BY JON NELSON
Throughout jazz history, and bebop history as well, there have been numerous performers who have achieved great fame and notoriety for their work. Yet when objectively analyzed, many of these individuals fall far short of the reputations they have been accorded. This article will focus on some of them.
***W.C. Handy is best remembered as “the father of the blues.” Handy (1873-1958) led an early quasi-military type of band which recorded fairly regularly during and immediately after the first World War. However, anyone listening to those records today will be vastly disappointed if they expect to hear anything resembling traditional blues. The band is adequate and performs in a sort of stilted ragtime manner with no solos and little to distinguish it from its contemporaries, such as James Reese Europe, Ford Dabney and others. While Handy did write a couple of well-known songs with the word “blues” in the title and while his “Memphis Blues” is often cited as the first published twelve bar blues, Handy cannot in any sense be called the father of the blues, as there were countless black musicians before him who were active blues performers. Unlike Handy, they understood the real emotional underpinnings of the blues style. Handy’s approach to the blues was purely academic; he himself never took solos that could by any stretch be called “bluesy.” As an indication of how superficial his understanding of the idiom was, Handy’s personal choice to help popularize the blues was the white vocalist Al Bernard, a vaudeville performer who often appeared in blackface and whose sole claim to wear the mantle of a blues performer was that he had been born in New Orleans, and that Handy liked him. This should indicate how far removed Handy really was from the genuine article. Despite all this, the critics proclaimed him the father of the blues, and the “W.C. Handy Music Festival” is still held to this day. Meanwhile, a real innovator like Jelly Roll Morton managed to become persona non grata to most of the major jazz critics, although recent research and the discovery of some of his later compositions have caused many to re-think their previous errors. At any rate, although Handy deserves a modicum of credit for having written a couple of standard songs. his influence and importance has been over-blown to the point of absurdity.
***Billie Holiday: “Lady Day” was one of the best-known singers of her time. Her fans will insist that she put everything into her performances, and that her emotional qualities are unmatched. It has often been said that one can almost feel her pain when she sang. This is a difficult position to maintain when one listens objectively to her recordings. Let us consider some of her many shortcomings.
For one thing, Holiday (1915-1959) had an extremely limited vocal range, encompassing little more than an octave. There is also an annoying nasal quality to her voice. Her pitch is often questionable as well, and the so-called “emotional impact” of her work is hard to justify given the vocal cliches she repeatedly utilized. Given that, how can her fans and jazz critics still maintain that she treated every song differently or that she made “every word count?” Holiday rarely swings and she almost never made any attempt to improvise around the melody. Her fame rests on the fact that she had the support of most jazz writers who, in defiance of her obvious limitations, built up her reputation to such a point that the public simply assumed that she must have been one of the greats. Her contemporaries also thought very highly of her, but consider this: jazz writer Leonard Feather once wrote that many over-rated musicians became well-known simply because there wasn’t that much competition at the time of their greatest fame. While he never mentioned Holiday (and also bought into the myth of her “greatness”) his point is particularly applicable with regard to Holiday. Her only real rival in popularity was Ella Fitzgerald, a performer whose talents were so far above Holiday’s that it is difficult to imagine how the latter could even have been considered a worthwhile performer.
***Roy Eldridge: Eldridge has usually been accorded great praise by the critics and was always highly promoted by record companies and producers. Dizzy Gillespie considered him to be his main musical influence. But there are so many problems with Eldridge (1911-1989) that it is difficult to take these assessments seriously. We may begin by noting his instrumental deficiencies; Eldridge hit so many bad notes and with such a bad tone that it is often difficult to ascertain exactly what it was he was trying to play. For those who disagree, let them try to find a solo in which he hits all his notes accurately. And as for musical taste—forget it! Even his most rabid fans never use the word “tasteful” to describe Eldridge’s playing. One of his main faults was his tendency to spoil many of his recordings with high-note forays that are not only in extremely bad taste, but ridiculously out of tune; invariably, it sounds like he isn’t even trying to be accurate or listening to the noise he is making. Since Eldridge was a product of the Big Band era, a period during which jazz was generally a happy music, Eldridge stands out as an anomaly who always seems to sound both angry and technically incompetent, particularly during up-tempo numbers. Some of his solos are so poorly played that it sounds like a high school student goofing around. Case in point: His hysterical “After You’ve Gone” solos with Gene Krupa’s big band in the early 1940s; there are times when he is simply moving the valves as fast as possible without being aware of the “notes” that are coming out of his instrument. Eldridge simply did not have either the technique or the temperament to be either a good trumpeter or a convincing jazzman, and there were so many superior players during the Big Band era that the attention given him by the critics and his promotors (such as Norman Grantz) was totally undeserved. Eldridge’s later recordings are even more annoying and unmusical; pick any of the songs he recorded in the 1970s, and find one—just one—where his technique and tone are commensurate with his reputation. Hint: there are none.
***Pee Wee Russell: Russell was an extremely limited clarinetist who squeaked and squawked his way to undeserved fame. His contemporaries praised him highly as did contemporary critics. One contemporary, tenor saxophonist Bud Freeman even predicted that there would be a time when his work would be studied even more than Benny Goodman’s. Russell was said to have an advanced ear and there are many examples of strange notes in his solos. However, rather than indicating a uniquely gifted improviser, these notes (many of them flat-out wrong) show a musical eccentric rather than a creative genius. A few more honest contemporaries, such as Barney Bigard, justifiably refused to take him seriously; Bigard said of Russell and Chicagoan Frank Teschemaker: “They weren’t real clarinetists to me.” Those who felt otherwise were for the most part his drinking buddies (Russell was a lifelong alcoholic). As but one example of his work, the first version of “The Eel,” recorded in 1933 is marked by one loud squeak which for some inexplicable reason is maintained for several beats; it becomes a part of the solo. Did he think this was being musical? As on the majority of his recordings, Russell proves here that he simply did not have the necessary “chops” to be a convincing jazzman. It must be admitted that Russell, almost uniquely among his dixieland contemporaries, did experiment with some more modern be-bop forms, but even here, his weak sound and intonation do him and his listeners a disservice.
***King Oliver: Oliver (1881-1938) is difficult to assess based on his records. One reason is that he suffered from gum disease and this obviously affected his playing. Due to the high praise given him by Louis Armstrong and others, critics were simply bamboozled into believing that Oliver must have been a great player. Listening to his records, most assumed that the hot trumpet solos were played by him when in fact they were played by men such as Louis Metcalf, Dave Nelson and others. As a result, Oliver has been the single most misrepresented soloist in jazz history; virtually every trumpet solo accredited to him was played by others. To hear the real King Oliver, one should listen to the two duet recordings he made in 1924 with Jelly Roll Morton, and to some of his Creole Jazz band solos, such as Dippermouth Blues. Do these records merit his being called the “king” of New Orleans jazz? Clearly they do not. Perhaps he was indeed a competent player at one time but if so, that is the stuff of legend rather than historical fact. Despite the efforts of Wynton Marsalis and others to paint him as the great precursor to Louis Armstrong, Oliver’s recorded performances show an extremely limited technician as well as improvisor.
In addition to his being over-rated as a player, Oliver’s renowned Creole Jazz Band was also ridiculously over-rated. Many writers have waxed poetic about this group’s alleged musical virtues, assuming that since King Oliver and Louis Armstrong were its trumpeters (cornetists), that fact alone puts this band at the top among traditional jazz groups. One writer, a personal friend of mine, marveled at the way the four horns improvised without tripping over one another. In fact, the ensembles are muddled and poorly played on virtually every one of their recordings. Armstrong and Oliver constantly get in each others way; the idea of doubling the melodic voice simply does not work, at least with these players; with these two constantly playing together, the actual melodies are impossible to hear. In addition, trombonist Honore Dutrey has all kinds of technical problems (his lungs were permanently damaged during World War 1) and invariably plays disturbingly out of tune. Given all this, it is a mystery why anyone would rate this band highly, much less call it the pinnacle of traditional jazz ensembles.
***Bubber Miley: Miley was another limited instrumentalist who seems never to have varied his playing. He always used a mute and growled his way through ensembles and solos. It has often been said that Miley (1903-1932) was able to effectively imitate the sound of the human voice. In fact, the wa-wa technique he employed was commonplace in the 1920s and his sound wasn’t particularly distinguished in this regard. Every one of his solos utilizes a plunger mute; His failure to deviate from this approach indicates a musician limited in scope and imagination. Clearly a product of his time, it can only be imagined if he would have been able to grow beyond his limitations had he lived longer.
***Jimmy Harrison: Known as “the father of the swing trombone,” Harrison (1900-1931) was a competent if undistinguished soloist with the Fletcher Henderson big band during its halcyon days in the 1920s. Many writers have claimed that Harrison liberated the trombone from its traditional tailgate role and made it into a true solo voice. But players such as Claude Jones, Charlie Irvis and others played similar or greater roles; Jones in particular was a far superior technician and more imaginative improviser than Harrison. Many critics insist that Harrison deserves most of the credit as he was “the first” to make the trombone a true jazz solo voice. Besides being untrue (the above mentioned were contemporaries rather than successors of Harrison), this statement illustrates a peculiar trend among jazz critics to give credit to those who did something first rather than to those who did it better. This is a trend only to be found among jazz writers. For example, Andrea Zani (1696-1757) is usually credited with being the first composer of a symphony, dating from 1729, and numerous others composed symphonies prior to 1750, but these composers are obscure names today and their music is rarely performed, while Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) is regarded as the first great symphonist. Jazz critics alone seem to go by the curious standard that because so and so influenced others, that automatically makes him/her a major figure.
***Jimmie Noone: Noone (1895-1944) was an early pioneering clarinetist from New Orleans who enjoyed the enthusiastic acclaim both of the critics and of his fellow musicians. He was known for his sweet tone and rapid-fire tonguing on his instrument. But the exaggerated sweetness and vibrato invariably makes his work sound mawkish and cornball, even unintentionally comical. And his staccato approach renders most of his performances stiff and unswinging. If this were not enough, his improvisational abilities were limited; contemporaries such as Johnny Dodds, Sidney Bechet, Omer Simeon and others were far better improvisers than Noone. If I were to list the top ten or fifteen clarinetists from New Orleans, Noone wouldn’t even be on the list.
***Fletcher Henderson: Henderson (1897-1952) is over-rated on two accounts. For one, his orchestra never lived up to its potential and two, his arranging skills were not fully developed during the time of his greatest fame. As to the first, his orchestra contained in its ranks many of the most famous musicians of the time, including Louis Armstrong, Tommy Ladnier, Jimmy Harrison, Coleman Hawkins, Benny Carter, Buster Bailey, J.C. Higginbotham, Russell Procope, Sandy Williams, and numerous others. Quite a lineup of impressive talent, yet their records are rarely exciting or deserving of the acclaim accorded the band and its leader. There are numerous reasons for this. The band often sounds extremely sloppy, due in large part to the uneven timekeeping of its drummer, Kaiser Marshall. The band sounds rhythmically stiff due to this and also because of the dated, quasi-ragtime styled lead trumpet of Russell Smith. And as good as the saxophone players were individually, as a section they were rarely cohesive.
As for Henderson’s arranging skills, Henderson rode on the back of the gifted Don Redman, who wrote most of the arrangements from the 1920s. By the mid 1930s, Henderson’s arranging skills had developed substantially, but the idea that his writing helped pave the way for the swing era is not supported by the facts. One early reissue of his work, a three volume set aptly entitled A Study in Frustration summarizes Henderson’s career; the frustration comes in listening to his records and trying to see what all the fuss was about.
***Coleman Hawkins: Hawkins (1904-1969) is almost universally considered to be one of the top two or three most important tenor saxophonists in jazz history. Admittedly, his flexibility allowed him to be at home in a variety of musical settings and he did record a few classic solos. But his early recordings show an extremely limited musician, one who struggled with intonation and timing; rarely do his solos actually swing. His solo on Henderson’s “The New King Porter Stomp” from 1931 perfectly illustrates the point: Not only is he out of tune, he doesn’t seem to know where the beat is and consequently sounds lost all the way through. He doesn’t even follow the chords! This may be the single worst solo ever committed to record by a major jazz musician. His most famous recording, “Body and Soul” from 1939, rambles on and on without ever creating anything of real substance. It is thus extremely difficult to understand his fame from this period; part of it is no doubt due to the fact that there simply weren’t that many tenor sax specialists during his early years. His later, post-war period is better judged by bebop standards rather than as jazz.
***Jack Teagarden: Like Hawkins, Teagarden (1905-1964) benefitted from the fact that there weren’t that many competitors around when he gained his initial fame. Teagarden was a good, though by no means great trombonist; it is baffling to the extreme to understand the accolades heaped upon him not only during his lifetime but in the half century since his death. He possessed a couple of good tricks, such as his use of the portamento and, especially, his ability to play half the trombone with a water glass. But his articulation was muddy; any good trombone teacher would emphasize the importance of correct tonguing on the trombone, a lesson Teagarden obviously never learned. If one does not tongue the notes correctly, one will be extremely limited in his ability to articulate rapid note sequences. To be sure, speed isn’t everything, but this deficiency mars Teagarden’s work on just about every available recording. In his own time, there were numerous other trombonists who played the same style of music and were equally skilled or even superior to Teagarden; names such as Tommy Dorsey, Bill Rank, George Brunis, Lou McGarity, Fred Ohms, Cutty Cutshall, Joe Yukl and others come readily to mind. And, J.C. Higginbotham, Claude Jones, Benny Morton, Dickie Wells and others possessed much more distinctive styles and instrumental technique.
Any unbiased comparison of their work with Teagarden’s will demolish the notion that he stood head and shoulders above the competition.
***Artie Shaw: One of the best known big band leaders of the 1930s and early 1940s, Shaw (1910-2004) is usually rated as being the equal or even superior of Benny Goodman as a clarinetist. This is completely unwarranted for a number of reasons. Technically speaking, Goodman was the top virtuoso of his day, and was equally at home playing jazz and big band music as he was playing and recording Mozart’s clarinet concerto. Shaw was strictly a swing performer. His technical proficiency, while good, was by no means exceptional. Omer Simeon, for example, was a superior technician but never got the critical acclaim Shaw did. Shaw’s tone was both nasal and flat at the same time. By flat, I am not referring to pitch, but to a dull, lifeless quality that manifests itself in all his recordings, even up to his last ones, made in 1954. Shaw himself is on record as having criticized Goodman’s improvisational abilities, calling him mechanical and predictable, in effect saying Goodman was more of a technician than a musician. Yet the same can certainly be said of Shaw, and with considerably more justification. Listening to his recordings show him engaging in technical displays such as fast chromatic runs that may be superficially impressive to the non-expert, but in actuality sound more like exercises out of an instruction book than real inspirational jazz. To be fair, it must be noted that Shaw did tend to move with the times, and his last recordings show that he has been listening to more modern sounds and incorporating some of them into his own improvisations. But I simply cannot get past his hollow, lifeless and even annoying sound, making it difficult to listen to any of his recordings.
***Pops Foster: Foster (1892-1969) has usually been cited by jazz historians as the premier bassist from New Orleans, and the best of the early “walking” style men on that instrument. The acclaim is difficult to substantiate. For one thing, his bowing technique is primitive and unprofessional, even by the standards of his time; his playing on “Higginbotham Blues” with the Luis Russell orchestra illustrates this point. His pizzicato work, supposedly so influential, pales in comparison with his contemporaries, including Steve Brown, Wellman Braud, John Lindsay, Walter Page, and others. His recorded legacy shows a player of modest talent at best, who often sounds like some of the octogenarian relics who seem such a ubiquitous presence at many dixieland jazz club meetings.
***Ben Webster: One of the three best-known tenor sax players of the big-band era (along with Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young), Webster (1909-1973) gained a particular reputation as an interpreter of slow songs (often incorrectly identified as ballads; a ballad is a slow folk song telling a specific story). On up tempo numbers, he tended to play with a rough, grainy sound that was more annoying and unmusical than it was inspired. Saxophones have been used and abused more than any other instrument in jazz, and the tenor in particular has been the focus of many honkers and screamers. He doesn’t appear to have had a particularly skilled musical ear, in marked contrast to Young, and his technique pales in comparison with such contemporaries as Chu Berry, Bud Freeman, Johnny Russell and others. Even on his much-heralded slow numbers, Webster’s playing, while listenable, was undistinguished.
***Freddie Green. Green (1911-1986) was best known as the acoustic guitarist in Count Basie’s much-acclaimed rhythm section. His fifty year tenure in the band may be an all-time longevity record for a sideman. In addition to the jazz critics, many guitarists have also praised Green’s work. But in listening to his records, it is extremely difficult to see what all the fuss was about. Green, equally famous for never taking a solo during his tenure, contented himself with quarter note strumming, always on the beat. What is rhythmic about being constantly on the beat? Where is the rhythmic variety so essential to swing? One guitarist I spoke to told me “it is the way he does it.” When I asked him specifically what it was that made his work so admirable, he was unable to provide a response. As already pointed out, it certainly wasn’t his rhythmic variety that separated him from his contemporaries. Was his harmonic awareness particularly acute? Far from it; his chords were standard swing era chords. Did Green possess any particular skills or display originality, virtuosity, or anything else that would separate him from his contemporaries? Not in the least. Did he drive the band? Again, no; playing on the beat hardly constitutes drive. Did he vary his approach with each song? No, he stuck to his tried and true formula of playing on the downbeat. Did Green’s fame arise because he was a member of a leading swing band? No; if this were the case, then another Fred, Fred Guy from the Duke Ellington band, would have been equally famous. In fact, Guy’s work showed much more rhythmic variety than Green’s. Certainly, Basie and the other two members of his legendary rhythm section, bassist Walter Page and drummer Jo Jones, were standout performers on their instruments; Page in particular may have been the premier bassist of his time. Three fourths of the Count’s famed rhythm section were rightly highly acclaimed. But the role assigned to Green could have been performed equally well or better by just about any high school guitarist of his time.
OVERRATED JAZZ MUSICIANS
***W.C. Handy is best remembered as “the father of the blues.” Handy (1873-1958) led an early quasi-military type of band which recorded fairly regularly during and immediately after the first World War. However, anyone listening to those records today will be vastly disappointed if they expect to hear anything resembling traditional blues. The band is adequate and performs in a sort of stilted ragtime manner with no solos and little to distinguish it from its contemporaries, such as James Reese Europe, Ford Dabney and others. While Handy did write a couple of well-known songs with the word “blues” in the title and while his “Memphis Blues” is often cited as the first published twelve bar blues, Handy cannot in any sense be called the father of the blues, as there were countless black musicians before him who were active blues performers. Unlike Handy, they understood the real emotional underpinnings of the blues style. Handy’s approach to the blues was purely academic; he himself never took solos that could by any stretch be called “bluesy.” As an indication of how superficial his understanding of the idiom was, Handy’s personal choice to help popularize the blues was the white vocalist Al Bernard, a vaudeville performer who often appeared in blackface and whose sole claim to wear the mantle of a blues performer was that he had been born in New Orleans, and that Handy liked him. This should indicate how far removed Handy really was from the genuine article. Despite all this, the critics proclaimed him the father of the blues, and the “W.C. Handy Music Festival” is still held to this day. Meanwhile, a real innovator like Jelly Roll Morton managed to become persona non grata to most of the major jazz critics, although recent research and the discovery of some of his later compositions have caused many to re-think their previous errors. At any rate, although Handy deserves a modicum of credit for having written a couple of standard songs. his influence and importance has been over-blown to the point of absurdity.
Categories: Music Commentaries