Jazz Focus

Two great dance bands from the Hot Dance period - Dave Nelson's Harlem Highlights and Kingsmen with Buster Bailey, Glyn Pacque, Charles Frazier and Wilbur DeParis and the Savoy Bearcats with Joe Steele, Carmelo Jari and Demas Dean . . terrific recordings from mostly forgotten bands and a cameo from King Oliver....

The "pre-Louis" band . . records done before Louis Armstrong joined the Roseland Ballroom orchestra led by Fletcher Henderson . .this group was still a force to be reckoned with in Harlem music circles . . featuring Elmer Chambers, Howard Scott, Teddy Nixon, Don Redman, Charlie Dixon, Billy Fowler, Ralph Escudero, Kaiser Marshall and Allie Ross, these records also have the first recorded solos of Charlie Green and Coleman Hawkins.

The great swing era trumpet player on three pickup dates after he left Cab Calloway's band . . the first with Sammy Price (also featuring, Vic Dickenson, Pete Brown, Milt Hinton and JC Heard), second with George Wettling (with Bud Freeman, Dave Bowman, Milt Hinton and George Barnes), and third with Sidney Bechet (with Jimmy Archey, Buddy Weed, Walter Page and Johnny Blowers).

Great solo piano recordings by the great Harlem Stride master from 1921-1930. Several standards and pop tunes, but mostly originals by Johnson!

Spike Hughes was a white British music critic and bass player who had a successful series of recordings for British Decca in the early 1930's. He came to the US in 1933 to record some of his own compositions and arrangements with an all-star band put together by Benny Carter, who used mostly his own band and soloists from Fletcher Henderson and Luis Russell's orchestras. Red Allen, Shad Collins, Dickie Wells, Wayman Carver, Coleman Hawkins, Chu Berry, Red Rodriguez, Sid Catlett and others. Also, the last date Coleman Hawkins recorded with the Henderson band in March, 1934 - Buster Bailey, Red Allen, etc.!

Not yet "Western Swing," this music is Texas Swing - musicians in the string band tradition who identified as Jazz players. Steel guitarist Bob Dunn, clarinetists John Harvey and Butch Gibson, saxophonist Earl Driver, pianist Landon Beaver, violinist Darrell Kirkpatrick and others play a range of jazz songs (mostly from the 1920's) with a relentless beat and great solos!

Live and studio recordings by the Second Herd, 2.0....Getz, Sims and Steward were gone, replaced by Gene Ammons, Jimmy Giuffre and Buddy Savitt, but Serge Chaloff is still there, along with Ernie Royal, Earl Swope, Lou Levy, Terry Gibbs, Shorty Rogers and a guest appearance by Nat "King" Cole - progressive 1949 big band music!

Bill Boyd and His Cowboy Ramblers was really just a radio band . . Boyd would record using a floating personnel of whoever was available (much as did Lionel Hampton, Red Allen and Teddy Wilson in New York). Members of Roy Newman's band, the Modern Mountaineers and the Light Crust Doughboys appear on this subset of Boyd's huge discography from the period - slanted mostly towards jazz and pop music of the 1920's these records feature Knocky Parker and Smoky Wood on piano, Marvin Montgomery on banjo, Carroll Hubbard, Jesse Ashlock and J.R. Chatwell on violins and Butch Gibson on clarinet as well as Boyd's brother Jim on bass and vocals.

The clarinet playing vaudevillian had very popular bands in the 1920's and 30's, but his playing was not it's feature - he would hire fine jazzmen such as clarinetists Don Murray, Jimmy Dorsey, Frank Teschemacher and Slats Long (and Benny Goodman, who we played on a previous show) as well as George Brunies and Muggsy Spanier . . great hot dance from 1928-1933.

Reed player Bingie Madison had a big band in 1930-31 in Harlem that never recorded under his name but which backed Oliver, Williams and Johnson on a series of sessions. Soloists include Madison on tenor sax, Buster Bailey on clarinet, Fred Skerritt on baritone sax, Henry "Moon" Jones on alto, Gene Rodgers on piano, Goldie Lucas on guitar and banjo, Richard Fullbright on bass and tuba, Bill Beason on drums, Jimmy Archey on trombone, Ward Pinkett and Bill Dillard on trumpets. Great transition between "Hot Dance" and the Swing Era!