The Penguin Jazz Guide (35 page)

& See also
Lennie Tristano / The New Tristano
(1954–1962; p. 151)

LOUIS JORDAN

Born 8 July 1908, Brinkley, Arkansas; died 4 February 1975, Los Angeles, California

Alto saxophone, voice

Louis Jordan 1946–1947

Classics 1010

Jordan; Aaron Izenhall (t); James Wright, Eddie Johnson (ts); Wild Bill Davis (p); Carl Hogan (g); Jesse Simpkins, Dallas Bartley (b); Joe Morris (d); The Calypso Boys (perc). October 1946–December 1947.

Chuck Berry said (1978):
‘Louis Jordan pretty much invented rock and roll. I don’t mean the music – though everyone stole his riffs – but the crowd. Louis Jordan invented the rock crowd.’

Jordan came from a vaudeville family and never quite lost that ethos. He quit big bands in the early ’40s to form his Tympany Five, one of the most successful small bands in jazz history, which helped to father R&B. Jordan was an incomparable funster as well as being a distinctive altoman and smart vocalist. His hit records, ‘Five Guys Named Moe’, ‘Choo Choo Ch’Boogie’, ‘Caldonia’ and many more, established the idea of the jump band as a jiving, irrepressible outfit. Rightly so: Jordan was a pro’s pro, tirelessly seeking out fresh songs and constantly touring. But, surprisingly, the music seldom suffered, which is why his best sides still sound fresh. There are plenty of good compilations around, which gather up the hits, but it’s more interesting in our context to dive into the narrative at a specific point and observe just how hard the group worked at looking as if they were merely at play.

We’ve picked one representative moment. The previous year or two’s volumes have ‘Choo Choo Ch’Boogie’ and ‘That Chick’s Too Young To Fry’ plus a couple of duets with Ella Fitzgerald, then eight tracks made for V-Disc, a radio ad for Oldsmobile and the sublime duet with Bing Crosby on ‘Your Socks Don’t Match’. Our favourite, though, has a sublime put-down in ‘You’re Much Too Fat And That’s That’, as well as Jordan’s first two versions of ‘Open The Door Richard!’. These and a few other, less celebrated songs, like ‘Boogie Woogie Blue Plate’ and the straight blues ‘Roamin’ Blues’ and ‘Inflation Blues’, make it the first choice. If you find yourself not enjoying Jordan’s music, check your pulse.

JOHN HARDEE

Born 20 December 1918, Corsicana, Texas; died 18 May 1984, Dallas, Texas

Tenor saxophone

John Hardee 1946–1948

Classics 1136

Hardee; Harold Baker (t); Trummy Young (tb); Russell Procope (as, cl); Ted Brannon, Billy Kyle, Billy Taylor (p); Tiny Grimes (g); Sid Catlett, Buddy Rich (d); and others. 1946–1948.

Johnny Griffin heard ‘Hardee’s Partee’ in a ‘blindfold’ test (1992):
‘Sounds like Hawkins with a cold! Just who
is
that? I’d guess he’s from Texas. There was nobody playing like that in New York.’

The album title
Forgotten Texas Tenor
says it all. He had a sound reminiscent of Coleman Hawkins, but after an early stint of recording, including some excellent, big-voiced work for Blue Note, he wasn’t heard outside his home state. We believe we glimpsed him in France in 1975, at a festival in Nice, but no detail remains. He had a big, heavy tone but a deft touch with a tune. Not the most exciting or barnstorming of the Texas tenors, he had a quality that is hard to describe and hard to forget. His own material is good, in a functional sort of way, and while the better-known things, ‘Hardee’s Partee’ and ‘Boppin’ In B flat’, are hardly classics, the rest are individual enough to spark curiosity.

TYREE GLENN

Born Evan Tyree Glenn, 11 April 1912, Corsicana, Texas; died 18 May 1974, Englewood, New Jersey

Trombone, vibraphone

Tyree Glenn 1947–1952

Classics 1420

Glenn; Peanuts Holland (t); Nat Peck (tb); Johnny Hodges, Hubert Rostaing (as); Don Byas (ts); Harry Carney (bs); Åke Hasselgård, Jimmy Hamilton (cl); Hank Jones, Charles Norman, Billy Strayhorn, Thore Swanerud, Billy Taylor (p); Bill Doggett (org); Sten Carlberg, Jerome Darr, Jean-Jacques Tilché (g); Jean Bouchety, Simon Brehm, Milt Hinton, Wendell Marshall (b); Anders Burman, Sonny Greer, Jo Jones (d). January 1947–1952.

Louis Armstrong researcher Kjell Watkins says:
‘Tyree Glenn was a replacement for Jack Teagarden in Armstrong’s group. It takes big feet and a big heart to fill those shoes. When Louis and [manager] Joe Glaser were both in hospital, it was Tyree who volunteered to give a blood transfusion. I think that’s a measure of him.’

Glenn is, to our knowledge, the only vibes-player ever to work with Duke Ellington, but is better known as a trombone-player. He served time with Eddie Barefield, Benny Carter, Cab Calloway and Don Redman, but made his name with the Louis Armstrong All Stars. Influenced by Tricky Sam Nanton, he made a specialism of wah-wah solos. He’s a warm-toned, rootsy player who nevertheless had some modernist touches that always seemed comfortably assimilated to his basic sound, so he never stood out (negatively) in Armstrong’s company and helped keep the sound up to date.

Glenn started recording on his own account for Blue Star in Paris, easy bop discs with a warm and enveloping sound and with Byas in excellent heart. Glenn and the saxophonist recorded further sides in the Netherlands the following year, another four-horn front line, though with Peck in for the alto saxophonist. Glenn shows his facility on the vibes with ‘My Melancholy Baby’, but it’s the interpretation of Dvořák’s ‘Humoresque’ that takes the prizes. Subsequently, he recorded in Sweden with the Brehm Kvintett, then back in America in the spring of 1949 with Strayhorn and a group of Ellingtonians. Finally here, at the start of the new decade, some sides with organist Doggett and a piano-led small group with Jones. It doesn’t add up to a paradigm-shifting body of work, but one wonders why these sides aren’t better. Glenn’s a fluid technician and has more to say than what’s to be read off a section-chart. Plaudits to Classics for making him better known.

DJANGO REINHARDT
^&

Born Jean-Baptiste Reinhardt, 23 January 1910, Lieberchies, Belgium; died 16 May 1953, Fontainebleau, France

Guitar

Pêche À La Mouche

Verve 835419-2

Reinhardt; Vincent Casino, Jo Boyer, Louis Menardi, Rex Stewart (t); André Lafosse, Guy Paquinet (tb); Michel De Villers (as, cl); Hubert Rostaing (cl); Jean-Claude Forenbach (ts); Eddie Bernard, Maurice Vander (p); Joseph Reinhardt, Eugène Vées (g); Will Lockwood, Ladislas Czabancyk, Pierre Michelot, Emmanuel Soudieux (b); Al Craig, Ted Curry, André Jourdan, Jean-Louis Viale (d). April 1947–March 1953.

Stéphane Grappelli said (1981):
‘What did I mean by Django’s “monkey business”? I mean all the things the Americans admired him for! For me, it was too much; for them, it was, I think, part of his charm!’

The war years obviously brought a certain non-musical poignancy, and the remarkable story of how Django was protected by a jazz-loving Luftwaffe officer, but the coldest and most detached audition still reveals a shift in Django’s playing towards something altogether more inward, secretive, less joyous, and even when there are no obvious shadows gathering
there is a hint of darkness and doubt, in keeping with a personality that was becoming ever more erratic and dissociated.

After the Liberation, Django became an international hero, travelling to America to work with Duke Ellington. His attitude to the Americans was a studied detachment. He would turn up and play, but show no sign of engagement with what was going on around him. Django and Grappelli, who’d spent the war years in London, were reunited after hostilities ceased, but much of the old magic had gone. Prefaced by a track each – ‘Pêche À La Mouche’ and ‘Minor Blues’ – from Django’s quintet and orchestra, the 1947 sessions for Blue Star with the re-formed Hot Club are not classics like the great sides of the previous decade, but they have a spontaneity and ease that are both attractive and aesthetically satisfying. Producer Eddie Barclay gave Django a free hand to play what he wanted, and the music that emerged was bright, flowing and often thoughtful, with a rough edge that is only partially explained by the technical limitations of the recording.

There is one further session from 1947, under the leadership of Rex Stewart, which again might have served to remind Django of the huge cultural distance between him and the Americans. He plays with immense elegance on ‘Night And Day’ but never sounds as though he’s on top of what Stewart is doing harmonically.

The later recording, which was issued as a 10-inch LP, not as 78s, saw the shadows move a little closer round the guitarist, but Django’s solo on ‘Brazil’ is, as noted by Pierre Michelot, quite astonishing in its fiery grace, and he seems to have overcome some of the amplification problems he had been having since the war. He tackles ‘Night And Day’ again, on his own terms this time, and there are beautiful versions of ‘Nuages’ and ‘Manoir De Mes Rêves’. He isn’t a musician whose work divides easily into ‘early’ and ‘late’, but it’s clear that the period between these two recordings was one of personal and artistic change and, in some respects, retrenchment. Django had made a great many miscalculations and had to spend too much time compensating for them. He seemed foredoomed to a short career, and he died near Paris, aged just 43.

& See also
Django Reinhardt 1935–1936
(1935–1936; p. 51);
MARTIN TAYLOR, Spirit Of Django
(1984; p. 486)

LOUIS ARMSTRONG
^&

Born 4 August 1901, New Orleans, Louisiana; died 6 July 1971, New York City

Trumpet, cornet

Louis Armstrong 1947

Classics 1072

Armstrong; Bobby Hackett (c); Jack Teagarden, Tommy Dorsey (tb); Benny Goodman, Peanuts Hucko, Barney Bigard (cl); Ernie Caceres (cl, bs); Charlie Barnet (as); Lionel Hampton (vib); Dick Cary, Mel Powell (p); Al Casey, Al Hendrickson (g); Bob Haggart, Harry Babasin, Arvell Shaw, Al Hall (b); Big Sid Catlett, George Wettling, Cozy Cole, Louie Bellson (d); Jeri Sullivan, Golden Gate Quartet (v). May–November 1947.

Complete New York Town Hall And Boston Symphony Hall Concerts

Fresh Sound DRCD 11291 3CD

Armstrong; Jack Teagarden (tb, v); Barney Bigard, Peanuts Hucko (cl); Dick Cary (p); Bob Haggart, Arvell Shaw (b); George Wettling, Big Sid Catlett (d); Velma Middleton (v). May & November 1947.

Trumpeter Randy Sandke says:
‘Armstrong’s laser-like, warm-as-the-sun sound reflects his boundless zest for life, love for the full spectrum of humanity, and his heroic triumph over nearly insurmountable odds.’

After the final Hot Five records, Armstrong recorded almost exclusively as a soloist in front of big bands until the formation of the All Stars in 1947. He toured in the previous decade with the remnants of Luis Russell’s orchestra, but not even Armstrong could resist the postwar slump, despite his Hollywood appearances.
Only
Armstrong could have come back quite so grandly, and intact: an invincible personality.

Although the records become more formal in shape – most of them are contemporary pop tunes, opened by an Armstrong vocal and climaxing in a stratospheric solo – the best of them showcase him as grandly as anything he’d done previously. Since his vocal stylings were becoming as important as his trumpet-playing, it was critical that he got some of the best tunes of the day.

After some years of comparative neglect, Armstrong bounced back via the film
New Orleans
, made during the period covered by the earliest tracks here, and the formation of the All Stars, following the celebrated 1947 Town Hall concert. This was a gloriously unrehearsed and spontaneous affair: onstage, at least, for the planning and promotion had been thorough.

Throughout, Armstrong sounds ready to resume his eminence, playing with riveting intensity. There is a moment after a couple of warm-up numbers, when pianist Dick Cary plays the wrong intro for ‘Big Butter And Egg Man’ and Pops has to cover for him, to no avail. There were rawly beautiful versions of ‘Royal Garden Blues’ and ‘Muskrat Ramble’ and a deliciously over-the-top ‘Rockin’ Chair’ with Teagarden. This was the moment when revivalism or neo-traditionalism in jazz took off. It may have represented a prison to Armstrong in some regards. Ever afterward, this complex, brilliant musician was required to come out on stage and in some way pretend that he was a simple soul from the deep South who just happened to be there with trumpet and tux and a few ancient songs. It was formula and an audience situation – quickly repeated at Symphony Hall in Boston – that was instantly and unmistakably problematic but Armstrong had announced his return and resumed his eminence.

& See also
Complete Hot Five And Hot Seven Recordings
(1926–1928; p. 21),
California Concerts
(1951–1955; p. 130)

DEXTER GORDON
^&

Born 27 February 1923, Los Angeles, California; died 25 April 1990, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Tenor saxophone

Dexter Gordon On Dial: The Complete Sessions

Spotlite SPJ CD 130

Gordon; Melba Liston (tb); Teddy Edwards, Wardell Gray (ts); Jimmy Bunn, Charles Fox, Jimmy Rowles (p); Red Callender (b); Roy Porter, Chuck Thompson (d). June 1947.