Arranging is an underrated element in jazz and arrangers have not been given the credit they deserve. Arranging has almost always been considered piecework, paid at so much per arrangement. Bandleaders (and agents and performers) often took credit for tunes—and arrangements. And, except for staff writers working up stock arrangements (“stocks”) for publishers, the paper trail is incomplete.
Arranger/composer/musician Eddie Durham is among the most important of that unsung group and this documentary might help remedy that.
Durham grew up in rural Texas, the son of a sharecropper/cowboy/fiddler and quickly acquired the skills to thrive in a competitive musical environment. He toured with circus and minstrel troupes (black and white acts travelled and lived together) and with his own family in the Durham Brothers Orchestra.
In the late 1920s, he landed in Kansas City—not a bad place for a musician and was hired to play trombone and guitar and write arrangements for the top bands in that town—Walter Page’s Blue Devils and the Bennie Moten Orchestra. He modernized Moten’s sound. Then, when Count Basie took over Moten’s group, Durham’s work was fundamental to Basie’s sound. Basie’s “book” was composed largely of head arrangements—riffs and melodies made up at rehearsals or on the gig—and Durham took those arrangements and created music that was flexible but
