Jazz in the Public Domain

Clara Smith, vocals with varied artists: Waitin’ for the Evenin’ Mail, I Never Miss the Sunshine, I’m Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down, You Don’t Know My Mind. Clarence Williams with Bechet: Mean Blues. Clara Smith: Don’t Advertise Your Man, Good Lookin’ Papa Blues, I Don’t Love Nobody Blues. Clarence Williams: My Own Blues. Clara Smith with Coleman Hawkins: Texas Moaner Blues, Deep Blue Sea Blues.Clara Smith is popular in any era. Clarence Williams and Bechet are included for support alongside the ubiquitous Fletcher Henderson.

Coleman Hawkins with Clara Smith: Texas Moaner Blues, Deep Blue Sea Blues. Fletcher Henderson Orchestra: Sudbustin’ Blues, He’s the Hottest Man in Town, Doo Doodle Oom, West Indian Blues, You’ve Got to Get Hot, Old Black Joe’s Blues, Charleston Crazy, Houston Blues, Jealous, I Can’t Get The One I Want, My Papa Doesn’t Two-Time No Time, 31st St. Blues.Listening for Hawkins you also hear Redman, Fowler, Chambers. In 1924 Hawkins was still nineteen, in 1944 he was 39 playing bop, in 1964 he charted popular albums. With Clara Smith here he solos at length in his blues style and also with Henderson plays more of a blues attack than of the orthodox straight melodic tone. Billy Fowler is on bass sax on several tunes.Although Prez represented a new direction from the Hawkins style, the opposite is also true. Hawkins developed a unique rhythm-based style distinct from the customary classical tenor leads of Pettis and Krueger. Prez developed the high lead style taken from Tram leading on to Getz and Wardell Gray. Hawk’s explosive approach led to Rollins and Roland Kirk. No sax section had better trained musicians than Redman and Hawkins. But neither messed much with the classical or pop orthodoxy. Together they created a parade of hits. The Redman/Hawkins reed section -supplemented by Billy Fowler - by the results obtained, was among the most successful of the competitive 20’s.Prez from Tram c melody started from the free floating popular dance band alto lead melodic line of Loren McMurray style shaped by rhythm like metered poetry with the band riffing behind him polyphonically. We are left dancing. Hawkins it seems started from within the rhythm section as a basso foundation glued to the beat but shaped by melody, like a bassist soloing, or a drum solo.

Loren McMurray (saxophone) with the orchestras of Eddie Kuhn (1920): You’re Just Like a Rose. Mike Markel (1921): I Wonder If You Still Care For Me, I Wonder Who You’re Calling Sweetheart, Say Persianna Say!, Idola, Blue Eyes Blues, Alabama Blues, Two Wooden Shoes. The Virginians (1922): I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate. Bailey’s Lucky Seven: Homesick. Lanin’s Southern Serenaders: Doo Dah Blues, Shake It and Break It, Eddie Leonard Blues. Eddie Davis: Hot Lips. Mike Markel (1922): Lonesome Mama Blues.This starts in 1920 with a KC band where Mac got his launch. Seven tunes from Markel is maybe a slog but this music is interesting and well recorded for 1921 from a talented society orchestra, McMurray being featured. In the second half the jazz tunes from 1922 pick up the pace. That’s Cliff Edwards eefing on Doo Dah Blues, a sample of what would become widespread two years later. McMurray helped expand the paradigm for the alto as the dominant melodic instrument (as did Bechet for soprano) plus low register slap tongue in rhythm support. McMurray had a busy recording career for about three years 1920-1922 and then he was gone at age 25, leaving the legacy of the alto as a star lead instrument.

Henderson: Somebody Stole My Gal. Nick Lucas: My Best Girl. Gene Rodemich: Shanghai Shuffle. Oriole Terrace Orch.: Off and Gone. Bennie Krueger: Charley My Boy (Voc. Billy Jones). James Blythe: Armour Avenue Struggle. Marion Harris: Jealous. Armstrong (Henderson Orch.): Everybody Loves My Baby. Loren McMurray: Haunting Blues, Charlie Creath: Pleasure Mad. M. Harris: I Can’t Get The One I Want (lyrics by Billy Rose). Arcadia Peacock Orch. (Jules Schneider ts, Chick Harvey voc.): Where's My Sweetie Hiding. Rosa Henderson (with Fletcher Henderson): Papa Will be Gone. M. Harris: Tain't Nuthin' Else. The Texas Blues Destroyers (Bubber Miley, Alvin Ray): Lennox Avenue Shuffle.Jealous is a dream reverie Harris could deliver as in I’ll See You In My Dreams and Tea for Two. The lonely Harris interpretation as she introduced these legacy tunes is a valid starting point as with Tatum who happens on Tea for Two to take Harris’s dreamy approach. Another Harris tune Haunting Blues is here from Loren McMurray in 1922 his final year. James Blythe played early boogie before it took over. The Arcadia Peacock Orch. was from St. Louis as was Charles Creath. Here also is the original Shanghai Shuffle by its composer, borrowing from Limehouse Blues which swept the US in 1924 with Gertrude Lawrence, who contrasts with Harris who started in the US and then went to England. The OTO provide our title, led by Ted Fiorito.

Fletcher Henderson Orchestra: I Can't Get the One I Want, Where the Dreamy Wabash Flows, Say Say Sadie, Prince of Wails, My Papa Doesn't Two Time No Time (Don Redman Voc.), Mobile Blues, Chicago Blues, That's Georgia, Sudbustin' Blues, Copenhagen, Shanghai Shuffle.Many of the late ‘24 tunes with Armstrong are provided separately in the episode titled Pops season 2 episode 11. Here cornetist Elmer Chambers is featured and in a section with Howard Scott. Hawkins’ slap tongue works particularly on Sudbustin which is an uptempo variation of the slow swinging Piron dance tune. Which is telling because any tune Henderson played was reconstructed to a bouncy Henderson fox trot regardless of the lyrics. This Prince of Wails, the Schoebel tune, is the most elaborate version of this tune which Schoebel didn’t record in 1924. Shanghai Shuffle is notable and includes an Armstrong solo, and composer Rodemich’s own version is heard in episode 41. Redman scatting here on My Papa gives syllables to the eefing/kazoo/comb tradition of pure vocalizing that swept 1924 including the goofus guy Redman himself voicing without syllables on Mobile Blues. We also apparently hear a washboard on Chicago Blues.Henderson played in a league with Lanin, the Virginians, the Ramblers, OTO, Krueger, Rodemich, many others and you hear these same tunes and dance ideas circulating on Brunswick and Vocalion and various labels. Redman elaborated on the trends and fads particularly from Irving Brodsky and Adrian Rollini, while also developing the bouncy Henderson style before Ellington put into words about what don’t mean a thing. Ellington took the space opened by Henderson for the African American cultural contribution to the fox trot further into the classical art song. Jazz coming from port city NOLA was inherently global and not possible to segregate. Plessy v. Ferguson to the contrary. Henderson with Redman integrated the national fox trot market by providing the African American difference. And then there was the whole blues market they dominated. Bert Williams had already been the Jackie Robinson of Broadway with Flo Ziegfeld. Henderson competed in the dance band major leagues by providing his own brand led by the unique Hawk and Redman sound. Although Morton invented jazz he was more off in a league of his own with Joplin, Mozart and Monk. A composer’s league somewhat museum quality. Ellington went there also. Redman of the weekly fox trot business abandoned the polyphonic front line for more industrial strength. Bebop brought back a front line with Bird and post bop hits by Silver, Dizzy, Monk adhered to a rhythmic danceable model using virtuoso soloing. Hit tunes have always been central to the jazz formula, particularly understood by Bird.Morton’s New York phase brought New Orleans jazz to a fulfillment as a concert music, but didn’t exactly capture NY dancers and was considered old fashioned, however more like Brahms versus Wagner. Henderson still has a bouncy and free feel with these smaller bands in 1924 although played from across the Rubicon from a Clarence Williams Blue Five which was jazz only. By bringing in Armstrong, like Whiteman with Bix, Henderson spotlighted the talent but didn’t embrace the NOLA front line concept, as did Armstrong to the very end or Clarence Williams with Armstrong and Bechet in 1924.

Frank Trumbauer (cms): with Ray Miller's Orch.: Mama's Gone Goodbye, I Can’t Get the One I Want, Doodle Doo Doo, The Cotton Pickers: Jimtown Blues, Benson Orch.: I Never Miss the Sunshine, Mound City Blue Blowers: San, Red Hot, Lanin’s Arkansaw Travelers: Lost My Baby Blues, Ray Miller; Where is that Old Girl of Mine (Billy Jones Voc.), The Cotton Pickers: Prince of Wails, Ray Mlller: Red Hot Mama, Lotsa Mama, Come on Red, Sioux City Six: Flock of Blues, I'm Glad. Trumbauer solos and performs section work as a sideman from 1923-24. Joined by Andy Sannella and Miff Mole in the Ray Miller Orch. Bix and Miff with the Sioux City Six. Frank Signorelli with the Cotton Pickers. Tram was adept in duets and here particularly with Miff Mole and Andy Sannella.