The Sound Of Jazz - Various

 

Fine And Mellow

The Sound Of Jazz

Columbia Records CL 1098

1958

The Sound Of Jazz was presented by "The Seven Lively Arts" over CBS Television Sunday, December 8, 1957.

From the back cover: The best thing that ever happened to television happened on CBS between five and six in that afternoon on Sunday, December 8. At least that was where and when it happened first: the program may have been run at a different hour and date in your part of the country, and – if there is any justice – it will be repeated, the more often the better. It was an installment in "The Seven Lively Arts" series called "The Sound Of Jazz," and as far as I'm concerned you can throw away all previous standards of comparison. This is where live television began to amount to something.

It was open and closed, and from time to time interrupted, by John Crosby as "host," but mostly it was musicians playing jazz – in a bare studio, dressed in whatever they lied (hats, sweat shirts, it didn't matter), smoking, talking to one another, or just walking around. Each group was introduced and then away it went, with team enough (in nearly all cases) to get the music going, while the camera roamed over the faced of participants and spectators. There were no phony or elaborate explanations. As the executive producer, Jack Houseman, remarked approvingly to the music critic Virgil Thomson, doing the dress rehearsal: "This is the first program about jazz that doesn't say it started in New Orleans and then went upon the river."

Technically "The Sound Of Jazz" gave the appearance of being very (as they say on the Avenue) "primitive." You knew that you were in a studio and that these people were being televised. If it sounded better to have a microphone right in the front of a man's face, there the microphone would be; and if one cameraman got in another's way he didn't scurry ashamedly out of it. But this impromptu effect, of course, took a deal of contriving. The musicians couldn't believe at first that thats were really okay, and Billy Holiday had to be persuaded to appear in slacks and pony-tail instead of the gown she had specially planned on. The air of casualness was in fact the end product of months of work.

This milestone was primarily made possible by Houseman, his assistant, Robert Goldman, and the producer for this show, Robert Herridge, who had the unbelievable courage and good sense to hire good taste and turn it loose. They found two jazz critics with some ideas, Whitney Balliett and Nat Hentoff, and after the usual round of conferences and memos, gave them complete artistic control. Balliet and Hentoff, from the start, had the kind of program in mind that they eventually produced – one that would concentrate in music. When I asked Balliett at what point they had decided in favor or visual realism and informality, he thought a moment and said, "I don't think it ever occurred to us to do it any other way."

They got the musicians they wanted, whether currently well known or not and whether or not "485" (the address on Madison of the Columbia front office) would have made the same choice. They were able to assemble combination of musicians whose booking arrangements usually keep them apart, and also let an old-timer like Pee Wee Russell play side by side with a modernist like Jimmy Giuffre. The name of one performer made "485" nervous, but Balliett and Hentoff put their feet down – and they won. Let i be written that as of 1957 there was still some decency left, and somebody willing to fight for it.

As "The Sound Of Jazz" came into the final weeks before air-time, it began to make other people uneasy, and for better reasons. Since there was so little of the normal panic on the surface, everybody panicked inside. The director, Jack Smight, found that he was twice as jumpy without actors around to worry about; and when "485" found out in the last few days that there really wasn't any script to speak of it began to emit angry noises: "What are you doing down there?" Balliett and Hentoff could only answer that everything was going to be fine, the musicians would turn up, and there would be some music. They hoped this was true.

They needn't have worried. If you were lucky enough to have seen "The Sound Of Jazz" I don't have to telly you how great it was and, even if you weren't, what I'd want to do anyway is sell you an explanation of why it was great. The cornerstone of live television, class will please now repeat, is the human face – with its spontaneity and tension, its halo of contradictions, its hints of life lived and life to come. Of course the TV camera is merciless; it draw on the person behind the face for all the resources that it can find there. It is not one eye but millions of eyes; it has high expectations and asks that the person before it be poised in the balance, somehow challenged or tested, so as to bring forth the most meanings from the ever-changing interplay of expressions in the face.

What made the jazz musicians extraordinary, when the camera put their features through its harsh examination, as how much it found there. Children and animals make the best movie actors, as Douglas Fairbanks said, because they are un-self-conscious and unable to fake. No more could these musicians be anything but themselves, for they are committed to independence and to a headlong attack of the cosmos. It showed; here – and no kidding – were individuals of stature and profundity, of flesh and substance, of warmth and bite. The music was good, yes, but what lifted "The Sound Of Jazz" to a level hitherto unattained was the sight of it being made. As a lady in White Plains sat down and wrote CBS as soon as the show was over, one so seldom has the chance "to see real people doing something that really matters to them."

Neither Belliett nor Hentoff expected the visual effect to be as sensational as it was. They knew that director Jack Smight "dug" jazz, but they would never have dared anticipate the deft and intricate camera work that enabled him to cut from one shot to another as skillfully as though he were a movie editor, working with developed film instead of a live show. The cameramen simply outdid themselves (for the record, and giving them a credit line they should have had on the air, they were Bob Heller, Harold Classen, Joe Sokota, Jack Brown, and Marty Tuck). Balliett and Hentoff's long and careful planning had made it possible for the musicians to extemporize; now the cameramen and the director could extemporize too, with the freedom to smudge the edges – lave that head half in the way – of practiced talent, the artistic intelligence that dares to risk a blunder because it knows precisely what it is doing. Jazz is like that, and as a result the two effects of "The Sound Of Jazz" – on the eye and on the ear – were miraculously in tune with each other.

Now there is talk not only of a repeat but of a series, and no one could better deserve it than this new-found team. But one wonders if the miracle can happen twice. Part of the reason that Balliett and Hentoff were let alone was that no one in high authority really understood what they were up to. Now the secret is out and there will be many hazards. As I sat with them in producer Robert Herridge's office, going over the first day's mail, the phone rang and Herridge answered it. He listened, laughed explosively, and  hung up. "Lawrence Welk," he said, "demands equal time." – Eric Larrabee

Also from the back cover: Eric Larrabee's hymn of praise to CBS' "The Sound Of Jazz" reproduced here by courtesy of Harper's Magazine, omits one important reason for the brilliant success of the show. Four days before the show went on the air, during a driving blizzard, all the jazzmen on the show appeared at Columbia's 30th Street studios to record the show for this album. They wore the usual recording uniforms, hats, sport shirts, snow-drenched shoes, and they played up a storm of their own that day. What you saw on television looked like the recording session; what you hear now is the sound of jazz.

Credit for this remarkable event belongs to a number of people, including the show's producer Robert Herridge, its director Jack Smight, associate producer Charles H. Schultz, and musical advisors Nat Hentoff and Whitney Balliett. Also responsible for this album are the executives of the various labels who graciously allowed their exclusive artists to participate in the recording. And finally, and of course most important, credit goes to the real pros of the show, the musicians, who worked quickly and flawlessly to blend their highly individual styles of jazz into a single swinging performance. To all of these we express our thanks that what they contributed is here forever to be enjoyed.

To help you enjoy the music more, the following is a summary of solos by each of the all-stars.

Side 1

Wild Man Blues

Henry "Red" Allen All-Stars including; Henry "Red Allen and Rex Stewart, trumpet; Pee Wee Russell, clarinet; Coleman Hawkins, tenor sax; Nat Pierce, piano; Jo Jones, drums; Milt Hinton, bass; Vic Dickerson, trombone

1st chorus: Allen

2nd chorus: Coleman Hawkins and Vic Dickenson

3rd chorus: Pee Wee Russell and Rex Stewart

4th chorus: Ensemble

Rosetta

Henry "Red" All-Stars

1st chorus: Allen

2nd chorus: Allen (vocal)

3rd chorus: Hawkins

4th chorus: Dickenson

5th chorus: Stewart

6th chorus: Russel

7th chorus: Allen

8th chorus: Ensemble (Pierce solo)

Fine And Mellow

Billie Holiday with Mal Waldron All-Stars including: Lester Young, Colman Hawkins, Ben Webster, tenor sax; Doc Cheatham, trumpet; Vic Dickenson, trombone; Mal Waldron, piano; Jo Jones, drums; Danny Barker, guitar; Jim Atlas, bass.

1st chorus: Holiday

2nd chorus: Young

3rd chorus: Webster

4th chorus: Holiday

5th chorus: Cheatham

6th chorus: Hawkins

7th chorus: Holiday

8th chorus: Dickenson

9th chorus: Holiday

10th chorus: Holiday

Blues

Jimmy Giuffre, Pee Wee Russell, clarinet; Jo Jones, drums; Danny Baker, guiar

Side 2

I Left My Baby

Count Basie All-Stars featuring Jimmy Rushing, including: Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, Earl Warren, Harry Carney, saxophone; Roy Eldridge, Joe Newman, Doc Cheatham, Emmett Berry, trumpet; Vic Dickenson, Dickie Wells, Frank Rehab, trombone; Count Basie, piano; Jo Jones, drums; Eddie Jones, bass; Freddy Green, guitar.

1st/2nd chorus: Rising with Young

3rd chorus: Ensemble

4th chorus:Basie

5th chorus: Hawkings

6th/7th  chorus: Rushing with Wells

The Train And The River

The Jimmy Guiffre Trio including: Jimmy Giuffre, bariton tenor sax, and clarinet; Jim Hall, guitar; Jim Atlas, bass.

The Jimmy Giuffre Trio appears through the courtesy of Atlantic Records

Nervous

Piano solo by Mal Waldron.

Dickie's Dream

Count Basie All-Stars (same band as for I Left My Baby)

1st chorus: Young, Wells, Newman

2nd chorus: Young

3rd chorus: Rehab

4th chorus: Newman

5th chorus: Carney

6th chorus: Dickenson

7th chorus: Berry

8th chorus: Hawkins

9th chorus: Wells

10th chorus: Eldridge

11th chorus: Basie

12th chorus: Ensemble

Note: One member of this great assemblage of jazz immortals did not appear on the show or on these recorded performance. Walter Page, one of the greatest of all bass players and an alumnus of the Basie rhythm section, could not leave his bed to join the others. Walter Page died of pneumonia Friday morning, December 20, 1957. Columbia and the musicians appearing on this album dedicated it to his memory.