Mr. Rhythm

   Jim and I have not changed our positions on Artie Shaw vs. Benny Goodman.  However, when the discussion heats up, we do have an arbiter: Genial John Sheridan, who knows every note of every part in every arrangement ever played by Shaw and Goodman.  John will listen to the conversation, then respond with "Shaw's record of ("xxx") is hard to beat, then he will sing the melody of an arranged passage or solo exactly the way it was played.  Or -- he might say, "Well, Goodman's 'Walk, Jenny, Walk' is what inspired me to listen to this music."

   However, one thing that Jim, John and I agree on: Freddie Green was KING OF THE RHYTHM GUITAR!  Today, Mar. 31, is Freddie Green's birthday -- so it's only appropriate that we pay tribute to his inestimable contributions to Jazz… 

   From the very first notes he played on an early Count Basie broadcast ("I'll Always Be In Love With You," from June 30, 1937) it is obvious that Basie's "All-American Rhythm Section" was a force to be reckoned with.  Green floated atop a phenomenon he described as "The Rhythm Wave" with piano, acoustic guitar, bass and drums locked in, and focused entirely on generating an unstoppable swinging feel.  Eventually, Green's unadorned 4/4 became one of the hallmarks of the Basie sound.  In the late '30s, Basie, Green, bassist Walter Page and Jo Jones swung mightily, no matter what type of material was being played or sung.  Later Basie rhythm sections had a totally different feel, with less-is-more piano plinking, modern bass lines and aggressive drumming.  But through it all, Freddie Green kept a pulsating rhythm going.  Thick strings, high action and a series of b-i-g bodied guitars compensated for the lack of an amplifier and the strum of his Gretsch, or Stromberg, could easily be heard over the loudest Basie orchestra in full cry.  The pulse went right through you, to paraphrase Eddie Condon, "like a triple bourbon."

   With all the emphasis that has been put on his rhythm playing, it is easy to forget that Freddie Green was also an excellent soloist.  He took lessons from the marvelous guitarist Allan Reuss, and in 1938 actually soloed on record ("Dinah," with Pee Wee Russell's Rhythmakers).  In later years, Green traded fours with the Basie brass on Thad Jones' "The Elder" and of course "Li'l Darlin" would not have sounded the same without the signature guitar glissando that began each four bar phrase at the beginning of the song.  Fortunately (or not), the Basie rhythm section required a straight, unaccented 4/4 on the guitar rather than inventive solo flights.

   Veterans of the Basie band recall that Freddie Green interacted well with veteran musicians (and of course the orchestra leader) but was taciturn to the point of rudeness with younger players.  But by the 1980s, Freddie Green had paid a lifetime of musical dues, pioneering a style of rhythm guitar playing that is still held in the highest esteem by musicians and fans alike, around the globe.  He may have just decided to let his guitar playing do all the talking.

   In San Antonio, whenever the discussion turns to rhythm guitar for our band, we can depend on Jim to say, "I want FREDDIE GREEN!"  No argument there, Jim!  Not from me, not from anyone.  Who wouldn't want that wonderful, subtle, swinging pulse to be the sparkplug of their rhythm section???

   Happy Birthday, Mr. Rhythm.  Wish you were here!

    -- Hal Smith

For more information regarding Freddie Green, including rare photos, recordings, transcriptions and interviews, visit www.freddiegreen.org.

Shaw vs. Goodman: After 73 years, we’re still arguing!

by Jim Cullum

Hal Smith, esteemed jazz drummer, is clearly one of the great experts on the origins of jazz. He knows a lot about it and he knows a lot about how to play it.

Hal Smith

“You really prefer Shaw to Goodman?” he quizzes me. He knows in advance that he has a fight on his hands.

Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman

Let me tell you, I think that these arguments, so common among jazz nuts, are mostly hot air. Hal prefers the Coca Cola. I’ll have a Pepsi, please! Most of the time, that’s how silly this stuff is. But, for old time’s sake, we go at it.

Shaw vs. Goodman! Of the two, Shaw thrills me more.

“No comparison!” I say, “Shaw wins in all the ways I can measure.”

Hal fires back, “How could you measure so that you prefer Shaw?” He lists numbers of Benny’s early recordings.

We might go on like this for days – especially if we are on the road.

Swing Crazy Kids

The Shaw vs. Goodman battle was first waged by the jazz weirdoes during the late 1930s. A tidal wave of jazz, newly re-packaged as “Swing” had young Americans by their throats. A performance by one band or another would ignite passions never known before in American music. The jazz camps lined up. The excitement about Shaw and Goodman caused one of the biggest battles. Mainly Benny won out. He was the most popular of all swing-era figures and generally he eclipsed all other clarinetists.

However, Shaw began to challenge Goodman’s preeminence, and between the two of them, a high water mark of jazz clarinet performance was set.

Goodman and Shaw

For my money, no one ever played the clarinet more beautifully than Artie Shaw. As much as I admire Benny, here are reasons I admire Shaw more:

1) Shaw’s tone is a little darker – I think it is more mellow and richer and more interesting than Benny’s. In a few words, Shaw’s tone is unique, recognizable and gorgeous. 2.) Shaw is more careful about picking out the most interesting notes. This may be small potatoes, but I don’t think there are quite as many surprises in Benny’s playing.

When you listen to Shaw, think of Bix and listen that way. Shaw’s sound is special like Bix’s and he doesn’t waste many notes. He is like Bix in telling the story. Somehow the Bix influence is in there. Maybe it is accidental. But I suspect that Shaw had been very impressed by Bix. Both Beiderbecke and Shaw had special tones and both tended to find unexpected patterns.

Shaw had heard Bix play at his peak. He was amazed by the sound. “The whole horn vibrated,” he said.

A few years later Shaw roomed with Bix for a while.

After another 60 years, an aging Shaw attended the Bix Beiderbecke Jazz Festival at Davenport, Iowa. He discovered that the Beiderbecke home where Bix was born and had grown up was becoming dilapidated and the roof had failed. Shaw began to yell about the condition of the house.

In the end, the whole place was well restored. This was a big deal. To the hardcore devotee, the Beiderbecke house is a Mecca.

Bix Beiderbecke - classic photo

I suggest that when you listen to Shaw, listen to the similarities to Bix.

Shaw possessed and often displayed more technique than Bix. But don’t let that confuse any point about their similarities.

Goodman, also considered a kind of genius by many, swung just as hard. His playing was always perfect, flawless.

But Shaw is where a special, individual art lies. Listen to Shaw that way and see what you think.

Great though it is, I do not recommend another round of “Begin the Beguine.” Rather get into Shaw in depth. There is a huge wealth of recorded material, and Shaw, who retired early, was always at the top of his form.

“So if you’re so smart,” Hal asks, “who are your fingers-on-one-hand favorite jazz musicians?” You know the bit − whose records do you take with you to a desert island, when there can only be five artists?

I am ready for him. “Here you go,” I say. And I toss them off, for I have played this game for a lifetime: “Armstrong, Beiderbecke, Bessie Smith, Artie Shaw, and there is a 10-way tie for 5^th and last place.”

“That 5^th place is a cop out,” Hal says.

“Why are you worrying about my 5^th place, anyway? We’re talking about Goodman and Shaw. You go figure out your own 5^th place choices.” This is the way these jazz arguments have been going ever since Buddy Bolden, having finished with the waltzes and schottisches, came on with a slow, grinding blues.

There are some strong similarities in the Shaw/Goodman comparison. 1.) Both were unique and brilliant musicians. 2.) They were eccentric in the extreme. 3.) They were driven by their egos and their talents and the clear rivalry that was between them. 4.) They took great advantage of the rising tide of the swing era to carry the form to a high art.

If you can find it, try the double CD set of the Artie Shaw “At the Blue Room, At the Café Rouge” air checks. To my ear, big band swing just does not get any better. Shaw’s hands are all over this stuff. He wrote or directed the writing of the arrangements. He set standards for solo quality. The result: everyone in the band absorbs much of Shaw’s taste, and solo notes are not wasted. Ensemble precision is amazing. The rhythm section, with young Buddy Rich on drums, is as good as it gets.

If you do find this CD, I suggest that you experiment with turning down the high frequency response. In the transfer from LP to CD, the audio has become a little too edgy to be faithful. But I think you’ll like it – really like it!

I enjoy this size band too: four rhythm, three trumpets, two trombones, four saxophones, plus Shaw (14 pieces in all). Benny’s band had the same instrumentation.

I never cared as much for the later swing bands – often with nine brass, five reeds and usually only three rhythm.

If you hear a swing band today it is usually extra large and more about volume than it is about swing. Often you will see 20 mikes on a band already loud enough to peel the paint. Rock starts to creep in on some numbers.

Or, sometimes there is the other extreme − moo cow, slavish imitations of Glenn Miller.

Of course it would not be impossible to create a swinging band like Shaw’s. But it would take an obsessed genius like Shaw to drive it. And the market is not there. To realize full potential, a band like this must actually work every night for hundreds of nights.

Jim Cullum

PS. A tip-

The other night I saw a movie, “Dancing Co-ed,” starring Lana Turner and Artie Shaw. The movie is terrible, but Shaw plays a lot, and his playing is magnificent. You can find all this on your computer. I can’t − I am computer challenged. But you can find it, you lucky dogs!

Kid Stuff

by Hal Smith

The first recordings of Jazz giants Louis Armstrong, Jack Teagarden and Bix Beiderbecke never cease to amaze me, no matter how many times I listen to those historic sides.

Though subsequent recordings would showcase his virtuosity on cornet, trumpet and vocals, Armstrong's first record ("Chimes Blues," with King Oliver from 4/15/23) shows that his playing style was almost fully formed at the age of 21.

Similarly, Teagarden's solo chorus on "She's a Great, Great Girl" with Roger Wolfe Kahn and his Orchestra (3/14/28) showcases Big T's beautiful tone, effortless technique and his gift for melodic improvisation. The record was made when Teagarden was 22.

Beiderbecke's first recording, "Fidgety Feet" with the Wolverines Orchestra (2/18/24), is more of a preview of things to come. Bix was 20 when the record was made. The listener will hear flashes of his ethereal tone and the rhythmic concept that spawned a new way of playing jazz. Still, Bix's style in 1924 was still "under construction."

Many other great musicians made their first records at early ages, but one of those recordings continues to be a real mindblower, "Deed I Do" by Ben Pollack and his Californians (recorded 12/17/26) with Benny Goodman on clarinet.

From the mid-to-late 1920s, Ben Pollack's orchestra was considered to be one of the best hot bands anywhere. Pollack, an outstanding Chicago drummer, cut his musical teeth with the New Orleans Rhythm Kings. His own '20s-era ensembles included top jazzmen such as Goodman, the aforementioned Teagarden, and Glenn Miller, Fud Livingston, Frank Teschemacher and Bud Freeman.

Unfortunately, not all of the Pollack recordings allow the listener to hear the hot music that the band was capable of playing. But "Deed I Do," recorded in Chicago on 12/17/26, is plenty hot and includes an absolutely spectacular half-chorus by Goodman.

Composed by Walter Hirsch and Fred Rose, "Deed I Do" was a current popular song when the Pollack band recorded it (Pollack's photo adorns the sheet music). The recording begins with a "symphonic jazz" introduction and leads into an ensemble chorus in the key of F, with reeds playing melody, violins accompanying and brass "pecking." A brief interlude leads into the rarely-heard verse, with eight bars of Bix-influenced cornet played by Earl Baker. The reeds take the second half, and the orchestra makes a quick modulation to Eb for bandleader/drummer Pollack's vocal (Critics tend to be harsh concerning Pollack's vocals, but this writer believes that drummers make excellent vocalists!).

After the vocal, there is another "symphonic jazz" interlude with Goodman playing peek-a-boo between ensemble passages, then another modulation to Bb. Fud Livingston, a fine Chicago style reedman, takes the first half of the chorus on tenor sax and manages to quote his own composition "Imagination" on bars 7 and 8. He is followed by Glenn Miller, paying homage to Miff Mole. Both men's solos, and Goodman's later on, are punctuated by the leader's swinging cymbal work - choked, in this particular case.

Next is yet another "modernistic" modulation with breaks by Goodman. The fluid technique and rich tone on the first break suggest Jimmie Noone. The second break has a lemony tartness that recalls Johnny Dodds. After hearing only a few bars of Goodman's solo, it quickly becomes apparent that Bix's influence was not limited to cornetists! The "sock-time" phrasing is much like Bix's on Jean Goldkette's recording of "Proud of a Baby like You." And, like fellow Chicago clarinetist Frank Teschemacher, Goodman sometimes employed an almost brassy tone, more like a cornet. There is definitely some Tesch in Goodman's solo too (particularly bars 10 and 11). Before that, there is even a nod to Pee Wee Russell (bars 8 and 9). The final break, on bars 15 and 16, combines the graceful melodic lines of Jimmie Noone and Leon Roppolo with Beiderbecke-like phrasing.

Benny Goodman's first recording is a genuine tour-de-force. His flawless technique makes the solo sound as though it was casually tossed off, but the intensity is still white-hot. The half-chorus is a textbook demonstration of how to play "Chicago Style" clarinet, recorded almost a full year before the classic McKenzie-Condon sides with Teschemacher. Still, Goodman's musical identity is not lost in the process. What you hear on this 1926 record is not far removed from the Goodman clarinet sound of the '30s, '40s and beyond. "Deed I Do" and subsequent sides with Pollack such as "He's the Last Word," "Waitin' for Katie" and "Singapore Sorrows" continue to astound and delight musicians over eight decades after they were recorded (I hear that our own Ron Hockett was speechless after hearing them the first time!).