18. Red Nichols and Miff Mole

Born in Ogden, Utah in 1905, Red Nichols was the red-haired son of a music teacher and multi-instrumentalist, and as a youth Red played in the local brass band, as well as studying piano and violin. He went to a military academy on a music scholarship aged 14, but fell under the spell of jazz, to his father’s dismay, and he was soon home again and playing in bands around Ogden, as well as in the town’s theatre pit. He joined the first of several touring bands with which he criss-crossed the country, learning his trade, and hearing the early recordings of Bix Beiderbecke, who was to become a major influence on Red’s style (rather than Armstrong). Another of the influences on Red was his friend, Miff Mole.

Making Cents with Miff
 Carr et al believe Red met Miff Mole in Atlanta in 1923, but Alyn Shipton dates their meeting to 1925. Either way, from 1925 until the end of the decade the pair began a close musical association, recording a number of influential tunes in a variety of small bands mainly in New York, the band names often involving a play on Red’s surname, Nichols, such as the Five Pennies. The records became big sellers.

Miff Mole

Miff Mole, the elder of the two, was born in Long Island, New York in 1898, and played with bands led by Jimmy Durante and Gus Sharp, before joining Phil Napoleon’s Original Memphis Five. It was the recordings of this last band that were to influence Red Nichols, as Miff quickly gained prominence, lauded as the first great trombone soloist. Later, the great Basie trombonist Dickie Wells would call him “the JJ Johnson of the 1920s”, but Mole’s career was beset, even at the height of his repute, by ill-health. Ailing and with gigs drying up, by the winter of 1960 he had taken to selling pretzels in a subway. Working in the New York winter can’t have done him any favours, and by April he was dead. Miff’s death came just over a year after Danny Kaye portrayed Nichols – or a Hollywood version of him – in the film "The Five Pennies".

Red Nichols and His Five Pennies, Boneyard Shuffle:

Eddie Lang is on guitar, and the clarinet/alto sax is Jimmy Dorsey.

Red Nichols and His Five Pennies, Feeling No Pain:

Pee Wee Russell is on clarinet, and the bass part is carried by Adrian Rollini on the unusual bass sax. This time Dick McDonough is the guitarist.


Compare that with Red and Miff’s Stompers, on another track called Feeling No Pain:

 Their music is not bluesy, and it can’t really be said to swing, but it would be wrong to dismiss it (as it sometimes is) as “chamber jazz”; this is hot dance music, and could often be raucous.

Red and Miff on CD:
Morton and Cook recommend the Red Heads Complete 1925 – 1927, on Classics, and Miff Mole Slippin’ Around, on Frog Records.

17. Henry “Red” Allen

Flushed with early success
Born in New Orleans in 1908, by the early 1920s, Red Allen was playing with the Excelsior Brass Band as well as with Sam Morgan’s band and George Lewis’ band. He earned his nickname because of the colour that his cheeks took on when he played high notes.

Chicago to New York
 After a spell on the Mississippi river boats, he was recruited by Joe Oliver to join him in Chicago in 1927. His talents were noticed by former Joe Oliver pianist Luis Russell, who was then fronting one of the most successful bands in New York. Russell’s band used several former Joe Oliver sidemen, including the formidable, bellow-lunged trombone player, Jay C. Higginbotham. At first Red travelled to New York to guest on Luis Russell recordings, but soon he had joined the band full time.

 Here’s Red propelling the Luis Russell number, Dr Blues. But listen out for Jay C. Higginbotham’s trombone solo, not that you’ll miss it!

As well as having an inherent sense of swing, Red was from the start a player willing to take risks. Avant-garde trumpeter, Don Ellis, hailed Red as “the most creative and avant-garde trumpeter playing in New York”. This was in the mid-60s, only two years before Red’s death, at the height of the New Thing (famously described by Time magazine as that “curious and compelling cacophony”). Red wasn’t pandering to new tastes; it’s just that the new players could dig Red’s famous unpredictability. His playing had always been full of the unexpected: what Ian Carr et al describe as his “’modern style’, all slurs, atonal twists and growls”. (Jazz: the essential companion, P7).

Lightning
 Here’s the Russell band’s Jersey Lightning:

Pops Foster solos on bass from around one minute in, but after that – from about 1:23 - we hear Red’s incredible solo, full of notes that aren’t even in the key being played, never mind the chord. The tune is full of chromaticism, but Red occasionally goes further than that, into pure atonality. His solo wouldn't sound out of place on a Charles Mingus album 30 years later.



 Red was to be a huge influence on later trumpet players, like Roy Eldridge. We’ll hear more of him in later decades, but we couldn’t leave the 20s without a mention for the man once called the last great New Orleans trumpet soloist.

 Here he is on a side recorded under his own name in 1929, Swing Out:

Red on CD:
 You can hear Red on Luis Russell records as well as under his own name in the late 20s. Morton and Cook recommend Luis Russell’s the Luis Russell Story, on Retrieval. It’s well worth getting. As well as Red and the wonderful Jay C. Higginbotham, you’ll hear old hands such as Kid Ory, Johnny St Cyr and Pops Foster, as well as Albert Nicholas on reeds.

Under Red’s name, Morton and Cook recommend Henry “Red” Allen and his Orchestra 1929 – 1933, on Classics.