The record changer (Jan 1955-Dec 1957)

10 records noted DICK HADLOCK BUCKLIN MOON ROBERT L THOMPSON MARTIN T. WILLIAMS lu watters: 1947 Cakewalking Babies From Home/ Antigua Blues/Beale St. Blues/ Chattanooga Stomp/Jazzin Babies Blues/Snake Rag It is largely earnest vigor that makes these sides still worthwhile. Most of the members (Helm, Murphy, Scobey, Rose, Lamini, Dart, Mordecai) are still blowing forcefully, but to me they don't make as much sense any more. I think the reason is Lu Watters, the guy who made you listen. His voice was more than an uninhibited shout. It was a full-blown authority speaking about the small and lively facet of jazz that Lu liked. After years of blasting Snake Rag and Chattanooga, the boys might well be pretty tired of these warhorses. But on this record, taken from their 1947 "This Is Jazz" broadcast, they run 'em down like hounds on a chase. By now, though, some of the ex-Watters men must react to Cake Walking Babies or Jazzin Babies Blues about like Clyde McCoy does to Sugar Blues. The performances here may not be the greatest Watters on records, but it is already time to be grateful for a few more Yerba Buena tid-bits not previously issued. It is only a pity they did not broadcast fresher material. Anyway, dig old Lu. He played good. {Riverside RLP-2513) (RBH) charlie parker memorial, volume I I am reviewing this record because I think that it should be reviewed {Savoy did not send this magazine a copy of it). It is the first of a series of LP's on which Savoy plans to issue alternate masters and "short takes" (incomplete, interrupted performances) of all of its Charlie Parker dates, along with some bits of conversation (most of it amounting to rather teasing shouts of "Hold it! Hold it!", "Once more," usually by Parker), and some of the already released versions. If it were nothing else, it would be .1 record of the nature of what I shall call for the time being Charlie Parker's "talent." But it is much else. I first heard Charlie Parker play in 1945 in I lolly wood with Dizzy Cillespie's group. I had rather ignored his solos on the McSli.uin records as only imitation Lester Young (which we can now see they were not) and I had heard so much imitation l.rsler Young from bin band sidemen like those in Earl Mines 1910 42 band that I was not impressed. (Incidentally, one can, of ioiiim' r<: 1 1 1 liirdland .ins nighl and hear imitation Young and Parker on all instruments, endlessly.) I wronged Cillespie and Parker*! music: I did not understand it, did in. I really listen lo Parker. For one thing, I was hearing Kid Ory's band at the Jade Palace and I had never heard any such jazz. (Ory's music has never been recorded. All of his records are rather stringent "dixieland.") It seemed to me more relaxed, but more feeling, more collectively integrated, and more mature than any jazz I had ever heard. Beside it, the "new" music seemed tense, ostentatious, and to have a certain self-conscious effrontery. And, by that time, swing, which I did understand, had degenerated so far that the "jumpin' jive" that most of its minor practitioners played sounded as melodically barren as a set of toned drums. Ory's music still seems to me more mature. But it achieved that maturity on different and, if you will, "simpler" terms. But I now am sure that Charlie Parker was a major talent and of all the modernists he undoubtedly possessed the greatest creativity. All great jazzmen have understood the blues —I will say that categorically — and Charlie Parker, as has often been said, understood them. And he could play them more movingly and honestly than any other modern jazzman. There are a majority here: Parker's Mood (with its light delicate double timing which may make one reflect on Johnny Dodds), Bluebird, Perhaps, and Buzzy (Parker is almost amazingly inventive) are worth singling out. But his feeling for the blues was in all of Parker's work, and that is as it should be. These alternate takes will amaze you: on many tunes attack, attitude, mood are consistent, but the lines and structures of the solos are almost completely different on the separate versions. Nothing quite like the inventiveness of these alternate takes, placed together here, has ever been attested to on jazz records before, and it is probably the highest tribute that the creativity and musicianship of the "modern" jazzman could have. The music did not "flow" out of Charlie Parker as it did out of, say, Morton or Dodds or Young. But it comes. It comes with a tenseness (which often causes reedsquealing) and sometimes a terrible effort, but it makes music, always fresh. He had his particular language, his set of devices and idioms like any jazzman. It is only because he had so many lesser and superficial .imitators that his "vocabulary" has been called "limited" and full of cliches. (Johnny Dodds is not repetitious and lacking in authentic feeling because of Jimmy O'Bryant). And there are times here when he momentarily regains that smoothness of tone which he had only on certain McShann sides (see The Jumpin' Blues which solo, by the way, is an early exercise at Ornithology) . Then take a performance like Ah-LeuCha. Here (in the mid-40's), as on C.hasin' tin Bird, is a superb statement of that direction toward counterpoint which the modern school is now beginning to explore. (And, this record is a full statement of most Ijfthi things that the Mulligan-Baker groups iav been feeding back to so much acdain.1 Miles Davis, by the way, is on all ofaes sides, and on Buzzy he is almost as invjtiv as Parker, (it was Ross Russell who plfcei out that Davis played Parker on tryB and Paul Bacon who said that he seen i ti have something to say and just happei i ti pick up a trumpet to say it with).'ohi Lewis is excellent, Max Roach . . . Blips let this album be the Bird's memorial. )ne I hope of many to come. (SavovU 12000) {M.T.W.) jumpin' with pete johnson Climbin' and Screamin'/ Let 1b Jump/ Re-Pete Blues, (Pete's J tie No. 2)/B and O Blues/Shuffle Bvjgi, /Pete's Blues/How Long/Buss ob inson Blues i These, of course, are the collected foi Art sides and they come from neaSi beginning of Johnson's (apparently) nos productive and inventive period, 1938J. Climbin' and Let 'Em Jump are <otl versions of Pete's favorite boogie-blues ucl has been called everything from Roll Em Pete to Rebecca elsewhere. Climb I i probably the best version of it he has H Jump begins with an intriguing introd tioi involving a suspense of the beat, lfl begins to weaken about half-way thri.fl Johnson's most frequent problem — he I could not sustain what he had begun. I O is one of his best and most sus I records, but one has the feeling when I ing it that what used to be known hi "power" is sometimes more a matt a force and a single level of dynamics — fid one cannot censure in this music — thi s] momentum or swing. Shuffle is an interim and slower version of his half-walking lue which he did so magnificently on Blue'ol as Holler Stomp. The rest of the set is composts € "straight" blues. On the positive side, t be said that they are all pleasant anc M Johnson was trying to use a larger dy mi range, a more "melodic" line, and to e I the harmonics of the form: perhaps ax ira ble ideas all, on the face of it. Ho^ vci these are "prettified," languid things . I wholly lacking in any blues "feel." i basis of feeling. They are little else I pleasant. The effect is one of lushnes in< sentimentality. (It was rather incong I to hear him use some of the same m I ideas that form the basis of Robinson b iw Joe Turner's passionate shouting it th latter part of Goin' Away Blues.) Rob I for example, begins with a melodic lim'ha is, granted, both pianistic and pretty-H wanders in this for about two and a I minutes. Prettiness but little human bi| sentimentality but little real feeling, nl once on records, in You Don't KnouM Mind, did Pete play the blues with II beautiful, earthy feeling. If he could iw integrated the talent manifest here : kind of sophistocated melody and \M structure with that authenticity of tiM he had in his boogie and in My Mind M knows . . . ? M But these boogie numbers were JB before the pointless double-timing and i Ml ingless multiplying decorativeness took his treble figures. And here they are. (/» side RLP 1054) {M.T.W.)