Eddie Lang.

My posts on early jazz have tended to focus on cornet, trumpet and saxophone players, unsurprisingly as those were the dominant instruments of the time. That would change with the influence of Eddie Lang, the first jazz guitar virtuoso. We have come across Eddie Lang before as he was the guitar player in Bix Beiderbecke and Frankie Trumbauer's classic, "Singing The Blues". In fact Eddie was the quintessential guitar player of the time, the man that anyone of note wanted to play in their records.



His duets with violinist Joe Venuti would set the stage for the famous Hot Club collaboration of Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grapelli in the 1930's. Here's a great example of this, "Wild Cat".



Lang was the house guitarist for the famous Okeh records label in New York and as such worked with many famous names including Bix Beiderbecke, Louis Armstrong and Bing Crosby. Due to the racial segregation of the time he used a pseudonym for his works with that other famous guitarist of the time, Lonnie Johnson. His choice of Blind Willie Dunn seems, retrospectively first class. Here he is with Johnson on "Blue Room", a very bluesy number that Lang has no problem with, keeping up with Johnson's 12 string. The result is utterly sublime.



Lang also managed to find time to work with the legendary King Oliver around 1927. The recordings known as Blind Willie Dunn and his Gin Bottle Four sees Oliver as a sideman rather than the bandleader. Here's "Blue Blood Blues",



When Eddie's career began, it was the banjo that was the instrument of choice for many. This was primarily due to its sound being able to cut through the brass instruments on those early acoustic recordings. However the development of electric recording techniques after 1925 would change things immensely as a microphone could now be placed closer to the guitar and individual strings could be heard clearly. Very simple in terms of today's technology but pretty earth shattering for the development of the guitar in popular music. As such the function of the guitar changed dramatically in the jazz band set up.



As a guitar player myself it has been interesting to research Eddie Lang's career and to view his place in the pantheon of early guitar trailblazers. My focus when learning the guitar was to listen to players like BB King and Robert Johnson. I knew the names of Django Reinhardt and Charlie Christian based on how they influenced my early lead guitar heroes, Scotty Moore and Chuck Berry. My ignorance of Lang has been glaring and it is a shame. The influence over subsequent guitar players is clear to see, as his stylng and phrasing would become commonplace jazz staples. A virtuoso indeed.

Louis Armstrong The Complete Hot Five & Hot Seven:

Album number one in the Cannonball Jazz Library. Here.

The Cannonball Jazz Library

I have decided to set up an accompanying blog alongside this one. The Cannonball Jazz Library will highlight jazz records that I have been listening to and consider notable.

The new blog is here.

Sidney Bechet

Sidney Bechet can only be really described as a giant in the world of jazz. He was born at the turn of the century in the musical melting pot that was New Orleans and was therefore exposed first hand to the musical advancement that was taking place. He was a child prodigy and a renowned clarinet player by his early teens. He was also to prove instrumental in bringing the saxophone to the forefront of jazz (it previously being seen as an unwieldy, novelty instrument).



Like most of his contemporaries, Bechet headed for the bright lights of Chicago and hooked up with Clarence Williams, Freddie Keppard and King Oliver. He was one of the first musicians to see the rising popularity of jazz in Europe and so travelled to France and Britain in the early 20's, to great acclaim. He appears to have been something of a wild man and was deported back to the States after an altercation with the law. Back in the States, with a soprano sax in tow that he had picked up in London, he eventually began working again with Clarence Williams and making his first recordings.

It is in these recordings made from 1923 to 1925 that Bechet's musicianship can be seen. The vibrato that emanates from his clarinet and sax could be seen as both violent and extremely soulful. It's safe to say that no-one at the time had heard anything like it. The influence of the blues can clearly be heard in his playing and he is happy to push the boundaries away from the ensemble style of jazz that was prevelant at the time. In fact these recordings were made a few months before Louis Armstrong and King Oliver made their seminal jazz recordings in Richmond, Indiana.

Here are the first recordings, "Wild Cat Blues" and "Kansas City Man Blues". Note Bechets' dominance on these tracks.




However it should be noted that Bechet and Armstrong were actually friends and knew each other from their early days in New Orleans. Luckily for us Clarence Williams had the nous to organise a recording session involving both of them in what one Bechet biographer has termed the "Duel of the giants". I personally dislike the term. What I hear in these recordings are two artists who have great respect for each other but are willing to push each other on and get the ultimate out of their instruments. As we have seen before, Louis Armstrong was no shrinking violet even in the presence of his mentor, King Oliver.

Here's "Texas Moaner Blues". It opens with Bechet on the clarinet. Armstrong's cornet solo is typically strong and lays down the challenge to Bechet's soprano sax for the final bars.



"Mandy Make Up Your Mind". The only known jazz song with a sarrusophone solo - a kind of cross between a bassoon and a bass saxophone. This musical oddity was primarily used in the pre electic era as a replacement for the double bass which was difficult to hear and record. Bechet gives it a go!



Finally, check out "Cake Walkin' Babies From Home", another great example of how well the two pioneers in jazz gelled so well.



Unfortuantely Bechet was not to record again for the rest of the 20's. He became briefly involved with Duke Ellington's Washingtonians band but his wanderlust appears to have been insatiable. He travelled on from the States to Europe to play in France, Britain and as far as Russia. He wasn't to achieve the success that Louis Armstrong enjoyed in America but he was highly regarded in Europe, particularly in France, where he eventually settled. His influence in jazz is considerable - from Benny Carter, Johnny Hodges, Coleman Hawkins, John Coltrane and beyond.

Duke Ellington.

Look up the words "sophistication", "class" or "elegance" and you will see this man's name mentioned. A giant of the jazz world, I was of course aware of him, but again woefully ignorant and underexposed to his music. I think in part because of the vast amount of recordings that he made in a career that spanned 50 years. A simple blog entry from me, entitled "Duke Ellington", will not come close to even scratching the surface of the legacy this man has left us. 50 years of endeavour will probably take as long to listen to and appreciate. For the purposes of this entry I will attempt to look at his early career and how he came to be of such stature in the jazz world.



A band leader, composer, arranger and entertainer, Duke Ellington's career spans from the early jazz years of the 1920's to the 1970's. His early influences were ragtime and classical music. He began his career playing at well to do society parties in his native Washington DC - not anything near to jazz. This changed however when he moved to New York in the early 1920's and became involved in the Harlem movement. A small fish in a big pond it seems, as he and his band struggled to make ends meet. He was however, crucially, exposed to the developments of stride piano at the time. He soaked up the music of James P Johnson, Fats Waller and Willie The Lion Smith and started to write his own music, his debut being "Soda Fountain Rag" (unfortunately I can't locate it for this post). Eventually he became the band leader for The Washingtonians and began a stint at The Kentucky Club in New York City.

It was at this time that he began his first colloborations with trumpeter, Bubber Miley. Miley was heavily influenced by the New Orleans sound of Louis Armstrong and Joe "King" Oliver, who he had seen play in Chicago in the early 20's. As I mentioned in an earlier entry, Oliver was a pioneer in developing different sounds for trumpet playing, particularly the mute. Bubber Miley was to expand this technique further with a plunger mute and is credited with popularsing the growl or the "jungle sound" that is associated with Ellington's early recordings.



Here is the song East St Louis Toodle-oo, a great example of this style.



Ellington developed this style further by making compositions specifically designed to be played by the soloists in his orchestra. Here's The Mooche with Bubber Miley at his best.



Here is Black And Tan Fantasy This is a good demonstration of an Ellington/Miley composition that begins slow and in a minor key that develops a faster tempo and to a major key change and then back and forth (with Chopin's funeral march thrown in at the end for good measure!)



The big break for Ellington and his band came when they landed a gig at the famous Cotton Club in Harlem (which Joe King Oliver had famously turned down). They played there from 1927 to 1932 and even though it was a whites only club they had national exposure as the shows were sydndicated and broadcast over the radio. The legend of how Duke Ellington's Orchestra managed to get the gig tells a lot about the period and the kind of people associated with the famous speakeasies of the time. Duke had a contract with a club in Philadelphia that prevented him from taking the Cotton Club opening. With the help of his agent Irving Mills, who shall we say was "connected" with the right people, he was released from the contract after the club in Philadelphia received a telegram from the Cotton Club owners saying, "Be big or be dead". An offer they couldn't refuse!

Stride Piano III - Willie The Lion Smith

Willie “The Lion” Smith is another proponent of the stride piano style. He is also credited with playing on the song, “Crazy Blues”, regarded as the first recored blues song. Recorded by Mamie Smith's Jazz Hounds in New York in October 1920, it was perhaps the first record aimed directly at African American consumers.



Smith it seems was very much an underground figure in the Harlem scene in the 1920’s, though no less an influence on jazz for it. Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk cite him as a major influence (Ellington wrote a couple of songs in his honour.) He didn’t actually record as a solo artist until the 30’s but he had a long career stretching as far as the 1970s.

He cut quite a figure with his derby hat, checked waistcoat and ever present cigar. His technique was quite simply breathtaking. It almost sounds as if there are two people playing at once. Check out the aptly named “Fingerbuster”, which he originally recorded in 1939.



NPR have done a great documentary on Willie The Lion Smith. It includes a great explanation of stride piano.

Stride Piano II - Fats Waller

Fats Waller was a name familiar to me. If you mentioned his name I would immediately recollect, perhaps the most famous, photo of him, the one where he is sitting at an upright piano, wearing a cockeyed hat and smoking a cigarette. I also knew that his most famous track was the classic, Aint Misbehavin'.



However I was unaware of the actual style of his playing. I assumed that he played an early form of boogie woogie but in fact his style is very much Harlem Stride. He was a student of James P Johnson, who we looked at in the previous post. I have heard it argued though that Waller took the stride piano form to a higher level. He was a formidable musician but in his favour was his immense showmanship. This is apparent in the songs and records that he left us. I love the humour that jump out of the songs. It sounds like he was having the time of his life (and he probably was considering that he was partial to having a bottle of gin on his piano).

His entire catalogue is worth checking out, but here are a few choice cuts.

Handful of Keys. This song exemplifies Fats Waller's technique.



Honeysuckle Rose. A great example of Fats' sublime piano playing infused with his tongue in cheek delivery.



The Joint Is Jumpin'. It's Friday night in 1920's Harlem.