Sweets Jazz Library TODAY! 1600hrs!

[handsomefortune]

mint film burning dog, priceless.

thanks!

[burning dog]

Odd that Charlie Shavers was three years younger than Dizzy and Monk. In older books his birthdate is recorded as 1917 but it's now correctly given as 1920.

http://www.jazzprofessional.com/interviews/Charlie_Shavers.htm

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

LOVELY PROGRAMME...one of my fav vocal albums of all time - Jimmy Witherspoon's wonderful "Singing the Blues" (World Pacific c. 1958) has a great little band of Hamp Hawes, Gerald Wilson, Teddy Edwards and Sweets etc. Some great and appropriate fills by Mr. Edison behind Spoon on the slow blues.

BN.

The Quintet he co-led with Lockjaw Davis produced some fine stuff also.

[grippie]

Listener Feedback this week, the Booker Little looks good?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0132lsf

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

grippie
Listener Feedback this week, the Booker Little looks good?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0132lsf

I'M JUST RIFFIN' TO JOHNNY GRIFFIN!

BN.

[handsomefortune]

and here he is, at 'the bach dancing and dynamite club' california
looks like an intriguing selection.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Johnny_Griffinlo.jpg

[Byas'd Opinion]

The Quintet he co-led with Lockjaw Davis produced some fine stuff also.

Agreed. I've asked for one of their pieces to be included in the next catch-up programme. (And had a moan about the change of programme time).

I saw Harry Edison at the Queen's Hall in Edinburgh in the early 80s. By that time he was past his peak - almost a tribute act to himself - but he was still very enjoyable. I can't remember who the rest of the band were, although I suspect it was a local pick-up group.

[Ian Thumwood]

One of the recommendations on the "Sweets" Edison programme was a Naxos CD of the Count Basie orchestra of the mid forties (44/45) which consisted of radio transcriptions and V-disc recordings. The title is "Circus in rhythm."

Based on this recommendation, I managed to get my hands on a copy from big river for about £3.50 including postage and I wanted to post a heads up message as this record is absolutely terrific. There is one vocal with Thelma Carpenter which is a bit dated but I was struck just how timeless these recordings are. A few tracks seem to be 12-bar blues themes but scores like "Taps Miller", "Down for double" and a host of others serve to demonstrate just how terrific this band was. I love the way that the arrangements are written so that the phrases played by the particular elements of the orchestra are structured to add maximum swing - all due to the manner in which the emphasis of the beat is stressed. The record also has three tracks by the great Jimmy Rushing ("Take me back baby" <ok>) who, for my money, was the greatest big band singer ever - I love the way that he belts out the blues. There is also some nice Lester Young on the record who was enjoying a second stay with the band. I would suggest that this CD is worth the money alone for the terrific arrangement of "Lets jump" but this is a disservice to all the other great music amonst the 19 tracks. Shame that there are no details about who arranged which particular track (wondered if there was a Basie discography website which gives this information??) but it is fascinating to hear how the free-booting band that emerged from Kansas City in the thirties had by the mid-forties already started to move in a direction that anticipated the "New Testament" band of the 50's. Whilst Basie never really swallowed the Be-bop mantra, these records serve to show that his band was not only keeping up with the times but very much setting the agenda. As ever, I feel that Basie was definately writing the agenda for big band jazz (staggering to see how dominant the soloists are in relation to the arrangements and how this squashes the stupid notions sometimes peddled on this site about jazz musicians being "imprisioned" within big bands) and I think the tracks on this disc will please fans of this genre of the music. Thoroughly recommended.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

thanks for that Ian .... one of the more treasured ep of my now disposed of record collection was the classic Young Basie band ... they were dynamite in that epoch and carried on in that manner!

[Alyn_Shipton]

Ian
Details of some (but not all) of the Basie arrangers for the period of the Naxos disc are in Chris Sheridan's massive bio-discography of Basie. But that is now selling at rather inflated prices on the big river's US site...

[Ian Thumwood]

Just a quick heads up about this record which Alyn recommended on the "Sweets programme and subsequently snapped by as a present for my father.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Complete-at-Midnight-Riverside-Sessions/dp/B0001QNODI/ref=sr_1_6?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1317584866&sr=1-6

I'm halfway through playing this record and have just gone through the Sweets Edison session and haven't heard the half of the disc with a band led by Charlie Shavers - I have that to look forward to when I drive to work tomorrow. However, the point I wanted to make was just how good this record is. A very good recommendation indeed and a bit of a kick in the pants for those he feel the West Coast was a bit tame in comparison with NYC.

The session effectively features a 12 -piece big band rattling through a few warhorses (including a mutated version of "Stomin' at the savoy" ) and includes star soloists such as Benny Carter, Willie Smith and Jimmy Rowles amongst others. The balance of the band is actually made up of studio musicians of the day whose reputation was pretty big in the 50's but now remains forgotten or only remembered by big band fans who listened to the various recreations made for Time-Life magazine under the direction of Glen Gray and billed as the "Casa Loma orchestra" albeit of a far better standard than any pf the bands he had fronted in the 30's/ 40's. The Edison disc is a welcome reminder of some forgotten names like Shorty Sherrock who contributes some knock-out trumpet and drummer Irv Cottler who was practically a first call musician in those days. The trombone is played by the Canadian Murray MacEachern who bizarrely doubled on alto. At one time, he was second only to Dorsey on this horn and had a long tenure with Gray's original band. The two other "studio" soloists who stand out are Plas Johnson who I think is still alive. He is best known for being the original saxophonist on Mancini's "Pink Panther" theme but back then he was a really useful player who had absorbed Parkerisms but managed to work it into a more "Swing " context - I suppose the nearest comparison today would be someone like Pete Christleib. His playing is really good.

/http://www.plasjohnson.com/index.htm

The musician who really stands out though is Gus Bivona whose clarinet is employed on the ride-out choruses to devastating effect rather akin to Benny Goodman albeit his sound is much fuller than Goodman's. Like MacEachern, Bivona also cut his teeth with Benny Goodman and Glen Gray in the 40's and then worked extensively as a studio musician. Again, he is pretty impressive on this record. Interesting to hear the likes of Bivona and Johnson mixing it with more celebrated jazz musicians and easily capable of holding their nown in some pretty fast company. Shame that some of these studio musicians are over-looked or perhaps only appreciated when they work with someone like Stan Getz as is the case with Jimmy Rowles. Perhaps it's time to think of these players as jazz musicians first and studio players second?