Iazzletter PO Box 240, O)Ai CA 93024-0240

G€ne Lrc Ad Libitum G Iazzletter PO Box 240, O)ai CA 93024-0240 network radio broadcasting. Thoughts for the Day Not that there was no social dancing in the nineteenth century. But the forms of it were sedate, quite different from what came about in the band era. To oversimplify' the early two Iltith the perfervid languageJlying about inwhat has become years of the twentieth century saw the popularity of The Land oJ' Unending Electiort, I am reminded of two kinds of dance: intimate face-to-face dance to slow music. came have the unfortunate pe r t inen t o b s ervations : and athletic dancing that to the Victorian designation 7 itterbugging. With the death of Whenever morality is based on theology, whenever right era, the slower dancing was often considered scandalous, for move is made dependent on divine authority, the most immoral, it permitted a man and woman to hold each other and unjust, infamous things can be justified and established. with bodies touching, and everybody knew what that didto Ludwig Feuerbach, philosopher, 1804-1872 you. The jitterbugs came to seem more outrageous. They had - a love for fast numbers, and the more skilled and adventur- Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every ous of them were extraordinary athletes. Since I was never to them rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who much of a dancer at any tempo, I paid little attention a joke, and hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. at the time. They were looked on as something of 'Ihc world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending newsreels showed segments shot in Harlem. Whirling, sorts of ways, the srveat of laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of swirling, with the men flinging the girls in all its children . .This is not a way of life at all, in any true including up over their heads making (egad!) the thighs and sense. Under the clouds of threatening war, it is humanity panties only too visible. When I see them now in old fihn eccentricify' hanging from a cross of iron. footage, I am amazed, at their prowess, not their Dwight D. Eisenhower During those years, I was, like most jazz and big-band - fans, a reader of Down Beat,nevet of course foreseeing that I would one day be its editor. It was in some ways a silly magazine, certainly a frivolous one. Among the other with The Glenn Miller Years I manifestations of its giddy vapidity - chick singers big boobs on the covers, cute coy headlines in the manner of My high school years felhduring World War II and the latter Variety its annual readers'poll which, when I was in part of the big-band era. In common with millions of kids, I charge of it,I came to despise. So did many of the musicians in the was a devoted fbllower of the bands, and I saw most of them, even in those earlier days: when Harry James won including Jimmie Lunceford, Duke Ellington, Woody trumpet category, he gave his award to Louis Armstrong' Herman, Charlie Barnet, Lionel Hampton, Count Basie, The magazine divided the bands into swing and sweet Tommy Dorsey, Gene Krupa, Les Brown, Benny Goodman, categories, always with a tone of condescension or even and Stan Kenton. contempt toward the latter, which included Freddy Martin, I have given much thought over the years to the causes of Blue Barron, Richard Himber, Horace Heidt, Wayne King, the era and then, in the post-war years, the decline of the Tommy Tucker, Shep Fields, Sammy Kaye, and Guy bands. Essentially the era came about in consequence of the Lombardo, the band every jazzfan loved to hate. Indeed, the confluence of two factors: the growing popularity in the early Down Beat poll had a King of Corn category in which part of the l4st century of "ballroom" dancing, and the rise in Lombardo consistentlY won. the1920s and then domination in the 1930s and 1940s of The "hot" bands included Duke Ellington, Artie Shaw, June 2007 derived Woody Herman, Count Basie, Jimmie Lunceford, Charlie "sides". After World War II, a few dozen recordings England turned up, along with Barnet, Gene Krupa, Glen Gray, Tommy Dorsey, and to my from radio broadcasts made in its pre-war radio broad- taste Les Brown which, if it wasn't strictly speaking a jazz a good many recordings made from were of quality band, was clean and tasteful with a nice bounce to it and casts in the U.S. Not all these recordings Pan Alley trash' beautiful arangements, most of the best of them by Frank materiall there was a large amount of Tin the band was the Comstock. In the war years, my favorite of those bands was Yet for all the brevity of its life, Miller LP recordings were that of Tommy Dorsey, playing such incandescent Sy Oliver most influential of the era, and many of Ralph Flanigan and charts as Well Git It and the long, warrn, beautiful chart on issued in its echo under the leadership flourish in the U.S' Deep River,issued on two sides of a six-inclr 78. As the war others, and knock-offs of the band still sound of clarinet lead came to an end, the wild and fiercely hot Woody Herman and U.K., all featuring its distinctive band came to the fore, and then came Stan Kenton whose on the saxophone section. evaluated other than by his band was laterunder-rated and indeed denigrated, like that of But no artist should ever be of leading a jazzband, Paul Whiteman before him. The "hot" bands heavily featured intention. And Miller had no intention personnel of such fine players as their best jazz soloists, such as Jack Jenney with Artie Shaw' despite the presence in his was to form and Woody Herman made his soloists, a long succession of them Bobby Hackett and Al Klink. His intention and that's exactly from the Candoli Brothers on through Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, lead a smoother and coherent dance band, knew exactly what he and Al Cohn to Bill Chase, Alan Broadbent, and Gregory what he did. By every testimony, he Herbert, the very definition of his band, whereas Shaw made wanted and how to get it. himself his principal soloist. Benny Goodman had Teddy One thing never questioned is Miller's business acumen' gener- Wilson, later Mel Powell, Charlie Christian and Lionel It is, on examination, even more finely tuned than is as the smartest busi- Hampton, but he was known on occasion to fire players who ally believed. He was once described A better got applause that overshadowed his own. And there were nessman of any bandleader since John Phillip Sousa. the best precedent goes lesser but very good bands, such as that of Teddy Powell, precedent is Paul Whiteman. But Strauss the younger. whose career ended when he went to prison for draft-dodging, back well before that: JolTann the and Jerry Wald, a clarinetist who imitated Shaw with a In the two hundred and fifty and more years since men blazoned their names in fidelity such that (as I learned years later) Artie detested him. death of J.S. Bach, these two dance orchestras that But the line between the "sweet" and "hot" bands was not musical history by forming and leading popular of their day: Johann Strauss the as clear as the hipper-than-thou fans and Down Beat made otil, became far the most men achieved their emi- because even Basie and Ellington played acertainnumber of Younger and Glenn Miller. Both held to be meretricious, the ballads for the romantic dancers, and some of the sweet bands, nence using lulgate music long including Kay Kyser whose band was far better than it three-four meter in Strauss's Vienna, the four-four common fotm was generally given credit- for, with fine arrangements by in Miller's America. Strauss elevated a peasant dance Miller made George Duning could play creditable jazz. to the level of acceptance by the Hapsburgs; The most difficult- to define band was also the most American dance music acceptable to the British Royal Although both men successful of the era, that of Glenn Miller. It has been much family, who were among its enthusiasts. admirers in high denigrated. Jo Stafford told me that the members of the had their detractors, both too had their Brahms and Richard Dorsey band considered it a little corny' A lot of musicians, musical places. Strauss was admired by jazz arranger and including some of its own alumni, such as the late Billy May, Wagner. The late and brilliant Belgian fan of Miller's. claimed it didn't swing. Miller had, essentially, aside from an composer Francy Boland was a devoted that only trash earlier band that recorded for Decca and failed, two important It is an axiom of the American culture art struggles for the orchestras, a civilian band and then a second and larger achieves wide public favor while the best superior element of the orchestra which was part of the Army Air Corps. The second, approval of a small, exclusive, and But the corollary, that which had a large string section, was far the better orchestra, population. Sometimes this is true. no good, isn't. It since it had superior personnel: the brilliant Mel Powell on what achieves wide popularity is ipsofacto piano instead of the mediocre Chalmers (Chummy) certainly was untrue in the cases of both Miller and Strauss' counterpoint, MacGregor, Ray McKinley on drums, instead of the plodding A thoroughly studied musician in composition, has been so Maurice Purtill, and others of the first rank.

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