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RELEASE DATE - 17 NOVEMBER 2025 The first full-length biography of a true giant of jazz Description Jazz legend Cootie Williams left home to start his career as a professional musician at the age of fifteen. In 1940, after eleven years as one of the major soloists with the Duke Ellington orchestra, Williams was lured away to the band of Benny Goodman, one of the most popular bands in the country. At the time, it was a controversial move—it was still taboo for African Americans to share the bandstand with white people. Current references to the move usually reduce it to a song written by Raymond Scott, "When Cootie Left the Duke." In reality, it was a seismic event. The Black press predicted Black bands would collapse from raids on their ranks. White musicians were afraid they would be put out of work. And the white press stirred up visions of Black musicians mixing with white women in the new landscape of integrated orchestras. The twenty years trumpeter Williams spent as a band leader (1942-1962) have been covered in only the barest of details. His involvement in politics and the civil rights movement have not been detailed before. An astute talent scout, Williams and his band launched the careers of Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, Earl “Bud” Powell, Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, and Pearl Bailey. He also was the first to record the music of a young Thelonious Monk, using two of Monk's compositions (“Epistrophy” and “‘Round Midnight”) as theme songs for his band. Steven C. Bowie respectfully tells Williams’s story, from his Alabama ancestry onward, including many new details rediscovered from the historical archives of the African American press and those gleaned from the author’s interviews with his friends and colleagues.

This recent tribute to pianist Mel Powell, who enjoyed a brilliant jazz career in the 1940s before working primarily in an academic classical realm for the rest of his life, is now up for online listening: Jazz Mission: Mel Powell in the 1940s ... Powell also made several fine jazz albums for the Vanguard label in the mid-1950s that may be the subject of a future program. The 1940s offered so much musical ground to cover that I decided to stick to that particular decade for this episode.

I listened to the Benny Goodman Columbia CD Volume III: All the Cats Join In today, and was struck with how fresh, assured, and imaginative the Stan Getz solos on the album were. The three tracks with Getz solos are "Lucky (You're Right, I'm Wrong)," "Rattle and Roll," and "Swing Angel." They're all excellent. "Rattle and Roll" has long been one of my favorite Goodman recordings - it was in that first box of 78s my grandmother gave me around 1974 - but "Lucky" is the Getz solo that really knocks me out: it has drive, harmonic imagination, and is extremely well-constructed. "Swing Angel" is almost as good, but suffers from being only half as long - eight measures as opposed to sixteen in "Lucky." I don't have the Mosaic Goodman box set, and am unlikely to get it, since I feel that I more recordings than I can listen to. But it has those three tunes, and alternate takes of all. Getz's first solo with Goodman is not on the Mosaic set - "Give Me the Simple Life," from November 20, 1945. The tenor solo is nearly as good as the three I mentioned above, but shows a little rhythmic uncertainly right at the beginning. Are there Getz solos on any Goodman recordings other than the four I've mentioned? In any case, these solos show remarkable talent and originality from an 18-year old.

I decided to pay tribute to the Goodman centennial this week with a program devoted to his brief foray into bebop (1947-49): Benny Goodman's Bebop Interlude Mostly small-group, some big band, lots of Wardell Gray, plus appearances from Stan Hasselgard, Mary Lou Williams, and Fats Navarro. Broadcasting tonight at 10 p.m. EST on WFIU and tomorrow night at 10 p.m. EST on Blue Lake Public Radio, but it's already archived for online listening.