Duke Ellington - The Complete 1936-1940 Variety, Vocalion and Okeh Small Group Sessions

Mosaic 235

In March of 1935, a Duke Ellington-led sextet waxed a couple of sides, and almost nobody noticed — the records weren’t released until 1947. In July of 1935, Benny Goodman made a trio date with Teddy Wilson and Gene Krupa, and a whole lot of people started buying records of small-group jazz, something that the big band craze had swept aside in favor of starched uniforms, danceable tempos and drearily warbling crooners. Within a short time, numerous big bands had formed their own little groups inside the big band as added attractions. At the same time, record producers began recording small groups, often with vocals, for down-market labels like Variety and Bluebird. For the classic jazz listener, many of these records offer a wonderful glimpse into an era when gods walked the earth – not encased in the suffocating riffs and constrictions of the big bands that made their bread and butter.

From this lush musical epoch, Mosaic, in exemplary fashion, has gathered about 170 sides made by Ellington groups. In them, the Ellington sound is ever-present (and gloriously remastered), reminding us, if such were needed, that much of that sound depended equally on the contributions of highly individualistic sidemen as on the leader’s composition and arranging. Under the “recording supervision” (what they called producing in 1936) of Helen Oakley, Ellington initiated a long string of dates under the nominal direction of his favorite stars: Rex Stewart, Barney Bigard, Johnny Hodges, and Cootie Williams. The Mosaic set also includes a few piano solos, duos with Duke and Jimmie Blanton, and a group called the “Gotham Stompers” which interwove members of the Ellington and Chick Webb bands.

The Gotham Stompers date provides a revealing point of comparison as to one of the main elements that placed the Ellington band above the swing band rank & file of the day: rhythm. With Webb’s more mainstream ‘swingy’ rhythm section putting down the foundation, the closing ensemble on “Did Anyone Ever Tell You?” sounds like any number of sound-alike dance bands of the time, while the Caravan-esque “Alabamy Home” floats along rather too pleasantly, missing the dark undertones of the famous Ellington tune. Sonny Greer may not have had that forward-momentum ride-cymbal thing that Webb and Jo Jones had mastered, but he kept the front line on its toes and plugged the holes with obstreperous, irrepressible fills. Greer fit Ellington’s barroom-sprung piano to a ‘t’ – keeping the band, even at the height of the swing craze, “beyond category.”

Listen to Sonny drive the band on “The Boys From Harlem,” tight brushes on snare under Cootie’s puckish opening, followed by the Tiger-Rag-in-Morse-code ensemble (Duke throws in a hilarious cliffhanger of a break in the middle). Greer switches to sticks for the closing free-for all. Greer’s breaks had a clattering, hell-for-leather quality shared by no other drummer of the time. But he could get out of the way when required, as on the serene “Blue Light,” an immortal of hushed, abstract Ellington blues, recorded by an octet in late 1938. On this, one of several “Mood Indigo” offspring sprinkled throughout the set, Ellington’s playing looks far into the future – spare, percussive and dissonant, a far cry from the barrelhouse.

Ellington’s piano solos in the set offer a number of approaches, reinforcing the impression that Duke wasn’t altogether comfortable with his own soloing just yet. And with guys like James P, Fats and the Lion running wild, who could blame him? The medleys from December 1936 are unadulterated show-revue playing: florid, heavy and unswinging. Duke’s no more than a song-plugger here (and a damn successful one, in terms of the money he made from royalties). Three years later, producer Oakley managed to talk Duke into two more solos, “Just Good Fun” and “Informal Blues;” more in the Harlem stride tradition, but, judging from the titles alone, throwaways (and not released at the time). Another trifle from a couple of months later, “Blues” (also previously unreleased) is marred by a badly out-of-tune piano, which must’ve been as distracting to the Duke as it is to the listener. The 1939 duos with Jimmie Blanton, that most astonishingly ahead-of-his-time bassist, one whom Duke stole right out from under Fate Marable (on that leader’s own bandstand!) mark a tentative but fascinating sprouting to what quickly blossomed into a vibrant partnership. Recording engineers probably were not quite sure how to record such an unusual combination, keeping the bass too much in the background, whereas Blanton was the “horn” in that duo.

Producer Oakley complained of having vocalists “foisted” on her by Ellington’s manager Irving Mills (Ivie Anderson, Duke’s band singer, was not included in that number, and consequently is not represented in the Mosaic collection). Of the 40-odd vocals in the set, the two sides by the harmony group The Quintones offer limpid harmonies but dismal material (The titles say it all: “Utt-Da-Zay (The Tailor Song)” and “Chew-Chew-Chew (Chew Your Bubble Gum)”.), but the nadir must be Scat Powell’s lugubrious “Blue Is The Evening” from an August 1938 date (that parakeet’s entire recorded career spanned just a few months). The next recorded Ellington combo, labeled under Johnny Hodges, opens with “Prelude To A Kiss” in its vocalized debut, a workaday example courtesy of one Mary McHugh. In time, that lovely melody would become a feature for Hodges – minus the singing. One vocal side not to be missed is “Peckin’,” from May 1937, with three takes to choose from. Cootie supplies the shouting, staccato delivery, sounding for all the world like Cab Calloway channeling Chuck D.

The vocals have subsided by the time we get to the debut of Billy Strayhorn, who by his own account “inherited a phase of Duke’s organization” in the small group arranging chores after his very first jump out of the gate. A selection from that early 1939 date, “Swingin’ On the Campus,” may have not made the permanent Ellington book but demonstrates precocious scoring, using unison pre-bop “calls” contrasted with a harmonized chromatic “response.” Henderson formulae are refreshingly scrambled at a time when most band arrangers were cloning Fletcher clichés. Other good Strayhorn stuff pops up on “Top And Bottom” (Strayhorn’s first recorded jaunt on piano, featuring cat-and-mouse interplay with Cootie), the funky “Skunk Hollow Blues” on a Hodges date, and “Toasted Pickle” with its insouciant, airy trio horns in close harmony (the tune’s by Cootie, but likely arranged by Strayhorn). A notable misfire is “Minuet in Blues” with its “classical” backings sounding forced and precious.

When you splurge on a Mosaic box, part of the treat is a big-format book decorated with rare and illuminating photographs and copious, well-researched liner notes. There are some great photos included, along with a meticulous discography, but the liner notes are flat and tedious, too often reading like footnotes. Stephen Lasker’s a good scholar of Duke, but here he chooses to fill the pages with minutiae about recording details, addresses and dispositions of recording studios, copyright holders, dates, etc*, managing in the process to create a potent tonic for sleeplessness. Maybe Mosaic’s editors feel enough has been said about the music already.

So… don’t read – listen! All in all, the Ellington Small Groups box is one of the tightest collections of classic jazz sounds Mosaic has produced. Mosaic’s continuing forays into the swing era are to be celebrated. (Check out their recent Chu Berry set.) Now, for a 1930s Ellington orchestra set from Mosaic…

~ Tom Djll

*Here’s how Lasker opens a discussion of the October 14, 1939 session: “The address of the recording studio isn’t noted in the files. Chicago telephone directories for 1939-40 don’t show an address for an ARC or Columbia recording studio, but the record company had since the previous December been owned by CBS, which maintained a recording facility at radio station WBBM in the Wrigley Building, 410 N. Michigan Avenue, which was also the Chicago address of Columbia Records during the war. However, it seems likelier that Ellington’s 1939-40 Chicago Columbia sessions were recorded at World Broadcasting Systems Inc., at 301 E. Eire Street, given that the record company had contracted World to handle much of their New York and Los Angeles recording activity in 1939-40.” Lasker spends the rest of the entry outlining the copyright history for a lesser Strayhorn tune, saying nothing about the music played that day.