Teddy Wilson
Teddy Wilson at the Turkish Embassy, Washington, D.C., 1940 © William P. Gottlieb
Background information
Birth name	Theodore Shaw Wilson
Born	(1912-11-24)November 24, 1912 Austin, Texas
Died	July 31, 1986(1986-07-31) (aged 73) Hillsdale, New Jersey
Genres	Jazz
Occupations	Pianist
Instruments	Piano
Associated acts	Louis Armstrong Earl Hines Billie Holiday Lester Young Lena Horne Benny Goodman

Theodore Shaw "Teddy" Wilson (November 24, 1912 – July 31, 1986) was an American jazz pianist. Described by critic Scott Yannow^[1] as "the definitive swing pianist", Wilson's sophisticated and elegant style was featured on the records of many of the biggest names in jazz including Louis Armstrong, Lena Horne, Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday, and Ella Fitzgerald. With Goodman, he was perhaps the first black musician to play in a racially integrated group. In addition to his extensive work as a sideman, Wilson also led his own groups and recording sessions from the late 1920s to the '80s.

Biography[link]

Wilson was born in Austin, Texas, on November 24, 1912. He studied piano and violin at Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama. After working in the Lawrence "Speed" Webb band, with Louis Armstrong, and also understudying Earl Hines in Hines's Grand Terrace Cafe Orchestra, Wilson joined Benny Carter's Chocolate Dandies in 1933. In 1935, he joined the Benny Goodman Trio (which consisted of Goodman, Wilson and drummer Gene Krupa, later expanded to the Benny Goodman Quartet with the addition of Lionel Hampton). The trio performed during the big band's intermissions. By joining the trio, Wilson became the first black musician to perform in public with a previously all-white jazz group.

Noted jazz producer and writer John Hammond was instrumental in getting Wilson a contract with Brunswick, starting in 1935, to record hot swing arrangements of the popular songs of the day, with the growing jukebox trade in mind. He recorded fifty hit records with various singers such as Lena Horne, Helen Ward and Billie Holiday, including many of Holiday's greatest successes. During these years, he also took part in many highly regarded sessions with a wide range of important swing musicians such as Lester Young, Roy Eldridge, Charlie Shavers, Red Norvo, Buck Clayton, and Ben Webster.

Wilson formed his own short-lived big band in 1939, then led a sextet at Café Society from 1940 to 1944. He was dubbed the "Marxist Mozart" by Howard "Stretch" Johnson due to his support for left-wing causes (he performed in benefit concerts for The New Masses journal and for Russian War Relief and chaired the Artists' Committee to elect Benjamin J. Davis).^[2] In the 1950s, he taught at the Juilliard School. Wilson can be seen appearing as himself in the 1955 motion picture The Benny Goodman Story.

Wilson lived quietly in suburban Hillsdale, New Jersey, in the 1960s and 1970s.^[3] He performed as a soloist and with pick-up groups until the final years of his life.

Wilson died in Hillsdale, on July 31, 1986; he was 73. He is buried at Fairview Cemetery in New Britain, Connecticut.

Select discography[link]

Wilson at a Benny Goodman rehearsal, 1950

• 1949: Teddy Wilson Featuring Billie Holiday
• 1956: I Got Rhythm
• 1956: Pres and Teddy
• 1959: "Gypsy" in Jazz
• 1972: With Billie in Mind
• 1972: Moonglow (Black Lion)
• 1973: Runnin’ Wild (Recorded live at the Montreux Festival) (Black Lion)
• 1976: Live at Santa Tecla
• 1980: Teddy Wilson Trio Revisits the Goodman Years

As sideman:

• 1933-1942: Billie Holiday, The Quintessential Billie Holiday (Volumes 1-9)
• 1935-1939: Benny Goodman, The Complete RCA Victor Small Group Recordings
• 1938: Benny Goodman, The Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert

References[link]

External links[link]

• Allmusic

Benny Goodman
from the film Stage Door Canteen (1943)
Background information
Birth name	Benjamin David Goodman
Also known as	"King of Swing", "The Professor", "Patriarch of the Clarinet", "Swing's Senior Statesman"
Born	(1909-05-30)May 30, 1909
Origin	Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Died	June 13, 1986(1986-06-13) (aged 77)
Genres	Swing, big band
Occupations	Musician, bandleader, songwriter
Instruments	Clarinet
Years active	1926–1986

Benjamin David “Benny” Goodman^[1] (May 30, 1909 – June 13, 1986) was an American jazz and swing musician, clarinetist and bandleader; widely known as the "King of Swing".

In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman led one of the most popular musical groups in America. His January 16, 1938 concert at Carnegie Hall in New York City is described by critic Bruce Eder as "the single most important jazz or popular music concert in history: jazz's 'coming out' party to the world of 'respectable' music."^[2]

Goodman's bands launched the careers of many major names in jazz, and during an era of segregation, he also led one of the first well-known racially-integrated jazz groups. Goodman continued to perform to nearly the end of his life, including exploring his interest in classical music.

Childhood and early years[link]

Goodman was born in Chicago, the ninth of twelve children of poor Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire,^[1] who lived in the Maxwell Street neighborhood. His father was David Goodman, a tailor from Warsaw; his mother was Dora Grisinsky^[1] (from Kaunas, Lithuania). His parents met in Baltimore, Maryland, and moved to Chicago before Benny was born.^[3]

When Benny was 10, his father enrolled him and two of his older brothers in music lessons at the Kehelah Jacob Synagogue. The next year he joined the boys club band at Jane Addams' Hull House, where he received lessons from director James Sylvester. He also received two years of instruction from the classically trained clarinetist Franz Schoepp.^[4] His early influences were New Orleans jazz clarinetists working in Chicago, notably Johnny Dodds, Leon Roppolo, and Jimmy Noone.^[3] Goodman learned quickly, becoming a strong player at an early age: he was soon playing professionally in various bands.

Goodman attended Lewis Institute (now Illinois Institute of Technology) in 1924 as a high school sophomore, while also playing the clarinet in a dance hall band. (He was awarded an honorary LL.D. from IIT in 1968.) When Goodman was 16, he joined one of Chicago's top bands, the Ben Pollack Orchestra, with which he made his first recordings in 1926.^[3]

He made his first record on Vocalion under his own name two years later. Goodman recorded with the regular Pollack band and smaller groups drawn from the orchestra through 1929. The side sessions produced scores of sides recorded for the various dimestore record labels under an array of group names, including Mills' Musical Clowns, Goody's Good Timers, The Hotsy Totsy Gang, Jimmy Backen's Toe Ticklers, Dixie Daisies, and Kentucky Grasshoppers.

Goodman's father, David, was a working-class immigrant about whom Benny said (interview, Downbeat, February 8, 1956); "...Pop worked in the stockyards, shoveling lard in its unrefined state. He had those boots, and he'd come home at the end of the day exhausted, stinking to high heaven, and when he walked in it made me sick. I couldn't stand it. I couldn't stand the idea of Pop every day standing in that stuff, shoveling it around".

On December 9, 1926, David Goodman was killed in a traffic accident. Benny had recently joined the Pollack band and was urging his father to retire, since he and his brother (Harry) were now doing well as professional musicians. According to James Lincoln Collier, "Pop looked Benny in the eye and said, 'Benny, you take care of yourself, I'll take care of myself.'" Collier continues: "It was an unhappy choice. Not long afterwards, as he was stepping down from a streetcar—according to one story—he was struck by a car. He never regained consciousness and died in the hospital the next day. It was a bitter blow to the family, and it haunted Benny to the end that his father had not lived to see the success he, and some of the others, made of themselves."^[5] "Benny described his father's death as 'the saddest thing that ever happened in our family.'"^[6]

Career[link]

Goodman left for New York City and became a successful session musician during the late 1920s and early 1930s (mostly with Ben Pollack's band between 1926 and 1929). A notable March 21, 1928 Victor session found Goodman alongside Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, and Joe Venuti in the All-Star Orchestra, directed by Nat Shilkret.^[7][8][9] He played with the nationally known bands of Ben Selvin, Red Nichols, Isham Jones (although he is not on any of Jones's records), and Ted Lewis. He recorded sides for Brunswick under the name Bennie Goodman's Boys, a band that featured Glenn Miller. In 1928, Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller wrote the instrumental "Room 1411", which was released as a Brunswick 78.^[10] He also recorded musical soundtracks for movie shorts; fans believe that Benny Goodman's clarinet can be heard on the soundtrack of One A. M., a Charlie Chaplin comedy re-released to theaters in 1934.

During this period as a successful session musician, John Hammond arranged for a series of jazz sides recorded for and issued on Columbia starting in 1933 and continuing until his signing with Victor in 1935, during his success on radio. There were also a number of commercial studio sides recorded for Melotone Records between late 1930 and mid-1931 under Goodman's name. The all-star Columbia sides featured Jack Teagarden, Joe Sullivan, Dick McDonough, Arthur Schutt, Gene Krupa, Teddy Wilson, Coleman Hawkins (for 1 session), and vocalists Jack Teagarden and Mildred Bailey, and the first two recorded vocals by a young Billie Holiday.

In 1934 Goodman auditioned for NBC's Let's Dance, a well-regarded three-hour weekly radio program that featured various styles of dance music. His familiar theme song by that title was based on Invitation to the Dance by Carl Maria von Weber. Since he needed new arrangements every week for the show, his agent, John Hammond, suggested that he purchase "hot" (swing) arrangements from Fletcher Henderson, an African-American musician from Atlanta who had New York's most popular African-American band in the 1920s and early 1930s.^[3]

Goodman, a wise businessman, helped Henderson in 1929 when the stock market crashed. He purchased all of Henderson's song books, and hired Henderson's band members to teach his musicians how to play the music.^[11]

In early 1935, Goodman and his band were one of three bands (the others were Xavier Cugat and "Kel Murray" [r.n. Murray Kellner]) featured on Let's Dance where they played arrangements by Henderson along with hits such as "Get Happy" and "Jingle Bells" from composer and arranger Spud Murphy.^[12] Goodman's portion of the program from New York, at 12:30 a.m. Eastern Time, aired too late to attract a large East Coast audience. However, unknown to him, the time slot gave him an avid following on the West Coast (they heard him at 9:30 p.m. Pacific Time). He and his band remained on Let's Dance until May of that year when a strike by employees of the series' sponsor, Nabisco, forced the cancellation of the radio show. An engagement was booked at Manhattan's Roosevelt Grill (filling in for Guy Lombardo), but the crowd there expected 'sweet' music and Goodman's band was unsuccessful.^[13] The band set out on a tour of America in May 1935, but was still poorly received. By August 1935, Goodman found himself with a band that was nearly broke, disillusioned and ready to quit.

Catalyst for the Swing era[link]

An eager crowd of Goodman fans in Oakland

In July 1935, a record of the Goodman band playing the Henderson arrangements of "King Porter Stomp" backed with "Sometimes I'm Happy", Victor 78 25090, had been released to ecstatic reviews in both Down Beat and Melody Maker.^[14] In Pittsburgh at the Stanley Theater some of the kids danced in the aisles.^[15] This had made little impact on the band's tour until August 19 when they arrived in Oakland to play at McFadden's Ballroom.^[16] There, Goodman and his artists Gene Krupa, Bunny Berigan, and Helen Ward found a large crowd of young dancers, raving and cheering the hot music they had heard on the Let's Dance radio show.^[17] Herb Caen wrote that "from the first note, the place was in an uproar."^[18] One night later, at Pismo Beach, the show was another flop, and the band thought the overwhelming reception in Oakland had been a fluke.^[13]

The next night, August 21, 1935 at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles, Goodman and his band began a three-week engagement. On top of the Let's Dance airplay, Al Jarvis had been playing Goodman records on KFWB radio, and Los Angeles fans were primed to hear him in person.^[19] Goodman started the evening with stock arrangements, but after an indifferent response, began the second set with the arrangements by Fletcher Henderson and Spud Murphy. According to Willard Alexander, the band's booking agent, Krupa said "If we're gonna die, Benny, let's die playing our own thing."^[20] The crowd broke into cheers and applause. News reports spread word of the enthusiastic dancing and exciting new music that was happening. Over the course of the engagement, the "Jitterbug" began to appear as a new dance craze,^[21] and radio broadcasts carried the band's performances across the nation.^[13]

The Palomar engagement was such a marked success it is often exaggeratedly described as the beginning of the swing era.^[13] Donald Clarke wrote "It is clear in retrospect that the Swing Era had been waiting to happen, but it was Goodman and his band that touched it off."^[13]

In November 1935 Goodman accepted an invitation to play in Chicago at the Joseph Urban Room at the Congress Hotel. His stay there extended to six months and his popularity was cemented by nationwide radio broadcasts over NBC affiliate stations. While in Chicago, the band recorded If I Could Be With You, Stompin' At The Savoy, and Goody, Goody.^[13] Goodman also played three special concerts produced by jazz aficionado and Chicago socialite Helen Oakley. These "Rhythm Club" concerts at the Congress Hotel included sets in which Goodman and Krupa sat in with Fletcher Henderson's band, perhaps the first racially integrated big band appearance before a paying audience in the United States.^[13] Goodman and Krupa played in a trio with Teddy Wilson on piano. Both combinations were well-received, and Wilson stayed on.

In his 1935–1936 radio broadcasts from Chicago, Goodman was introduced as the "Rajah of Rhythm."^[20] Slingerland Drum Company had been calling Krupa the "King of Swing" as part of a sales campaign, but shortly after Goodman and crew left Chicago in May 1936 to spend the summer filming The Big Broadcast of 1937 in Hollywood, the title "King of Swing" was applied to Goodman by the media.^[13] Goodman left record company RCA for Columbia, following his agent and soon to be brother-in-law John Hammond.

At the end of June 1936, Goodman went to Hollywood, where, on June 30, 1936 his band began CBS's "Camel Caravan," its third, and, according to Connor and Hicks, its greatest of them all, sponsored radio show, co-starring Goodman and his old boss Nat Shilkret.^[7][8] By spring, 1936, bandleader Fletcher Henderson was writing arrangements for Goodman's band. He would disband his own group in 1939 and become a full-time arranger for Goodman. Other noteworthy arrangers in the Goodman band were Jimmy Mundy, 1935 to 1939 (overlapping with Henderson) and Eddie Sauter, the 1940s.

Carnegie Hall concert[link]

In late 1937, Goodman's publicist Wynn Nathanson attempted a publicity stunt by suggesting Goodman and his band should play Carnegie Hall in New York City. If this concert were to take place, then Benny Goodman would be the first jazz bandleader to perform at Carnegie Hall. "Benny Goodman was initially hesitant about the concert, fearing for the worst; however, when his film Hollywood Hotel opened to rave reviews and giant lines, he threw himself into the work. He gave up several dates and insisted on holding rehearsals inside Carnegie Hall to familiarize the band with the lively acoustics."^[23]

The concert was the evening of January 16, 1938. It sold out weeks before, with the capacity 2,760 seats going for the top price of US$2.75 a seat, for the time a very high price.^[23] The concert began with three contemporary numbers from the Goodman band—"Don't Be That Way," "Sometimes I'm Happy," and "One O'Clock Jump." They then played a history of jazz, starting with a Dixieland quartet performing "Sensation Rag." Once again, initial crowd reaction, though polite, was tepid. Then came a jam session on "Honeysuckle Rose" featuring members of the Count Basie and Duke Ellington bands as guests. (The surprise of the session: Goodman handing a solo to Basie's guitarist Freddie Green who was never a featured soloist but earned his reputation as the best rhythm guitarist in the genre—he responded with a striking round of chord improvisations.) As the concert went on, things livened up. The Goodman band and quartet took over the stage and performed the numbers that had already made them famous. Some later trio and quartet numbers were well-received, and a vocal on "Loch Lomond" by Martha Tilton provoked five curtain calls and cries for an encore. The encore forced Goodman to make his only audience announcement for the night, stating that they had no encore prepared but that Martha would return shortly with another number.^[24]

By the time the band got to the climactic piece "Sing, Sing, Sing", success was assured. This performance featured playing by tenor saxophonist Babe Russin, trumpeter Harry James, and Benny Goodman, backed by drummer Gene Krupa. When Goodman finished his solo, he unexpectedly gave a solo to pianist Jess Stacy. "At the Carnegie Hall concert, after the usual theatrics, Jess Stacy was allowed to solo and, given the venue, what followed was appropriate," wrote David Rickert. "Used to just playing rhythm on the tune, he was unprepared for a turn in the spotlight, but what came out of his fingers was a graceful, impressionistic marvel with classical flourishes, yet still managed to swing. It was the best thing he ever did, and it's ironic that such a layered, nuanced performance came at the end of such a chaotic, bombastic tune."^[25]

This concert has been regarded as one of the most significant in jazz history. After years of work by musicians from all over the country, jazz had finally been accepted by mainstream audiences. Recordings were made of this concert, but even by the technology of the day the equipment used was not of the finest quality. Acetate recordings of the concert were made, and aluminum studio masters were also cut.^[23]

Goodman took the newly discovered recording to his record company, Columbia, and a selection was issued on LP. These recordings have not been out of print since they were first issued. In early 1998, the aluminum masters were rediscovered and a new CD set of the concert was released based on these masters. The album released based on those masters went on to be one of the best selling live jazz albums of all time.^{[citation needed]}

Charlie Christian[link]

Pianist/arranger Mary Lou Williams^[27] was a good friend of both Columbia records producer John Hammond and Benny Goodman. She first suggested to John Hammond that he see Charlie Christian.^[28]

Charlie Christian was playing at the Ritz in Oklahoma City where [...] John Hammond heard him in 1939. Hammond recommended him to Benny Goodman, but the band leader wasn't interested. The idea of an electrified guitar didn't appeal, and Goodman didn't care for Christian's flashy style of dressing. Reportedly, Hammond personally installed Christian onstage during a break in a Goodman concert in Beverly Hills. Irritated to see Christian among the band, Goodman struck up "Rose Room", not expecting the guitarist to know the tune. What followed amazed everyone who heard the 45-minute performance.^[29]

Charlie was a hit on the electric guitar and remained in the Benny Goodman Sextet for two years (1939–1941). He wrote many of the group's head arrangements (some of which Goodman took credit for) and was an inspiration to all. The sextet made him famous and provided him with a steady income while Charlie worked on legitimizing, popularizing, revolutionizing, and standardizing the electric guitar as a jazz instrument.^[30]

Charlie Christian's recordings and rehearsal dubs made with Benny Goodman in the early forties are widely known and were released by Columbia.

Beyond swing[link]

Goodman continued his meteoric rise throughout the late 1930s with his big band, his trio and quartet, and a sextet. By the mid-1940s, however, big bands lost a lot of their popularity. In 1941, ASCAP had a licensing war with music publishers. In 1942 to 1944 and 1948, the musician's union went on strike against the major record labels in the United States, and singers took the spot in popularity that the big bands once enjoyed. During this strike, the United States War Department approached the union and requested the production of the V-Disc, a set of records containing new and fresh music for soldiers to listen to.^[31] Also, by the late 1940s, swing was no longer the dominant mode of jazz musicians.^[32]

Bebop, Cool Jazz[link]

By the 1940s, jazz musicians were borrowing advanced ideas from classical music. The recordings Goodman made in bop style for Capitol Records were highly praised by jazz critics. When Goodman was starting a bebop band, he hired Buddy Greco, Zoot Sims, Wardell Gray and a few other modern players.^[33]

Benny Goodman (third from left) in 1952 with some of his former musicians, seated around piano left to right: Vernon Brown, George Auld, Gene Krupa, Clint Neagley, Ziggy Elman, Israel Crosby and Teddy Wilson (at piano)

Goodman enjoyed the bebop and cool jazz that was beginning to arrive in the 1940s. When Goodman heard Thelonious Monk, a celebrated pianist and accompanist to bop players Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Kenny Clarke, he remarked, "I like it, I like that very much. I like the piece and I like the way he played it. [...] I think he's got a sense of humor and he's got some good things there."^[33]

By 1953, Goodman completely changed his mind about bebop. "Maybe bop has done more to set music back for years than anything [...] Basically it's all wrong. It's not even knowing the scales. [...] Bop was mostly publicity and people figuring angles."^[35]

Forays into classical repertoire[link]

Goodman's first classical recording dates from April 25, 1938 when he recorded Mozart's Clarinet Quintet in A major, K. 581, with the Budapest Quartet. After his bop period, Goodman furthered his interest in classical music written for the clarinet, and frequently met with top classical clarinetists of the day. In 1946, he met Ingolf Dahl, an emigre classical composer on the faculty of the University of Southern California, who was then musical director of the Victor Borge show. They played chamber music together (Brahms, Milhaud, Hindemith, Debussy) and in 1948 Goodman played in the world premiere performance of Dahl's Concerto a Tre.^[36]

In 1949, when he was 40, Goodman decided to study with Reginald Kell, one of the world's leading classical clarinetists. To do so, he had to change his entire technique: instead of holding the mouthpiece between his front teeth and lower lip, as he had done since he first took a clarinet in hand 30 years earlier, Goodman learned to adjust his embouchure to the use of both lips and even to use new fingering techniques. He had his old finger calluses removed and started to learn how to play his clarinet again—almost from scratch.^[37]

Goodman commissioned and premiered works by leading composers for clarinet and symphony orchestra that are now part of the standard repertoire, namely Contrasts by Béla Bartók, Clarinet Concerto No. 2, Op. 115 by Malcolm Arnold, Derivations for Clarinet and Band by Morton Gould, and Aaron Copland's Clarinet Concerto. While Leonard Bernstein's Prelude, Fugue, and Riffs was commissioned for Woody Herman's big band, it was premiered by Goodman. Woody Herman was the dedicatee (1945) and first performer (1946) of Igor Stravinsky's Ebony Concerto, but many years later Stravinsky made another recording, this time with Benny Goodman as the soloist.^[38]

He made a further recording of Mozart's Clarinet Quintet, in July 1956 with the Boston Symphony String Quartet, at the Berkshire Festival; on the same occasion he also recorded Mozart's Clarinet Concerto in A major, K. 622, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Charles Munch. He also recorded the clarinet concertos of Weber and Carl Nielsen.^[3]

Other recordings of classical repertoire by Goodman are:^[39]

• Premiere Rhapsodie for Clarinet by Claude Debussy
• Clarinet Sonata No. 2 in E flat by Johannes Brahms
• Rondo from Grand Duo Concertant in E flat by Weber, and
• An arrangement by Simeon Bellison of Beethoven's Variations on a theme from Mozart's "Don Giovanni".

Touring with Armstrong[link]

After forays outside of swing, Goodman started a new band in 1953. According to Donald Clarke, this was not a happy time for Goodman.

Goodman with his band and singer, Peggy Lee, in the film Stage Door Canteen (1943)

Movies[link]

Benny Goodman's band appeared as a specialty act in major musical features, including The Big Broadcast of 1937, Hollywood Hotel (1938), Syncopation (1942), The Powers Girl (1942), Stage Door Canteen (1943), The Gang's All Here (1943), Sweet and Lowdown (1944) and A Song Is Born (1948). Goodman's only starring feature was Sweet and Lowdown (1944).

Goodman's success story was told in the 1955 motion picture The Benny Goodman Story^[41] with Steve Allen and Donna Reed. A Universal-International production, it was a follow up to 1954's successful The Glenn Miller Story. The screenplay was heavily fictionalized, but the music was the real draw. Many of Goodman's professional colleagues appear in the film, including Ben Pollack, Gene Krupa, Lionel Hampton and Harry James.

Personality and influence[link]

Goodman was regarded by some as a demanding taskmaster, by others an arrogant and eccentric martinet. Many musicians spoke of "The Ray",^[42] Goodman's trademark glare that he bestowed on a musician who failed to perform to his demanding standards. Guitarist Allan Reuss incurred the maestro's displeasure on one occasion, and Goodman relegated him to the rear of the bandstand, where his contribution would be totally drowned out by the other musicians. Vocalists Anita O'Day and Helen Forrest spoke bitterly of their experiences singing with Goodman.^[43] "The twenty or so months I spent with Benny felt like twenty years," said Forrest. "When I look back, they seem like a life sentence." At the same time, there are reports that he privately funded several college educations and was sometimes very generous, though always secretly. When a friend once asked him why, he reportedly said, "Well, if they knew about it, everyone would come to me with their hand out."^[44]

Goodman is also responsible for a significant step in racial integration in America. In the early 1930s, black and white jazz musicians could not play together in most clubs or concerts. In the Southern states, racial segregation was enforced by the Jim Crow laws. Benny Goodman broke with tradition by hiring Teddy Wilson to play with him and drummer Gene Krupa in the Benny Goodman Trio. In 1936, he added Lionel Hampton on vibes to form the Benny Goodman Quartet; in 1939 he added pioneering jazz guitarist Charlie Christian to his band and small ensembles, who played with him until his death from tuberculosis less than three years later. This integration in music happened ten years before Jackie Robinson became the first black American to enter Major League Baseball. "[Goodman's] popularity was such that he could remain financially viable without touring the South, where he would have been subject to arrest for violating Jim Crow laws."^[46] According to Jazz by Ken Burns, when someone asked him why he "played with that nigger" (referring to Teddy Wilson), Goodman replied, "I'll knock you out if you use that word around me again".

John Hammond and Alice Goodman[link]

One of Benny Goodman's closest friends off and on, from the 1930s onward was celebrated Columbia records producer John H. Hammond, who influenced Goodman's move from RCA to the newly created Columbia records in 1939.^[3]

Benny Goodman dated John H. Hammond's sister Alice Frances Hammond (1913–1978) for three months. She had previously been married to British politician George Duckworth, from whom she obtained a divorce. She and Goodman married on March 14, 1942. They had two daughters, Benjie and Rachel.^[3]

Both daughters studied music, though neither became the musical prodigy Goodman was.

Hammond had encouraged Goodman to integrate his band, persuading him to employ pianist Teddy Wilson. But Hammond's tendency to interfere in the musical affairs of Goodman's and other bands led to Goodman pulling away from him. In 1953 they had another falling-out during Goodman's ill-fated tour with Louis Armstrong, which was produced by John Hammond.^[3]

Goodman appeared on a 1975 PBS salute to Hammond but remained at a distance. In the 1980s, following the death of Alice Goodman, John Hammond and Benny Goodman, both by then elderly, reconciled. On June 25, 1985, Goodman appeared at Avery Fisher Hall in New York City for "A Tribute to John Hammond".^[47]

Later years[link]

Benny Goodman in concert in Nuremberg, Germany (1971)

After winning numerous polls over the years as best jazz clarinetist, Goodman was inducted into the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame in 1957.

Goodman continued to play on records and in small groups. One exception to this pattern was a collaboration with George Benson in the 1970s. The two met when they taped a PBS salute to John Hammond and re-created some of the famous Goodman-Charlie Christian duets.^[3]

Benson later appeared on several tracks of a Goodman album released as "Seven Come Eleven." In general Goodman continued to play in the swing style he was most known for. He did, however, practice and perform classical clarinet pieces and commissioned compositions for clarinet. Periodically he would organize a new band and play a jazz festival or go on an international tour.

Despite increasing health problems, he continued to play until his death from a heart attack in New York City in 1986 at the age of 77, in his home at Manhattan House, 200 East 66th Street. A longtime resident of Pound Ridge, New York, Benny Goodman is interred in the Long Ridge Cemetery, Stamford, Connecticut. The same year, Goodman was honored with the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.^[48] Benny Goodman's musical papers were donated to Yale University after his death.^[4]

He is a member of the National Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame in the radio division.^[49]

His music was featured in the 2010 documentary Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story, narrated by Academy Award winner Dustin Hoffman.^[50][51][52]

Discography[link]

(This discography combines LP and CD reissues of Goodman recordings under the dates of the original 78 rpm recordings through about 1950)

Noted sidemen[link]

• Noni Bernardi (1911–2006), big-band musician and member of the Los Angeles, California, City Council, 1961–93

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Firestone, Ross (1993). Swing, Swing, Swing: The Life & Times of Benny Goodman. New York: Norton. ISBN 0-393-03371-6. 

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Benny Goodman

Music portal

• Benny Goodman official site
• Benny Goodman web biography with audio
• Benny Goodman scores, Music Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
• Benny Goodman papers (the bulk of the musician's estate) in Irving S. Gilmore Music Library of Yale University
• Benny Goodman Audio Collection, Institute of Jazz Studies, Dana Library, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ.
• Benny Goodman biography
• the Benny Goodman Sextet performing live in 1950 as regulars on the DuMont network TV series Star Time

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2009)

Lester Young
Lester Young at the Famous Door, New York, N.Y., ca. Sept. 1946. Photo by William P. Gottlieb.
Background information
Birth name	Lester Willis Young
Also known as	"Pres" or "Prez"
Born	(1909-08-27)August 27, 1909 Woodville, Mississippi, U.S.
Origin	Kansas City, Missouri, U.S.
Died	March 15, 1959(1959-03-15) (aged 49) New York City, New York, U.S.
Genres	Jazz
Occupations	Saxophonist, clarinetist
Instruments	Tenor saxophone, clarinet
Years active	1933–1959
Labels	Verve

Lester Willis Young (August 27, 1909 – March 15, 1959),^[1] nicknamed "Pres" or "Prez", was an American jazz tenor saxophonist and clarinetist. He also played trumpet, violin, and drums.

Coming to prominence while a member of Count Basie's orchestra, Young was one of the most influential players on his instrument, playing with a cool tone and using sophisticated harmonies. He invented or popularized much of the hipster ethos which came to be associated with the music.

Early life and career[link]

Lester Young was born in Woodville, Mississippi and grew up in a musical family. Young's father, Willis Handy Young, was a respected teacher, his brother Lee Young was a drummer, and several other relatives played music professionally. His family moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, when Lester was an infant and later to Minneapolis, Minnesota. Although at a very young age Young did not initially know his father, he learned that his father was a musician. Later Willis taught his son to play the trumpet, violin, and drums in addition to the saxophone.

Lester Young played in his family's band in both the vaudeville and carnival circuits. He left the family band in 1927 at the age of 18 because he refused to tour in the Southern United States, where Jim Crow laws were in effect and racial segregation was required in public facilities.^[2]

With the Count Basie Orchestra[link]

In 1933 Young settled in Kansas City, where after playing briefly in several bands, he rose to prominence with Count Basie. His playing in the Basie band was characterized by a relaxed style which contrasted sharply with the aggressive approach of Coleman Hawkins, the dominant tenor sax player of the day.

Young left the Basie band to replace Hawkins in Fletcher Henderson's orchestra.^[3] He soon left Henderson to play in the Andy Kirk band (for six months) before returning to Basie. While with Basie, Young made small-group recordings for Milt Gabler's Commodore Records, The Kansas City Sessions. Although they were recorded in New York (in 1938, with a reunion in 1944), they are named after the group, the Kansas City Seven, and comprised Buck Clayton, Dicky Wells, Basie, Young, Freddie Green, Rodney Richardson, and Jo Jones. Young played clarinet as well as tenor in these sessions. He was a master of the clarinet, and there too his style was entirely his own. As well as the Kansas City Sessions, his clarinet work from 1938-39 is documented on recordings with Basie, Billie Holiday, Basie small groups, and the organist Glenn Hardman.

After Young's clarinet was stolen in 1939, he abandoned the instrument until about 1957. That year Norman Granz gave him one and urged him to play it (with far different results at that stage in Young's life--see below).

Leaving Basie[link]

Young left the Basie band in late 1940. He is rumored to have refused to play with the band on Friday, December 13 of that year for superstitious reasons, spurring his dismissal.^[3] Lester left the band around that time and subsequently led a number of small groups that often included his brother, noted drummer Lee Young, for the next couple of years; live and broadcast recordings from this period exist.

During this period Young accompanied the singer Billie Holiday in a couple of studio sessions in 1940 and 1941 and also made a small set of recordings with Nat "King" Cole (their first of several collaborations) in June 1942. His studio recordings are relatively sparse during the 1942 to 1943 period, largely due to the American Federation of Musicians' recording ban. It was Holiday who gave Young the nickname "Pres", short for President.^[4]

In December 1943 Young returned to the Basie fold for a 10-month stint, cut short by his being drafted into the army during World War II (see below). Recordings made during this and subsequent periods suggest Young was beginning to make much greater use of a plastic reed, which tended to give his playing a somewhat heavier, breathier tone (although still quite smooth compared to that of many other players). While he never abandoned the wooden reed, he used the plastic reed a significant share of the time from 1943 until the end of his life. Another cause for the thickening of his tone around this time was a change in saxophone mouthpiece from a metal Otto Link to an ebonite Brilhart. In August 1944 Young appeared alongside drummer Jo Jones, trumpeter Harry "Sweets" Edison, and fellow tenor saxophonist Illinois Jacquet in Gjon Mili's short film Jammin' the Blues.

Army service[link]

In September 1944 Young and Jo Jones were in Los Angeles with the Basie Band when they were inducted into the U.S. Army. Unlike many white musicians, who were placed in band outfits such as the ones led by Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw, Young was assigned to the regular army where he was not allowed to play his saxophone.^{[citation needed]} Based in Ft. McClellan, Alabama, Young was found with marijuana and alcohol among his possessions. He was soon court-martialed. Young did not fight the charges and was convicted. He served one year in a detention barracks^{[5][dead link]} and was dishonorably discharged in late 1945. His experience inspired his composition "D.B. Blues" (with D.B. standing for detention barracks).

Some jazz historians have argued that Young's playing power declined in the years following his army experience, though critics such as Scott Yanow disagree with this entirely. Recordings show that his playing began to change before he was drafted. Some argue that Young's playing had an increasingly emotional slant to it, and the post-war period featured some of his greatest renditions of ballads.^{[citation needed]}

Post-war recordings[link]

Young's career after World War II was far more prolific and lucrative than in the pre-war years in terms of recordings made, live performances, and annual income. Young joined Norman Granz's Jazz at the Philharmonic (JATP) troupe in 1946, touring regularly with them over the next 12 years. He made a significant number of studio recordings under Granz's supervision for his Verve Records label as well, including more trio recordings with Nat King Cole. Young also recorded extensively in the late 1940s for Aladdin Records (1946-7, where he had made the Cole recordings in 1942) and for Savoy (1944, '49 and '50), some sessions of which included Basie on piano.

While the quality and consistency of his playing ebbed gradually in the latter half of the 1940s and into the early 1950s, he also gave some brilliant performances during this stretch. Especially noteworthy are his performances with JATP in 1946, 1949, and 1950.^{[citation needed]} With Young at the 1949 JATP concert at Carnegie Hall were Charlie Parker and Roy Eldridge, and Young's solo on "Lester Leaps In" at that concert is a particular standout among his performances in the latter half of his career.

Struggle and revival[link]

From around 1951, Young's level of playing began to decline more precipitously, as he began to drink more and more heavily. His playing showed reliance on a small number of clichéd phrases and reduced creativity and originality, despite his claims that he did not want to be a "repeater pencil" (Young coined this phrase to describe the act of repeating one's own past ideas). A comparison of his studio recordings from 1952, such as the session with pianist Oscar Peterson, and those from 1953–1954 (all available on the Verve label) also demonstrates a declining command of his instrument and sense of timing, possibly due to both mental and physical factors.^{[citation needed]} Young's playing and health went into a crisis, culminating in a November 1955 hospital admission following a nervous breakdown.

He emerged from this treatment improved. In January 1956 he recorded two Granz-produced sessions featuring pianist Teddy Wilson (who had led the Billie Holiday recordings with Young in the 1930s), trumpet player Roy Eldridge, trombonist Vic Dickenson, bassist Gene Ramey, and drummer Jo Jones - available on the Jazz Giants '56 and Prez and Teddy albums. 1956 was a relatively good year for Lester Young, including a tour of Europe with Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz Quartet and a successful stint at Olivia's Patio Lounge in Washington, DC.

Throughout the 1940s and 50s, Young had sat in on Count Basie Orchestra gigs from time to time. The best-known of these is their July 1957 appearance at the Newport Jazz Festival, the line-up including many of Lester's old buddies: Jo Jones, Roy Eldridge, Illinois Jacquet and Jimmy Rushing. His playing was in better shape, and he produced some of the old, smooth toned flow of the 1930s. Among other tunes he played a moving "Polkadots and Moonbeams", which was a favorite of his at that time.^{[citation needed]}

The final years[link]

On December 8, 1957, Young appeared with Billie Holiday, Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Roy Eldridge, and Gerry Mulligan in the CBS television special The Sound of Jazz, performing Holiday's tunes "Lady Sings The Blues" and "Fine and Mellow". It was a reunion with Holiday, with whom he'd fallen out of contact for years. She was also in decline at the end of her career, and they both gave moving performances. Young's solo was brilliant, considered by many jazz musicians an unparalleled marvel of economy, phrasing and extraordinarily moving emotion.^{[citation needed]} But, Young seemed gravely ill, and was the only horn player who was seated (except during his solo) during the performance. By this time his alcoholism had cumulative effect. He was eating significantly less, drinking more and more, and suffering from liver disease and malnutrition. Young's sharply diminished physical strength in the final two years of his life yielded some recordings with a frail tone, shortened phrases, and, on rare occasions, a difficulty in getting any sound to come out of his horn at all.^{[citation needed]}

Lester Young made his final studio recordings and live performances in Paris in March 1959 with drummer Kenny Clarke at the tail end of an abbreviated European tour during which he ate next to nothing and virtually drank himself to death. He died in the early morning hours of March 15, 1959, only hours after arriving back in New York, at the age of 49. He was buried at the Cemetery of the Evergreens in Brooklyn.^[6] According to jazz critic Leonard Feather, who rode with Holiday in a taxi to Young's funeral, she said after the services, "I'll be the next one to go."^[7] Holiday died four months later at age 44.

Posthumous dedications and influence[link]

Charles Mingus dedicated an elegy, "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat", for Young only a few months after his death.^[8] Wayne Shorter, then of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, composed a tribute, called "Lester Left Town".

Young's playing style influenced many other tenor saxophonists. Perhaps the most famous and successful of these were Stan Getz and Dexter Gordon, but he also influenced many in the cool movement such as Zoot Sims, Al Cohn, and Gerry Mulligan. Paul Quinichette modeled his style so closely on Young's that he was sometimes referred to as the 'Vice Prez' (sic).^[9] Sonny Stitt began to incorporate elements from Lester Young's approach when he made the transition to tenor saxophone. Lester Young also had a direct influence on young Charlie Parker ("Bird"), and thus the entire be-bop movement. Indeed, recordings of Parker on tenor sax are similar in style to that of Young. Lesser known saxophonists, such as Warne Marsh, were strongly influenced by Young.^{[citation needed]}

Don Byron recorded the album Ivey-Divey in gratitude of what he learned from studying Lester Young's work, modeled after a 1946 trio date with Buddy Rich and Nat King Cole. "Ivey-Divey" was one of Lester Young's common eccentric phrases.

Young is a major character in English writer Geoff Dyer's 1991 fictional book about jazz, But Beautiful. "The Resurrection of Lady Lester" by OyamO (Charles F. Gordon) is a play and published book depicting Young's life; subtitled "A Poetic Mood Song Based on the Legend of Lester Young".

In the 1986 film Round Midnight, the fictional main character Dale Turner, played by Dexter Gordon, was partly based on Young - incorporating flashback references to his army experiences, and loosely depicting his time in Paris and his return to New York just before his death.

Acid Jazz/boogaloo band the Greyboy Allstars song "Tenor Man" is a tribute to Young. On their 1999 album "Live", saxophonist Karl Denson introduces the song by saying, "now some folks may have told you that Lester Young is out of style, but we're here to tell you that the Prez is happenin' right now." Those were literally the lyrics Rahsaan Roland Kirk wrote and sang to the melody of the Charles Mingus elegy, "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat".

Peter Straub's short story collection Magic Terror (2000) contains a story called "Pork Pie Hat", a fictional account of the life of Lester Young. Straub was inspired by Young's appearance on the 1957 CBS-TV show, The Sound of Jazz, which he watched repeatedly, wondering how such a genius could have ended up such a human wreck.[1]

He is said to have popularized the term cool as slang for something fashionable.^[10] Another slang term he coined was the term "bread" for money. He would ask "How does the bread smell?" when asking how much a gig was going to pay.^[11]

Discography[link]

This section requires expansion.

As member of Basie band[link]

• The Complete Decca Recordings (1937–39) Decca Records
• America's #1 Band: The Columbia Years (1936-1940 and non-Young sessions to 1942) Columbia Records
• Super Chief (1936-1940 and non-Young sessions to 1964) Columbia Records

Solo career[link]

• The Kansas City Sessions (1938 and 1944) Commodore Records
• The Master's Touch (1944) - Savoy Records
• The Complete Aladdin Recordings (1942-7) - the 1942 Nat King Cole session and more from the post-war period
• Lester Young Trio (1946) - with Cole again, and Buddy Rich Verve Records
• The Complete Savoy Recordings (1944–50)
• Lester Young Trio (1946) - Verve Records
• One Night Stand - The Town Hall Concert 1947 - live recording
• Lester Young with the Oscar Peterson Trio (1952) Verve Records
• Live at Birdland- Lester Young (1953)
• Pres and Teddy (1956) Verve Records
• The Jazz Giants '56 (1956) - Verve Records
• The Complete Lester Young Studio Sessions on Verve - 8-CD boxed set (includes the only two Young interviews in existence)
• Lester Young in Washington, D.C., 1956 (5 volumes), with house-band the Bill Potts Trio.
• Count Basie - Count Basie at Newport (1957)

References[link]

• Luc Delannoy. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press. ISBN 1-55728-264-1. 

External links[link]

	Biography portal
	Music portal

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Lester Young

• The Legendary Lester Young: an article in the TLS by John Mole, July 18, 2007.
• A detailed chronology of recordings featuring Lester Young
• Who 2
• Lester Young multimedia directory
• Why Lester Young Matters by Ted Gioia (jazz.com)
• Lester Young Centennial by Ethan Iverson
• Lester Young 100th Year Anniversary Site

Jo Jones (October 7, 1911 – September 3, 1985) was an American jazz drummer.^[1]

Known as Papa Jo Jones in his later years, he was sometimes confused with another influential jazz drummer, Philly Joe Jones. The two died only a few days apart.

Biography[link]

Born as "Jonathan David Samuel Jones" in Chicago, Illinois, he moved to Alabama where he learned to play several instruments, including saxophone, piano, and drums. He worked as a drummer and tap-dancer at carnival shows until joining Walter Page's band, the Blue Devils in Oklahoma City in the late 1920s. He recorded with trumpeter Lloyd Hunter's Serenaders in 1931, and later joined pianist Count Basie's band in 1934. Jones, Basie, guitarist Freddie Green and bassist Walter Page were sometimes billed as an 'all-American Rhythm section'. Jones took a brief break for two years when he was in the military, but he remained with Basie until 1948. He participated in the Jazz at the Philharmonic concert series.

He was one of the first drummers to promote the use of brushes on drums and shifting the role of timekeeping from the bass drum to the hi-hat cymbal. Jones had a major influence on later drummers such as Buddy Rich, Kenny Clarke, Roy Haynes, Max Roach, and Louie Bellson. He also starred in several films, most notably the musical short Jammin' the Blues (1944).

Jones performed regularly in later years at the West End jazz club at 116th and Broadway in New York City. These performances were generally very well attended by other drummers such as Max Roach and Roy Haynes. In addition to his artistry on the drums, Jones was known for his irascible, combative temperament.

In contrast to drummer Gene Krupa's loud, insistent pounding of the bass drum on each beat, Jones often omitted bass drum playing altogether. Jones also continued a ride rhythm on hi-hat while it was continuously opening and closing instead of the common practice of striking it while it was closed. Jones's style influenced the modern jazz drummer's tendency to play timekeeping rhythms on a suspended cymbal that is now known as the ride cymbal.

In 1979, Jones was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame for his contribution to the Birmingham, Alabama musical heritage. Jones was the 1985 recipient of an American Jazz Masters fellowship awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Discography[link]

As leader[link]

• 1955: The Jo Jones Special
• 1957: At Newport Live
• 1959: Jo Jones Plus Two
• 1973: The Drums
• 1976: The Main Man
• 1985: Our Man, Papa Jo!

As sideman[link]

With Coleman Hawkins

• The Hawk Flies High (1957)

With Oscar Peterson

• The Oscar Peterson Trio with Sonny Stitt, Roy Eldridge and Jo Jones at Newport (1957)

With Ella Fitzgerald

• Ella at the Opera House (1958)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Drummerworld - biography with images and videos
• All About Jazz
• Allmusic biography
• Official website of the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame
• Rifftide: The Life and Opinions of Papa Jo Jones (new book review, 2011)

Earl Hines
Earl Hines performs for Private Charles Carpenter, songwriter and manager of the Hines orchestra, at Camp Lee during World War II
Background information
Born	(1903-12-28)December 28, 1903 Duquesne, Pennsylvania
Died	April 23, 1983(1983-04-23) (aged 79) Oakland, California
Genres	Swing, Big band, solo piano
Occupations	Musician
Instruments	Piano

Earl Kenneth Hines, universally known as Earl "Fatha"^[1] Hines, (December 28, 1903^[2] – April 22, 1983) was an American jazz pianist. Hines was one of the most influential figures in the development of modern jazz piano and, according to one major source, is "one of a small number of pianists whose playing shaped the history of jazz".^[3]

Biography[link]

Early life[link]

Earl Hines was born in Duquesne, Pennsylvania 12 miles from Pittsburgh city center. His father^[4] played cornet and was leader of Pittsburgh's Eureka Brass Band,^[5] his stepmother a church organist.^[6] Hines intended to follow his father on cornet but "blowing" hurt him behind the ears - while the piano didn't.^[7][8][9] The young Hines took classical piano lessons^[10] - at eleven he was playing organ in his local Baptist church^[11] - but he also had a "good ear and a good memory"^[12] and could re-play songs and numbers he heard in theaters and park 'concerts':^[13][14] "I'd be playing songs from these shows months before the song copies came out. That astonished a lot of people and they'd ask where I heard these numbers and I'd tell them at the theatre where my parents had taken me." Later Hines was to say that he was playing piano around Pittsburgh "before the word 'jazz' was even invented".^[15][16]

Early career[link]

At the age of 17, and with his father's approval, Hines moved away from home to take a job playing piano with Lois Deppe & his 'Symphonian Serenaders' in the "Liederhaus", a Pittsburgh nightclub.^[17] He got 2 meals a day^[18] and $15 a week.^[19][20] Deppe was a well-known baritone who sang both classical and popular numbers. Deppe used the young Hines as his accompanist for both and took Hines on his concert-trips to New York. Hines' first recordings were accompanying Deppe — four sides recorded with Gennett Records in 1923.^[21] Only two of these were issued, and only one, a Hines composition, "Congaine", "a keen snappy foxtrot",^[22] featured any solo work by Hines. Hines entered the studio again with Deppe a month later to record spirituals and popular songs.^[23]

In 1925, after much family debate,^[24] Hines moved to Chicago, Illinois, then the world's "jazz" capital, home (at the time) to Jelly Roll Morton and King Oliver. He started in The Elite no 2 Club^[25] but soon joined Carroll Dickerson's band with whom he also toured on the Pantages Theatre Circuit to Los Angeles and back.^[26]

Then, in the poolroom at Chicago's Musicians' Union on State & 39th, Earl Hines met Louis Armstrong.^[27][16] Hines was 21, Armstrong 24. They played together at the Union piano.^[28] Armstrong was astounded by Hines's avant-garde "trumpet-style" piano-playing.

Armstrong and Hines became good friends,^[29] shared a car,^[30] and Armstrong joined Hines in Carroll Dickerson's band at the Sunset Cafe.^[31] In 1927, this became Louis Armstrong's band under the musical direction of Hines.^[32] Later that year, Armstrong revamped his Okeh Records recording-only band, Louis Armstrong's Hot Five, and replaced his wife Lil Hardin Armstrong on piano with Hines. Armstrong and Hines then recorded what are often regarded as some of the most important jazz records ever made, most famously their 1928 trumpet and piano duet "Weatherbird".^[33]

... with Earl Hines arriving on piano, Armstrong was already approaching the stature of a concerto soloist, a role he would play more or less throughout the next decade, which makes these final small-group sessions something like a reluctant farewell to jazz's first golden age. Since Hines is also magnificent on these discs (and their insouciant exuberance is a marvel on the duet showstopper "Weather Bird") the results seem like eavesdropping on great men speaking almost quietly among themselves. There is nothing in jazz finer or more moving than the playing on "West End Blues", "Tight Like This", "Beau Koo Jack" & "Muggles".^[34]

The Sunset Cafe closed in 1927.^[35] Hines, Armstrong and their drummer, Zutty Singleton, agreed they would be, “'The Unholy Three', stick together and not play for anyone unless the three of us were hired”^[36] but, trying to establish their own Warwick Hall Club^[37] as 'Louis Armstrong and his Stompers' [with Hines as musical director and the premises rented in Hines' name] they ran into difficulties. Hines went briefly to New York to return to find that in his absence Armstrong and Singleton had re-joined their now-rival Carroll Dickerson’s band at the new The Savoy Ballroom^[38] – a fact which left Hines “warm”.^[39] Hines joined clarinetist Jimmy Noone at The Apex, an after-hours speakeasy, playing from midnight – 6am 7 nights a week. Hines recorded with Noone,^[40] again with Armstrong^[41] and late in 1928^[42] recorded his first piano solos, 8 for QRS Records in New York then 7 for Okeh Records in Chicago, all except two his own compositions.^[43] He moved in with Kathryn Perry^[44] with whom he had recorded 'Sadie Green The Vamp of New Orleans' but Hines had also begun rehearsing his own big band. At 24 his big break was about to come.

Chicago years[link]

On 28 December 1928 (so on his 25th birthday and 6 weeks before The Saint Valentine's Day massacre) the always-immaculate^[45] Hines opened at Chicago's Grand Terrace Cafe leading his own big band, the pinnacle of jazz ambition at the time. "All America was dancing", Hines said^[46] and for the next 12 years and through the worst of the Great Depression and Prohibition Earl Hines was "The Orchestra" in The Grand Terrace. The Hines Orchestra [or 'Organization' as Hines preferred it - it had up to 28 musicians] did three shows a night in The Grand Terrace, four shows every Saturday and sometimes did Sundays. "Earl Hines and The Grand Terrace were to Chicago what Duke Ellington and The Cotton Club were to New York - but fierier."^[47]

The Grand Terrace was controlled by Al Capone - so Hines became Capone's "Mr Piano Man"^[48] with the Grand Terrace upright piano soon replaced by a white $3,000 Bechstein grand.^[49] Talking about those days Hines later said:

... Al [Capone] came in there one night and called the whole band and show together and said, “Now we want to let you know our position. We just want you people just to attend to your own business. We’ll give you all the Protection in the world but we want you to be like the 3 monkeys: you hear nothing and you see nothing and you say nothing”. And that’s what we did. I used to hear many of the things that they were going to do but I never did tell anyone. Sometimes the Police used to come in ... looking for a fall guy and say, “Earl what were they talking about?” ... but I said, “I don’t know - no, you’re not going to pin that on me”, because they had a habit of putting the pictures of different people that would bring information in the newspaper and the next day you would find them out there in the lake somewhere swimming around with some chains attached to their feet if you know what I mean .. ^[16]

From The Grand Terrace, Hines and his band broadcast on "open mikes" over many years, sometimes seven nights a week, coast-to-coast across America — Chicago being well placed to deal with the U.S. live-broadcasting time-zone problem.^[50] Earl Hines' became the most broadcast band in America.^[51][16] Among his listeners were a young Nat 'King' Cole ^[52] and Jay McShann in Kansas City who said his "...real education came from Earl Hines. When 'Fatha' went off the air, I went to bed”.^[53] But Hines' most notable 'student' was Art Tatum from Toledo, Ohio, 6 years younger than Hines and now often regarded as the greatest pianist jazz has so far produced.^[54]

Hines always liked to promote and, often surprisingly quietly, to accompany singers most notably, in the Grand Terrace days, Billy Eckstine:

... on tour, Hines and his star singer Billy Eckstine were treated like the rock stars of later years, being mobbed by the huge crowds that turned out to hear them.^[55]

Each summer, Hines toured his whole band for three months, including through the South. "When we traveled by train through the South, they would send a porter back to our car to let us know when the dining room was cleared, and then we would all go in together. We couldn't eat when we wanted to. We had to eat when they were ready for us."^[56][57]

George Dixon and Walter Fuller were leading trumpeters in the band. The Hines band also included noteworthy reed players: Omer Simeon, Jimmy Mundy. Mundy, with Hines from 1932 to 1936, also did arranging work for Hines before he left for Benny Goodman's orchestra. Darnell Howard played clarinet, alto saxophone and violin from 1931 to 1937. In 1937 Budd Johnson joined the band in clarinet and saxophone roles. Ray Nance performed on trumpet and violin, 1937 to 1939, before moving on to the Duke Ellington Orchestra.

Occasionally, Hines allowed other pianists to play as 'relief' piano player which better allowed Hines to conduct his whole 'Organization'. Jess Stacy^[58] was one, Nat "King" Cole^[59] and Teddy Wilson were others (though Cliff Smalls was his favorite^[60]).

The Birth of Bebop[link]

It was with Hines in The Grand Terrace that soon-to-be Bebop saxophone giant Charlie Parker got his first professional job, until he was fired for his "time-keeping" — by which Hines meant Parker's inability to show up on time despite Parker resorting to sleeping under The Grand Terrace stage in his attempts to do so.^[61]

However, the Grand Terrace closed suddenly in December 1940 with the manager, Ed Fox, 'not to be found'.^[62] Hines, always famously good to work for,^[63][64] took his band on the road.^[65]

Johnson (along with Billy Eckstine) has been credited with helping to bring modern players into the Hines band in the transition between swing and bebop. Modernists included Benny Harris, trumpet, on and off from 1941 to 1945, Cliff Smalls, trombone and second piano, 1942 to 1946 and Wardell Gray, tenor saxophone, 1943 to 1946. Johnson left the band by the end of 1941, to return occasionally in 1947.

Some of his band members were drafted to fight in World War II. Six members of the Hines' band were drafted in 1943 - Hines had to cancel part of his Southern tour and started to take on female musicians including four on violin and a female bassist, guitar player and harpist. ^[66] Yet, Hines toured his band coast to coast across America. He took time out from his band to front the Duke Ellington Orchestra in 1944 while Duke was ill.^[67])

It was during this time (and especially during the 1942–44 musicians' strike recording ban^[68]) that members of the Hines' band's late-night jam-sessions laid the seeds for the upcoming 'revolution' in jazz, Bebop. Duke Ellington was later to say that, "the seeds of bop were in Earl Hines's piano style"^[69] while Charlie Parker's biographer wrote:

... The Earl Hines Orchestra of 1942 had been infiltrated by the jazz revolutionaries. Each section had its cell of insurgents. The band’s sonority bristled with flatted fifths, off triplets and other material of the new sound scheme. Fellow bandleaders of a more conservative bent warned Hines that he had recruited much too well and was sitting on a powder keg.^[70]

Composer Gunther Schuller said:

... In 1943 I heard the great Earl Hines band which had Bird in it and all those other great musicians. They were playing all the flatted fifth chords and all the modern harmonies and substitutions and Dizzy Gillespie runs in the trumpet section work. Two years later I read that that was 'bop' and the beginning of modern jazz ... but the band never made recordings.^[71][72][73]

Dizzy Gillespie wrote of that band:

... We had a beautiful, beautiful band with Earl Hines. He’s a master and you learn a lot from him, self-discipline and organization. Earl Hines was the pianist in his band and I mean he played some piano. We used to make him play longer solos. We’d say, “Play another one, Gates”. And he’d go again. They’d say, “Lay out, lay out, lay out …” and we wouldn’t come in. Earl had to play again. He’d look up and keep playing and grinning. You couldn’t flush him … no matter what you did. We wouldn’t come in when we were supposed to and make him play another chorus. He’d be sweating, man, but he’s so cool, he's the epitome of perfection. Earl Hines is the master of composure. He is class personified. I don’t know a classier musician or a classier person in any field than Earl Hines”^[74]

In 1946 Hines received serious head injuries in a car crash near Houston which affected his eyesight^[75] but he continued to lead his big band for 2 more years.^[76] In 1947 he bought the El Grotto nightclub^[77] in Chicago - the showgirls were called The Grottoettes - but it soon foundered, Hines losing $30,000.^[78] In reality the big-band era was over - Hines had had his for 20 years.

Rediscovery[link]

From left: Jack Teagarden, Sandy DeSantis, Velma Middleton, Fraser MacPherson, Cozy Cole, Arvell Shaw, Earl Hines, Barney Bigard. At the Palomar Supper Club, Vancouver, B.C., March 17, 1951.

In early 1948, Hines joined up again with Armstrong in the "Louis Armstrong and his All-Stars" 'small-band' (rather, Hines now came to feel, as a sideman^[79]) and stayed, not entirely happily, through 1951. Next, back as leader again, Hines took his own small combos around the States^[80] and Europe but, at the start of the jazz-lean 1960s and old enough now to retire and take up bowling,^[81] Hines settled "home" in Oakland, California with his wife and two young daughters, Janear and Tosca,^[82] opened a tobacconist's and came close to giving up the profession.^[83]

Then, in 1964, thanks to Stanley Dance, Earl Hines' determined friend and unofficial manager, Hines was "suddenly rediscovered" following a series of 'recitals' at The Little Theatre in New York that Dance had cajoled him into. They were the first piano 'recitals' Hines - always thinking of himself as "just a band pianist"^[84] - had ever given. These 'recitals' caused a sensation. "What is there left to hear after you've heard Earl Hines?", asked the New York Times.^[85] Hines then won the 1966 "International Critics Poll" for Down Beat Magazine's "Hall of Fame". Down Beat also elected him the world's "No 1 Jazz Pianist" in 1966 (and were to do so again five further times). Jazz Journal awarded his LP's of the year first and second in their overall poll and first, second and third in their piano category.^[86] Jazz voted him "Jazzman of the Year", voted him their no. 1 and no. 2 in their piano recordings category and he was on Johnny Carson's and Mike Douglas' TV shows.

From then until he died twenty years later Hines recorded endlessly both solo and with jazz notables like Cat Anderson, Harold Ashby, Barney Bigard, Lawrence Brown, Dave Brubeck (they recorded duets in 1975), Jaki Byard (duets in 1972), Benny Carter, Buck Clayton, Cozy Cole, Wallace Davenport, Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, Vic Dickenson, Roy Eldridge, Duke Ellington (duets in 1966), Ella Fitzgerald, Panama Francis, Bud Freeman, Stan Getz,^[87] Dizzy Gillespie, Paul Gonsalves, Stephane Grappelli, Sonny Greer, Lionel Hampton, Coleman Hawkins, Johnny Hodges, Peanuts Hucko, Helen Humes, Budd Johnson, Jonah Jones, Max Kaminsky, Gene Krupa, Ellis Larkins, Marian McPartland (duets in 1970), Gerry Mulligan, Ray Nance, Oscar Peterson (duets in 1968), Russell Procope, Pee Wee Russell, Jimmy Rushing, Stuff Smith, Rex Stewart, Maxine Sullivan, Buddy Tate, Jack Teagarden, Clark Terry, Sarah Vaughan, Joe Venuti, Earle Warren, Ben Webster, Teddy Wilson (duets in 1965 & 1970), Jimmy Witherspoon, Jimmy Woode and Lester Young. Possibly more surprising were Alvin Batiste, Tony Bennett, Art Blakey, Teresa Brewer, Richard Davis, Elvin Jones, Etta Jones, The Inkspots, Peggy Lee, Helen Merrill, Charles Mingus, Vi Redd, Betty Roché, Caterina Valente, Dinah Washington—and "Ditty Wah Ditty" with Ry Cooder.
But his most acclaimed recordings of this period were his solo performances, "a whole orchestra by himself".^[88] Whitney Balliett wrote of his solo recordings and performances of this time:

... Hines will be sixty-seven this year and his style has become involuted, rococo, and subtle to the point of elusiveness. It unfolds in orchestral layers and it demands intense listening. Despite the sheer mass of notes he now uses, his playing is never fatty. Hines may go along like this in a medium tempo blues. He will play the first two choruses softly and out of tempo, unreeling placid chords that safely hold the kernel of the melody. By the third chorus, he will have slid into a steady but implied beat and raised his volume. Then, using steady tenths in his left hand, he will stamp out a whole chorus of right-hand chords in between beats. He will vault into the upper register in the next chorus and wind through irregularly placed notes, while his left hand plays descending, on-the-beat, chords that pass through a forest of harmonic changes. (There are so many push-me, pull-you contrasts going on in such a chorus that it is impossible to grasp it one time through.) In the next chorus—bang!—up goes the volume again and Hines breaks into a crazy-legged double-time-and-a-half run that may make several sweeps up and down the keyboard and that are punctuated by offbeat single notes in the left hand. Then he will throw in several fast descending two-fingered glissandos, go abruptly into an arrhythmic swirl of chords and short, broken, runs and, as abruptly as he began it all, ease into an interlude of relaxed chords and poling single notes. But these choruses, which may be followed by eight or ten more before Hines has finished what he has to say, are irresistible in other ways. Each is a complete creation in itself, and yet each is lashed tightly to the next. Hines' sudden changes in dynamics, tempo, and texture are dramatic but not melodramatic; the ham lurking in the middle distance never gets any closer. And Hines is a perfervid pianist; he gives the impression that he has shut himself up completely within his instrument, that he is issuing chords and runs and glisses not merely through its keyboard and hammers and strings but directly from its soul.^[89]

Solo tributes to Louis Armstrong, Hoagy Carmichael, Duke Ellington, George Gershwin and Cole Porter were all put on record in the 1970s, sometimes on the 1904 12-legged Steinway (unique and famously ornate) given to him in 1969 by Scott Newhall, managing editor of the San Francisco Chronicle. In 1974, so now in his seventies, Hines recorded sixteen LPs. "A spate of solo recording meant that, in his old age, Hines was being comprehensively documented at last, and he rose to the challenge with consistent inspirational force".^[90] Between his 1964 "come-back" and up to when he died, Hines recorded over 100 LPs all over the world.^[91] Within the industry, he became legendary for going into a studio and coming out an hour-and-a-half later with a famously-unplanned 'solo' LP behind him^[92] including discussion and coffee time - and ideally a brandy or two. Retakes were almost unheard of except when Hines wanted to try a tune again in some, often completely, "other way".^[93]

Pianist Lennie Tristano said of these recordings, "Earl Hines is the ONLY one of us capable of creating real jazz and real swing when playing all alone." To Horace Silver, "He has a completely unique style. No one can get that sound, no other pianist". Erroll Garner said, "When you talk about greatness, you talk about Art Tatum and Earl Hines". To Count Basie, Hines was "The greatest piano player in the world".^[94][95]

From 1964 onwards Hines often toured Europe, especially France. He toured South America in 1968 and then added Asia, Australia, Japan and, in 1966, the Soviet Union to his list of State Department-funded destinations. During his 6 week and 35 concert^[96] Soviet Union tour, the 10,000-seat Kiev Sports Palace was sold out. As a result, the Kremlin cancelled his Moscow and Leningrad concerts^[97] as being "too culturally dangerous".^[98]

Final years[link]

Arguably still playing as well as he ever had,^[99] Hines displayed individualistic quirks (including grunts a la' Glenn Gould) in these performances. He now sometimes sang as he played, especially his own "They Didn't Believe I Could Do It—Neither Did I".^[16] In 1975, Hines was the subject of an hour-long documentary film for British ATV television channel, out-of-hours at the Blues Alley nightclub in Washington, DC. The New York Herald Tribune described it as "The greatest jazz film ever made". In that film Hines said, '"The way I like to play is that ... I'm an explorer, if I might use that expression, I'm looking for something all the time ... almost like I'm trying to talk".^[16] He played solo in The White House (twice)^[100] and played solo for The Pope - and played (and sang) his last show in San Francisco a few days before he died in Oakland, quite likely somewhat older than he had always maintained. As he had wished, his Steinway had a very much "All Star" Christie's auction for the benefit of gifted low-income music students, still bearing its silver plaque: "presented by jazz lovers from all over the world. this piano is the only one of its kind in the world and expresses the great genius of a man who has never played a melancholy note in his lifetime on a planet that has often succumbed to despair".^[101][102]

On his tombstone^[103] is the inscription: "piano man".

Style[link]

From his time with Armstrong onwards, Hines's was a pioneer in developing the "trumpet-style" piano-playing, often using dazzlingly fast octaves so that on none-too-perfect upright pianos (and with no amplification) "they could hear me out front" - as indeed they could.^[104][105] Richard Cook's Jazz Encyclopedia says:

... [Hines'] most dramatic departure from what other pianists were then playing was his approach to the underlying pulse: he would charge against the metre of the piece being played, accent off-beats, introduce sudden stops and brief silences. In other hands this might sound clumsy or all over the place but Hines could keep his bearings with uncanny resilience.^[106]

Of his own style he commented, in 1973:

The way I like to play, is that I.. I'm an explorer.. I'm lookin for something all the time.. and oft times I get lost.. and most times people that are around me an awful lot know, when they see me smiling, they know that I'm lost and I'm trying to get back! But it makes it much more interesting because then, you do things that surprise yourself.. After you hear the recording - it makes you a little bit happy too, and you say "ooh, I didn't know I could do that!" - which you don't.^[16]

Selected discography[link]

[It would seem that Hines' first-ever recording was on 3 October 1923.]^[107] Records commercially available as new, as of March, 2012 are shown in bold.

The 1930s, classic jazz and the swing era:

• Louis Armstrong & Earl Hines: inc.'Weatherbird','Muggles','Tight Like This','West End Blues' : Columbia 1928: reissued many times inc. as The Smithsonian Collection MLP 2012
• Jimmie Noone & Earl Hines: "At the Apex Club": Decca 1928: reissued
• Earl Hines Solo: 14 of his own compositions: QRS & OKeh: 1928/9: reissued many times[see below]
• Earl Hines Collection: Piano Solos 1928-40: OKeh/Brunswick/Bluebird: Collectors Classics
• That's a Plenty, Quadromania series 1928-1947 Membran 4 CDs 2006, an easily available collection
• Deep Forest, ca. 1932-1933: HEP
• Swingin' Down, 1932-1934: HEP
• Harlem Lament, 1933-1934, 1937-1938: Columbia
• Earl Hines - South Side Swing 1934-1935: Decca

Swing to bebop transition years, 1939-1945:
[Big bands were particularly affected by the 1942-1944 American Federation of Musicians recording ban which also curtailed the recording of early bebop]

• The Indispensable Earl Hines: Vols 1, 2, 1939-1940, Jazz Tribune/BMG
• The Indispensable Earl Hines: Vols 3, 4, 1939-1942, 1945, Jazz Tribune/BMG
• Earl Hines & The Duke's Men: [with Ellington side-men] 1944: reissued Delmark 1994
• Piano man: Earl Hines, his piano and his orchestra: 1939-1942, RCA Bluebird
• The Indispensable Earl Hines: Vols. 5, 6, 1944, 1964, 1966, Jazz Tribune/BMG
• Earl Fatha Hines and His Orchestra: 1945-1951, Limelight 15 766
• Classics, 1947-1949 (includes Eddie South) Classics Records

After 1948 - and therefore after Big Band era:

• Louis Armstrong All Stars: Live in Zurich 18 October 1949: Montreux Jazz Label
• Louis Armstrong & The All Stars: Decca 1950 & 1951: reissued
• Earl Hines: Paris One Night Stand: Verve/Emarcy France 1957
• The Real Earl Hines: [1st 'Rediscovery' concert @ Little Theatre NY 1964] Focus & Collectibles Jazz Classics: reissued
• Earl Hines: The Legendary Little Theatre Concert [2nd 'Rediscovery' concert]: Muse 1964
• Earl Hines: Blues in Thirds: solo: Black Lion 1965
• Earl Hines: '65 Solo - The Definitive Black & Blue Sessions: Black & Blue 1965
• Earl Hines: Fatha's Hands - Americans Swinging in Paris EMI 1965
• Earl Hines: Hine's Tune: [live in France with Ben Webster, Don Byas, Roy Eldridge, Stuff Smith, Jimmy Woode & Kenny Clarke]: Wotre Music/Esoldun 1965: reissued
• Once Upon a Time [with Ellington side-men]: Verve 1966
• Jazz from a Swinging Era [with All-Star group in Paris]: Fontana 1967
• Earl Hines: At Home: solo: [on his own Steinway]: Delmark 1969
• Earl Hines: My Tribute to Louis: solo: Audiophile 1971 [recorded 2 weeks after Armstrong's death]
• Earl Hines plays Duke Ellington: vols 1 & 2: solo: New World 1971-1975
• Earl Hines: Hines plays Hines: The Australian Sessions: solo: Swaggie 1972
• Earl Hines: Tour de Force & Tour de Force Encore: solo: Black Lion 1972
• Earl Hines: Live at the New School: solo: Chiarascuro 1973
• Earl Hines: A Monday Date: reissues of Hines' 15 1928/1929 QRS & OKEH solo recordings: Milestone 1973
• Earl Hines: The Quintessential Recording Session: solo: Chiaroscuro 1973 [remakes of his 8 1928 solo QRS piano recordings]
• Earl Hines: The Quintessential Continued: solo: Chiaroscuro 1973 [remakes of his 7 1928/9 solo OKEH piano recordings]
• Earl Hines/Stephane Grappelli duets, The Giants: Black Lion Records 1974
• Earl Hines/Joe Venuti duets: Hot Sonatas: Chiaroscuro 1975
• Earl 'Fatha' Hines: The Father of Modern Jazz Piano [5 LPs boxed]: 3 LPs solo [on Schiedmeyer grand] and 2 LPs with Budd Johnson, Bill Pemberton, Oliver Jackson: MF Productions 1977
• Earl Hines: In New Orleans: solo: Chiarascuro 1977
• An Evening With Earl Hines: with Tiny Grimes, Hank Young, Bert Dahlander and Marva Josie: Vogue VDJ-534, 1977
• Earl 'Fatha' Hines plays Hits he Missed: [inc Monk, Zawinul, Silver]: Direct to Disc M & K RealTime 1978

[It would seem that Hines' last-ever recording was on 29 December 1981.]^[108]

On anthologies:

• The Complete Master Jazz Piano Series: 13 Hines solo numbers: MD4 140 [with Jay McShann, Teddy Wilson, Cliff Smalls etc.] 1969-1972

Notes[link]