He left Brooklyn many years ago but Brooklyn never left him. His childhood was a rich gumbo of passions: the Dodgers, radio shows, comic books, 78 rpm records, stickball, punchball, movies, and of course the Dodgers. From these ingredients his life's main interests were formed: jazz, classical music, writing, and (still) baseball. Brooklyn also gave him Brooklyn Girl, who has been his best friend for more than half a century. One lucky kid.
The title of the 1945 song I'm Just a Lucky So-and-So -- music by Duke Ellington, lyrics by Mack David -- is an apt self-description of anyone within earshot of Rebecca Kilgore singing it, or anyone who has discovered the postings on the Jazz Lives website. Although this performance has already been posted elsewhere, it is, in Eddie Condon's phrase, too good to ignore.
Over the years the song has been recorded by many, including Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Louis Armstrong, and -- a particular favorite of mine -- Jay McShann with Jim Galloway in 1983. Becky's performance here with musical soulmates trombonist Dan Barrett and pianist Rossano Sportiello, all dispensing beauty in equal measure, is as great as any of them.
Whoever this "Jazz Lives" fellow is, we're lucky so-and-so's to have him around. I'm thankful I live in an age when such a performance as this can be captured, preserved, and viewed worldwide, for all time.
On March 1, 1929, Thomas "Fats" Waller, already a master of Harlem stride piano and songwriting whiz with Ain't Misbehavin' and Black and Blue to his name, entered Liederkranz Hall in New York to lead a recording session. The sides produced that day have been precious to me (in LP and CD form) for most of my adult life, imperishable classics of early jazz.
That these records were made at all is a minor miracle, for which we can thank not just Waller but also Eddie Condon, cast by Providence in the unlikely rôle of guardian angel (which, if you know anything about Condon, is a brilliant example of casting against type).
A couple of weeks after organizing the recording of That's a Serious Thing and I'm Gonna Stomp Mr. Henry Lee, Condon was paid $75 to do something that Victor Records' executives had so far been unable to do: deliver Fats Waller to a recording studio on time, with a well-rehearsed band. "The date is four days from now," Condon was told. "That will give you time to assemble a band and rehearse it."
Andy Razaf's lyric to Ain't Misbehavin', "I don't stay out late / don't care to go, / I'm home about eight / just me and my radio," did not apply to Waller, so Condon realized the task would be difficult. Little did he know that getting Fats to the recording studio would be of the same order of magnitude and difficulty as harnessing the power of the rivers or the sun to produce useable energy.
Condon went up to Harlem to Connie's Inn and introduced himself to his favorite piano player:
He was so amiable, so agreeable, so good-natured [wrote Condon in his memoir We Called It Music]that I felt almost ashamed of my mission, but I performed it; I asked Fats about making a record. A recording date? He'd be delighted, he'd be proud; just any time. In four days? Fine. Wonderful. At noon? Perfect.
Condon phoned the Victor exec and was told, "We shall expect you at noon on Friday. You had better stay close to Waller."
I did but every time I opened my mouth to say something about getting the band together or discussing the numbers to be played, Fats said, "Fine! Wonderful! Perfect!" and handed me another belt of gin. We were in perfect accord on everything. Nothing happened.
After three hazy, gin-drenched days, there was still no band, no music. Condon asked Waller what the band was going to play. "Why, we'll play music," said Fats. "Now let's have a little drink and talk about it." At this point, according to Condon, "things grew faint and finally dark."
At the eleventh hour, Condon and Waller awoke from their respective stupors. Waller made some quick phone calls and rounded up trumpeter Charlie Gaines, trombonist Charlie Irvis, and reedman Arville Harris. Condon, who had not expected to be part of the band, asked Waller: "Well, what are you going to play?" "You mean what are we going to play," replied Fats. ""Man, you're with us."
So the five men decanted themselves into a taxi, swung by the Riverside Towers to pick up Condon's banjo, and careened toward Liederkranz Hall. Inside the cab, Fats was sketching out the musical program:
He hummed a simple, basic pattern of rhythm and melody... When we had it memorized, he explained what each of us was to do. "You got that, Charlie?" he said. Both Charlies said yes. They had it.
So fertile was Waller's musical imagination that he could compose tunes as easily as he could improvise a jazz chorus; "so fluent as a composer," wrote John S. Wilson, "and so eternally in need of money that he was very casual about all but giving away many of his compositions." (It's said Waller composed his six-part London Suite on the spot, at the piano, while his manager, Ed Kirkeby, was describing the various sections of London to be portrayed.)
The taxi arrived at Liederkranz Hall at ten minutes to twelve. "I see you are punctual," said Mr. Adams, one of the execs. "Congratulations. Well, Mr. Waller, what is it to be this morning?" "A little thing we call The Minor Drag," replied Fats.
We set up our instruments and Fats repeated his instructions. He played the theme for us; as soon as I heard him I knew why we didn't need drums -- his left hand would take care of the bass. "Ready?" Fats said. "Let's go," one of the Charlies said.
While acknowledging Condon's importance as an organizer and promoter of jazz, some critics past and present have disparaged his rhythm playing. I disagree. The Minor Drag is closely miked and Condon's banjo is often clearly audible. Seems to me he's kicking things along quite nicely.
We listened to the playback. I had a difficult time believing what I heard because it sounded wonderful. I looked at Mr. Adams. He was smiling. "You see," he said to me, "what careful rehearsal will do?"
After The Minor Drag and Harlem Fuss had been cut, as an afterthought Mr. Adams said, "I wonder, Mr. Waller, if we could have some piano solos now?" "Wonderful!" Fats said. "Perfect!" -- and without moving from the bench he proceeded to toss off two solo masterpieces, Numb Fumblin' and that ne plus ultra of Harlem stride piano, Handful of Keys:
When the session was over, Mr. Adams pronounced himself pleased. "We must have some more of these dates," he said. "This is an excellent example of the wisdom of planning and preparation."
It's February, 1929, New York City; six years before Benny Goodman and impresario John Hammond famously "integrated" jazz with Teddy Wilson and the Goodman Trio; eighteen years before Jackie Robinson broke into major league baseball; nineteen years before Harry Truman integrated the armed forces; twenty-five years before the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision.
A young guitarist-banjo player named Eddie Condon goes up to Harlem to hear Charlie Johnson's band at Small's Paradise on 135th Street. "Somebody ought to put this music on records," he says to himself. "It's too good to miss." So Condon goes to Ralph Peer of Victor Records and makes his case: "I want to use [trumpeter Leonard "Ham"] Davis, [tenor saxophonist Happy] Cauldwell, and [drummer George] Stafford" [all from the Johnson band] with some friends of mine -- [trombonist] Jack Teagarden, [pianist] Joe Sullivan, and [reedman Mezz] Mezzrow."
Peer agrees to Condon's idea, saying, "I hope it's good." Here's one of the sides cut that day, That's a Serious Thing. The vocal is by Teagarden.
Not only was it good; it was history-making. As Condon wrote in his memoir, We Called It Music:
When the masters were cut Mr. Peer congratulated me. "You were right about the music," he said. "it is excellent. All in all I should say this has been an interesting experiment." It wasn't until I got out in the street that I realized what he meant. I made some inquiries: so far as I could discover we had made the first mixed recording date on any national label, using both white and Negro musicians. I thought it had been done long before.
The quote is typical of him. Eddie Condon had no socio-ethno-political agenda. He was color-blind for the purest of reasons; the music he loved was his only agenda.
Some years ago I was listening to this record and came to a startling realization. As far as I know, outside of civil rights organizing and lobbying, no other field of human endeavor on earth had blacks and whites working together in 1929 to produce something of lasting value and beauty.
In his long career Eddie Condon arguably did more to organize and promote pure jazz than anyone. He was also the unlikeliest civil rights champion in history. To my mind he's the most important and influential American cultural figure never to have been the subject of a major biography.
I grew up on radio and 78 rpm records, so posting audio clips and sharing my favorite music with the world is more than a delight -- it's a miracle. Through trial and (lots of) error I learned how to upload and publish individual audio clips via Hipcast, but publishing two clips in one post had me baffled. I emailed Denise at Hipcast customer support, pleading for help, and she quickly unbaffled me. I created a playlist with Thanks a Million by Louis Armstrong (1935) and How Can I Thank You? with Mildred Bailey and Red Norvo (1938) and clicked on "Publish." Let's see if it works.
I recently read that fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld was "heir to his father's evaporated milk fortune." Does this mean that Lagerfeld's father left him a fortune earned in the evaporated-milk business, or that Lagerfeld's father made a fortune in the milk business and then squandered it?
In my Ink Spots post, I mentioned parenthetically that when the Platters' record of My Prayer zoomed to the top of the charts in 1956, we teenagers thought it was a new song. Like so many pop hits of the '50s -- Side By Side (1927), Play a Simple Melody (1914), I Can Dream, Can't I? (1938), Beyond the Blue Horizon (1930), The World is Waiting for the Sunrise (1918), Walking My Baby Back Home (1930), Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries (1931), I've Got the World on a String (1932), Love Letters in the Sand (1931), My Blue Heaven (1924) -- it wasn't new at all.
I can't find the date of composition of Fats Domino's 1956 hit What's the Reason I'm Not Pleasin' You? but I know that Red McKenzie and Bunny Berigan and the Mound City Blue Blowers recorded it in 1935:
Other 1950s recyclings come to mind: Jo Stafford's Make Love to Me was, of course, derived from the New Orleans Rhythm Kings' 1923 Tin Roof Blues, and Elvis Presley's Love Me Tender was nothing but Aura Lee from 1861.
We even thought Joe Turner was a new singer. When I saw him at one of Alan Freed's first rock 'n' roll shows at the Brooklyn Paramount, I knew nothing about him and Kansas City and the Sunset Club and pianist Pete Johnson. We had no idea Big Joe had already been shakin', rattlin' and rollin' for over twenty years.
But back to My Prayer. The Ink Spots had scored a hit with the song in 1939, but the melody wasn't new even then. My Prayer was derived from Avant de Mourir, a 1926 composition by Romanian violinist Georges Boulanger (1893-1958), student of Leopold Auer and composer of salon pieces featuring tango rhythms and gypsy-flavored melodies. In 1939, the English lyrics -- uninspired, in my opinion -- were added by Jimmy Kennedy, an Irish songwriter. (Kennedy did a much better job with composer John Walter Bratton's 1907 The Teddy Bears' Picnic, retrofitting it with lyrics in 1932. He was also the lyricist of Red Sails in the Sunset and The Isle of Capri.)
This tango version of Avant de Mourir is from 1929:
Boulanger's own version, played with schmaltz aplenty, can be heard here:
Boulanger plays it at such a funereal pace that the tango rhythm is lost, but considering the title of the piece (and that this is the composer playing it) his tempo seems heartbreakingly appropriate.
Brooklyn Baby was (I'm guessing) about seven years old. I had just purchased an LP and was giving it plenty of turntable time, so the music formed part of the soundtrack of BB's growing-up years. I hope this post will bring her a pleasant little nostalgia rush on her birthday.
The LP consisted of McKenzie-Berigan sessions from 1935-36, said McKenzie being Red McKenzie, ex-jockey, ex-bellhop, crooner, and hot comb player supreme. On the selection playable below, Red is sans comb-and-paper but avec his Mound City Blue Blowers, who on this occasion were Bunny Berigan, trumpet; Eddie Miller, clarinet; Al Philburn, trombone; Gil Bowers, piano; Nappy Lamare, guitar; Harry Goodman, bass; Ray Bauduc, drums.
Maestro McKenzie and Bunny Berigan, with Forrest Crawford, Morty Stuhlmaker,
Eddie Condon, and a young, youngJoe Bushkin at the piano.
Brooklyn Baby is sure to remember Red's rendition of She's a Latin from Manhattan, music by Harry Warren, lyrics by Al Dubin, an exposé of that faux-Cuban terpsichorean Susie Donahue:
She can take a tambourine and whack it, But with her it's just a racket, She's a hoofer from Tenth Avenoo!
Not that Brooklyn Baby has anything in common with Señorita Donahue. BB doesn't pretend to be anything but what she is. And what she is, is this: the best daughter one could wish for. Not to mention a wife, mother, and quilter extraordinaire, and a person of substantial accomplishment in her field. Brooklyn Girl and I couldn't be prouder.
