Brownian Motion

As a vocalist the great early trombonist Jimmy Harrison was somewhere between a vaudeville performer and a jazz singer. I believe I read somewhere that his inspiration was Bert Williams. Love "Somebody Loves Me" with Fletcher Henderson.

I can't off the top of my head name a recording from my birthday--02/11/47--(wait, when were the Bolden cylinders recorded?)--but I'd like to hear whether anyone knows of recording dates whose musical substance was somehow affected by news events. For instance Billie Hollliday's gently ironic reading of Gershwin's "Things Are Looking Up" was recorded just days after George Gershwin's untimely death.

I haven't seen Red Norvo's name here, but he played vibes for the latter half of his career, if I'm not mistaken. Haygood Hardy played nice vibes with Herbie Mann on "Live at the Village Gate (Vanguard?); I think Hardy left jazz for more lucrative fields of music. Joe Roland was an excellent vibist--whatever happened to him? And Tyree Glenn could wail on vibes; he made at least one album on which he played nothing but.

Samuel Barber wrote a couple of symphonies worth hearing--in fact all of Barber's orchestral music is worth hearing, especially the Overture to A School for Scandal. My favorite Nielsen is "The Helios Overture".

I've had a fondness for the synphonies of Carl Nielsen for many years. In particular the 4th, composed during WW I, is a very moving statement, although very despairing. The only Nielsen symphony that doesn't hold up very well is the 6th (1930), which is a bitter attack on modernism by an old man whose time has passed.

That's it.

What was the name of that recording? Sounds interesting! The album was under Bill Keith's name: "Something Old Grass, Something New Grass, Something Borrowed, and Something Bluegrass". They also play a damn fine "Jordu", and a rousing "Auld Lang Syne", which I inflict at top volume on my family every January 1st.

It's blasphemy to talk that way about Caravan. One of the best versions I ever heard was by a studio band of hot bluegrass musicians--Bill Keith, Vassar Clements, David Grisman, and Tony Rice. When Charlie Byrd and Scott Hamilton recorded it together a decade later Byrd quoted liberally from Rice's guitar solo. Love that cross-pollination!

CD Connection seems to have the entire Classics catalogue--I just ordered Harlan Leonard and Vol I of Boots and His Buddies, and they said they shipped them. Not here yet, though. Ghost, how goes it with Freddie Webster?

I got a cheapo system compared to most folks responding--Sherwood CD changer and receiver; Sennheiser headphones; a really old Technics tape deck; Cerwin-Vega! speakers; and an old Onkyo turntable with a Shure cartridge. I'm intrigued by the above statement about the importance of cables. Can anyone verify the importance of the cable choice to the overall quality of the sound? My cables are probably 20 years old, but they seem to be working fine.

A few other albums from the period in question... Personal Choice--Jack Teagarden, Ruby Braff, Lucky Thompson, Sol Yaged, and Ken Kersey--was recorded in 1954. Everybody shines on this date. Red Allen was not well-served by jazz record producers in the 1950s, but he did have a good night at Newport in 1957 along with Teagarden, Kid Ory, and his buddy J.C. Higginbotham. Why Verve hasn't seen fit to reissue it is a mystery. Red also did a first rate date for RCA in 1957 (Martin Williams produced); great supporting cast: Coleman Hawkins, Higgy, and the oft-maligned Buster Bailey. This recording is certainly one of Red's masterworks.

Paul Quinichette made an exceptionally nice album for UA in 1959--Al Grey, and 3 trumpets: Shad Collins, Sweets, and Snooky Young, and Nat Pierce, Freddie Green, Eddie Jones and Jo Jones(?)--very nice Basie feel. I'm waiting for it to appear on CD.

Well, I respectfully disagree about Bishop Jr. IMO he drags down this date, especially sad because Doc and especially Shorty were given so few chances to strech out during these years.

I was also thinking of Sonny White, Billy Kyle, Red Richards, and Ellis Larkins as folks who might have made interesting contributions to various mainstream dates. White in particular was a much-neglected musician for his entire career.

Pianist Claude Hopkins led some fine dates for Prestige Swingville. I'm especially partial to the one featuring Buddy Tate and Emmett Berry. In fact the whole Swingville catalogue is worth a listen to, though not everything in it is first rate. The problem with these Swingville sets, IMO, is that they often used a somewhat thin front-line, probably as an economy measure, and that they frequently used Tommy Flanagan (pretty much the Prestige "house pianist" during this period), who was not the most appropriate accompanist for the swing generation.

"European Windows" by John Lewis, recorded in '58, has some great solo work from various European jazz musicians. It is a scandal that it is not available on CD. The MJQ and the Beaux Arts String Quartet is also great music. And it's still available!

Here's another vote for Eddie Sauter-Stan Getz and "Focus". Decent string writing makes all the difference. I like Bird with strings, but that's only because I like Bird.

Marie Marcus, 89, Jazz Pianist and Fats Waller Protégée, Dies By DOUGLAS MARTIN Published: October 19, 2003 [M] arie Marcus, a jazz pianist who was a protégée of Fats Waller and appeared on Manhattan's 52nd Street, the prewar epicenter of jazz, before becoming a summer fixture in nightclubs on Cape Cod, died on Oct. 10 in Hyannis, Mass. She was 89. In a book about jazz personalities, "Barney, Bradley, and Max" (Oxford, 1989), the jazz critic Whitney Balliett suggested that Mrs. Marcus's talent and experience elevated her into a higher league than the normal run of resort acts. "At first, her style seems a simple mélange of chunky chords and brief connective runs, but on closer examination it is a repository of the jazz piano playing of the thirties and forties," he wrote. <http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/misc/spacer.gif> Advertisement <http://graphics7.nytimes.com/ads/british/300x250_landing.gif> <http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/misc/spacer.gif> Marie Eleanor Doherty, an only child, was born in Roxbury, Mass., on May 25, 1914. Her father, a plumber, and her mother were elegant ballroom dancers and had a player piano in the house with rolls by the likes of Waller. She started playing the piano at 4 and studied at the New England Conservatory of Music while attending Roxbury Memorial High. She started in children's radio shows and ended up in Manhattan playing the piano on a national radio show for NBC as well as in clubs, under the name Marie Doherty. When Waller persuaded her to play in an after-hours club in Harlem, he pointed to his heart and said, "For a white girl, you sure got it there." She asked him whether he knew a good piano teacher. He answered, "How about me?" and gave her lessons when he was in town. With the licks she absorbed from him, she made it to 52nd Street, the epicenter of jazz, where she played at the Swing Club. At the end of her New York years, she led a 12-piece band and, after several musicians were drafted, a six-piece one. Her agent sent her to the Coonamessett Club in Falmouth on Cape Cod, in part to help her relax from the exhausting work. The respite became a happy 40-year residency, and she became popular with both locals and tourists. President Kennedy came to hear her and Alma Gates White play as the "piano mamas" at the Panama Club in Hyannis. For many years, she also spent winters performing in Miami Beach. In the 1950's, she appeared on television shows like Steve Allen's "Tonight" show and the "Dave Garroway Show." In 1937, she married Jack Brown, a singer. They later separated, and he died. She later married Bill Marcus, a trumpet player and later a lawyer. He died in 1965. She is survived by her sons, Jack Brown, of Quincy, Mass., and William Marcus, of Fort Lauderdale; her daughters, Mary Liles and Barbara Marcus, both of St. Petersburg, Fla.; eight grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren.

Anyone know anything about strider Charlie Lewis, who made solo sides in Paris in 1940, or '41? One of his tunes was "April in Paris"--I don't know of an earlier jazz recording of this chestnut.

In 1961 Kenny was a patient at the New York State Rehabilitation Hospital in West Haverstraw New York, since renamed the Helen Hays Hospital. I was there as well. Word got around among the patients that Kenny was quite a jazz pianist. I was 13, and was just developing an interest in jazz, but of course I had never heard of him. Kenny seemed to be a shy man who kept to himself, but after he was there for a month or so he was persuaded to perform for the patients. He was in a wheel chair by then but his upper extremities seemed fine. So one evening in the hospital auditorium he played for about an hour before a small but respectful crowd of other patients and a few ringers. I don't remember much about the concert, other than that he played a boogie woogie number that was most probably Boogie Woogie Cocktail, his old feature with Andy Kirk. I was pretty impressed.

Kenny also turns up on the Buck Clayton Mosaic set, and a live date with Buck from the early 50s that was issued on Storyville (not very good sound quality, unfortunately). Kenny's also on the Jack Teagarden album reissued on Fresh Sounds with Lucky Thompson and Ruby Braff. And Kenny shows up on a Sol Yaged date from 1956 and easily steals the show from Yaged's vapid Benny-derived noodlings. Not long after, Kenny stopped playing because of a degenerative disease--I'm not certain which.

Harry was a good blues player; he made some nice records in that vein with Albert Ammons, Teddy Wilson, and the Metronome All-Stars. But I believe that by the time he left Goodman to strike out on his own as a bandleader his career as a jazzman was over. Although professionally active until his death, Harry never again recorded in a straight jazz context with peer musicians, not even as a lark. And that was clearly his choice.

Tell me more about these canary vocals!

One more thing. The present incarnation of the Vanguard Company has not done too well with their precious jazz catalogue. I don't know whether alternate takes of these sessions exist anymore (if they do they're worth issuing), but with Vanguard it's common for some tracks to show up under more than one name and on more than one CD (witness the Vic Dickenson situation) while other tracks (Buck Clayton's "I Must Have That Man" for instance) have not yet appeared on CD.

It's true. This is a great album. Besides the prime Ruby, Shad Collins, one of producer John Hammond's favorites, gets an all-too-infrequent chance to stretch out a little. And then of course there is Sir Charles Thompson, who was a perfect accompanist for these musicians. IMO a lot of 50s and 60s mainstream sessions were dragged down by unsympathetic pianists, but that's never the case when Sir Charles is on the job. Edmond Hall maintains his usual high standard throughout. I was just listening last week to an album of alternate takes by Ed, and his command and inventiveness from track to track just blew me away. Vic himself is of course a wonderful witty soloist. Although he had been part of the NY jazz scene for awhile by the time these sessions were recorded, I believe these were Vic's first recording's as a leader. In general these Hammond-produced Vanguard sessions and the Buck Clayton Jam sessions at over Columbia marked the re-emergence of a style of playing jazz that had gone out of fashion since the triumph of bop in the late 1940s. Players like Clayton, Ed Hall, Vic, Red Allen, Dickie Wells, Benny Morton, and others of their generation were not very convincing as dixieland players, so it's nice to hear some of these same musicians once again in a comfortable setting.