Red Norvo Trio

 

Honeysuckle Rose

Red Norvo Trio
Rondo-lette High Fidelity A28
A Product of the Rondo Record Corporation
1958

From the back cover: "Red" Norvo, one of the foremost figures of modern jazz, was born Kenneth Norville, March 31, 1908 at Beardstown, Illinois. Norvo started taking piano lessons at the age of eight. While in high school, he took up the xylophone, and then left home at the age of seventeen for Chicago where he launched his career as the leader of a seven piece marimba band entitled The Collegians. When this group broke up, he joined Paul Ash's orchestra, and followed that with a tour of vaudeville in a solo act in which he played the Poet and Peasant overture and did a tap dance. During the summer of 1929 he led a band in a Milwaukee ballroom, and then enrolled at the University of Detroit. He returned to the music business some four months later in Minneapolis, working at Station KSTP, and then returned to Chicago as a staff musician at NBC with Victor Young.

While working on a radio series with Paul Whiteman over NBC, he met Mildred Bailey, then a singer with Whiteman's band. They worked together in Chicago, and then married and came to New York with Whiteman. Red left Whiteman in 1934 and settled in New York where he had his own piano-less octet at the Hickory House on 52nd Street. The personnel of the band included Eddie Sauter on mellophone, Herbie Haymer on tenor sax and Dave Balfour on guitar.

Norvo expanded the band in 1936 to 12 pieces with Mildred Bailey as vocalist. This band recorded regularly for Brunswick from 1936 to 1939 and could be deemed to be pre-eminent in the presentation of Norvo's soft subtle brand of swing music. Norvo remained active as a bandleader from 1940 to 1944, but his wife worked separately during most of this time. In 1943 Norvo had an all-star combination with Shorty Rogers, Eddie Bert and Ralph Burns. In 1943 also, he shifted from xylophone to vibraphone. For the last fifteen years he has played the latter instrument almost exclusively. In 1944 he formed a new band including Aaron Sachs on the clarinet, Remo Palmer, guitar and Clyde Lomdardi, bass. Norvo then gave up bandleading and joined Benny Goodman early in 1945, and then spent all of 1946 with Woody Herman's orchestra. In 1947, he settled in California. Although divorced from Mildred Bailey he continued to be on friendly terms with her and they recorded occasionally together until her death. After freelancing in Hollywood for some time, Norvo returned East in 1949, leading a sextet which included Tony Scott, Mundell Lowe and Dick Hyman.

Norvo's next important move was to adopt a trio format in 1950 with Tal Farlow and Charlie Mingus (later Jimmy Raney and Red Mitchell). His trio records have been acclaimed as the most striking examples of subtlety and finesse in modern, chamber-music style jazz. In January, 1954 he made his first overseas tour in the Jazz Club USZ, Unit.

Norvo was the first musician to show the possibility of adapting jazz to the xylophone. Prior to Norvo the instrument had been considered a novelty only by jazzmen. His first group of recorded solos were for Brunswick in 1933 and this was followed by a long series of recordings with swing groups, first with Jack Jenney, Artie Shaw, Charlie Barnet, Teddy Wilson (1934) and Bunny Berrigan, Jack Jenney Johnny Mince, Chu Berry, etc. (1935). He is considered not only to be a peerless musician in his own right but has show incredible ability to select as sidemen, musicians who were destined to become famous. During the past several seasons Norvo has played Las Vega appearing at the Sands and Tropicana hotels.

Blue Room
Exactly Like You
Rose Room
These Foolish Things
East Of The Sun
This Can't Be Love
September Song
Honeysuckly Rose
Sweet Georgia Brown
Ay Ay Ay
Oh Lady Be Good
Confessin'