“Stuff’s playing jumped out at me instantly,” remembers violinist Matt Holborn, who recently released an album, “For Stuff”, celebrating the pre-eminent, Ohio-born violinist. Stuff Smith will also be the focus of forthcoming concerts in the West Country, at Pizza Express Jazz Club (15 July), and on the Edinburgh fringe (details/dates below).
When I was about 15, my grandfather, who was a jazz musician in Hull, played me Stéphane Grappelli with Django Reinhardt. He told me the story about Django’s hand injury and gave me a CD. I misremembered the story and felt disheartened, as I couldn’t understand how Grappelli could sound like that with only two working fingers on his left hand.
After a few years, I plucked up the courage to start learning jazz on the violin. From quite early on, whilst I did love Grappelli, I always felt like I wasn’t getting the full breadth of what jazz can offer from him alone.
I first heard Stuff Smith (Hezekiah Leroy Gordon Smith, 1909-1967), on YouTube. It must have been around 2007 or 2008, and I was getting ready to apply to jazz college. Stuff’s playing jumped out at me instantly. Back then, there were only a few videos of him, and streaming services weren’t a thing yet, but my grandfather gave me a compilation of jazz violinists, and I found a few Stuff Smith tracks on there too.
I loved his swing, his energy, and his completely unique take on the instrument as a whole. In Stuff’s playing, I felt I’d found that veracity and that “jazz” sound I’d been looking for in some of Grappelli’s recordings. That’s not to say I don’t love Stéphane’s thing, when he was really cooking in the ’40s, especially in those last recordings with Django in Rome, he was really cooking. Its more that his playing just didn’t give me everything I was looking for.
Studying on a jazz course, you can end up sidetracked trying to fit in with a “house style,” so to speak, and I sort of ended up on a different path for a while. But Stuff came back into my life when I interviewed Anthony Barnett, Stuff’s biographer, posthumous record label boss, and friend, for my Jazz Violin Podcast (link below).
Since then, I’ve ended up trawling most of Stuff’s back catalogue and taken it upon myself to try and work out what it is that makes him so great. While doing so, I’ve written some music inspired by Stuff and his whole “thing,” released earlier this year on an album called For Stuff.
The tracks I’ve picked by Stuff span his whole career. Some of them aren’t easy to find copies of, you might even have to dig through Anthony’s website and get a CD sent to your house, but they’re all priceless to me as a violinist who’s serious about swing, jazz, and music that walks the line between folk roots and endless possibility.
1. My Thoughts (released as a 10” single in 1940)
This is a ballad penned by Stuff. It has the sort of melody that always makes me feel like there are lyrics written to it somewhere but never recorded. It’s a beautiful example of Stuff’s ability to play sweetly and in a more Classical way, something we dont often hear on recordings of Stuff, so most would assume he can’t. Contrary to popular (I use this term loosely) belief, Stuff did study classical violin, first with his father, then at Johnson C. Smith University.
2. It’s Wonderful – Have Violin Will Swing (1958)
Not to be confused with S’Wonderful, this was one of the handful of songs that Stuff wrote that has made its way into the jazz canon. It’s a great example of Stuff’s melodic prowess as a composer, and there are some amazing versions by people like Ella Fitzgerald and Stuff’s hero, Louis Armstrong.
3. Stop Look – (released as a 12” double single in 1944 alongside Lagwood by Red Norvo in 1944)
I have a great recording from Anthony Barnett’s collection of the band rehearsing for this recording, Stuff playing his double-stopped intro and the band trying to put something together behind him. This is another great song that Stuff wrote and performed with lyrics, but for some reason, it’s never found its way into circulation as a jazz standard.
4a. Undecided – Cat on a Hot Fiddle (1960)
Two tracks together from the same album….This might be the first full-length Stuff solo that I ever got down on my instrument. I feel like Stuff’s sound on this session is at its peak, you can hear his acoustic tone. He doesn’t sound super amplified like he often did in sessions around this time, and he sounds extremely relaxed. This album was my go-to during my early “Stuff years.”
4b. Nice and Warm – Cat on a Hot Fiddle (1960)
This second track from Cat on a Hot Fiddle is an original. When I first got into gigging with Stuff’s music, I played it at Kansas Smitty’s old bar in London Fields. I researched his amplification setup, a D’Armond guitar pickup tied on with elastic, into a tube amp. I tried it for the gig, but it never worked for me like it did for Stuff.
There’s a smattering of London jazz musicians I’ve coaxed into learning tunes like this. It’s simple and enjoyable to play over, but has enough little “musical happenings” to feel like more than just a melody with chords.
5. When I Grow Too Old to Dream – with Nat King Cole from After Midnight
This is a great example of Stuff’s musicality. He accompanies Nat expertly, filling just the right amount of space. He sort of becomes the whole horn section, using nice double stops and riffs that weave in and out of the vocal line without taking centre stage.
It’s also a great example of Stuff’s skill playing in flat keys, Db isn’t a key violinists usually love, but Stuff seemingly preferred them.
Stuff was surrounded by jazz greats in New York, many of them horn players. If you want to be a valued member of a jazz scene as a violinist, you can’t expect horn players to work around you. You can’t, for example, expect a trumpet player to play everything in concert D, A, or E major just because violins have open strings there to keep them in tune.
6. Desert Sands – Stuff Smith (1957)
Another Stuff original, an extremely simple tune, like a stripped-back 12-bar minor blues with a bridge. His playing here is very riffy and seems made of simple ideas that flow right into each other.
It’s also a great example of his amplified sound, the pickup/amp combo gives him a growly, almost Howlin’ Wolf tone. There are several great versions of this tune, but this one’s my favourite.
It’s from Stuff’s first release as a leader since his early Onyx Club Boys recordings, out on Verve. It’s an all star band of: Oscar Peterson, Ray Brown, Barney Kessel, Alvin Stoller. After a career lull, this album and another with Dizzy Gillespie gave Stuff a recharge.
7. Bugle Blues – Live at Montmartre Jazzhus, Copenhagen (1965)
This is Stuff playing live only a few years before his death in 1967. I can only guess there were several gigs that year, maybe a residency, at Montmartre Jazzhus in Denmark, there’s a Live At Montmartre album, but this video isn’t from it.
It’s looser and faster, which I prefer. He’s at his most inventive, flipping between bluesy riffs and his signature “out” lines that he “always brings back to the chords.”
At 21:55, there’s a great example, he uses the violin’s fifths tuning to transpose a wild line up and up. Dizzy Gillespie always laundered Stuff for his harmonic inventiveness, (even though Stuff was pretty outspoken about bebop)
8. Tain’t No Use (released as a 10” single as the B-side to “I Don’t Want To Make History” – 1936)
A great example of Stuff’s work with Jonah Jones. Stuff serves not just as a frontline soloist, but as an accompanist. He uses the violin’s ability to play more than one note at a time, becoming a sort of horn/rhythm section hybrid. This period of Stuff’s playing isn’t always my first point of call, but I love it and think it shows how innovative he was right from the start.
9. It Don’t Mean a Thing – from Live at the Philharmonic (1957)
Watching this video was the first time I ever heard Stuff play. Grainy footage from the Jazz At The Philharmonic roadshow, which toured North America from the 1940s onward. Recorded during a 1957 tour, the band features Oscar Peterson, Ray Brown, and Jo Jones. Stuff’s playing is gritty and to the point. I remember hearing it and wanting to learn more.
10. Sophisticated Lady – Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington Songbook (1957)
Stuff’s solo here has gone down in history for its inventiveness and pure melody. He uses the violin’s open strings in a key that doesn’t seem like it would welcome them. His harmonics, glissando, and left-hand pizzicato stand out, but it’s the laid-back melodic statements that stick with me, and make me want to become a better improviser every time I hear it.
LIVE DATES:
12 July – Ashburton Arts
13 July – The Acorn Theatre Penzance
15 July – Pizza Express Dean Street – booking link below
15-21 August – Argyle Cellar Bar, Edinburgh
One Response
Great article, Matt. Stuff swung right to the end – there were a couple of Polydor LPs issued in the mid to late 60s – “Swinging Stuff” and “One O’Clock Jump” (I think that second one was issued after he died), but something I love, is this recording coming up to sixty years old – recorded in July 1965 with the Kenny Drew Trio (Kenny, a 17 year old Nils Henning, talented beyond his years and Alex Riel, who died only last year )- at the Montmartre – at same club with the same trio (and the same audience by the sound of them) who would accompany Dexter Gordon two years later for more material issued by Polydor/Black Lion. Eddie South & Stuff Smith were THE two jazz violinists for me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IObWGgo9yHE&t=464s