Review of John Hammond Bio

[Brownian Motion]

The New York Times

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August 11, 2006

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John Hammond, Who Put His Money and Vision Where His Musical Taste Was

By PETER KEEPNEWS

Considering how many historic recordings bear his name, it’s a little surprising that it has taken until now, almost 20 years after his death, for someone to write a biography of John Hammond. But maybe it’s not all that surprising.

After all, Mr. Hammond spent his career out of the spotlight. While helping to steer artists from Billie Holiday to Bruce Springsteen into the public eye as a talent scout, record producer and overall mover and shaker, he remained the benevolent (some would say paternalistic) man behind the curtain.

And it’s not as if Mr. Hammond has never been written about. He’s a prominent supporting character in the biographies and autobiographies of his most famous so-called discoveries, a list that also includes Bob Dylan, Count Basie, Benny Goodman and Aretha Franklin. He told his own story in 1977 in “John Hammond on Record,” a memoir that was more than a little self-serving and selective, but entertaining nonetheless.

So while it could be said that Dunstan Prial is staking out virgin territory with his Hammond biography, “The Producer,” it could also be said that he is simply taking all the good Hammond anecdotes that have been out there for years and putting them in one place, creating the literary equivalent of a greatest-hits collection.

But he has done more. He has conducted some solid research, and while his book is sometimes a little light on context (among other things, it lacks a thorough discography), he has fashioned the diverse strands of Mr. Hammond’s life into a very readable narrative. It helps that he has a fascinating protagonist.

If John Hammond didn’t exist, a novelist might have had to invent him. A child of privilege (his mother was a Vanderbilt), he was drawn to jazz and blues at an early age and went on to dedicate his life, and fortune, to American vernacular music, and also to racial equality. With his flat-top haircut and perpetual grin, he cut a strange figure. With his sharp ear, infectious enthusiasm and deep pockets, he helped change the course of 20th-century music.

Mr. Prial, a journalist (and the son of Frank Prial, who was a reporter and longtime wine columnist for The New York Times), clearly admires Mr. Hammond’s accomplishments, as both musical catalyst and social activist, but this book is not hagiography. Mr. Prial acknowledges that Mr. Hammond could be arrogant and imperious; that he could be vindictive toward musicians, among them Duke Ellington, who did not follow his career advice; and that he could take a rather cavalier attitude toward conflicts of interest.

In the 1930’s, when he was producing records by Goodman, Holiday and Basie, Mr. Hammond was also an influential critic. He wrote about music, primarily for Down Beat and the British magazine Melody Maker, and he often raved about musicians he worked with, without disclosing his involvement. (“I was in the studio at the time,” he would write about a record he was praising. What he wouldn’t say is that he was there because he was supervising the session.) As Mr. Prial notes, Hammond defended such apparent ethical lapses by explaining that it was all for the greater good of the music, and that anyway he was not benefiting financially. Call it the jazz version of noblesse oblige.

Mr. Prial tells us that he first learned about Mr. Hammond through the music of Stevie Ray Vaughan, the dynamic blues-rock guitarist who in the early 80’s became Mr. Hammond’s last significant protégé, and that he was a fan of Mr. Dylan and Mr. Springsteen before he knew anything about the man credited with discovering them. So it’s not surprising that once his narrative enters the 1960’s — shortly after Mr. Hammond rejoined Columbia Records, where he had first made his mark as a producer, and began shifting his focus from jazz — Mr. Prial seems much more engaged than when writing about the musicians Mr. Hammond recorded in the 30’s. He understands that these earlier artists were important but has a hard time explaining why.

For example, he writes of Lionel Hampton: “His music alone was enough to startle even virtuoso musicians of Benny Goodman’s caliber. When Hampton’s mallets struck the metallic bars of the vibraharp, a spray of notes burst forth. And each one made perfect sense, one note following another impossibly fast but never forced.” A spray of notes? This is colorful writing, but it doesn’t shed very much light.

Some passages are apt to make even the casual jazz fan wince. Take Mr. Prial’s observation that in Kansas City, in the days when Count Basie was a local hero, “improvisational jamming was the preferred style.” One word would have done it: jamming is improvisation.

But the author’s musical expertise is beside the point when he writes, eloquently, about what was perhaps Mr. Hammond’s greatest accomplishment: persuading an initially reluctant Benny Goodman to hire two black sidemen, Mr. Hampton and the pianist Teddy Wilson.

By bringing a racially mixed quartet on tour with his very successful all-white big band, Goodman made a powerful statement, if not quite as powerful as he would have made by integrating the big band, which he did not do until some years later. (Frustratingly, Mr. Prial sometimes acknowledges that the quartet and the orchestra were separate entities but at times seems to forget, as when he praises Goodman for “allowing two black men into his band.”)

Two decades before civil rights marchers shined a harsh light on the reality of segregation, John Hammond, via Benny Goodman, took a brave stand that almost no one else, in or out of the music business, was taking. That, Mr. Prial suggests, meant more to him than having a hit record ever could. It meant more to the world too.

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[AllenLowe]

well, Hammond was good, but he was no Chris Albertson -

(sorry Chris, could not resist) -

[BruceH]

The article somehow fails to mention that an electric organ was named after him...

[allblues]

The article somehow fails to mention that an electric organ was named after him...

Or a city in Indiana.

[Dmitry]

well, Hammond was good, but he was no Chris Albertson -

(sorry Chris, could not resist) -

Heh.

[JSngry]

The article somehow fails to mention that an electric organ was named after him...

Or a city in Indiana.

Or a popular egg dish.

[Fer Urbina]

The article somehow fails to mention that an electric organ was named after him...

Or a city in Indiana.

Or a popular egg dish.

Or a BBC weatherman

F

[Christiern]

Allen Lowe: "well, Hammond was good, but he was no Chris Albertson"

I'll forgive you for that one Allen.

But only if you forgive me the length of the following:

I read the book and have mixed feelings about it. I basically agree with Peter's assessment and, yes, Prial's lack of jazz knowledge is painfully obvious throughout, but more bothersome to me is that we only get a blurry picture of Hammond the man. Prial was fortunate to gain access to the many hours of Hammond interviews conducted by Ed Beach, and I suspect that this was his main source. It is certainly from these tapes that he derives such intimate details as Hammond's thoughts when entering a room (there is a lot of that in the book), at least I hope the author wasn't making this stuff up. However, I'm not so sure that John wasn't, because he was the chronic image builder (his own) who routinely enhanced his involvement in the shaping of jazz and would embellish rather than correct wrongfully attributed accomplishments.

As Prial correctly points out, John also dealt very loosely with the facts in his autobiography, a case in point being the death of Bessie Smith. Here was an instance where John virtually started a rumor that would become the most widespread of all the myths surrounding Bessie: that she died as a result of not being admitted to a white hospital in 1937. This story persisted despite attempts to set it straight; Edward Albee wrote a play based on it and jazz writers (with the exception of George Hoefer) simply accepted what John had written in down beat shortly after Bessie’s fatal car crash. In 1971, I played for John a detailed eyewitness account of Bessie’s accident by Dr. Hugh Smith, who totally debunked the myth. John listened, nodded, and said that it was interesting, but he didn’t argue with the doctor’s story. When I asked him why he hadn’t made a few phone calls before writing his hearsay account, he just shrugged his shoulders. A few years later, in his autobiography, John not only stuck to his old story, he suddenly recalled previously unmentioned details. Whitney Balliett picked up on that in a review of John’s book (

New Yorker

Jan. 9, 1978): “And in a queer passage, he refuses to accept the new and seemingly watertight version of Bessie Smith’s death advanced by Chris Albertson in ‘Bessie’.”

Here’s the “queer passage” from John’s book:

“I talked to the owner of the [silas] Green show, who told me how the old Packard in which Bessie was riding had been forced off the road and her arm nearly severed. He said that two ambulances had passed her by because she was black. It was a long and convincing story from a man who was in a position to know the truth, and there were two other people there nodding agreement as he told it to me. When I told him I wrote for several magazines and was interested, as my readers would be, in what had really happened, he said, ‘Don’t quote me’.”

How convenient.

The truth is that Bessie’s car (driven by Richard Morgan, her lover and Lionel Hampton’s Uncle) never went off the road, it crashed into the rear end of a delivery truck. Bessie was taken directly to the nearest black hospital, never regained consciousness, and died about 7 hours later.

I go into details of this here, because it is a clearly documented instance of John’s imagination (agenda?) at work. It says a lot about his disregard for accuracy. To Prial’s credit, he uses this story as one example of John’s stubborn refusal to admit having been wrong.

The fact that Prial does acknowledge John’s credibility gaps makes one wonder why he accepts on face value the interview material and some of the claims made in the autobiography.

Let me say that the book contains much interesting material about John’s personal life and background, so it is valuable in that respect, but there is an awful lot of space spent on filler material, such as superfluous details on some of John’s “discoveries.”

I find it interesting how some of the people Prial interviewed embrace Hammond and speak of him in glowing terms, directly contrasting previously expressed views. There is, for example, the record company executive who used to ridicule John (as so many others at Columbia did in the '60s), once even joking to me that a heart attack might foil the label's plan for a Hammond tribute at an upcoming Columbia convention. John was regarded as an out-of-touch relic at Columbia in the late 60s. He was referred to as an "untouchable," someone the company was saddled with who could not be be gotten rid of because Goddard Lieberson (who then headed CBS Records) owed his job to him.

I spent six weeks seated at John's desk, at his request, taking care of his business while he and his wife, Esmé, were on vacation. You learn a lot about a person that way, and I learned that John made too many promises that he couldn't keep. John left me a note asking that I inform George Braith that the album he had worked on for a year would not be released. You can imagine how difficult

that

was. Another musician called from a hospital bed, he had a bleeding ulcer and an unfulfilled promise from John. Then there were the stacks of tapes, sent in from all over the world by hopefuls whom John never lent an ear. Granted, 99% of them were horrendously bad, but I thought they at least deserved a listen, so I set about doing that.

There was a time when John Hammond was the only name black musicians associated with Columbia, so--and since he was officially the "Head of Talent Acquisition," it was to his small office that hopefuls directed their calls and mail. When budding artists called, John was always very friendly and quick to generate optimism, but he rarely followed through on his promises and there were times when he put people off once too often. Some became so frustrated that they paid him a visit at the office, and--in an era of black militancy--John was not always treated with the awe to which he had grown accustomed. One dashiki-wearing, afro-ed visitor grabbed John by the collar and screamed at him for not returning calls, making empty promises, being typical of “the man,” etc. Understandably shaken, John made sure that future visitors were described to his secretary by the floor receptionist, giving him time to make a quick escape via a conference room trouble seemed to be heading down the hall. The "great white father" never got used to black people not treating him with reverence.

Rex Stewart and I had lunch one day, after which I dropped by Columbia. Frank Driggs was working on a Fletcher Henderson reissue ("A Study in Frustration") and John was there to listen to some of the recordings. "I guess you're including some of the sides with Rex Stewart," I said. The answer from John was prompt and firm: "As few as possible!" When I asked Rex why John had seemed so hostile, he told me that John never liked “Negroes” who didn't kiss his ass, or something like that, and that he was known to actually stand in the way of people’s careers. I subsequently found several cases of such abuse of power. After waiting some 20 years for John to make good on a promise to her, Ruby Walker (Bessie Smith's niece) decided to take matters into her own hands and seek a recording contract. Uaware of John’s new executive position at Mercury, she wrote a letter to the label asking for an audition, because “John Hammond promised me the moon but dropped me like a hot potato.” John called her and made another promise, he would see to it that she never recorded again.

Then there was Charlie Smalls, a struggling composer whose talent John recognized. Charlie was a charming, good humored guy. John auditioned him in the studio and gave him a contract that called for making a single with the possibility of an album follow-up. Charlie became a regular visitor to the office, always stopping at the newsstand in the lobby to purchase a certain brand of cheroot that he knew John liked. John spoke very highly of Charlie, predicting good things for him..

Shortly after recording the single, and before it was released, Charlie received an eviction notice from his landlord. He told John that all he cared about was his piano and dog, asking for a modest advance to prevent the eviction. John became furious and told Charlie that he would not have given him a contract had he known he was in such bad financial shape! The record was shelved.

Not too long after that, Charlie answered an open call from Ken Harper who was looking for composers and lyricists to write (on spec) music for a musical based on "The Wizard of Oz." Charlie, still struggling, went to work and wrote the music (except for one song) for "The Wiz." Charlie died 12 years after the Broadway opening.

There is no question about John’s real accomplishments, which makes all the more inexplicable his self-puffery, and Prial does a good job of telling us why John rose to a lofty level in jazz, but--as Peter points out in his review--this is largely a rehash of familiar anecdotes. It could have been a far more interesting book if Prial had dug deeper and wider--after all, there are still many people around who knew John. People who knew that his keen ears could mistake a tenor for an alto, a cornet for a clarinet; people who knew that among the folded newspapers he always carried under his arm, somewhere between

The Wall Street Journal

and

The New York Times

, rested a copy of

Screw

a publication he read regularly, but never subscribed to. Once, in the lobby of Black Rock (the CBS building) his papers, including

Screw

. fell to the floor when he shook someone’s hand.

I only knew John for a little over two decades, and I could go on with first-hand anecdotes, so one can imagine how much was missed by Prial. I think he did get to Mikie Harris, John’s last secretary, who--as people filed out of St, Peter’s having sat through a series of Hammond stories--casually remarked to Hank O’Neal, “They bought the story.”

Indeed they did, but it wasn’t all fiction.

Edited August 12, 2006 by Christiern

[Dan Gould]

Thanks for those comments, Chris.

[Dmitry]

[i think he did get to Mikie Harris, John’s last secretary, who--as people filed out of St, Peter’s having sat through a series of Hammond stories--casually remarked to Hank O’Neal, “They bought the story.”

Wait a minute. Isn't that one of the opening scenes in Lawrence of Arabia?

[Christiern]

[i think he did get to Mikie Harris, John’s last secretary, who--as people filed out of St, Peter’s having sat through a series of Hammond stories--casually remarked to Hank O’Neal, “They bought the story.”

Wait a minute. Isn't that one of the opening scenes in Lawrence of Arabia?

If so, Mikie borrowed it. Hank O'Neal (of Chiaroscuro), who became John's partner in a unsuccessful record company (Hammond Music Enterprises) told me the story a day after the memorial service.

BTW, I should have mentioned that John finally mellowed and recorded a handful of numbers with Ruby Walker (Smith), but nothing more come of it. It was during this session that I introduced John to Alberta Hunter. I think he eventually "discovered" her.

[Christiern]

Book Review

Laissez Faire In The Studio

Richard Hyfler

W

hen John Hammond died in 1987, his "discoveries" of Billie Holiday and Bob Dylan were cited in his front-page New York Times obituary. He might as easily have been credited with discovering Count Basie, Aretha Franklin and Bruce Springsteen, all of whom he signed to recording contracts in a long career as a producer for Columbia Records (now owned by Sony) and its subsidiaries. Dunstan Prial's exhaustively researched The Producer: John Hammond and the Soul of American Music ($25, Farrar, Straus & Giroux) covers the career of this once legendary figure.

A Vanderbilt heir, Hammond grew up in Manhattan and lived in a mansion off Fifth Avenue, a short bus ride away from Harlem, whose nightspots and jazz clubs he first visited in the 1920s while he was still in his teens. His nocturnal habits made him a familiar figure on the scene. Shortly after dropping out of Yale, he began writing articles for music magazines and touting his own early efforts as a DJ, manager of jazz artists and record producer--dubious credentials by current journalistic standards.

Among his early accomplishments: the Bessie Smith session that produced the memorable "Gimme a Pigfoot (and a Bottle of Beer)," a sentiment, delivered with full-throated gusto by the great blues diva, that takes you a long way from summers at Newport. Hammond's personal charm and generosity toward the musicians he supported didn't stop him from developing a reputation as an acerbic critic--he had running battles in print with Duke Ellington--and as a sometimes unwelcome meddler in the bands, like Count Basie's and Benny Goodman's, that he could influence.

But in the studio he was laissez faire all the way, typically sitting in some corner working his way through newspapers and political magazines while the musicians were left on their own. Hammond deserves some credit for stepping out of the way when an extraordinary stream of sides were recorded by the young Billie Holiday. Led mostly by the pianist Teddy Wilson, these sessions remain the epitome of small-band jazz of the '30s and are as perfect in their way as anything American culture has produced. When Hammond stepped in, things sometimes got messy: His idea of recording Paul Robeson and Aretha Franklin as jazz singers did little for their careers.

Wilson figured in another of Hammond's ongoing concerns, when Hammond persuaded Goodman (later to become Hammond's brother-in-law) to hire Wilson, making Goodman's group the first prominent integrated band. The need to extend civil rights to the people responsible for the music he loved was clear to Hammond from the beginning. He was on the NAACP's board for decades--quitting when he thought it assumed too moderate a position--and during his World War II service he had the hopeless task of trying to boost the morale of ill-treated black recruits at Southern army bases.

Hammond's influence diminished after the war. Though his tastes extended to blues and gospel, he had little interest in postwar jazz or rock 'n' roll. But his sinecure at Columbia allowed him to sign and promote Dylan, Franklin and Springsteen, although having these "discoveries" introduced to a prominent industry figure was much less dramatic than hearing a band on the radio and driving from New York to Kansas City to sign up Count Basie.

This book corrects many of the errors of fact and omissions that appeared in Hammond's autobiography and includes well-placed biographies of the musicians he worked with and colorful details about Harlem in the '30s, the '60s folk scene and the jazz geography of Kansas City and Oklahoma City. The tone is generally laudatory, though balanced enough that one can appreciate Hammond's critics, who thought he was good at spotting raw talent but may have received more credit than he deserved.

How influential was Hammond? Count Basie would have made it to New York, with or without him. And no doubt Dylan would have just as decisively jumped out of the pack of early-'60s protest singers had he signed up with Elektra instead of Columbia. And with or without Hammond, no one was going to stop the long march to civil rights for American blacks. And no one "discovers" an Aretha Franklin, just as surely as America existed before Columbus. But a few more years of frustration might have killed the careers of some of the musicians Hammond scouted. At least one of them barely escaped oblivion.

Working on a tip from jazz pianist Mary Lou Williams, Hammond made his way to Oklahoma City in 1939 to listen to an electric guitar player. The plane trip from Chicago to Oklahoma City involved eight stops over 15 hours. A short time later, Hammond got the guitarist together with Benny Goodman. They hit it off musically and were soon appearing together in the country's most popular swing band. The only recordings that we have of Charlie Christian, which have influenced each successive generation of guitarists and contributed so much to the distinctive sound of rock 'n' roll, were produced in the brief span that he played with Goodman. Christian died in 1942 at the age of 25.

Sometimes, timing is everything.

He makes good points in the paragraph I bolded.--CA