New John Hammond biography

[ghost of miles]

Will Friedwald's review:

A Talent for Discovery

by Will Friedwald

New York Sun, June 27, 2006

My late father liked to tell a story about the extraordinary talent scout John

Hammond. At the dawn of the 1960s, my dad hung out a lot in the clubs of

Greenwich Village, where he heard dozens of folk singers singing out of tune and

accompanying themselves with a few chords (mostly wrong) on beat-up guitars. One

of them was Bob Dylan, recently arrived from his native Minnesota. My dad ran

into Mr. Dylan many times in 1961, but he saw nothing to distinguish the young

singer from the other raggedy folkies on the scene. Not so Hammond, who signed

Mr. Dylan to his record label, Columbia. As my father put it, "How John Hammond

was able to pick Dylan out and say, 'This guy is going to be something special'

always astonished me!"

Those who knew Hammond (1910-87) would have been less surprised. In addition to

Bob Dylan, Hammond either discovered or helped establish the careers of Billie

Holiday, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Charlie Christian, Aretha Franklin, George

Benson, and Bruce Springsteen, among others. How he did so is the subject of

"The Producer: John Hammond and the Soul of American Music" (Farrar, Straus &

Giroux, 368 pages, $27) by Dunstan Prial, a reporter for the Associated Press.

Hammond was a scion of one of the wealthiest families in America, the

Vanderbilts. He was drawn to black music and culture from a young age, and he

also grew up with the belief, handed down by his mother, that it was his duty to

help others. For Hammond, promoting good music was both a cultural and moral

imperative. By raising the standard of the nation's musical taste, he would

simultaneously fight for the civil rights of the black people who made the music

he loved.

By the late 1920s, Hammond was regularly traveling up to Harlem to hear the

music he had discovered on records. After dropping out of Yale in 1931, he began

to work his way into the record business, largely through his relationship with

Benny Goodman. The two met in 1933 when Hammond offered the clarinetist the

opportunity to lead an all-star band on a series of sessions for Columbia.

Though Goodman was already an established soloist at the time, Hammond served as

his musical conscience for a few crucial years in the mid-1930s.

Hammond helped Goodman put together the band that effectively launched the swing

era in 1935, advising him on which musicians to hire and urging him to make his

an uncompromisingly hot orchestra. At a time when it was taboo for white and

black musicians to perform together, Hammond encouraged Goodman to work with

great black musicians like pianist Teddy Wilson, vibraphonist Lionel Hampton,

and guitarist Charlie Christian.

Hammond's first major discovery was Billie Holiday, whom he heard singing in a

small club in Harlem in 1932. The late vibraphonist Red Norvo, however, always

insisted that he and his wife, the singer Mildred Bailey, had been with Hammond

on that particular night, and that it was Bailey who first pointed out that the

16-year-old girl was a major talent. Mr. Prial briefly mentions this story in

his footnotes, but it doesn't take anything away from Hammond -- nor does it

matter much that Mary Lou Williams first told him about Charlie Christian. In

both cases, it was Hammond who had the resources and presence of mind to give

talented young musicians opportunities to make records.

By the mid-1930s, Hammond was regularly producing various sessions for Columbia

while keeping an ear out for new talent. He first heard Count Basie on a

long-distance broadcast from the Reno Club in Kansas City, and he took the

necessary steps to set the pianist and bandleader up with an agent and re-tool

his already remarkable orchestra. Hammond's most vital contribution was

discovering the outstanding rhythm guitarist Freddy Green, who proved

indispensable to Basie for the rest of the pianist's career.

When Hammond discovered talents he liked, he devoted all his resources to

helping establish them. He wrote jazz criticism for various publications and, as

Mr. Prial shows, had no compunction about lavishing praise in print on the very

musicians whose careers he was steering. Similarly, he was known to take money

out of his own pocket to promote musicians. But woe unto those who acted like

they didn't need his support or suggestions.

Basie was diplomatic enough to go as far as he could with Hammond's suggestions,

but the band's star, Lester Young, resented the way Hammond tried to take charge

and replace some of Young's friends. Duke Ellington, whose more ambitious work

Hammond attacked in print, claimed that Hammond saw to it that the Duke's band

was never given the choicest studios to record in during the late 1930s, when

they were both at Columbia. Hammond also resented that when Harry James launched

his first band, the trumpeter went and hired a boy singer without consulting

him; as a result Hammond and Frank Sinatra were always at odds.

Hammond's desire to be in the middle of everything explains why he was lukewarm

to the sea change that occurred in jazz while he was in the Army between 1942

and 1946.When the bebop revolution occurred, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie

did not make it their business to seek Hammond's approval. Suddenly, there was a

whole generation of free-thinking musicians who didn't need his support.

Denouncing the entire modern jazz movement, Hammond said he heard more of the

bluesy energy he loved in folk and pop music. After returning to Columbia

Records in 1959, he proved his worth to the label by bringing in Leonard Cohen,

Ms. Franklin, and Messrs. Dylan, Benson, and Springsteen. He found most of these

later stars through agents, demo tapes, and other musicians -- rather than

sitting in a club and pricking up his ears. Just the same, he deserves credit

for launching them professionally.

Mr. Prial has given us a fast-moving and very readable biography that

complements Hammond's excellent memoir, "John Hammond on Record" (1977). Mr.

Prial uses Hammond's book as the skeleton of his story, which he has filled in

with other writings by Hammond and interviews with him. He has also

cross-checked Hammond's own accounts with the copious literature -- biographies

and autobiographies -- attendant to most of the major musicians Hammond was

associated with.

Mr. Prial is especially good in documenting Hammond's extra-musical activities:

his stint as a reporter covering the infamous Scottsboro Boys trial in 1932-33

and his often tempestuous involvement in the NAACP over three decades. As with

musicians, he tended to get testy with NAACP officials -- particularly with Roy

Wilkins -- when their ideas differed from his.

The book's most egregious fault is overlooking Hammond's relationship to Mildred

Bailey. Hammond never claimed to have discovered Bailey, but he produced many of

her best records, off and on over a dozen years, and they enjoyed a close

personal friendship. Hammond regarded his work with Bailey as some of the finest

of his career, yet she is barely mentioned here. But Mr. Prial devotes a whole

chapter to Stevie Ray Vaughan, a forgettable blues-rock guitarist who was the

last artist Hammond boosted.

Still, Mr. Prial also captures the essence of what allowed Hammond to succeed:

his a complete and unswerving faith in his own instincts. He would boost any

musician who pleased him, and had no fear of joining any left-leaning

organization he chose. (He deliberately steered clear of the Communist Party,

however, because he disagreed with its attitude toward blacks.) He would promote

either a performer or a cause with the dedication of a true reformer.

By the 1960s, Hammond almost never actually produced the artists he discovered.

By that time, he was leaving it to the other guys to make the records. John

Hammond's job, contrastingly, was to make careers.

[Christiern]

This is a book I must read.

I'll get back with my take on it. In the meantime, let me just quote a remark John's secretary made as people filed out of St. Peter's following a memorial service at which various people went overboard telling the usual Hammond stories of "discovery" and "ear."

Speaking almost to herself, she was overheard by Hank O'Neal (chiaroscuro).

"They bought the story."

I hope Prial didn't.