A Swingin' Love Affair - Peter Palmer

 

Almost Like Being In Love

A Swingin' Love Affair

Peter Palmer and His Orchestra

Gowns  by Blum & Liebach, Chicago

Mercury Records SR 60097

1959

From the back cover: Palmer started professionally in music during 1948, while an undergrad in the music department at Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill. He started at the top – leader of his own campus band. Since that time, he's been booking agent, personal manager, arranger for name bands, like Ralph Marterie, disk jockey and ballroom dance promoter, plus always continuing with his own band. This album represents a composite of all these musical correlations with the listening and dancing public.

Palmer was born Sept. 3, 1925 in Chicago, moving to Kenosha, Wis., as a child. He graduated from Northwestern in 1950.

Palmer places great emphasis on the audio effect, because he's been a sound fan for 6 years. His Glencoe, Ill., home is a hi-fi fan's dream!

From Billboard - August 17, 1959: Ray Connie has been quite successful with the formula presented here of voices used as instruments in support or as mood contrasts to the instruments themselves. The four-man, three-girl vocal group weaves nicely in and out of the swingin' band arrangements for "Let's Fall In Love," "Our Love Is Here To Stay," "The Glory Of Love," etc. A fine arranging job gets the benefit of a solidly realistic recording. Good listening.

Let's Fall In Love

Love Is Here To Stay

You Stepped Out Of A Dream

How High Is The Moon

I Only Have Eyes For You

Too Marvelous For Words

This Can't Be Love

Love Is Just Around The Corner

The Glory Of Love

My Funny Valentine

I Could Write A Book

Almost Like Being In Love

The Bix Beiderbecke Story - Vol. III - Whiteman Days

 

In A Mist

Bless You Sister

The Bix Beiderbecke Story

Vol. III

Whiteman Days

Columbia CL 846

1956

From the back cover: The Bix Beiderbecke who joins Paul Whiteman's band in Indianapolis in early November, 1927, was still pretty much in a world all his own, although he had learned to make compromises such as clean shirts and nothing loud before midnight, please. He was good, and Whiteman liked him and paid him well, but Bix would have played for less if he had been allowed to play more.

Bill Challis, Goldkette's arranger, joined Whiteman just before Bix did. As before, he frequently wrote passages especially for Bix, either as lead horn or for the ad lib solos with whatever sort of background Bix wanted. The other section men admired and respected Bix (with Goldkette, they were Ray Ludwig and Fuzzy Farrar; Whitman usually had Charlie Margulies, Eddie Tinder, and Henry Buss, who was later replaced by Harry Goldfield) and they always made a point of helping Bix with the tough concert arrangements. But it was never enough to make up for the fact that Bix often had to sit there for an hour blowing section harmonies (or just plain sit through the Ferde Grofé productions) and when he finally got a chance to play something on his own it was over before he could really get started.

By 1929 the pace was really rough. Whiteman's radio show was packed with new tunes every week, and Bix had to work harder than ever at the aspect he disliked most. Drinking didn't help much any more, because now drinking itself was pushing Bix around even more than the commercial music. It got to the point where Whiteman had to sent him for a cure, and when Bix got out of the hospital in February, 1930, he was scarcely able to return to the grind. He went home to Daveport for a while, and returned to New York, but it was obvious that he couldn't go back with Whiteman.

Challis tried to get Bix into the Casa Loma Orchestra, an ex-Goldkette unit that was just beginning to build a reputation that was ago make it the prom-trotter's favorite in the early thirties. Bix didn't have much confidence in his own ability to cut the tough Gene Gifford arrangements, though Challis had done several for the band which were based on arrangements that Bix had played often. After one false start that got no further than the Plaza entrance of Central Park, Challis and Corky O'Keefe, the band's manager, drive Vix up to Connecticut to give it a try. Four nights of the constant repetition that the Casa Romans needed to execute the precision arrangements were all Bix could stand, and he rolled back into town further off the wagon than ever.

For the first time in his life, Bix was broke. The considerable amount of money he had sent home to his sister through the years was lost in the crash; Bix had invested it all in bank stock, and the stockholders' double liability of those days wiped out all his savings. Club dates were few, but still he managed to stay on at the 44th Street Hotel. Among his companions in those days was a fellow named George Herman Ruth, who had an afternoon job with a ball club up at East 161st Street. Bix, a well-built fellow with a physique that remains robust until his final illnesses, had always been a baseball fan and had even played for the Lake Forest Academy team, as an old yearbook picture attests. His friendship with The Babe survived the fact that Bix's room was so small that Ruth had to take the door off the hinges to get in – or so they say.

Bix tunred more and more to classical music and playing the piano. He frequently spent the day at Bill Challis' apartment of Riverside Drive and 81st Street, where they gradually worked out a score on In A Mist and some other piano pieces Bix had developed though the years. (Candlelight, Flashes In The Dark). It was slow going, there was a jug hidden in the bathtub where Challis' sister, who also lived there, wouldn't see it. But aside from that Bix never played anything the same way twice. He was very conscientious about the piano scores, though; he had a premonition that something might happen to him, and he wanted to be remembered mostly by them. The published version of In A Mist differs somewhat from the recording, partly because Bix wanted to make revisions and partly because the publisher wanted a slow section just before the return to the first theme. After Bix's death, Challis also edited Bix's Davenport Blues in the same style for piano. Bix's last year was a downhill slide which his friends don't like to recall. There were a few commercial record dates, a short-lived attempt to take an all-star gang to Europe, and finally the move to Queens, where the cold Bix had been curing for years caught up with him.

The recordings in this volume of "The Bix Beiderbecke Story" are taken from the Paul Whiteman period, except that In A Mist was recorded a few weeks before his joined. It is, however, the most concrete example on wax of the musical thinking which dominated Bix during his last years and rightfully belongs in this group.

Margie, a throwback to the early dixieland session, is an odd side from the last Bix and His Gang date, and was not issued until many years after his death. The rest of the records are all celebrated Bix items, bur for his solo work only.

The right band for Bix would have been Tesch, Condon. Sullivan, Freeman and Krupa, or maybe one or two of the other white Chicagoans who worshipped him and who could play with him as practically no one else ever did. But the music they made together was never heard beyond jam session of which the surviving musicians and others who heard them still speak with reverence.

We asked musicians how it was that these perfectly mated partners for Bix never got together in a studio with him. "Bix actually traveled in a different crowd," said one."He didn't job with us, and in Chicago we got together only when he blew it for a week or so between working elsewhere in the middle west. And our bunch got precious few record dates, remember – small wonder Bix just wasn't around during  them. In New York Bix was established with that other gang. How many records did we get to make at that time in New York? Six sides – and three of them weren't released until more than ten years later!"

"As for Bix's record dates," said another, "he just recorded whenever Trumbauer or somebody told him to come, and the invitation didn't include guests. You known, Bix carried the whole band his back on all those dates – when he blows on those records, he's blowing trombone, beating the drums, and everything else. He had to – he was the only real guy on them."

Though this is essentially true of every session Bix ever made in his life, it's especially so with these last recordings with the Trumbauer studio band and the regular Whiteman orchestra. The Trumbauer arrangements were getting to be more anymore commercial (as opposed to the freedom will present in such earlier arrangements as Riverboat Shuffle and Ostrich Walk) and almost all the tunes were current pops. Trumbauer sang many of the vocals, with indifferent results, but some of the Rudy Vallee types (not represented in the present recordings) were considerably worse. But Bix was used to keeping his blinders on, and whenever he got up to play the atmosphere changed immediately. His solo style is represented here, and his unflagging spirit is all there remarkable when one hears in full the barren music surrounding him.

The public liked Trumbauer's whimsical saxophone playing, and Bix, though far more serious in his playing, often worked hand-in-glove with Tram's musical ideas. On Borneo, for example, which contains not only a fine first chorus lead by Bix but a Scrappy Lambert vocal that lampoons the whole ridiculous idea of a Tin Pan Alley song about Borneo. Bix and Tram indulge in one of their favorite pastimes: a "chase" chorus. Bix plays two bars, Tram plays two. Bix seres him, ands on for the whole chorus. They keep the melodic line going in one continuous improvisation, and when Bix mousetraps theist eight bars of the chorus with a pregnant little silence. Tram does it too when it's his turn.

They pull a variation of this trick on Baby, Won't You Please Come Home. Tram ends his chorus with an ascending phrase and Bix comes in to start his chorus with a variation on the same phrase. Incidentally this is a record which Bix scholars love to argue about. Andy Secrest also played the date, and until the last few bars only one cornet can be heard at a time. Who plays which? It's our guess that it's Secrest in the first chorus, Secrest again in the second, and still Secrest behind Tram's vocal, except for the first fill-in (second bar). After that, Bix plays the muted stuff, with Secrest returning to punch out the lead in the final chorus and Bix coming up over him in the last eight.

Bix and Bing Crosby steal the honors on the Whiteman recordings in this set. The Whiteman band was a truly top-heavy organization and the arrangements were often the height of pretentiousness. The "concert" interpretation of Sweet Sue is a real period piece. (The celesta background behind Jack Fulton's piping vocal – which is also typical of the era – was once thought to be played by Bix, but is is by Lennie Hayton.) Fulton recalls that Bix was in bad shape that day, and wore everyone down by fluffing notes in the run-downs preceding the recording. "He had everybody about crazy before finally settling down into that cozy going, as if to say, 'Why didn't you guys say you wanted to get out of here?'" His silo, played with a derby over the bell of his cornet, is one of the finest muted choruses he ever recorded.

The Bix legend stated fast and has never slowed down. The Princeton fans were the first collector of his records. The word spread swiftly, and by 1936 reissues had been made of several Bix and His Gang sides and some of the better Trumbauers. Dorothy Baker wrote Young Man With A Horn; Rick Martin, as she pointed out, wasn't Bix, but there's no doubt Rick couldn't have  been invented without Bix as the model.

Bix left his mark in the work of others, although not necessarily in the form of direct imitation. Andy Secrest, Doc Evans, Bill Priestley (whom Bix actually taught to play cornet) and Bobby Hackett can give you Bix choruses that sound almost like the real thing. (Most of Bix's solo on Royal Garden Blues in Vol. 1 sound more like Hackett than Bix!) Red Nichols based his whole style on Bix. But the one who came closest was Jimmy McPartland, the greatest white cornet."

Bix in his final year, and living as best he could with almost no money, is something of a stranger to historians and to his fellow musicians as well. They grow uncomfortable in discussing Bix's last musical directions, and prefer to talk about he Bix they really knew, when he was one of the boys on and off the bandstand. The beauty of tone, commanding drive, the fantastic, fascinating succession of ideas are what they remember, and they are what made him a legend that will live as long as jazz is known.

Date and Personnels

September 9, 1927: In A Mist. Piano solo by Bix Beiderbecke

April 10, 1928: Borneo. Bix Beiderbecke (cornet); Harry Goldfield (trumpet); Bill Frank (trombone); Izzy Friedman (clarinet); Frank Trumbauer (C-melody sax); Harold Strickfadden (alto and baritone sax); Min Leibrook (bass sax); Matty Malneck (violin); Lennie Hayton (piano); Eddie Lang (guitar); George Marsh (drums). The vocalist is Scrappy Lambert.

July 5, 1928: Bless You! Sister. September 20, 1928: Take Your Tomorrow. Same personnel except without Goldfield and with Harry Gale replacing Marsh. The vocalist in both performances is Trumbauer.

September 21, 1928: Maggie. Same personnel as on September 20, except without Strickfadden and Malneck.

April 17, 1929: Baby, Won't You Please Come Home. Same personnel as on April 10, 1928 except that Andy Secrest replaces Goldfield and Stan King replaces Marsh. Trumbauer is the vocalist.

The remaining selections were with the Paul Whiteman orchestra between May 22, 1928 and May 4, 1919. The Beiderbecke cornet solos are easily distinguishable, and the other soloists include Rank, Trumbauer (who also plays the bassoon solo on 'Taint so), Strickfadden and Friedman. The vocals by Bing Crosby and eh Rhythm Boys are also quickly recognizable. 

The Bix Beiderbecke Story, part of Columbia's continuing Golden Era reissues is produced and edited by George Avakian. internationally recognized authority on jazz.

Magie

In A Mist

Take Your Tomorrow (And Give Me Today)

Borneo

Bless You! Sister

Won't You Please Come Home?

'Taint So, Honey, 'Taint So

That's My Weakness Now

Sweet Sue, Just You

China Boy

Because My Baby Don't Mean Maybe Now

Oh, Miss Hannah

Pee Wee Hunt's Dance Party

 

Love Is Just Around The Corner

Pee Wee Hunt's Dance Party

Produced by Andy Wiswell

Capitol Records T1362

1960

From Billboard - April 11, 1960: Hunt and crew present a group of oldies in their familiar, infectious Dixie style. Tunes include "Way Down Yonder In New Orleans," "Alexander's Ragtime Band" and a new version of "Oh!" It's a good terp or listening set that should move well.

'Way Down Yonder In New Orleans

Swingin' Down The Lane

Five Foot Two

Sentimental Journey

Alexander's Ragtime Band

Sweet Georgia Brown

Oh!

Carolina In The Morning

Moonglow

Bill Bailey, Won't You Please Come Home

It Had To Be You

Love Is Just Around The Corner

Gene Mayl's Dixieland Rhythm Kings

Lonesome Man Blues

Jazz In Retrospect

Gene Mayl's Dixieland Rhythm Kings

Riverside Records 12-289

From the back cover: This new Dixieland Rhythm Kings album, their third on Riverside, finds this group of young traditionalists featuring a much wider musical approach than ever before in their 'retrospective' look at jazz. It also finds them in top form, with a varied, versatile and highly capable lineup.

The "D.R.K." was organized in Dayton, Ohio – which is still its home base – in 1948. Leader Gene Mayl, the pleasant and animated tuba-player and bassist, has been the band's driving force through several cages of personnel during the intervening years. He has always had very definite ideas and opinions on jazz and  jazz styles. Originally this led to a band most closely patterned after Lu Watter's West Cast 'revivalist." Now, although Gene conducers the D.R.K. basically still a traditional band in sound and concept, a lot has been changed since the group's previous records. Mayl no emphases mush more variety in such matters a temp, bet (w and 4), arrangements (including more use of such things as background behind solos) , and choice of selections. All of this adds up to a greater swing – in the mainstream, mid-1930's sense of the word.

As Mayl puts it: "Variety is a great thing." And an excellent example of this variety is in the repertoire employed her. Two of the tunes are Ellintonia (Caravan and Solitude); three are long familiar traditional-jazz-band items from the '10s and '20s (Dixieland On Step, Alabamy Bound and Limehouse Blues); four others are oringals by present members of the D.R.K. Former member Charlie Sonnanstine wrote Black Wall Tunnel Blues (a charter member of the group, trombonist Sonnanstine is currently heading his own band in California). Lu-Easy-An-I-Ay is former D.R.K. clarinetist Joe Darensbourg's tribute to his home state.

Mayl notes that, although the 1958-1959 edition of the band still plays the old Lu Watters book, that makes up only about ten percent of the repertoire. The rest consists of originals, three-strain Oliver and Morton compositions, some of the prettier old standards, and a liberal amount of Ellington material.

The DRK, according to Gene, cannot but be influenced by the best traditionally oriented groups of the past and present; some that he specifically mentions are Morton, Wilbur De Paris, Bob Scobey, Ellington and Condon. In sort, Mayl no longer considers the D.R.K. to be simply an Easter twig on the Lu Watters branch of the jazz tree. He still respects the Watters band as an original inspiration, summing up Lu's approach thusly: "He captured the harmonic spirt of form of the Liver Creole Band even if he didn't quite achieve the same with that group's rhythmic sense."

The members of the current DRK represent quite a few years of playing homage to jazz in different musical ways: Clarence Hall, pianist and vocalist (and composer of three of the selections include here), was born in New Iberia, Louisiana, some fifty years ago. He has worked with King Oiler, Ma Rainey, and John Kirby, has toured the country many times, and has spent much time playing in Chicago. His house-rent, boogie piano style brings to mind some of the work of the late Cripple Clarence Lofton; his piano is a very important part of the overall new sound of the DRK.

Bill Napier, now in his thirties, has played and recorded with earlier edition of this band. He has primarily based his musical activities on the West Coast and has played and recorded with Turk Murphy, Bob Scobey, Bob Mielke and with his own groups. He plays in the tradition of the late Jimmy No-one and Omer Simeon. To this writer, this record represents a musical high point of his career. His solo on Harlem Breakdown is a gem, telling a story in a lovely melodic way that brings to ming the  No-one of the '40s. Napier is a notable example of a musical and  creative person who plays in a traditional style; he doesn't imitate and he speaks musically with creative authority.

Trumpeter Al Frankel is from Hamilton, Ohio and Mryl reports that he is one of the most respected horn men in that area. Frankly has played with the old Barney Capp big band (of Roseland fame) and for years was featured with a Dixieland band, headed by the legendary Ohio jazzman Shiek Coyle, that also included pianist Fred Gary and clarinetist Pat Patterson.

Curtis Miller (who answers to the nickname "Tirol" – after the Ellington trombonist) has played with the bands of the Louis Armstrong and Tiny Bradshaw. Mayl considers him "a terrific musician" and particularly likes the way he uses mutes and variety in his work.

Drummer Eddie Robinson is basically a modernist (he played on the road for quite a while with pianist Phineas Newborn). But, according to Mayl, Robinson likes the way a traditional ensemble like this one "wails and swings."

Jack Vastine has played banjo with various versions or the DRK for about five years. Jack like Kansas City jazz, with special favorites being Jimmy Witherspoon and Joe Turner. His banjo in the rhythm section is partly responsible for the band's traditional sound. His vocals on Alabamy Bound and Lou-Easy-An-I-Ay are shaped with the flavor of Kentucky and points south.

Gene Mayl's doubling is another important factor in the flavor that the rhythm section imparts to the sound of the band. The difference in overall sound when Mayl shift from one instrument to the other can of course by readily noted: for example, compare Alabamy Bound (tuba) with Caravan (string bass). Even more important to the D.R.K. have been Gene's courage and strong musical convictions, which are responsible for the band's remarkable continuous life-span of more than a decade. Despite more than a fair share of hard going in making a commercial success of things at times, they have established what already amounts to a grand old jazz tradition of their own.

Orignal Dixieland One-Step

Lonesome Man Blues

Caravan

Dustin' The Keys

Black Wall Tunnel Blues

Alabamy Bound

Limehouse Blues

Put-In Blues

China Girl

Solitude

Harlem Breakdown

Lou-Eay-An-I-Ay 

The Bix Beiderbecke Story - Vol. II - Bix and Tram

 

Mississippi Mud

The Bix Beiderbecke Story

Vol. II

Bix and Tram

Columbia CL 845

1956

From the back cover: The association of Bix Beiderbecke and Frankie Trumbauser, begun in the fall of 1925 at the Arcadia Ballroom in St. Louis, is an unusual meeting of two musicians who were unlike in many ways, and yet collaborated successfully with mutual benefit to both. They were an odd combination even in appearance: Bix was husky, well-built, and blessed with a round, externally youthful, country-face, while Tram was the wiry type, a few inches shorter than the sturdy Beiderbecke, and with long, almost Mephistophelian features.

Trumbauer generally played C-melody saxophone, an instrument with the high pitch of E-flat alto sax. (It's virtually extinct today; even more than the bass sax which appears on many recording in this group.) The instrument as a whimsical tone, and Trumbauer played it that way. It suited the times, and it often suited Bix, who frequently served as Tram's foil. The many juxtapositions of Box's cornet and Tram's sax been well together, although oddly enough Bix always sounds dead serious and Tram always keeps the light touch.

Tram, a well-trained musician with a deaf on his shoulders appreciated and encouraged Bix in every way he none. He helps Box with the technical side of music, but still more important he helps steer the impractical Bix (who was such a "gone" guy that he often went for days without taking off his clothes, shoes and sock included) into the two best-paying and most famous bands of their time: Gene Goldkette's and Paul Whiteman's.

Second-gussers have also claimed that this was the ruin of Bix. His death from Physical frailty, brought on by alcoholism caused by musical and psychological frustration bears them out in some degree. But the point is still highly debatable, and the opinion here is that Bix was doomed never to find his shadowy goal in life, and that the end might even have been hurried without the money that enabled Bix to pay half a buck extra for a better grade of the inevitable bootleg.

Bix still couldn't read worth a hang, although he'd managed to hold down a chair with Charlie Straight's eleven-piece band in Chicago for a while before joining Tram. But during the season in St. Louis he enlarged his musical development in two ways: in the loneliness of being in a strange city, Bix found time to indulge his interest in classical music, and he used his ability to play piano by ear to delve more deeply into improvisation based on expansions of conventional harmony.

Contemporary European composers for orchestra fascinated him, particularly Debussy, Ravel, Holst and Stravinsky. In addition to going to concerts (usually with Bud Hassler of the Trumbauer band) Bix spent long hours at the piano in deserted bars, working out his own improvisation and teaching himself pieces by the Americans Griffes, MacDowell and Eastwood Lane. Bix always played with a consciousness for whole-tone scale (which also appears frequently in Debussy), and in this period he began exploring the non-jazz facets with were to incline more and more his improvisational thinking.

With Bix able to read a little better, Tram got him into Gene Goldkette's orchestra in the spring of 1926, along with some of the other Arcadia bandsmen. Goldkette, a rare combination of musician and business man, owned the Greystone Ballroom in Detroit, where he would build spa band's reputation and then send it out to cash in elsewhere in the Middle West. He was primarily responsible for the success of McKinney's Cotton Pickers, the best Negro dance orchestra in the midwest in the twenties, and later emulated Chicago's Husk O'Hare in booking two or three bands at once under his own name (which has been more highly developed by such society bandleaders a Meyer Davis).

Goldkett's basic band was the finest white orchestra of its time and consisted of musicians who could play both sweet and hot. It was the first white band to play jazz arrangements with real force, and it packed more of a wallop tham most large negro orchestras of that time. That summer Goldkette sent out a unit from the band to play a dime-a-dance joint called the Blue Lantern Inn at Hudson Lake, Indiana. The management frequently spilt the band so the music could be continuous, Bix double in both platoons, playing cornet in one and piano in the other.

At Hudson Lake Bix shared a broken-down cottage with Pee Wee Russell, the colorful clarinetist from St. Louis, who was closer spiritually to Bix than the more business-like Trumbauer. Bix and Pee Wee didn't care about anything by playing and not letting their liquor supply get below a 24-hour reserve. (They got their stuff for two bucks a gallon from a pair of bare-footed hags who protected themselves from Prohibition agents with a dozen ravenous dogs and a brace of shovels. They also used the latter to dig up crocks secreted behind the converted henhouse in which they lived.)

Aside from empty jugs, Bix and Pee Wee had an outstanding collection of sardine and baked bean cans – the only food they bothered with. The back porch sagged under thirty or forty quart bottles of milk. (They always meant to leave a note for the milkman but never found a pencil and paper together at the same time). They bought a Buick that didn't run and used it all the way out to the shack; all they used it for was to shave in front of a mirror propped against the hood, but as they explained to friends, if you live in the country you've got to have a car. Says Mezz Mezzrow, whom we can thank for preserving these textile in his autobiography, Really The Blues, "I couldn't tell you if there were any rugs under the dirt, but the room did have an upright piano with a bad list to the keyboard."

That piano helped Bix explore more and more the intricacies of harmony. He was beginning to split his musical personality – European form and discipline were begging to encroach on the freedom of the New Orleans music which had been his first great influence. Soon after Bix was to record his piano solo, In A Mist (which is in Vol. 3), wherein the influence of Edwin MacDowell wins out over jazz, though the latter is still in there pitching.

In A Mist, which grows in its importance in understanding Bix as one probes deeper and deeper into both the man and musician, could not have been more appropriately named. Bix never got out of the musical mist in his striving and searching for something that always eluded him (but, as his admirers point out, what wonderful things he played as he stove!) Further embattled as he was by the commercial music world, on which he as never able to turn his back, Bit's personal life became a mist in which he depended on Alcohol to carry him through each disappointment.

The high points he found sometimes in his own playing, sometimes in the company of friends. Whenever Bix was in New York, he had a standing invitation to play at Princeton dances. Frank Noris and Squirrel Ashcraft, independently of one another and in almost the same words, made clear to the writer that when Bix was around the talk was seldom about  music. "Bix had some unusual things in common with us," says Ashcraft, "we discovered that he could quote long passages from P. G. Wodehouse as well as we could, and we could spot the approximate page and the exact character who said any chosen line from his books – he had written 48."

The jazz brotherhood has never had much to do with women on most levels, and Bix usually steered clear ion them, although he was all man the girls went for him as a rule. The only one who seems to have meant anything to him was a cheerleader at Indiana U. during the spring the Wolverines were on the campus every week-end. She played a fair piano, and it was Bit's music that got her more than his boyish good looks. Her home was in Hammond, not far from Indiana Harbor, where Bix played that summer, and things got to be pretty serious for a while. Sixteen years later, Eddie Nichols found her singing in a sleazy tavern, but she was in a bad way by then and wouldn't talk about Bix or anything else.

The Goldkette days were the last in which Bix was to have any real degree of musical freedom, though even with this band there were plenty of times when he was playing under wraps half the night. The band travels as far East as New York, where it played the Roseland Ballroom opposite Fletcher Henderson. Bix was the man the local boys pointed out on the bandstand; the word had already spread through the country among musicians. But it was the more practical Trumbauser who wangled a recording contract with Okeh (with the assistance of Red McKenzie and Tommy Rockwell). He used Bix and his friends on the dates, and later got Bix a contract, too.

But by the summer of 1927 it was apparent that Goldkette couldn't keep the band going at all-star prices. The break came in October, and Adrian Rollini, who had worked a couple of record dates with Bix and Tram, booked them (along with most of the other hot musicians) into a new club. In two weeks the joint folded, and it was with Paul Whiteman's orchestra that the nucleus of the Goldkette band finally landed, Bix and Tram among them.

The selections in this volume of The Bix Beiderbecke Story were recorded under Frank Trumbauer's leadership during the period of the Goldkette band's Eastern swings and the first year of Bit's association with Paul Whiteman. They contain the most celebrated solos Bix ever recorded. I'm Comin' Virginia and Way Down Yonder In New Orleans are considered Nos. 2 and 3 in the collector's books, with the top spot emphatically reserved for Singin' The Blues.

In fact, this is usually considered one father three most celebrated solos in jazz history (the other two being King Oliver's cornet choruses on Dippermoth Blues and Johnny Dodds' rendition of the original Alphonse Picou clarinet solo in High Society). It is a solo of intense, brooding beauty, carefully built up to a typical tumbling break in the middle, with a surprise explosion after it. There was hardly a contemporary white musician of jazz pretensions who didn't learn it by heart. Fletcher Henderson paid the ultimate tribute by recording it twice in a version for his whole brass section, and in the thirties Will Osborne and Adrian Rollini both waxed similar arrangements for full orchestra. (The Trumbauer solo preceding Bix's was accorded the same honors, but with the passing years it has taken a back seat to Bix's solo.)

Wingin' And Twisting' and For No Reason At All In C find Bix at the piano with Eddie Lang on guitar and Tram on sax. His piano work on these numbers is not exceptional ; the style is typical of the period (Lennie Hayton's and Frank Signorelli's solos elsewhere in these volumes are example), but there is also an occasional flash of the quality Bix shows in the famous In A Mist – particularly in the fine intro he plays for No Reason, which is actually a variation on I'd Climb The Highest Mountain as arranged by Bill Challis for the Goldkette band. Each of these trio cuttings ends with Bix picking up his horn to play a few golden notes in the coda.

Ostrich Walk and Clarinet Marmalade are dixieland favorites; the former contains as exceptional solo which twice uses the descending phrase typical of Bix's concept of the blues. (He bases his opening on Way Down Yonder In New Orleans on this same phrase.) Mississippi Mud includes some minstrel-type clowning by Bing Crosby and Frank Trumbauer, and Carrying All Day is obviously a follow-up on Singin' The Blues; a good enough record on its own merits, but a far cry from the original. (Kindly note pun.)

Dates and Personnels 

February 4, 1927: Singin' The Blue. Bix Beiderbecke (cornet); Miff Mole (trombone); Jimmy Dorsey (clarinet); Doc Ryker (alto sax); Frank Trmbauer (C-melody sax); Morehouse (drums). Clarinet Marmalade was made the same day, with Bill Rank replacing Mole, and Howdy Quicksell (banjo) replacing Lang.

May 9, 1927: Ostrich Walk, Riverboat Shuffle. May 13, 1927: I'm Comin' Virginia, Way Down Yonder In New Orleans. Same personnel as for Singin' The Blues, except that Bill Rank and Don Murray replace Mole and Dorsey.

The Tram, Bix and Lang selections were recorded May 13 (For No Reason At All In C) and September 17 (Wringin' And Twisting'), 1927.

October 25, 1927: Crying All Day, A Good Man Is Hard To Find. Beiderbecke; Rank; Don Murray and Pee Wee Russel (clarinet and tenor sax); Trumbauser; Ryker; Adrian Rollino (bass sax); Joe Venuti (violin); Arthur Schutt (piano); Lang; Morehouse.

January 9, 1928: There'll Come A Time, Beiderbecke; Harry Goldfield (trumpet); Rank; Dorsey; Trumbauer; Harold Stickfadden (alto and baritone sax); Min Leibrook (bass sax); Matty Matneck (violin); Hayton Lang: George Marsh (drums).

January 20, 1928: Mississippi Mud. Beiderbecke: Rank: Izzy Friedman (clarinet); Trumbauer; Leibrook; Malneck; Hayton; Carl Press (guitar); Marsh. Bing Crosby and Frank Trumbauer are the vocalist.

You Better Go Now! - Jeri Southern

 

Dancing On The Ceiling

You Better Go Now!

Jeri Southern

Decca Records DL 8214

1956

From the back cover: If you were to leaf through all the material written about Jeri Southern in the past five years or so by record reviewers, night club critics, newspaper columnists, and others, you would notice a constant recurrence of such word as delicacy, sensitivity, taste, subtlety and restraint. And if you find these qualities admirable, then it's a fine experience you have in store as you listen to these lyrical little milestones in Miss Southern's Decca career. On some of them she sound very close tears, on others she sound wise and profound and perhaps just a bit cynical. Sometimes she seems like a wistful little girl the next minute she's silken and sultry and seductive... The moods are many and complex, and they are all Jeri Souther's... They are all yours too, to share with her here in the album.

Still in her twenties, Jeri Southern was born in the tiny Nebraska town of Royal, then which there are few smaller. When Jeri (Originally Genevieve Herring) was born there, there were two general stores and the population was 190. Now that the population is down to about 140, there is only one store. Jeri thrived much better than Royal. Before she was out of high school, it was obvious that she was a musician and, though the family struggled in the grips of the depression, Jeri went to the Notre Dame Academy in Omaha. After graduating, Jeri became a piano teacher's assistant and, after three years of tutoring, became a feature player in various Omaha night-cubs and hotels.

So far she had been a pianist. When told that she would fare better if she sang a few songs with her playing, Jeri was willing. Audiences soon responded other unaffected and intimate style of singing; talent scouts began talking about her; and Decca added her to its list of eminent artist. A few months later disc jockeys all over the country were raving about a new record by Jeri Southern entitled "You Better Go Now." Critics exclaimed about her bitter-sweet, tender sort of voice, her true warmth and genuine feeling, and her ability to communicate a relaxed atmosphere which is alluring but never too obvious. Dick Williams summed it up in the Chicago Mirror-News: "This is one Southern breeze that is going to kick up quite a storm before she is through."

From Billboard - January 28, 1956: Most of the items cut here by the seductive-voiced thrush have been out as singles, and as such they lack some of the intimate, sensitive quality of her strictly-for-album endeavors. Fans, however, will like the idea of getting "Dancing On The Ceiling," the title song, etc. in LP form. Her following among jazz buyers should also be reckoned with.

You Better Go Now - with Orchestra Directed by Camarata

Give Me Time - with Orchestra Directed by Sy Oliver

Something I Dreamed Last Night - with Orchestra Directed by Sy Oliver

The Man That Got Away - with Orchestra Directed by Sonny Burke

When I Fall In Love - with Victor Young and His Orchestra - Piano Solo by Jeri Southern 

Just Got To Have Him Around - with Orchestra Directed by Lew Douglas

Dancing On The Ceiling (He Dances On My Ceiling) - with Orchestra Directed by Norman-Leyden

Speak Softly To Me - with Orchestra Directed by Camarata

What Good Am I Without You - with Orchestra Directed by Sy Oliver

I Thought Of You Last Night - with Orchestra Directed by Sy Oliver

That Ole Devil Called Love - With music by Camarata

Remind Me - with Orchestra Directed by Sonny Burke

Four Freshmen - University Four

 

Rockin' Chair

Joe Jumps

Four Freshmen

With Special Guest Stars - University Four

Coronet Records CXS-279

From the back cover: The Four Freshmen are Ross and Don Barbour, Hal Kratszch and Bob Flanagan. They had their humble beginning at the Arthur Jordon Conservatory of Music in Indianapolis where they first met and made music together. Discovering that they had mutual tastes and a happy blend of voices, the group decided to try to apply there talents commercially.The  foursome is especially noted for its versatility. Toss, the drummer, doubles on trumpet.His brother,Don, the guitar man, splits vocal solos with Hal, who handles trumpet, bass and French horn. Bob played both bass and trombone.

The University Four are an up-and-coming instrumental combo. These boys also do a wonderful job in the vocal department. The group consisted of Phil Zito on accordion; Joe Giordano, violinist; Jimmy McNichol, guitarist and Pete Rogers on bass.

Poinciana 

Rockin' Chair

Ain't Seen Nothin' Like You

That's My Desire

This Heart Is For Sale (Kirby Stone Four)

Slow Poke

Cry

8-9-10

Hot Canary

Joe Jumps

Champagne, Candlelight & Kisses - Jackie Gleason

 

Theme from "Bus Stop"

Jackie Gleason Presents

Champagne, Candlelight & Kisses

Produced by Dick Jones

Arrangements by George Williams

Cover Photo: Capitol Photo Studios - George Jerman

Silver form David Orwell, Beverly Hills

Capitol Records SW 1830

1963

From Billboard - March 16, 1968: Gleason has a fine idea here. The lush sound of strings, for which he's justifiably acclaimed, is teamed with the mellow sound of a Dixieland combo. the album displays constantly changing moods and sounds with one very effective innovation in the use of soft, full Dixie trumpets against the strings. Album could move out with proper disk jockey exposure.

Them from "Bus Stop"

Undecided

I Double Dare You

A Pretty Girl, Is Like A Melody

A Little Girl, A Little Kiss

All By Myself

Keepin' Out Of Mischief Now

It's Been A Long, Long Time

That's A Plenty

Everything Happens To Me

Just You, Just Me

Fascinating Rhythm

Hawaii's Golden Favorites - Charles K. L. Davis

 

Akaka Falls

Hawaii's Golden Favorites

Charles K. L. Davis

Vocal with Chorus and Orchestra Directed by Henri Rene

Decca Records DL 74214

1962

From the back cover: Charles Keonaonalaulani Llewellyn Davis' first album for Decca is virtually a love-letter to his homeland. His polysyllabic Hawaiian name means "fragrant leaves of heaven," and as a lad of the Waialua Plantation he had a chance not only to absorb fish and poem to go spear-fishing by torchlight and skin-diving (good for developing the young singer's phenomenal breath-control) – but also to learn ancient chants, melodies and poems handed down for generations, representing the natural culture of a happy, song-loving people. As his fame as a star of television, opera, concert and supper-clubs increased, he never forgot the early influences, but always returned to add his voice and his interpretation to these songs.

The wide range of material in this collection represents the extraordinary polyglot of cultures that, in addition to the strong Polynesian influence, contribute to the colorful magic of Hawaii and its music. They include turn-of-the-century simplicity and courtliness, modern impressionism, European influences, as well as the characteristic hula tempo in several versions. The Hawaiian language is a melodious one, like Italian, and some indication of its poetic quality is to be found in these translations by the Hawaiian scholar, Kaupena Wong:

Akaka Falls: "As a stranger I saw the Akaka Falls, water so high above falling in fine drops from the cliffs... Fragrant is the upland, surrounded in the mist. A trail of heavy fragrance is wind-blown to my bosom..."

Ulili E (Song Of The Sandpiper): "Sandpiper running about on the beach, where the sea is peaceful and calm. Sweet is your voice... little bird of the sea foam. Ever watchful are you at Kekaha where the sea is calm..."

Pa'au'au of Pa'au'au..."

Nani Waimea refers to a beautiful area on the big island of Hawaii, while Pua Kukui is a hula depicting the pup (flower) of the Fukui (candlenut) tree, recently made the official State Tree. (Incidentally, the hibiscus – mentioned in another song – is the State Flower of Hawaii.)

Most people by this time know what "canes" and "wahines" are, but in case the listener is a malihini (newcomer) to south-sea parlance, these terms are equivalent to our "guys" and "dolls," "Kuu Ito" means "my sweetheart." And what did King Kamehameha say – apparently so lightheartedly – on that memorable occasion celebrated int he song? Well, "awe soho'e e" means – approximately, that is – "Good Heavens!"...

The versatile conductor, Henri René, who has provided outstanding backgrounds for scores of stars, further distinguishes himself with his multi-colored orchestral settings for "Why I Love Hawaii."

– Notes by Gene Bone and Howard Fenton

Why I Love You

White Ginger Blossoms

Medley: Nani Waimea, Pua Kukui

A Song Of Old Hawaii

King Kamehameha (The Conqueror Of The Islands)

Paauau Waltz

Little Brown Jug

I'll Weave A Lei Of Stars For You

Alaka Falls (Ka Wailele O Akaka)

Kuu Ipo (My Sweetheart)

Ulili E

Medley: Across The Sea, To You, Sweetheart, Aloha

The Swingers - Lambert, Hendricks & Ross

 

Now's The Time

The Swingers!

Dave Lambert, Jon Hendricks & Annie Ross

With Zoot Sims, Russ Freeman, Freddie Green, Jim Hall, Ed Jones & Sonny Payne

Recorded in Hollywood at The Crescendo

World Pacific Records WP-1264

A Division of Pacific Enterprises, Inc.

1959

From the back cover: As far as I am concerned, Lambertm Hendricks & Ross (along with being one of the greatest kicks in music today) are the Gilbert and Sullivan of jazz. They are performing jazz operettas five, six and seven minuets in length and have created a litany, language and literature of reference that is unique and operative on a complex, multi-level basis.

Anyone can dig them. They have a message that is easily understood, but just as a knowledge of Dubin and the Iris and English literary world of that particular period is essential to understanding much of Joyce, so is a prior knowledge of jazz musician slang and of the social and musical culture of jazz essential to a full understanding of The Trio.

It also helps, to have had a prior knowledge of the instrumental numbers to which Jon Hendricks has written his remarkable lyrics and which the group sings. When you have this knowledge, the whole glorious thing becomes real. Thus exposed to the full impact of The Trio's work, one can find as much delight in it as a Savoyard does in "Pinafore" and which the student of T. S. Eliot gets from reading that delicious tour de force, "The Sweeniad."

It takes a peculiarly agile mind to create lyrics that fit exactly to trumpet, saxophone and trombone solos played in fast tempos. Jon Hendricks has done this. Each lyric line takes off from the original title and develops a full story in jazz artgot that expands into a dialogue and then a three-way conversation as the other instruments (represented by the other two voices) join in. Reed and brass riffs are presented, almost classically, as a chorus bbehind the soloist. And, infall of the, Hendricks has managed to do what no other jazz lyricist, including Johnny Mercer, has been able to do – write lyrics for jazz creations without reshaping them into the popular sonf format.

Hendricks not onmlyh has an unusual voice (as do both Annie Ross and Dave Lambert) but he has the unique ability to take on the timber of the instrument whose solo he is singing. A bass player (Monk Montgomery of the Mastersounds) fell apart what he first heard "Swingin' Till The Girls Come Home." "He's got Pettiford's sound," he almost shouted. Hendricks, of course, has been a musical (he was a drummer in Toledo, Ohio, bands some years back  and picked up on jazz originally from his neighbor, Art Tatum) and in recent years has been "thinking about the bass." Annie Ross wrote an original lyric to "Twisted" (the Wardell Gray tenor solo) a few years back and it won her some fame as the new Freudian vocalist when it was released. Dave Lambert, a former tree surgeon, drummer and vocal group organizer, has been the organizer here again. "He was always after me to work up new things," Jon Hendricks says.

How doe Jon Hendricks pick tunes to do? "I just listen for one that songs to me," he says. "All of them sing to me, but one that sings very clear is the one I pick. If you listen long enough, you'll hear it finally. Then after a time, words begin to come to you. Whatever the horn is saying; they just form themselves."

On this LP, you'll find some starling example of songs that sing to Jon Hendricks. I hope they also sing to you. – Ralph J. Gleason, Editor Jazz and syndicated columnist whose Rhythm Section appears in such papers as the San Francisco Chronicle and the Boston Globe.

Airegin

Babe's Blues

Dark Cloud

Jackie

Swingin' Till The Girls Come Home

Four

Little Niles

Where 

Now's The Time

Love Makes The World Go 'Round

Manhattan Tower - Patti Page

 

The Party (Noah)

Manhattan Tower

Sung by Patti Page

With Orchestra and Chorus Conducted by Vic Schoen

Words and Music by Gordon Jenkins

Published by Leeds Music Corp.

Mercury Records MG 20026

1956

From the back cover: When Gordon Jenkins wrote the thrilling narrative tone poem, "Manhattan Tower," in 1945 it burst upon the musical world with an impact comparable to that of the introduction of "Rhapsody in Blue" a generation earlier. Many though that here, at least, was the definitive musical description of Baghdad on the Subway, of its sights and sounds, its terrible loneliness, its gaiety, its fantastic beauty at certain hours of the day and night, its brooding massiveness and, above all, its capacity to overwhelm a stranger with its spirit and to swiftly absorb him into its maelstrom of never-ceasing activity.

There is no doubt that musical, "Manhattan Tower" is a complete work, fulfilling to everyone's satisfaction what it she out to do. Yet, among those who loved it most and felt most intensely its varied moods there has been growing a strong desire to see "Manhattan Tower" expanded in scope. There were many who thought its main and secondary themes and the ideas expressed in this narrative could be developed musically and lyrically into a full bodied work of musical drama proportions. Evidently composer Gordon Jenkins felt the same way for here, in this Long Playing Mercury Album sung by the incomparable Patti Page is Jenkin's new, enlarged "Manhattan Tower," prepared especially for television but which doubtless will be seen and heard on many other mediums.

From its hauntingly beautiful opening theme, here translated lyrically as "One Upon A Dram," to the agonizing "Never Leave Me," Jenkins has evolved a simple love story over which looms the restless presence of Manhattan itself. From the rich martial of the original work with its startlingly effective musical phrases hd has drawn themes for some dozen songs and developed them carefully and with great skill. "New York's My Home" is, of course, intact and Noah, the water, is still cleaning the ash trays and serving up the chow for the party of nice people, but listeners will doubtlessly thrill in the discovery of the new songs with Jenkins has instilled with fresh, imaginative lyrics and his wondrously original flair for melody. Whether it be the poignant "Once Upon A Dream" or the delightfully gay, satirical "Married I Can Always Get" or the haunting cry of the hansom cabbie, there is a depth of new musical experience in store for lovers of "Manhattan Tower."

To bring full justice to this magnificent, new version of "Manhattan Tower," Mercury is proud to offer the un-matched artistry of Patti Page, the girl from Claremore, Oklahoma, who now makes her home among the towers of Manhattan. It was an arduous, tortuous trek for Patti but she has emerged from it as the nation's First Lady of song, warm, beautiful, gracious and possessed of a rare talent which develops and matures with each new height that comes up to challenger her. Ever since her recording of "Tennessee Waltz" brought her to national prominence, Patti has grown in stature as an artist and as a personality with each succeeding year, a fact fully in evidence to television audiences who've had the opportunity to watch her develop from the insecure, frightened girl who was the summer substitute for the quarter-hour Perry Como show some years ago to the poised, assured, thoroughly delightful hosts of the hour-long Ed Sullivan Show.

All of this new-found pipe and maturity is in evidence in Patti's singing of this Gordon Jenkins score. For one artist to attempt to interpret the entire score alone is an ambitious undertaking in itself, but the amazing vocal versatility which has enabled Patti to withstand all sorts of musical trends in the past few years also enables her to give full satisfaction and meaning to Jenkin's musical and lyric ideas. Her own experience, her own longing for a Manhattan tower, now fulfilled, have enabled her to identify herself closer with the music and its moods and to break them a depth of understanding which few other singers can match.

Aiding Patti immeasurable in the perforce of this new version of "ManhattanTower" is Vic Schoen, the conductor and arranger, who has won many awards for his work in these fields. Rocky Cole, Patti's regular accompanist, is at the piano.

Here, then, is the story of fabulous Manhattan, the brainchild of a man from Webster's Grove, Missouri, and interpreted bye a girl from Claremore, Oklahoma. This is as it should be, for none feel as intensely Manhattan's ever-beating pulse and overpowering reality as those who come bewildered, yet hopeful, into its awesome presence from afar.

New York's My Home

Once Upon A Dream

Learnin' My Latin

Happiness Cocktail

March Marches On

Never Leave Me

Married I Can Always Get

Repeat After Me

Indian Giver

This Close To The Dawn

The Party (Noah)