Throughout his career and during the nearly 60 years since his death, Paul Whiteman (1890-1967) and his music have been both overrated and underrated. The most popular bandleader of the 1920s, Whiteman was crowned “The King Of Jazz” in 1923. The title may have seemed beneficial at the time when most listeners had no idea what jazz was, but it hurt his reputation in the history books since the title arguably belonged to Jelly Roll Morton. A more accurate title would have been “King Of The Jazz Age.”
Whiteman was trained as a viola player and he spent time as a member of the Denver Symphony Orchestra (starting in 1907) and the San Francisco Symphony from 1914. He led his first band while in the Navy in 1918 and formed the Paul Whiteman Orchestra after being discharged from the military in 1919. In 1920 he moved with his band to New York and began recording. Starting in August 1920 with “Wang Wang Blues,” the enormously popular “Whispering” and “The Japanese Sandman,” Whiteman had one hit after another throughout the decade.
Paul Whiteman developed a winning mixture of music and styles that caught on big. Starting with a nonet and growing in time into a huge orchestra with strings, Whiteman had his musicians perform dance music, waltzes, novelties, semi-classical pieces, both romantic and jivey vocals, and some jazz. The results were safe compared to the more freewheeling and riotous bands of the early 1920s and appealed to audiences of all ages. He hired only the most technically skilled musicians, some of whom could play credible jazz, and while some of his recordings are quite dated today, they certainly satisfied his large audience throughout the 1920s and into the ’30s.
The Acrobat label has compiled Whiteman’s most popular recordings on a pair of five-CD sets: Whispering – The Hits Collection Vol. 1 1920-27 and Smoke Gets In Your Eyes – The Hits Collection Vol. 2 1928-54. It is estimated that Whiteman had 219 hits in his career and all of them are reissued on these ten CDs. Since these sets are not exclusively jazz, collectors will prefer the more complete reissues that feature cornetist Bix Beiderbecke with Whiteman during 1927-29. However these two collections (which total nearly 12 hours of music) are valuable in giving listeners a very strong cross section of Whiteman’s most popular recordings and the music that listeners during the era most enjoyed.
Whispering – The Hits Collection Vol. 1 1920-27 has 113 selections, beginning with Whiteman’s first three best sellers. Listening to such numbers as “Anytime, Anyday, Anywhere,” “Hot Lips,” and “When Day Is Done,” it becomes obvious why Henry Busse was considered by many to be a top jazz trumpeter during the first half of the 1920s. Even though his playing could not compare to King Oliver, Paul Mares, and Phil Napoleon much less Louis Armstrong and the many hot soloists who followed, for the time period Busse’s melodic variations were a departure from purely straight playing and were creative in their own subtle way.
Some of these performances have weathered the past century better than others. Among the highlights are the charming “Three O’Clock In The Morning,” “I’ll Build A Stairway To Paradise,” “What’ll I Do,” “Spain,” “I’ll See You In My Dreams,” “Birth Of The Blues,” “Muddy Water”(the first number featuring Bing Crosby), “Side By Side,” “I’m Coming Virginia,” “Washboard Blues” (sung by its composer Hoagy Carmichael”), and “Changes” which has a hot spot for Bix Beiderbecke. There is also the second version of “Rhapsody In Blue” with George Gershwin on piano. It can be considered the first standard rendition of the piece since the earlier (and livelier) version was more jazz-oriented.
The Paul Whiteman Orchestra began adding jazz stars in 1926 (including for a time Red Nichols and both Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey) and the following year it had Bix, Frankie Trumbauer, Bing Crosby and the Rhythm Boys in its roster. Mildred Bailey, Bunny Berigan and Jack Teagarden would be among those in Whiteman’s orchestra in future years although his jazz recordings were still just a small percentage of its repertoire for Whiteman never wanted to lose his middle-of-the-road dancing orchestra. By the time the swing era began in 1935, Whiteman’s band was considered old-fashioned by most listeners. However he continued his formula while adding occasional swing instrumentals, keeping his band together until 1942. After that he just recorded on an occasional basis, mostly George Gershwin concert works with occasional nostalgic albums that looked back towards his past glories.
Smoke Gets In Your Eyes has 106 selections including two versions of “Ol’ Man River” (one with Paul Robeson and the other featuring Bing Crosby), “Make Believe,” “Mississippi Mud,” “From Monday On,” “You Took Advantage Of Me,” “Concerto In F,” “China Boy,” “Nobody’s Sweetheart” (featuring Jack Teagarden), “New Tiger Rag,” “Christmas Night In Harlem,” “The Old Music Master” and the 1954 version of “Whispering.”
While these two sets do not constitute the complete Paul Whiteman (that would take up three times as many CDs), the pair of Acrobat releases, coupled with reissues of the sessions that he recorded with Bix Beiderbecke, make up the bulk of the most important recordings of “The King Of Jazz.”
Whispering – The Hits Collection Vol. 1 1920-27
Acrobat 2125
www.acrobatmusic.net and www.mvdb2b.com
Smoke Gets In Your Eyes – The Hits Collection Vol. 2 1928-54
Acrobat 2224
www.acrobatmusic.net and www.mvdb2b.com
Since 1975 Scott Yanow has been a regular reviewer of albums in many jazz styles. He has written for many jazz and arts magazines, including JazzTimes, Jazziz, Down Beat, Cadence, CODA, and the Los Angeles Jazz Scene, and was the jazz editor for Record Review. He has written an in-depth biography on Dizzy Gillespie for AllMusic.com. He has authored 11 books on jazz, over 900 liner notes for CDs and over 20,000 reviews of jazz recordings.
Yanow was a contributor to and co-editor of the third edition of the All Music Guide to Jazz. He continues to write for Downbeat, Jazziz, the Los Angeles Jazz Scene, the Jazz Rag, the New York City Jazz Record and other publications.
