Listening to JRR , the one track that I was intrigued to hear was the John Kirby one. When I was getting in to jazz it was almost impossible to find records by this group but my peers revered this group which enjoyed an almost hagiographical reputation. Accordingly, I have heard relatively little by this band and therefore was intrigued to see if the track played would shed any light.
My impression is that this band probably represented one of the highest levels of musicianship in the Swing Era with Buster Bailey being one of the few clarinet players who could push Goodman. Russell Procope always seems better with Ellington in my opinion but I think Charlie Shavers shares some of Bailey's neglect in that he is really overlooked these days. I find it hard to understand why he is not considered with more affection as his trumpet playing plays a similar role to Nat King Coles in the advancement of Swing towards Be-bop.
That said, Gunther Schuller was hugely critical of Kirby's group and even suggested that they weren't a genuine jazz outfit. Schuller is sometimes unreliable and , in my opinion, frequently guilty of double standards with his criticism. He was quite happy lauding Glenn Miller's music, for example. However, I can see what he was getting at as sometimes the music Kirby played is too clever. It is strange that technical perfection is not always a determinant in making "great jazz" and maybe Kirby was sometimes too smart for his own good. However, it is difficult not to be impressed by their technical prowess - a kind of mirror image of "jazzing the classics" whereby technical precision seemed to be put towards the task of making jazz seem more sophisticated. I think that it was a good little band and musically superior in every respect to a similar sized unit like Al Cooper's Savoy Sultans who can be dull in large doses even if they had a really adventurous alto soloist and a propensity to whip things up to a climax that presaged JATP.
My impression is that this band probably represented one of the highest levels of musicianship in the Swing Era with Buster Bailey being one of the few clarinet players who could push Goodman. Russell Procope always seems better with Ellington in my opinion but I think Charlie Shavers shares some of Bailey's neglect in that he is really overlooked these days. I find it hard to understand why he is not considered with more affection as his trumpet playing plays a similar role to Nat King Coles in the advancement of Swing towards Be-bop.
That said, Gunther Schuller was hugely critical of Kirby's group and even suggested that they weren't a genuine jazz outfit. Schuller is sometimes unreliable and , in my opinion, frequently guilty of double standards with his criticism. He was quite happy lauding Glenn Miller's music, for example. However, I can see what he was getting at as sometimes the music Kirby played is too clever. It is strange that technical perfection is not always a determinant in making "great jazz" and maybe Kirby was sometimes too smart for his own good. However, it is difficult not to be impressed by their technical prowess - a kind of mirror image of "jazzing the classics" whereby technical precision seemed to be put towards the task of making jazz seem more sophisticated. I think that it was a good little band and musically superior in every respect to a similar sized unit like Al Cooper's Savoy Sultans who can be dull in large doses even if they had a really adventurous alto soloist and a propensity to whip things up to a climax that presaged JATP.
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