“Just relax and play,” (John) Hammond instructed them. “No engineers in sight, no flashing lights—nothing but music. Only, please keep cigarettes off the piano.” The musicians grinned and began warming up on “I Can’t Get Started.” “This is the rarest kind of jazz today,” (Nat) Hentoff informed us as we followed him and Hammond to seats in the middle of the hall. “These guys are caught in no man’s land, somewhere between the people who think jazz died with Johnny Dodds and the people who think it began with Stan Kenton.”
Thus wrote Lillian Ross in a New Yorker “Talk of the Town” piece, profiling a session that took place on July 1, 1954. John Hammond had become a busy man at this point, simultaneously helping to organize the inaugural Newport Jazz Festival that summer (it debuted on July 17) and continuing his work as a music critic. He’d just come from six years as vice-president of Mercury Records, where he recorded both jazz and classical artists, and a failed Benny Goodman-Louis Armstrong tour (the two leaders decided they didn’t get along).
But Hammond’s five years at Vanguard offers a snapshot of an underappreciated time and place in the history of jazz. Hammond was a fan of swing, and his earlier efforts had brought Benny Goodman and Fletcher Henderson together, and had helped raise Count Basie’s band from a provincial group into national fame, so it was natural for him to bring to the studio players working in that style. By 1953, of course, jazz was surging into other distinctive styles, but the first Vanguard session featured swing veteran Vic Dickenson as leader of a group of sympathetic sidemen.
Trombonist Dickenson, who had played with Benny Carter, Count Basie, and Eddie Heywood, among many others, was a busy freelancer at this point. He answered Hammond’s invitation by assembling septets for two sessions that included Ruby Braff, Ed Hall, Sir Charles Thompson, and Walter Page, among others. Jo Jones reunites with Basie bandmate Walter Page for Dickenson’s session two.
Vanguard was founded in 1950 by Maynard and Seymour Solomon, brothers with an interest in classical music who began by recording Baroque music, particularly music of Bach, branching into jazz when they read a New York Times diatribe by Hammond lamenting lousy recording techniques. The Solomons preferred a single-mic setup (this was in pre-stereo days), which Hammond also had come to prefer. And so the new Vanguard Jazz Showcase label kicked off with a December 29, 1953, session, recorded in Brooklyn’s Masonic Temple, which boasted a thirty-five foot ceiling and wooden walls and floors. (This also would be home to almost all subsequent sessions.) The single mic was hung 30 feet above the stage, positioned for optimal balance.
Giving those mono recordings a vibrancy often missing in the results of multi-mic setups. Listen to “When You and I Were Young, Maggie,” for example, and the overtone-rich texture of Dickenson’s horn as he makes an amusingly sardonic statement to start off this old chestnut. It’s taken at an easy tempo, the same tempo as “You Brought a New Kind of Love to Me,” proving that you don’t need speed to swing successfully. A 12-minute “Jeepers Creepers,” featuring a lean piano solo by Thompson, is a tribute to the LP era, which encouraged longer recording times than 78s allowed.
Vic’s second leader session gives us eight and a half minutes of “Suspension Blues,” featuring a soulful Ed Hall solo, followed by thoughtful Thompson spin round the blues block. Listen also to Walter Page’s straight-ahead bass solo.
Ruby Braff is also worth the celebration he gets here. The trumpet wizard was 26 by the time of his first Vanguard session, with another half-century of playing ahead. Eleven months before his second session, during which time Braff, who’d only recently relocated to New York, was too busy to pin down for a full date. So he’s on only two tunes in the 1954 Dickenson session, but he’s the leader for the recording made in October 1955, with Dickenson in an ensemble including Sam Margolis on reeds, pianist Nat Pierce, and Page and Jones filling out rhythm.
The resulting 12-inch LP, The Ruby Braff Special, had a successful vinyl run but, until this release, has eluded a legit CD reissue. All eight sides are keepers, beginning with a hot “Romance in the Dark” (listen for Pierce’s unexpectedly sparse solo just before the finish) and ballads like “When You Wish upon a Star” and “Ghost of a Chance.” “Where’s Freddie?,” a Braff original, celebrates the absence of guitarist Freddie Green, who’d been invited to the date but had to leave town to play with Basie. He’ll be back (see below).
It was Sir Charles Thompson’s turn in the leader chair on December 30, 1953 (the day after Vic’s first session), with a lineup including a few new-to-Vanguard faces: Joe Newman and Benny Powell on brass; Pete Brown, alto; and Gene Ramey and Osie Johnson on bass and drums. The title of “Bop This,” the Thompson original that opens the set, might seem an insult today, but the tune itself shows the early affinity between swing and bop styles, especially in Powell’s stunning trombone solo. And Thompson is at his most radiant in a lilting “Memories of You.”
Thompson returned to lead a session the following August, this time as one of eight musicians in a lineup that included Coleman Hawkins. The challenge here—no doubt Hammond-inspired—was to capture a definitive version of “It’s the Talk of the Town.” He’d produced the 1933 version that featured Hawkins and the Fletcher Henderson bad, but Hammond thought that one too rushed. This would be Hawk’s ninth recording of the song, and his second with Thompson. This time they treat themselves to a four-and-a-half-minute canvas, and it’s right up there with “Body and Soul” for depth of feeling. Hawk and Sir Charles display an easy partnership in the first chorus; the second brings the others in a sustained chorus behind Hawk’s livelier improvisation.
Newman took the leader’s chair in March 1954 to pursue a more obvious bop sensibility, with a sympathetic ensemble that included Frank Foster on tenor, trombonist Matthew Gee, and Frank Wess, whose flute helps start things off on “Close Quarters,” a bright number credited to half the band.
Want more trumpets? Buck Clayton brought in Braff for a July 1954 date with Benny Morton and Buddy Tate. Clayton already was in the midst of his series of Jam Session recordings for Columbia, so he must have been busy. This is the session Lillian Ross profiled in The New Yorker, noting that, at one point, “Hammond sat down, threw back his head, and closed his eyes. ‘Boy, is Benny Morton warm!’ he said. … ‘This is going to be a masterpiece’…‘Listen to Jimmy Jones. That’s what I call natural sound. The piano doesn’t sound like a xylophone. It doesn’t sound like a harpsichord. It sounds like a piano.’” Hammond’s enthusiasm propels the performers, as you’ll hear on the 11-minute “I Can’t Get Started” and the two takes of the up-tempo original “Kandee.”
Jo Jones’s session as leader, from August 1955, is best known for its two takes of “Shoe Shine Boy,” recalling the lead-off number from the classic 1936 session that gave Basie his debut as leader. The 1955 session gives us Emmett Berry replacing Carl Smith and Lucky Thompson in the unenviable position of filling Lester Young’s shoes, alongside Benny Green on trombone—but here also is an unexpected visit from Count Basie on piano, joining Freddie Green, Walter Page, and Jo Jones, most of Jones-Smith Incorporated, a moniker devised by Hammond (in 1936 with Vocalion) to avoid contract infringement with Decca. Nat Pierce plays piano on the rest of the session, which includes heartfelt versions of “Lover Man” and “Embraceable You.”
We get three visits from Jimmy Rushing, slightly violating the Hammond ethos by adding a second mic for the vocals. His first session features Sammy Price, a stalwart boogie-woogie pianist who had accompanied Trixie Smith and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, among many others, as Rushing revisits favorites like “Boogie Woogie,” “I Want a Little Girl,” and “Sent for You Yesterday” from his Basie days as part of this seven-song set. He’s back the following year (1955) with eight pieces and ten songs, one of which—“Caravan”—omits Rushing because he was late to the studio. You’ll find “Caravan” as part of the Jo Jones collection in this set. Rushing eventually arrived, however, and put his powerhouse voice behind “See See Rider,” this time with pianist Pete Johnson punctuating the vocal with his busy thoughts alongside Rudy Powell’s clarinet. It sits alongside old favorites like “Every Day I Have the Blues” and a rollicking seven-and-a-half-minute “Evenin’.”
Jimmy’s March 5, 1957, set is in stereo and more electrified than we’ve heard before, with Marlowe Morris on organ and Roy Gaines’s electric guitar. The voice isn’t what it used to be, sounding especially ragged in “Dinah,” the opener. Berry and Dickenson and Tate are the brass and reeds on this date, and Tate gives a solid taste of R&B in “My Friend Mr. Blues.”
The collection finishes with A Night at Count Basie’s, venturing out of Brooklyn and into Count Basie’s Lounge at Manhattan’s 7th Avenue and 132nd Street. Recorded October 22, 1956, it puts us at a ringside table as Basie introduces the musicians, who include our old friends Berry, Dickenson, and Morris, alongside pianist Bobby Henderson, bassist Aaron Bell, and Bobby Donaldson on drums. The conceit is that we’re hearing a typical set, complete with audience chatter. The trade-off is that the recorded sound suffers, especially after the marvelous stuff that came before.
Still, it’s a treat hearing the group tear into a seven-and-a-half-minute “Indiana,” and close with nine minutes of “Canadian Sunset.” Along the way, Joe Williams takes the vocal on “More Than One for My Baby” (actually Joe Turner’s “Wee Baby Blues,” and here acknowledged as such), where Berry offers gritty responses to each of Williams’s phrases, as well as “Sent for You Yesterday” and “I Want a Little Girl.”
The Vanguard jazz series ended in 1958, probably not coincidentally when Hammond got a call from Goddard Lieberson to work for Columbia Records again, a period during which Hammond would make even more spectacular artist discoveries (look for David Alan Basche as Hammond in the movie A Complete Unknown).
Recalling the Masonic Temple sessions, Braff said, “The purity of the sound there was sort of the essence of John Hammond.” Like anyone who dared to oppose Hammond’s will, Braff eventually had a falling-out, but he didn’t hold a grudge. Interviewed by Hammond biographer Dunston Prial, Braff added, “He was so enthusiastic, so boyishly enthusiastic about whatever he was working on. It was a wonderful thing to behold.”
Mosaic has another Vanguard box in the works, a six-disc set titled Vanguard Piano Jazz Showcase, including the Ruby Braff-Ellis Larkins duet albums, a solo album by Bobby Henderson, small groups led by Mel Powell, and much more. But let this essential set tide you over until the emergence of that one.
Classic Vanguard Small Group Swing Sessions
Various Artists
Mosaic Records Limited Edition Box Set (#280—7 CDs)
mosaicrecords.com
B.A. Nilsson is a freelance writer and actor who lives in rural New York. His interest in vintage jazz long predates his marriage to a Paul Whiteman relative, and greatly helped in winning her affections.
