Jazz Library 05 Mar 2011

[Pianorak]

Listening to my second Jazz Library yesterday I was struck by the excellent sound quality of the mid-1930s recordings by trumpeter Roy Eldridge a.o. I assume they were remastered - but from what kind of original? 78s? - electrical recordings? - By contrast I find that most "classical" recordings from that period, especially solo piano, can be rather trying as far as sound quality is concerned.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

having just listened once some observations

1 want to listen again, it's the drummers .. a rare opportunity to compare Zutty Singleton and Big Sid Catlett, and Panama Francis! seemed to me that he sense of time shifted in the later thirties ...

2 excellent subject, Eldridge is easily overlooked these days ... he was great at the JATP in the late fifties when i first saw him ...

too many variables to answer your question pianorak; quality of original master or 78, transfer process, digital clean up etc .... but happy for the quality anyhow!

this is a 20 min video of Eldridge and Colman Hawkins in a jam session, hosted on a russian site but great and rare quality footage:

[Pianorak]

this is a 20 min video of Eldridge and Colman Hawkins in a jam session, hosted on a russian site but great and rare quality footage:

Thanks, Absolutely brilliant! - A good time was obviously had by all. Any more like that?

[Ian Thumwood]

Calum

I haven't listened to this programme yet but wanted to pick you up on the comment about Eldridge being excellent in the JATP concerts. Whilst there are moments where is is in good form, I think that Eldridge was a good example of a musician whose artistry diminished in the combatative environment of these sessions. Granted that he was famously extremely competitive, I think his playing could become tasteless in some of the trumpet battles.

His earliest work is best. One of his earlist recordings made under his own name is called (I think) "Wabash Stomp" and I was hugely impressed by these recordings when I heard them for the first time as a teenager. The recordings with Chu Berry are brilliant too and it is worth remembering that , along with Coleman Hawkins, Chu Berry, Benny Carter and the now-forgotten Clyde Hart, Eldridge was really at the forefront of where jazz was going in the late thirties and early forties. For some really unbooted and wild playing, check out "Jangled Nerves" which Fletcher Henderson recorded in 1936. This is a very perculiar record as the chart owes something to Gene Gifford's writing in the breathless manner in which the band churn out riffs and whilst it may be possible to decry this chart as being about 5 years out of date, the energy and swing of the band is something that would have been unknown when Gifford's music was being performed by the Casa Loma orchestra.

[Serial_Apologist]

Calum

I wanted to ask: did you go to the Oscar Peterson Trio/Ella Fitzgerald double concert at the Finsbury Park Odeon in - I think it would have been - 1963? I was - ahem - a fan of the OP Trio back then in my green 'n' greedy teens - and was disappointed at the time not to see OP accompanying Ella; but she had her own trio, with... Roy Eldridge!

Those days, eh?!

S-A

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

not in Finsbury S_A but likely [i think i recall it!] at the Hammersmith Odeon if at all, certainly saw him there and with Ella .... can't remember OP ... but those days as you say!

any way the point was when i saw him he was not in a trumpet battle, just featured .... i also like his work with Artie Shaw, but then i can be a bit of a coast yard lizard eh ......

he was an important figure in the music:




the prog seemed light on his later years .... wonder why?

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

As someone (60s mod) who was put off by Eldridge early on - that kind of raspy high note playing he sometimes engaged in on Verve - I found the program really excellent, particularly the later French sides.

Opened my nose (and ears).
Adjusts tonic mohair suit and stumbles off...

BN.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

it's them pointy shoes innit ....

[Byas'd Opinion]

I've got the Properbox "Little Jazz - Trumpet Giant" set that a lot of the selections were taken from, and I've got to say that I find the music on it very inconsistent. Eldridge seems always to have had a temptation to show off which he didn't always keep in check. There's a lot of genuinely great jazz there, but too often he seems just to be showing how fast, high and loud he can play. Maybe this tendency got more pronounced as he got older, or when he was touring with JATP, but it seems always to have been there. But possibly it's what the public wanted to hear - an forerunner of the rock "guitar hero" phenomenon.

Having said that, at his best he was superb, and the Properbox set is an excellent investment, even if there's maybe two CDs worth of really top class music spread through a 4 disc set.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

i admit to an ambivalence, don't like his showing off, but there is an album with Mingus
{oooh Mingus with Jo Jones!]

and the Newport Rebels

[Ian Thumwood]

Bluesnik

I was curious to read your comment as I feel that Eldridge was a precursor to what happened to jazz trumpet in the early forties when Dizzy Gillespie emerged from under his influence to be a leading figure in Be-bop. Jazz history has tended to suggest that it was through the saxophone and piano that the soloists started to get more "Modern" but it is worth while remembering that the likes of Eldridge very much represented the avant garde of his horn during his 1930's heyday. Whilst Hawkins, Tatum, Young or Carter might be singled out as "progressive" in their time, I think they had an equivalent to a degree in Eldridge - at least when he curbed the more indulgent elements of his playing such as the excessive high register work which sounds a boring to my ears as the pointless tenor-chasing bebop records. There are other players of this ilk like the now little - remembered Peanuts Holland and Charlie Shavers who played in this same spirited style which marked the point at which trumpeters started to look beyond Armstrong as an influence. This fleeter style of laying definately pointed the way forward for the instrument in the following decade.

Personally, I enjoy hearing trumpet players who have a bit of character in their playing and find the the "Cool" school of playing which frowned upon the imaginative use of timbre definately lost a lot of character and some of the "earthy" jazz flavour in their work. Taken to it's naural conclusion, you end up at some of the more annodine style of trumpet that crops up on some ECM records where the sound is almost reduced to a whispiness. The best jazz trumpet playing either has the stature and majesty of someone like Armstrong and his disciples such as Berigan or Clayton or the individual colour of the likes of the Ellingtonians, Miles, Dizzy, Lester Bowie or Dave Douglas. Of the "purer" tone players, I suppose Tom Harrell appeals to be most of all (for his unique sense of harmony) as well as some Bix but if you want a "hot" solo within the framework of a swing band, for me Eldridge is only matched by the brilliant Harry "Sweets " Edison.

[Alyn_Shipton]

Ian
Although it is Abram's - and perhaps your view that "Dizzy emerged from under the influence" of Eldridge, I've written at length in my book on Dizzy that it's more complex than that. Dizzy described it as evolution, which is perhaps more accurate. I see Jabbo and Red Allen as influences on Diz (both of them players who looked beyond Armstrong in the 20s), and I make the point that Diz learned Eldridge's style at second hand from Charlie Shavers and Bama Warwick (all painstakingly documented). Jabbo remained - in my view - a more avant garde, surprising and exciting player than Eldridge in much of his (Roy's) early recorded work, and Allen remained startling right through to the 60s. Roy had the ability to excite, but seldom to startle, as Dizzy had. Both Red and Jabbo remained able to startle right up to old age.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

there are lacunae in my education innit ...Jabbo

..one cool dude in '38

[Alyn_Shipton]

He was a lovely man. Hung out with him and Don Cherry at the Vanguard, when he was playing in a quintet with Don, Kirk Lightsey, Ed Blackwell, and I can't remember the bass player. But he was on fine form when he played at the Pizza Express in London - I guess this was around 1978. I took a rather atmospheric shot which is posted on my site, because that night Peter Ind was on bass rather than me. Rest of the band: Stan Greig piano, Norman Emberson (soon to be featured in my Buck Clayton Legacy Band) on drums, and Sammy Rimington on clarinet and alto. here's the link:http://www.alynshipton.co.uk/2011/03/jabbo/