Charlie's Choice - Charlie Barnet

Murder At Peyton Hall

Charlie's Choice

Charlie Barnet and His Orchestra

RCA Camdem CAL-389

1957

From the back cover: During the quarter of a century that Charlie Barnet has been a band leader, his compulsion for organizing and breaking up bands has been matched only by his tendency to get married (he is occupied with wife Number Ten as this is written). The bands have held to an amazingly high level of swinging quality but, like his marriages, they were never quite successful enough to please Charlie.

The band heard in this collection is usually referred to as "that great band Barnet had at the beginning of the Forties." In point of fact, it was the first of Barnet's really great bands, the first successful jelling of something he had been working toward for more than a half a dozen years. Both his career as a full-time professional musician (starting as a sideman with Frank Winegar's Pennsylvanians at the Village Barn in New York) and his serious interest in jazz began in 1930. Within a couple of years he was leading a band of his own but for a long time it remained a band without a focus.

His first band was built around a library which he bought from Jan Garber for $20 (Garber was giving up a relatively free-swinging style to under take is very successful road-show version of Guy Lombardo), During the next few years, the Barnet band played enough routine ballads to pave Tin Pan Alley six feet deep. But Charlie's jazz interests were also getting sufficient display so that his band became the first white band to play the famous Apollo Theater in Harlem – he got the booking in 1934 as a last-minute substitution for Benny Carter, who couldn't make it.

All through the Thirties, Barnet was an ardent admirer of Duke Ellington's band and, after Count Basie reached New York in 1936, he added Basie to his immediate sources of inspiration. He was reaching out for both Ellington harmonic blend and Basie's superb swinging rhythm and in 1939 he finally found himself with both the men who could play on this level and an ideal showcase – the Famous Door on Manhattan's jumping 52nd Street.

That was when Charlie Barnet moved out of the shadows and into the front line of the jazz world. And it was during this most yeasty period in the Barnet career – from December 1939 to August 1941 – that these recordings were made.

Side 1

Blue Juice, written by one of Barnet's best arrangers during the Forties, Dale Bennett, carries a suggestion of the Ellington influence in the blaring muted trumpet opening. But when Barnet comes in on soprano saxophone, his style is quite different from that of Ellington's soprano saxophonist, Johnny Hodges. Barnet's soprano is very much like his tenor – his staccato, jabbing, angular attack seems to bite off notes and spit them out. Originally an alto saxophonist and later better known on tenor, Barnet started playing soprano when Billy May wrote a soprano saxophone part into his arrangement of Compton Turnpike for the Barnet band.

You're My Thrill features a vocal by Lena Horne, one of numerous future singing stars who worked with the Barnet band (Kay Starr, Frances Wayne, Fran Warren, Trudy Richards and Mary Ann McCall were others). Even at this early stage in her career, Lena's strong projection is evident despite some unresolved consonant trouble.

Murder At Peyton Hall is typically Barnet in its mixture of horseplay and rampant swing. It opens with shots, a shriek, and then on comes the Basie influence with Barnet's soprano saxophone pouring out swooping, soaring passages. Peyton Hall was an apartment-hotel in Hollywood where Barnet lived.

It's A Wonderful World, one of the tunes on which Jan Savitt's reputation was built, brings on Mary Ann McCall singing with light, unforced, swinging phrasing, with a solid ensemble arrangement surrounding her.

I Hear A Rhapsody is a fine example of Barnet's ballad style of this period as his soprano saxophone leads the reed section and guitarist Bus Etir takes one of his dedicated, carefully evolved unamplified solos. The singer is Bob Carroll, a chest-out, shoulders-back type.

Spanish Kick, otherwise the Habanera from Carmen, more than lives put to its title. Barnet, playing tenor saxophone, not only kicks – he punches, jabs, jumps and goes through an amazing display of fast musical footwork.

Side 2

Good For Nothin' Joe is all Lena Horne, showing that ability to build a song with logic and ease which has since become an essential part of her matured artistry.

Winge Over Manhattan, an early effort at composing for a jazz band by Billy May, is a tone poem of sorts built around the traditional big band use of soloists. In the reed passage toward the end, you will hear the germ of a later Barnet hit Skyliner.

Lois, written and arranged for Barnet, gives him an opportunity to show how a tenor saxophone cal be played in a style that manages to be simultaneously balladic and earthy.

Wild Man Of The Fish Pond is another product of Barnet's days at Peyton Hall. This rocking bit of gutbucket commemorates the lighthearted revels that were sometimes held in Peyton Hall's outdoor swimming pool (the fish pond) and Charlie's role as master of the revels. He was, as a California expression of that time had it,  "a wild man" or, as later generations would have it, "real crazy." The label, in the more alliterated form of "The Mad Man," has stuck to him ever since.

Haunted Town, in this Bud Estes arrangement, provides a lovely, warm introduction to Lean Horne's vocal – "the best side Lena made with us," says Charlie.

Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie is all up tempo Barnet tenor, gulping, stuttering, whirling and loaded with references to a Barnet stylistic source that is sometimes overlooked – Lester Young. – John Wilson

Charlie Barnet's Orchestra

Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie (December 1939); It's A Wonderful World (February 1940): Lyman Vunk, Billy May, John Owens, Bob Burnet, trumpets; Spud Murphy, Don Ruppersburg, Bill Roberson, trombones; Charlie Barnet, Kurt Bloom, Jimmy Lamare, Skippy Martin, Gene Kinsey, saxophones; Bill Miller, piano; Bus Etri, guitar; Phil Stephens, bass; Cliff Lehman, drums.

Wings Over Manhattan, Wild Mab Of The Fish Pond (September 1940): Bernie Pravin, Sam Skolnik replace Burnet and Owens on trumpet; Leo White replaces Martin on saxophone.

I Hear A Rhapsody (October 1940): Ford Leary added on trombone; Conn Humphreys replaces Kinsey on saxophone.

Good For Nothin' Joe, Haunted Town, Blue Juice, You're My Thrill (January 1941): Bob Burnet and Esposito replace Skolnik and May on trumpet.

Lois, Spanish Kick (June 1941): Bob Burnet, Bob Price, Cy Baker, Mickey Bloom, trumpets; Bill Robertson, Ford Leary, Tommy Reo, Spud Murphy, trombones; Charlie Barnet, Kurt Bloom, Conn Humphrey's Ray Hopfner, Jimmy Lamare, saxophones; Bill Miller, piano; Bus Etir, guitar; Phil Stephens, bass; Cliff Leeman, drums.