Artie Shaw and His Orchestra
[1] Krazy Kat
[2] I Cover the Waterfront
[3] Fred's Delight
[4] Stardus
[5] Aesop's Foibles
[6] Orinoco
[7] They Can't Take That Away from Me
[8] Smooth 'n Easy
[9] I Get a Kick Out of You
[10] Afro-Cubana
[11] So Easy
[12] 'S Wonderful
[13] Innuendo
[14] Similau
[15] Carnival
[16] Mucho de nada
Artie Shaw, clarinet
Dan Palladino, Don Fagerquist, Dale Pierce, Vic Ford, trumpets
Sonny Russo, Fred Zito, Angie Callea, Porky Cohen, trombones
Herb Steward, Frank Socolow, alto saxophoes
Al Cohn, Zoot Sims, tenor saxophones;
Danny Bank, baritone saxophone
Gil Barrios, piano
Jimmy Raney, guitar; Dick Niveson, bass; Irv Kluger, drums
Solos:
Saxophone: All tenor solos by Al Cohn, except "I Cover the Waterfront," by Zoot Sims • Trumpet: All by Don Fagerquist, except "Stardust," by Don Palladino, and a few other titles where there is exposed high trumpet •
Trombone: "Innuendo" by Sonny Russo; "Stardust" by Fred Zito, who plays Jack Jenney's original 1949 solo
Composers/Publishers:
Krazy Kat: CBS Robbins Catalog, Inc.; I Cover the Waterfront: John Green, Edward Heyman/Harms, Inc.; Stardust: Hoagy Carmichael/Mills Music; Orinoco: John Bartee, Roger Segure, Artie Shaw/Life Music, Inc.; They Can't Take That Away from Me: George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin/Chappell & Co., Gershwin Pub. Corp.;
I Get a Kick Out of You: Cole Porter/Harms, Inc.; So Easy: Tadd Dameron/Denton & Haskins Corp.; Liz Bet Music, Inc.; 'S Wonderful: George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin/New
World Music Corp.; Similau: Cherio Music; Carnival: Harry Warren, Bob Russell/Triangle.
Arrangers:
Krazy Kat: Johnny Mandel; I Cover the Waterfront: Artie Shaw and Lennie Hayton; Fred's Delight: Tadd Dameron and Artie Shaw; Stardust: Artie Shaw and Lennie Hayton; Aesop's Foibles: Gene Roland; Orinoco: John Bartee; They Can't Take That Away from Me: George Siravo; I Get a Kick Out of You: Johnny Mandel; Afro-Cubana: John Bartee; So Easy: Tadd Dameron and Artie Shaw; 'S Wonderful: Ray Conniff; Innuendo: Johnny Mandel; Similau: George Russell; Carnival: Paul Jordan; Mucho de nada: John Bartee
The late 1940s was the worst of times for the big bands. With the exception of Ellington and a few others, virtually all the major jazz orchestras had broken up. Some regrouped after a while, but some didn't. Artie Shaw had been out of the picture since late 1946, when he left the band business to study music and perform classical and modern works with symphony orchestras. The answer was always no when the inevitable question was asked: "Will you ever have another band?" While in Rochester, New York for a concert, Shaw was asked about bebop music. He replied: "I hate the categories we insist upon fitting things into. I don't know what you mean by bebop. If you mean the music played by, for instance, Dizzy Gillespie and his group, that's fine music. It has a force and intensity of feeling." Throughout his various careers, Artie Shaw has relished challenges, and modern jazz was one he was to conquer.
The new music of the 1940s caused problems for most jazzmen of earlier generations. Many couldn't hear the new harmonies, intervals, or rhythmic subtlety, and responded by either badmouthing it or ignoring it. But there was also a group of established players who either embraced it, or at least were comfortable enough to respond to some of the challenges. In the last group would be Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Lester Young, Mary Lou Williams, Sid Catlett, Benny Carter, Count Basie, Dave Tough, and Duke Ellington. Most of them had actually
anticipated qualities of the new music in their work of the preceding decade.
One name that must be added to this list is Artie Shaw; however, unlike the others, he has not been adequately regarded as the forwardlooking and fresh improvisor that he was. Once he attained superstardom as a bandleader, most of the jazz "purists" stopped taking him seriously. After all, he couldn't sell all those records and be putting down anything of great importance, could he? This unfortunate elitist attitude can now be seen for the canard it always has been. These performances, newly issued, are more proof of Shaw's confidence in, and support of, modern jazz.
After an appearance with the Denver Symphony on March 1, 1949, Shaw returned to New York to prepare for a singularly challenging recording project. With an orchestra conducted by Walter Hendl, Artie was featured on pieces by Ravel, Debussy, Milhaud, Poulenc, and Gould. Also included in the repertoire were selections by Kabalevsky and Shostakovich. When Shaw took the orchestra into Bop City on April 14, the Hearst newspapers attacked him for including Russian composers in his program. During an appearance on Leonard Feather's "Jazz at Its Best" radio show, Shaw responded: "Anybody who plays a program of modern music and doesn't include the Russian composers is scratching his left ear with his right hand. I'd
really be getting political if I ignored them."
Shaw's interest (and excellence) in modern music, and his championing of the thenunpopular Russian composers, is testimony to his singularity among the superstar "bandleaders" of the so-called Swing Era. He was the most articulate of his peers and had a tremendously wide intellectual scope. But possibly the most significant facts about Artie Shaw in relation to the development of jazz are that he was widely respected, and that he listened to succeeding generations of jazz' musicians. Both Benny Harris, whose influence was pivotal during bebop's embryonic stages, and Kenny Clarke, the founder of modern jazz drumming, singled him out for his harmonic sophistication.
Cannonball Adderley and Phil Woods, from a slightly later generation, also went out of their way to pay respect to Shaw's musicality. The recordings they heard and loved were made before the ones heard in this set, which indicates that Shaw was emitting musical thoughts in advance of the context in which they originally appeared. His only company in that league of bandleaders would be Ellington and Basie -- not bad company, especially when one considers that Shaw has never received his due as a jazz improvisor. To be sure, much has been made of his classic solos on recordings like "Stardust," "Nightmare," and "These Foolish Things"; but the emphasis has never been
properly placed on the linearity and harmonic sophistication of his work, in relation to the subsequent development of the music.
Shaw's appreciation of, and comments on, Lester Young are particularly relevant to this point. In 1984, in the midst of talking about other clarinetists' influence on his work, he told me: "Hell, Lester Young had more of an effect on me than any clarinetist." He went on to say: "Lester and I were friendly, and we would go out and jam together when he was with Count Basie. We also sat around his hotel room in Harlem playing, just the two of us. I was always after Bill Basie to let him play more, because Herschel Evans was doing most of the soloing at that time. Bill said something of interest to me: 'When Lester plays, I kind of lose the band.' You know, Lester played in another dimension than the band did. It was the same with Thad Jones twenty years later. He would go off into another place. Lester played very, very relaxedly; he wasn't pushing the beat. If anything, he was lagging behind. This was not done at that time. His ability to handle eighth notes without rushing them was beautiful. Also, Lester played music first, jazz second. When Lester would play something, and I would follow him, we were kind of meshing. It was a very interesting kind of juxtaposition of two quite different sensibilities doing almost identically the same thing. He knew I dug him, and I knew that he dug me. Dig is a good word there -- not just understood, not just heard, but dug. Got underneath." And on Lester's clarinet playing:
"He played better clarinet than guys who played 'better' clarinet than he did. The formulation of the idea in his head, musically, came out of his horn."
This natural and deep respect for Young's music was ultimately expressed in the music of the band heard, for the first time at length in forty years, in this set. The main writers for the band were, to a man, disciples of the Young aesthetic. They were George Russell, Johnny Mandel, Tadd Dameron, Gene Roland, and Al Cohn. The combination of that grounding and the knowledge of Shaw's musical past resulted in a musical library of great subtlety and elegance.
We left Artie in April 1949, with the orchestra he brought into Bop City. He realized that a nightclub probably wasn't the best venue for that kind of musical experience, and gave up any further attempts at it. To complete the project he had begun in March, he recorded again in May with Alan Schulman's New Music String Quartet. By August, he had started to assemble a new big band. The first mention of it in the press was in the August 12 issue of Downbeat. An interesting item in the story is the listing of the drummer as Mel Sokoloff. Although Mel never wound up working with the band, he went on to become one of the greatest drummers of all time: Mel Lewis.
contact the band's manager, one Lennie Lewis. Lennie Lewis was an ardent admirer of Shaw's, and before becoming his band manager had led a great territory band out of Buffalo, New York. He brought his band to New York in 1948, where it played the Apollo and the Savoy Ballroom. But work for big bands was scarce even for the big names in those days, and pretty soon Lewis' group disbanded. When the chance came to help Artie organize a band, he recommended as many of his guys as he could. Mel Sokoloff, who had already accepted a job elsewhere, couldn't join. But three others from the Lewis band did join: first alto Tony Ragusa, arranger/trombonist Angie Callea, and tenorist Joe Lagano, who had joined the band during its brief New York period and who proved to be Lennie's connection to the New York players.
There is also a mention that any female singer interested in singing with the band should
Shaw's band began to shape up in early September. A tour starting in Boston and then heading out to the Midwest was booked commencing September 14. Various articles about the band listed Eddie Sauter, John LaPorta, Gerry Mulligan, Ralph Burns, and Mary Lou Williams as arrangers. Unfortunately, none of their work has survived. The band's personnel was comprised of players from different bands and backgrounds. The New Yorkers were Danny Bank, Al Cohn, Frank Socolow, and Lagano. Don Fagerquist had already been a soloist in Gene Krupa's band for a few years, while first trumpeter Don Palladino had put in time with Hal MacIntyre and Johnny Long. Sonny Russo came
from Sam Donahue and Buddy Morrow.
Pianist Dodo Marmarosa had the greatest "inside" reputation of any of the sidemen, having made historic recordings in 1945-46 with Artie, Charlie Parker, and Lester Young. To this day, Artie singles him out as one of his favorite players, and one from whom he learned a lot. Guitarist Jimmy Raney, who had both big- and small-band experience, was featured mostly in the small group, the Gramercy Five. The other men in the band had equally impressive pedigrees.
The tour took the band from Boston to Providence, Hartford, Canada, and through Chicago, winding up in Michigan over a twomonth period. The band's engagement at the Blue Note in Chicago is described by Artie as its "zenith." Unfortunately, it was also during this tour that Dodo Marmorosa, who was quite erratic in those years, walked off one night and never returned. By the time the band returned to New York, a few chairs had changed. Lagano was out, and he was replaced by Zoot Sims. Gil Barrios, a young Puerto Rican pianist, took Dodo's place. And Herb Steward, who had played so many beautiful tenor solos in Artie's 1945 band, replaced Ragusa on lead alto. Stan Getz has described Steward's alto sound as the "closest to a human voice I've ever heard."
too set an idea of what I wanted. This band can't be a stylized band. At least not at first it can't be. Style? I'll try anything." Shaw was confident enough to let this band find its own sound, without imposing his likes and dislikes. This is very rare among bandleaders, especially ones who have readily identifiable sounds of their own.
The sax section has always been one of the highlights of the various Shaw bands from 1938 on, and this section's approach is something else again. Recently, Artie had this to say about it: "Herbie had a fine musical sense. He was playing the lead in quite a different way from the way Les Robinson did. You'll note that these men don't use much vibrato. Although I did miss in some respects the sound of the '38 sax section, I recognized that this was '49, another generation, really. It had its own kind of aesthetic. The sax section sounded quite different. But it was in tune, they played together, they breathed together, and they did what they were supposed to do, so I let it go at that. In that era, vibrato and all those embellishments were sort of suspect anyway."
In an interview done right before the tour began, Shaw told writer Barry Ulanov: "I used to have
One of the pleasures of listening to Shaw's recordings has been the blend of his clarinet with, and on top of, the reed section. How did he fit in with this group? "This was my post-concert stage. My whole sound and approach to playing had changed. It got pure, and a little more refined. Instead of a vibrato, I tried to get a
For the most part, this band played music written expressly for it. But there were instances of its interpreting charts from earlier Shaw bands. When asked if the band had any trouble switching gears to an earlier conception of ensemble playing, Artie replied: "That's the fascinating thing to me about anything that's any good. There's no reason a good classical painting can't stand up next to a Picasso, or a de Kooning. You don't make invidious comparisons between one era and another. You're dealing with human expression here, and it's going to vary."
Artie had tremendous respect for the drummer in the band, Irv Kluger. He recently said: "Irv was a very vital player. He was a spark plug with the small groups, too. Irv fit right in. He was a very supple drummer. He had a lot of spark as a human being. It's like the difference between Chick Webb and other drummers. Buddy Rich and Sid Catlett were exciting drummers; and Dave Tough, in his own way, even though he was quiet, had a great psychic energy to his playing. Irv fit right in with them."
As the new year approached, Artie was scheduled for some surgery, but he wanted to make sure that this band got recorded. While in the midst of negotiating with a few major labels, he made it possible for the sessions that resulted in these recordings to happen. As it turned out, only a handful of these arrangements was ever recorded commercially. The band broke up not long after these sessions, making these recordings all the more important.
Because the band was only together for three months, its musical reputation was due to the members' memories (Danny Bank called the sax section "the greatest I ever played in"), the relatively few people who were fortunate enough to hear it in person, and a handful of rarely reissued 78s. With the release of this material, a great band's sound will now be available to all.
I'd like to thank Sonny Russo, Danny Bank, Angie Callea, Herb Steward, and, above all, Artie Shaw, for their generous time reminiscing about this band they still feel so strongly about.
Loren Schoenberg
