Buselli-Wallarab Jazz Orchestra: The Gennett Suite

[ghost of miles]

Last Friday Indiana’s long-running Buselli-Wallarab Jazz Orchestra released The Gennett Suite, co-leader Brent Wallarab’s ambitious four-movement tribute to the musical legacy of the historic Richmond, Indiana jazz label. Wallarab has transposed some of Gennett’s most notable recordings by Jelly Roll Morton, King Oliver and Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke and Hoagy Carmichael into expansive and modernistic big-band settings that invoke the melodic content of the originals in service of a 21st-century Gennett sound that draws on Wallarab’s love of his own mentors and influences such as Gil Evans and David Baker.

The double CD comes with a 60-page hardbound book containing essays by former Smithsonian curator of American music John Edward Hasse and by me (full disclosure! Very proud to be involved with this project) as well as Gennett-related photographs from the 1920s. It’s available through Amazon (vinyl version coming this autumn); here’s what jazz critic Neil Tesser has to say about it:

To most people, the small town of Richmond, Indiana won’t ring a bell. But those attuned to the seismic events that occurred there a century ago will instantly conjure up such early jazz icons as Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, and Jelly Roll Morton, surrounded by primitive recording technology in a converted piano factory – the setting for some of the most famous, pioneering jazz records made at the Gennett Studios, for one of the earliest successful record labels.

The brilliant composer and Indiana University professor Brent Wallarab has long admired that music, and the story of how culture, politics, capitalism, and the 1920s thirst for freedom combined to place Gennett at an epicenter of 20th-century music. With The Gennett Suite, he captures that history in a monumental piece, for the Buselli-Wallarab Jazz Orchestra, that repurposes music from the Gennett label’s influential early records. The album will be released on June 9, 2023 on Patois Records, a scrappy little label of our own time, owned by veteran trombonist and educator Wayne Wallace.

Using such classic compositions as “Dippermouth Blues,” “Wolverine Blues,” and “Star Dust” – the first recording of which took place in Richmond – Wallarab reimagines these legendary themes and personages for a new century. To do so, he has emptied his considerable toolbox of musical wizardry. He has extended themes, elasticized the time, turned ensembles into prisms, and applied a host of anachronic techniques – funkified bass lines, advanced harmonies, brilliant sonances, and plush ensemble textures barely imagined 100 years ago – to boldly bring these ancient compositions into the 21st century.

But not at the expense of the original material; at their most modern, Wallarab’s reinterpretations lose neither sight nor sound of the source. “These are more than just ‘arrangements’ of the tunes,” he points out. “I tried to give each one its own character. . . . [Each] is a unique part of the overall narrative I want to tell.”

Wallarab designed The Gennett Suite in four movements, each of which elevates one of the major jazz tributaries flowing into the Gennett studios in the early 1920s. The first movement, Royal Blue, celebrates some of the label’s earliest stars, tracing the evolution of jazz from an idiom of collective improvisation – represented by “Tin Roof Blues,” recorded in 1923 by the New Orleans Rhythm Kings – to a soloist’s art in the hands of Louis Armstrong. Wallarab illustrates this transition with an interlude that leads from “Tin Roof Blues” to the contemporaneous classics “Chimes Blues” and “Dippermouth Blues,” Gennett recordings made by King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band starring Armstrong, who had arrived in Chicago in 1922.

The second movement, Blues Faux Bix, focuses on Armstrong’s white counterpart, cornetist Bix Beiderbecke, whose cooler sound and more measured approach provided a Midwest alternative to the sounds from New Orleans. (Beiderbecke was born and raised in Davenport, Iowa.) This movement combines several songs Beiderbecke recorded for Gennett with his band The Wolverines – the early classics “Wolverine Blues” and “The Jazz Me Blues” – and Beiderbecke’s eidetic “Davenport Blues,” recorded under his own name and here starring Wallarab’s longtime band-leading partner, trumpet ace Mark Buselli.

Movement 3, Hoagland, reminds us that one of the earliest architects of the Great American Songbook – Hoagland Howard (“Hoagy”) Carmichael – played his own role in the Gennett story, as a fledgling songwriter and confidant of other musicians on the scene. On Carmichael’s classic “Riverboat Shuffle,” Wallarab recombines sections of the melody to build suspense and create an irresistible propulsion. But the real highlight is Wallarab’s extraordinary recomposition – and saxophonist Greg Ward’s emotionally transcendent interpretation – of “Star Dust,” which many consider to be the greatest single American popular song.

Carmichael first recorded “Star Dust” at Gennett in 1927. It grew out of his friendship with and admiration for Beiderbecke: Carmichael sought to capture the dreamy quality of the cornetist’s improvisations in this indelible through-composed melody. Given its pride among place in popular music, its inclusion would seem like a foregone conclusion, but Wallarab felt that wasn’t justification enough. “I went round and round on this,” he admits. “I mean, does the world really need another arrangement of ‘Star Dust?’ But I knew that if we were going to deal with Hoagy, it had to be reckoned with. So I decided that I would only submit a new arrangement if I could come up with a different approach.”

He ended up with a fantasia based on the original theme, incorporating elements from European classical composers in subtle ways; once he’d decided on the treatment, Wallarab knew that it should be a vehicle for Ward, the Chicago jazz veteran who joined the Indiana University faculty in 2019. Ward is well known in new jazz circles for exploratory bands like his Rogue Parade, and for collaborations with “Beat Scientist” Makaya McCraven. As Wallarab points out, “We all know what an amazingly creative small-group improviser he is. But a lead saxophone player in a big band? It’s just among the best I’ve ever heard from anyone. His playing on ‘Star Dust’ is just breathtaking.”

The final movement, Mr. Jelly Lord, honors Jelly Roll Morton, the first notable jazz composer, whose 1923 Gennett collaboration with the New Orleans Rhythm Kings helped put the new studio and its fledgling label on the map of American recording. Morton’s early arrangements had a seminal impact on his peers and imitators; and in “King Porter Stomp,” he gifted the world with a classic composition that has inspired new treatments by artists from Fletcher Henderson to Gil Evans to avant-jazz guitarist Noël Akchoté.

Although not a native Hoosier, Wallarab has spent the majority of his adult life in Indiana, and he has taken a keen interest in the state’s pivotal role during the early days of the recording industry. “Gennett’s importance in spreading jazz throughout the country has always been so inspiring to me,” he explains. His first attempt to commemorate that history in the form of a major composition came in 2003; but even after the piece was performed, “I knew that it wasn’t done yet,” he says. “It was OK, but it became the model for the current Gennett Suite.” He began to rewrite the project in 2017 and then, in early 2022, he committed to finishing the monumental piece before the end of the year.

“As far as I’m concerned, my job was to create this musical narrative of Gennett,” Wallarab continues. To help tell that story beyond the music itself, he enlisted acclaimed jazz historian John Hasse, Curator Emeritus at the Smithsonian Institution, whose astute historical essay contextualizes the milieu in which jazz and Gennett both took root; and also David Brent Johnson, author and nationally syndicated radio host at Bloomington’s WFIU-FM, to analyze Wallarab’s use of the source material for the work. The essays highlight the 60-plus-page booklet that accompanies the splendidly packaged double-CD.

In bringing the music of 100 years ago forward, Wallarab has fulfilled his long-held goal to commemorate Gennett and, more broadly, the state of Indiana’s vital and often forgotten role in the record business. A passionate educator, he has also made this a teachable moment, using the work to dust off and re-examine music that remains vital yet malleable to changing tastes.

In 2023, “Gennett is not exactly an unknown,” Wallarab says, but neither is it high in the consciousness of modern listeners. In fact, “A lot of the musicians who played on the session had no idea about the label and his history.” But they surely do now.

Edited June 14, 2023 by ghost of miles

[ghost of miles]

A brief but positive, four-star review in the September issue of DownBeat, getting top marks in their round-up of new big-band releases.

… and All About Jazz’s review from earlier this summer.

Edited August 3, 2023 by ghost of miles

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Double-LP and immersive mix version on the way, plus a roundup of some reviews:

Patois Records and the Buselli-Wallarab Jazz Orchestra together announce the release of a premium Dolby Atmos immersive mix version of the critically acclaimed The Gennett Suite on September 1, 2023 through Apple Music. This will be followed by a double LP vinyl version of the recording later this fall. Celebrating the full circle of recording technology from the inception of the legendary Gennett Records in the early 1900s to the present, both versions of the recording will be available along with artwork chronicling the history of how early jazz greats such as Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, and Bix Beiderbecke created their music on the Gennett label. 
 
“The immersive mixes will make you feel like the orchestra is playing a private concert just for you as you sit amongst the ensemble hearing the 13 horns clearly and separately surrounding you in 360 degrees. It allows you to experience the complex and detailed harmonies and the beautiful tones of each of the musicians. Many immersive mixes utilize the format for tricks and gimmicks, but Jazz is a natural fit for this relatively new way to experience music.” – Mixing Engineer Jacob Belser 
 
“The Gennett Suite is a reaffirmation of jazz and how its living spirit continues to inspire us.” – Wayne Wallace, Patois Records
 
The Gennett Suite will be available to stream in Dolby Atmos on Apple Music with compatible equipment. See https://www.dolby.com/experience/music/#gref for details on how to listen.

 

The album, featuring the Buselli-Wallarab Jazz Orchestra and released on CD/digital June 9, 2023 via Patois Records, has earned broad critical acclaim:

★★★★★  “A brilliant tribute to a founding studio of 1920s jazz… What stands out immediately on first listen, is the sophistication and arrangements of the classic tunes of this period. I would compare the quality to early Duke Ellington… Much like Duke, Brent writes to the strengths of his soloists. Recorded in August, 2022, in Bloomington, Indiana, in pristine acoustics, this is early jazz music to treasure.” —Jeff Krow, Audiophile Audition

 

★★★★1/2 “This ambitious piece is named for Gennett Records, who played a crucial role in jazz history 100 years ago. With the highest production values in every stage, this one is a must for devotees of contemporary big band jazz. — Duck Baker, Absolute Sound 

 

★★★★★ “…the music has the feel of America, the twenty-first century reaching back and shaking hands with the early-twentieth, taking the artists’ relatively primitive recordings—state of the art for their times—and inviting them into the present, with gorgeous harmonies and luxuriant arrangements. The Gennett Suite: a distinctly American masterpiece.” – Dan McClenaghan, All About Jazz

 

★★★★ “The Gennett Suite by the Buselli/Wallarab Orchestra, in which Brent Wallarab reimagines century-old themes like “Tin Roof Blues”, “Riverboat Shuffle”, “Davenport Blues” and six others into a contemporary suite. Like Gil Evans and Henry Threadgill before him, he intends neither an earnest repertory-style duplicate nor a cartoonish, cut-and-paste mockery of 1920s pop culture. Using a stylish modernism, he dresses them in a 21st-century context so we can hear them played with care for fresh ears in today’s terms. For those who’ve let their homework slide on the early jazz songbook, there’s a richly appointed 68-page booklet to provide a scrim of antiquity. — John McDonough, DownBeat 

 

★★★★ “Mark Buselli and Brent Wallarab have taken this important music and refashioned it for their sumptuous big band….Vivid arrangements and stunning soloists swingingly submerge the listener in the seismic 1920s, making them seem as fresh as the 2020s — fresher, perhaps…. Let this lovely album clean out your 21st- century ears, then blow the dust off the originals and play them too.” – Chris Pearson, The Times, London