The record changer (Jan-Dec 1944)

The Record Changer, August 1944 BRUNIES AT THE TROMBONE By Charles Wiiford Reprinted by kind permission of the editors of Jazz Music (London), Albert McCarthy and Max Jones George Brunies is a trombone-player and also a tradition. With Louis Armstrong he has the longest record of service of any big-time jazz musician, and for all of twenty years now he has held his honorable place among the few worthwhile white trombonists. Unlike Armstrong however, he has maintained all the fire of his youth and of post-war New Orleans, and resisted the temptation to grow into a Grand Old Man. He has not become a film star nor been offered the honorary degree of a catchpenny college, but he does know by now just what a trombone part should be. The playing of a trombone part in a collective improvisation is an unrewarding task that appeals to few musicians. To relinquish the spotlight to the trumpet and clarinet and fill in the harmonies in their support; to give the bass of the chord and instinctively know the right note; to pick up and emphasize or answer the phrases of the leading instruments and always be ready with an easy fill-in while the trumpet takes a pause; to link phrase to phrase of the tune, and chorus to chorus, with a run of notes that points the new direction and always keeps the music moving; and to fulfill these duties with a forethought and taste that makes of them a fluid and intelligent extra voice in the polyphony: this is the most difficult job in the band, and when eventually mastered brings no applause from the crowd and little enough praise from the critics. It is no surprise that there has always been a shortage of good trombonists; the gap has now to be filled by the always woolly and ineffective tenor saxophone, which has not the strength to make itself felt in ensemble, and whose faults therefore pass with less notice. The shortage is worse since fashion followed Tom Dorsey from the clambake to the th6 dansant, and it sometimes seems that among the white musicians Brunies is the sole survivor. The great Daddy Edwards records no more; the other old master Santa Pecora appears now and then, but as quickly backs away again from the din and the com mercial racket; Floyd O'Brien survives, but is spasmodic and unpredictable; and the situation is such that Brad Gowans, whose jazz pedigree consists of one fifteen-year-old record on third cornet to Red Nichols and Jimmy Dorsey, hasr switched to valve trombone and reappeared with very undeserved success. Among the negroes there has been no such falling-off; but this is the one branch of jazz in which they cannot claim superiority to the whites. Kid Ory of course set the style, but his playing was too archaic to be gonsistently enjoyable; Preston Jackson and Fred Robinson were often excellent; but in general the negro trombonists were too enthusiastic and lacking in restraint to be good ensemble players. Superb soloisls such as Benny Morton and Higginbotham are for instance as lacking in sense of ensemble as Teagarden. Brunies remains. In twenty years the only change in his playing has been a gain in technique and confidence, and a progressive simplification of style towards the most forceful essence of the trombone part. His ear is now never at fault in its feeling for the right note, 1he exact timing and the most fitting shape of phrase for the context. His tone is shamelessly broad and assertive, his flow of ideas is unfaltering and tireless, and his sweeping use of the glissando that is the chief joy of his instrument is masterly. He is in fact without rivals; there is no question that he is the greatest of all background trombonists. Yet it is with diffidence that one applies superlatives to his work, for he has not attempted any superlative or even original achievement; he has been content to raise to the highest degree the tradition h.e found already existing. And his is a traditional art, deriving irom the bass-singer's part in the quartets beloved in American saloons and from the trombone's part in the brass band. When he is required to improvise a solo chorus, and tradition no longer sustains him, Brunies is liable to become immediately pedestrian and undistinguished. On the other hand, at fitting in a single-phrase solo break he is superb, producing the kind of thing Ory would 48