with Marjorie Hyams: Northwest Passage. Kathy Stobart: I Can’t Get Started. Hans Koller’s New Jazz Stars, with Jutta Hipp: All the Things You Are. Beryl Booker: Squirrel. Terry Pollard: T & S. Vi Redd: That’s All. STASH: ST 113 $6.98

Reminds me of a true story I was told, years ago, by a friend who was a flight attendant on a B.O.A.C. Stratocruiser (now you know that it was long ago. Anyway, an elderly lady went to the loo and, as she sat there, the lid on the outside of the plane came off. The result was enormous suction that made it impossible for her to be pried off! They were over the Atlantic and the pilot finally lowered the altitute (considerably) to eliminate the suction!

There was a book about these bands, Swing Shift by Sherri Tucker, which I reviewed for Crisis, the NAACP magazine. Unfortunately, although it had a wealth of information, Ms. Tucker twisted everything to comply with her own notion of feminism, severely reducing the value of her book as a serious resource.

Probably same place as I was. Scary, ain't it? I don't recall seeing you in Limbo.

Hmmmmmmmm, where was I when this thread was going? Whatever happened to Maren?

Photos removed by me CA

Bahama bagels?

I bet Adler wished Flyright had straightened up and seen the marketing value of a well-honed hoax.!

I'm afraid that Aggie is right, I heard that Dennis Irwin is no longer with us.

My favorite Jonathan and Darlene Edwards album is I Love Paris, where all the songs are French-related--it's on Columbia rather than RCA. Another great album of bad music, although not an intentional parody, is the collection of Florence Foster Jenkins' private recordings, which RCA issued. The lady, a Philadelphia sociality, was deadly serious about her music; she held a concert at Carnegie Hall in the Forties and it was sold out strictly from word of mouth. The audience had to wait between songs as she changed costumes, and when one of the wings on her angel costume sagged, the audience spontaneously went into one of the pop songs of the day, Comin' In On a Wing and a Prayer. Shortly before she died, Madame Jenkins is said to have told a friend, "Many people said that I couldn't sing, but nobody can say that I didn't/"

The Orange story reminds me of Buck Hammer, a creation of Steve Allen. He heard Cannonball say that "jazz critics are a joke" on TV show, so he decided to see if it was true. He recorded an album of piano solos that was issued by Jazztone.. The notes told of Buck Hammer, a true legend from Mississippi, who died shortly after making his only recordings, recently unearthed. "The Discovery of Buck Hammer"album received favorable reviews and only Nat Hentoff was sharp enough to note that Mr. Hammer had the distinct advantage of extra hand. Guess Cannonball was right.

I don't recall "Blind Orange Adams," but that alone sounds like the kind of pedestrian college humor I associate with Ed Sherman.

Ed Sherman was a nice guy, he used to hang around at Riverside, but I never found him to be funny. I also found Steve Allen's comedy to be somewhat strained. I don't think either gentleman's humor has passed the test of time. Lord Buckley was, IMO genuinely funny, as were Lenny Bruce and Woody Allen (although jazz was not the topic of their humor). Thanks for posting the Jazz Club skits--very clever and funny, indeed.

...have a great slide into many years to come!

...and keep 'em coming!

That was Concerto for Horn and Hardart, one of many wonderful pieces by P.D.Q. Bach. One of s legs was shorter than the other, as I recall, which is why his music was difficult to dance to. The coffee really was good at H&H, and that company saved my life again when I went to Philadelphia. Down but not out in NYC (in 1958) I had $10 and asked the Greyhound ticket agent if it would get me to another large city. "Three bucks will take you to Philly," he said. I bought the ticket, found a $5-a-week-room in center city and a day-old Horn & Hardart outlet for bread that had reached its official time limit, but still tasted fresh. My last $2 went to such bread. H&H will forever rank high in my book (literally, as it turns out). Yes, I miss the drug store counters, too.

Am I the only one here who misses Lyons Corner Houses? Afternoon tea and thinly sliced toast with marmalade--the longing for it never left me. I also have a sinking feeling when I think of Horn & Hardart--they had the best coffee around and going there was a bit of an adventure. When I first came here and was, literally, penniless, I used to go to H&H, fill one of their very thick cups with hot water, and stir in some ketchup. I think it kept me alive for awhile. What do you miss?

And don't forget, Macs can handle Windows as well as Tigers and Leopards.