Wednesday 28 August 2013

16. Jabbo Smith

Jabbo Smith, Red Hot Jazz Archive
Cladys “Jabbo” Smith was born in 1908 in Georgia, and learned to play trumpet while in an orphanage – a first parallel with Louis Armstrong. From the mid 20s he made some highly regarded recordings in New York. He was invited to join the Duke Ellington band, but although he is featured on the recording of Black and Tan Fantasy, he turned down a permanent spot in the band.

Armstrong’s replacement
 Jabbo pitched up in Chicago in the late 20s, playing at a speakeasy called the Bookstore, just as Louis Armstrong was preparing to leave the city. Milt Hinton – Tiny Parham’s bass player, who later worked with Cab Calloway and others - remembered that Armstrong’s club, presumably the Sunset Cafe, was looking for a replacement trumpet player when Hinton went there to play bass: “They were looking for a trumpet player to take Louis’ place and they got Jabbo Smith. Jabbo was as good as Louis then. He was the Dizzy Gillespie of that era. He played rapid-fire passages while Louis was melodic and beautiful. [...] He could play soft and he could play fast but he never made it”. (Shapiro and Hentoff, pp135-136).

Armstrong’s biographer, Terry Teachout, describes Smith as “in some ways even more facile” than Armstrong (Pops, p144), but believes that he lacks Louis’ expressive ability in the higher register.

Here’s Jabbo with his Rhythm Aces, recorded by Brunswick in Chicago in 1929. Note the anachronistic tuba.

Ace of Rhythm



You can hear Jabbo’s debt to Armstrong in this 8 bar blues, including in the vocals:

Take Me to the River.



Foreshadowing the future of jazz trumpet

For Ted Goia’s money, though, Jabbo Smith’s “driving, energetic attack foreshadows the later evolution of jazz trumpet, as represented by Eldridge and Gillespie, more clearly than even Armstrong’s”. (Gioia, p67).

Certainly, Eldridge was known to have valued some of Jabbo’s records highly, and Smith’s playing is adventurous and exciting, perhaps more so when he reaches for ideas you’re not quite sure he’s going to be able to pull off.

Listen out here for the wonderful Ikey Robinson on banjo.

Michigander Blues



Brief flowering

Ironically Jabbo bloomed on the Chicago music scene, just as the scene there was itself fading. The Mob gangs were engaged in an increasingly destructive turf war over control of the clubs, and civil society and the public authorities were clamping down on the clubs due to disapproval of the racial integration being flaunted by musicians, and in many cases by club audiences.

 Louis Armstrong was obliged to leave Chicago on a tour of the country after he became embroiled in a feud between competing management claims over him, during which a “big, bad-ass hood” named Frankie Foster pulled revolver on Louis and forced him to make a phone call withdrawing from a series of engagements in Chicago and agreeing to begin another contract in New York. On seeing the gun, Armstrong is said to have replied: “Weeeellll, maybe I do open in New York tomorrow”. Once he was away from the hood, he decided that giving both cities a wide berth for a while would be sensible. (See Teachout, pp162-164).

As the war escalated, venues were subject to firearms attacks and fire-bombings; the Plantation was firebombed while King Oliver’s band was on the bandstand. (Shipton, p119).

Later years

After his heyday in the late 1920s, Jabbo – still only in his mid 20s - disappeared from the music scene, apart from a brief resurgence with his innovative big band in the late 30s, until his “rediscovery” in the 1960s.

Jabbo on CD.

Morton and Cook recommend the Classics CD, Jabbo Smith’s Rhythm Aces 1929 – 1938, that brings together his Rhythm Aces sides with 4 tracks by his 1938 band.


Monday 26 August 2013

15. Hartzell “Tiny” Parham

(Pianist, organist, band leader, Chicago)


Born in Canada in 1900, but raised in Kansas, Tiny Parham worked the “Territory Circuit”, but found his way to Chicago by 1925, where he first worked as a pianist and composer for hire, accompanying blues singers and soloists. Here he is with Johnny Dodds, playing one of Parham’s own tunes.


 Unusual arrangements
 He was a terrific accompanist, but as a band leader he produced some very unusual and quirky music, combining instruments in ways other jazz composers weren’t. Tuba and violin, anyone? Here’s his Voodoo:



 Some commentators find similarities with Ellington’s work at the time, but I think there’s a closer affinity with Jelly Roll Morton, perhaps best heard in this side, although Tiny’s own piano break is quite unlike Morton’s style:


So, an affinity. But it’s by no means a Jelly Roll rip off.

Jazz connections
 It’s easy to forget, as we concentrate on the Chicago scene, that jazz was not sitting still in isolation in the city, but was evolving elsewhere as well. Sometimes it is said that it was evolving independently in the other locations it had been seeded, but that’s not quite true either. Tunes and reputations were being disseminated by the Territory Circuit, but also by recordings.

Records
 Record distribution in the US was remarkable in the 20s, and people even in difficult to reach communities had access to recorded music. So the urban centres were much more into the jazz craze. When Louis Armstrong went on tour, he was amazed to hear his records being played in black neighbourhoods all over the country, “We were popular all through the Towns we passed through – Toledo Ohio – Cleveland – Detroit – Buffalo”. (Louis Armstrong, in His Own Words: Selected Writings). He was surprised to find he was already well-known in towns he’d never before visited.

Radio
A 1924 Operadio set
It was also jazz’s good fortune to take off just at the same time as radio broadcasting erupted. Beginning in 1920, the US soon had national broadcasting networks, disseminating music, light entertainment and news. By 1922, there were 30 stations in America, growing to 550 stations in 1923, by which year the popularity of radio had begun to hit sales of record players so much that record player manufacturers began to combine their machines with radio sets, though most of the approximately 3 million Americans homes by then owning radios still used crystal sets with earphones.

A family using a crystal set, 1922
So even if he had never heard Ellington’s band in person, Parham – and the other Chicago musicians – had certainly heard his records or broadcasts, just as the New York musicians had heard theirs.

The Mob
 The Chicago music scene – like local government and law enforcement – was run by the Mob. Even venues not directly owned by gangsters such as Al Capone could not operate without their say. Parham worked in a club directly owned by Capone, in the Cicero area of the city.

 Parham may have worked directly for Capone, but others couldn’t avoid indirectly working for the mob. Joe Glaser, who on paper owned the Sunset club, was described as “gangster connected”; in reality his club was controlled by Capone’s syndicate. Armstrong and Oliver worked at the Sunset, and Glaser was eventually to become Armstrong’s manager.

Turf wars
As the 20s progressed, turf war between the gangs became more and more heated, and musicians were getting caught in the crossfire. Often literally.

George Wettling, the drumming friend of Muggsy Spanier, remembered the intimidation and the guns of those times. “We would see those rods come up – and duck. At the Triangle Club, the boss was shot in the stomach one night, but we kept working”. (Shapiro and Hentoff, p130).

Jimmy McPartland recalled the North Side mob coming into the Friar’s Inn, which had Capone connections. “So it was late this night, and we were off the bandstand and sitting in the back, when all of a sudden – bang, boom, bang! Somebody was shooting a gun.

 Mike Fritzl was the boss there, and Mike says, ‘Play, play, fellers.’ We weren’t all that keen, but the shooting had ceased so we got up on the stand to play, and there was the bass fiddle all shot to pieces”.(Shapiro & Hentoff, p132).

Death
 Like many others, Tiny got out of Chicago at the end of the 20s. He toured throughout the 30s, and died in a dressing room in Milwaukee during a show in 1943.

Tiny on CD
 Morton and Cook recommend the Classics issue, Tiny Parham and his Musicians, 1926 – 1929.


At the moment, that's a bit pricey for the casual collector (the French company with the famous typo on its covers, "Chronogical", went out of business, and some of its issues fetch higher prices than others).

The other alternative on the market was the 2008 release, "Tiny Parham", on the Timeless label, remastered by the late John R.T. Davies, but currently has an asking price of more than £100.  You'd need to really want it for that (it's a single CD, not a boxed set!).

So to hear Tiny, but not his Orchestra, you might want to consider Tiny Parham & the Blues Singers "Complete Recorded Works" (ie, as an accompanist) on the Document label.  This collection has three tracks with Johnny Dodds, including 19th Street Blues, heard above.



Wednesday 21 August 2013

14. Mezz Mezzrow

(Clarinet, saxophone, Chicago scene character, and Viper King).



Born in 1899, Milton Mesirow was a larger than life character, stories of whose colourful exploits have overshadowed his playing. He’s already been heard on the blog, I think, on some of the recordings by the Austin High Gang.

Extravagant character
 He was a good, though not great, player, but he deserves place in jazz history because of the extravagant way in which he personifies the times. There are two characteristics that are closely linked to jazz musicians in the 20s, and one is smoking marijuana, known by the black New Orleans musicians as “muggles”. Not all did use it – Kid Ory, for example, didn’t – but many did. Louis Armstrong was a life-long advocate of its virtues.

In the 1920s, marijuana was still legal in most US states, though alcohol wasn’t, and Mezzrow remembered he and Armstrong would roll their reefers “right out in the open and light up like you would on a Camel or a Chesterfield”.

Muggles King
 Mezzrow became an ardent devotee of the drug, and earned the nicknames the Viper King and the Muggles King. He soon had a sideline in supplying marijuana to musicians, and became so identified with the drug that his name became slang for it: for many jazz musicians “mezz” overtook “muggles” as their preferred term for marijuana.

The second characteristic of the times was how this generation of white Chicago musicians related to African American culture. Remember that although Jim Crow laws are most identified with the South, the North was not immune to local versions. The Chicago venue licensing authorities and the local musicians’ union shamefully colluded in forbidding black and white musicians to play together. The Chicago Federation of Musicians was itself segregated; black and white musicians had to join different organisations. (See this account of the Seattle AMF.) Nor was the North immune to the general racism we tend to associate with the South.

We have already seen that the musicians themselves got round this by not being paid if they sat in with musicians of different races, by taking part in after hours jam sessions, and by meeting at each others’ houses. (Johnny Dodds’ home was particularly renowned as a party house for musicians of all backgrounds). For this generation of young white Chicago musicians, the older black players were first their heroes, and then their friends. Part of the deal became that if you were a jazz musician, you were anti-racist. It is one of the attributes that sections of civil society, particularly the press, began to hold against white jazz musicians, seeing it as evidence that they were of low morals.

Being black
Mezz Mezzrow went a step further. He began to insist he was actually black. In 1930, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics was set up, and marijuana was eventually made illegal. Mezz was inevitably eventually arrested for possession with intent to distribute. Sentenced to a term in prison, he insisted – the prison being segregated - that he should be sent to a black wing, claiming he was a light skinned Negro of mixed race background.  Given the "One Drop" tradition, this was not so far fetched as it might seem.

It might seem odd from today's perspective, but he does seem to have been sincere. And remember that as stances of solidarity go, insisting on being treated as black in a racist penal system is no idle boast.

The Mob
 Mezzrow early on got a name for himself as someone who wasn’t afraid of the gangsters that ran the Chicago nightclub scene. Earl Hines remembered a run in Mezz had with Al Capone:

“It seems Al’s youngest brother, Mitzi, went for one of the good-looking entertainers with Mezz’s outfit, and Scarface ordered her fired. Mezz argued back while half a dozen of Al’s henchmen stood around laughing at the nerve of this musician arguing with Mr. Six-Shooter. Finally Al started laughing too and said, ‘The kid’s got plenty of guts’”.(pp130/131, Shapiro and Hentoff).

 You can hear Mezz’s playing as a sideman on a number of Chicago scene recordings, as well as with Bechet and with Fats Waller. But here is one of his own sides as a leader. It’s actually from the 30s, but I think we can let him off with that, after all he argued the toss with Scarface. Would you want to quibble?



Morton and Cook don’t recommend any CDs of Mezz as a front man (although he does feature on CDs by Fats Waller). But his book of memoires, Really the Blues, published in 1946, became something of a cult classic. I haven’t read it, though I have long meant to get a hold of a copy.





Monday 19 August 2013

13. Jimmy McPartland


McPartland was another Chicago native, born in 1907. He was raised in a succession of orphanages, before finally being expelled for fighting.

Austin High Gang
Along with other members of the Austin High Gang of high school friends who got together over their mutual love of jazz, he would initially learn jazz by copying the records of the New Orleans Rhythm Kings:


“What we used to do was put the record on [...] play a few bars, and then get all our notes. We’d have to tune our instruments up to the record machine, to the pitch, and go ahead with a few notes. Then stop. A few more bars of the record, each guy would pick out his notes and boom! We would go on and play it”, McPartland remembered. (Shapiro & Hentoff, p120)

Victrola Time
 When McPartland was around 15-years-old - the age he took up cornet - their hangout was an ice cream parlour called the Spoon and Straw. “They had a Victrola there, and we used to sit around listening to a bunch of records laid on the table”. [A Victrola model released in 1921-22, when the Austin High Gang were hanging out at the Spoon and Straw].

Eventually, McPartland and the Austin High Gang would discover King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, and would go to see them in person. The club boss, gangster-connected Joe Glaser, would let them in for free, knowing they’d be wanting to sit in and that he would get some free playing from them.

Wolverines
 As well as the NORK and King Oliver, the Austin High Gang admired Bix Beiderbecke, whom they first heard on the Gennett records Bix made with the Wolverines.

 “I was tremendously influenced by Bix, and hearing the Wolverines was a step forward for all of the gang. We got their numbers off, and added them to our repertoire”. (Shapiro and Hentoff, p144).


McPartland and the Austin High Gang were soon calling themselves The Blue Friars, after the speak easy club the NORK played at in Chicago, Friar's Inn, and were playing at the Cellar and the 3 Deuces, and falling into the circle of Eddie Condon and others.

Taking over from Bix
 Then Jimmy was offered his dream job, as Bix’s replacement in the Wolverines. He showed round the telegram offering him the job, and asked if it was a joke. It wasn’t. He accepted and moved to New York, where he shadowed Bix to begin with, learning the parts, both of them playing the gigs together. He roomed with Bix, and Bix bought him a new cornet saying the one Jimmy had been playing wasn’t worthy of the tunes.

Jimmy with the Wolverines:


McKenzie and Condon's Chicagoans

Jimmy joined McKenzie and Condon's Chicagoans in 1927, and with some of the old Austin High Gang and Eddie Condon, recorded a number of sides including China Boy:


Nobody’s Sweetheart:


In 1928, Jimmy was part of Benny Goodman and His Boys who recorded Room 1411, the first known composition by Glenn Miller (who co-wrote it with Benny Goodman, about whom more later).


Jimmy on CD:

Jimmy’s work with the Wolverines is included in the Complete Wolverines: 1924-1928, on the Off the Record label:






His later years are better served by CD issues, and we'll meet him again in later decades.


Wednesday 14 August 2013

12. Francis "Muggsy" Spanier



Muggsy Spanier, born in 1906, was a native of Chicago’s working class South Side. A cornet player, he first heard King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band play in the early 20s in Chicago, at the Lincoln Gardens club, and began to sit in with them whenever he was allowed.

 He remembered: “You can imagine the thrill it was the first time they let me sit in with them and play. I even remember the first tune – it was Bugle Blues, an original Joe Oliver tune”. (Shapiro & Hentoff).

Speak Easies
 With fellow South Sider, drummer George Wettling, Muggsy began to jam with musicians in the Black district of Chicago, at speak-easies patronized by musicians, and in the homes of black musicians such as Johnny Dodds. Even in Chicago, in the supposedly less racist North, the authorities forbade black and white musicians to play together, but they’d get around the rules, often simply by not being paid.

In the period of 1926 to 1928, they would jam at Chigaco clubs such as The Cellar and the 3 Deuces, where Eddie Condon often played. Soon they were forming bands, in various configurations and reconfigurations, with Condon and the others.

Spanier, top right.

Jamming at the Midway and the Sunset
Muggsy and Wettling’s regular gig from early 1926 was Midway Gardens Ballroom, on Cottage Grove, but – again ignoring the Jim Crow rules – when they finished, in the early hours of the morning, they’d dash across to the Sunset Cafe, where Louis Armstrong’s regular spot was at the time (with his Sunset Stompers), in order to take over from Louis during his breaks. Sometimes they’d sit in with Louis’ band to let some of his musicians take a rest. Muggsy would play second cornet to Louis, just as Louis once had with Oliver. (Earl Hines was the pianist with the Sunset Stompers, and in the 50s Muggsy and Hines would combine to jointly lead bands). Armstrong would occasionally guest at the Midway in return. Muggsy would try to steal Louis’ thunder by playing Armstrong’s best numbers before he got on stage. Armstrong was once heard to grin and say, “I do believe Muggsy is trying to cut me!” (Cutting contest), something nobody, least of all Muggsy, would have thought a serious possibility.

 Spanier said of Armstrong “How can you help loving a guy that makes the world smile and a happy place like Louis does? If he couldn’t blow or sing a note, he’d still be worth his weight in laughs”. (Shapiro and Hentoff).






Rhythmic drive
 Muggsy’s style was very like the black players he idolised, especially Joe Oliver, from whom he had learned at first hand. He had a warm tone, and stuck to the mid range of the instrument. Never a flash player, Muggsy created his sound with a forceful, rhythmic drive he derived from Oliver. Humphrey Littleton said “He wasn’t the greatest technician. Some of the solos play around with just four or five notes, but he gets something across every time. It’s almost miraculous how he does that, like Picasso creating a recognisable likeness with just two strokes of his brush”. (Morton & Cook, p74).

 When Muggsy later played in big bands, he told one band leader (Ted Lewis) who asked him to hit high notes, “Aw, get a piccolo!”

 Muggsy first recorded with the Bucktown Five in 1925, and the Stomp Six in 1926, before joining McKenzie and Condon’s Boys in the late 1920s.

 Here’s Muggsy with the Chicago Rhythm Kings in 1928 (including Mezz Mezzrow on tenor sax, Gene Krupa on drums, Frank Teschemacher on clarinet, and Eddie Condon on guitar):


Here’s Muggsy’s strong rhythmic playing kicking off There’ll Be Some Changes Made, by the Chicago Rhythm Kings:


(The vocal on the above is from Eddie Condon).

 The aforementioned Stomp Six in 1926. (The sound on this one is very thin):



Muggsy on CD:
 The Penguin Jazz Guide doesn’t recommend any Spanier tracks from the 20s, only the Classics collection Muggsy Spanier 1939-42.


In all fairness, the 30s and 40s is when his best recordings were made, especially with his Ragtime Band, and the Big Four with Sidney Bechet. But we’re still in the 20s, and to get those sides you might want to consider the 2 CD Essential Collection on the Avid Records label: