Remarkable news: Mosaic Records have perfected the time machine.
All you have to do is climb aboard this latest collection, set New York City as your destination and dial 1944 on the retro clock. On arrival, you’ll find that. While WWII Allied forces were overcoming enemies successfully in Europe and the Pacific, radicals in smoky Harlem clubs and West 52nd Street basements were in revolt, attempting to overturn the established order.
In this chronicle of febrile 1944 New York, you’ll encounter acknowledged jazz masters and assorted exotic hep-cats like Danish baron Timme Rosencrantz, A&R man Teddy Reig and Henry ‘Rubberlegs’ Williams. Over ten CDs, this indispensable collection concentrates on the epochal emergence of bebop viewed from the perspective of Oklahoma-born tenor saxophone player, Carlos Wesley ‘Don’ Byas.
By his early teens, Byas was already classically trained in violin, clarinet and alto saxophone. Later, when he switched to tenor, both sound and style were unashamedly influenced by the depth and richness of Coleman Hawkins, daddy of the jazz tenor saxophone, as well as the sensuous balladeering of Ben Webster, tenor star of the Duke Ellington orchestra.
Unleashing his broad, enveloping sound, Byas approached romantic ballads as seductive set-pieces (his boast: “I play tenor sexophone”). Equipped with formidable chops, he had no difficulty merging with cutting-edge boppers at frantic tempos. Consequently, he worked with illustrious jazz musicians and, during the 24 months covered by this collection, he can be heard blowing elbow-by-elbow with trombonists Vic Dickenson, Tyree Glen, J. C. Higginbotham, Benny Morton, Dicky Wells and Trummy Young. Trumpeters include Buck Clayton, Charlie Shavers, Hot Lips Page, Emmett Berry, Joe Newman and Frankie Newton. Among the tenor saxophonists are Coleman Hawkins, Gene Sedric, Ben Webster, Eddie Barefield and Flip Phillips. Among the altoists, Benny Carter and Russell Procope. Pianists included Erroll Garner, Sammy Price, Clyde Hart, Johnny Guarnieri, Jimmy Jones and Teddy Wilson. Bass players included Slam Stewart, Milt Hinton, Bob Haggart and Eddie Safranski. And drummers included Cozy Cole, Sid Catlett, Specs Powell and J.C. Heard. Each name a Swing Era titan.
Byas’s noteworthy talent and technique helped him vault the riffs, orthodox phrasing and clichés of the late Swing Era. He played more adventurously than most of his rivals with added complexity and longer, more intricate melodic lines. Checking through the personnel lists on the later tracks in this collection, we find Byas sharing recording studios with the foremost cadre of avant-garde activists: trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, altoist Charlie Parker, pianist Thelonious Monk, bass player Oscar Pettiford, baritone saxophonist Serge Chaloff, tenor player Lucky Thompson, trumpeters Benny Harris, Neal Hefti and Shorty Rogers, guitarist Herb Ellis, clarinettist Tony Scott and drummers Shelly Manne and Max Roach. Each one a dangerous revolutionary.
Stripped-down versions of the bop creation myth explain how Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk, bored with the commercial conventions of swing era white bands, developed an angular new music crammed with dissonances almost overnight. Yeah, well, up to a point. This timely collection provides evidence that much more was going on than meets the ear.
World War II all but obliterated the big band business and doomed the Swing Era forever. However, not before its most distinguished practitioners had erected signposts to the future. Masters like tenorists Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young, trumpeter Roy Eldridge, pianist Art Tatum, guitarist Charlie Christian and bassist Jimmy Blanton pushed and prodded the music beyond its fashionable licks and orthodox limitations towards a fresh musical language. Bebop was primed to happen.
Clearly, Byas idolised Coleman Hawkins but, in Art Taylor’s book, Notes and Tones, he claimed yet another influence: “Art Tatum really turned me on. That’s where my style came from”. Not only was he close to Tatum, but was deeply affected by the pianist’s dazzling harmonic virtuosity (as was Charlie Parker, who laboured washing dishes in Jimmy’s Chicken Shack, Harlem, so he could marvel nightly at Tatum working his brand of magic) and it showed. Fellow tenor giant Johnny Griffin confided in Art Taylor that he thought “Don Byas was the Tatum of the tenor saxophone”. By 1944, Byas had done his time with the leading black big bands, replacing Lester Young in Basie’s band plus stints with Lionel Hampton, Don Redman, Andy Kirk and Lucky Millinder. But, after hours, he’d be found sitting in with Thelonious Monk, Charlie Christian and drummer Kenny Clarke at Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem, the incubator of bebop.
Yet, all these facts pose an uncomfortable question: if Don Byas was such a star, why isn’t he better known? Simple answer: because in 1946, he departed the U.S. to live in Europe and suffered the fates of pianist Kenny Drew, tenor player Johnny Griffin, trumpeters Benny Bailey and Bill Coleman and a bunch of other fine talents. Absenting oneself from the U.S. jazz’s parochial village was tantamount to choosing obscurity.
Sifting through this assembled treasure chest of 193 tracks, shepherded by Loren Schoenberg’s magisterial 29-page essay resplendent with contemporary photos, you’re there: present at the unfolding of jazz history over two crucial years, all curated in acts of dedicated phonographic archaeology extracted from the precious grooves of 78rpm labels like Savoy, Gotham, Jamboree, Manor, Majestic, Masterseal, Plymouth and Super Disc.
Crucially for this Byas retrospective, Mosaic were granted access to the collection of Baron Timme Rosenkrantz, an aristocratic refugee from Nazi-occupied Denmark and passionate jazz aficionado who had cut one-off discs on a home recorder in his NYC apartment at 7, W.46th Street. Among the riches in the Rosenkrantz recordings is an aircheck from the Three Deuces club in ’44 that has clarinettist Tony Scott playing the old standard ‘Whispering’ while Byas plays Dizzy Gillespie’s spiky bebop contrafact ‘Groovin’ High’ followed by a luscious clotted cream version of Carmichael and Parrish’s ‘Star Dust’. Then there’s an earlyintimation of Byas’s celebrated ‘Indiana’ Town Hall duet with bassist Slam Stewart (whose popular shtick was humming in unison with his bowed solos) and a blistering take of the Gershwins’ ‘I Got Rhythm’. The Baron’s supernaturally big ears brought together modernists Thelonious Monk, tenor player Lucky Thompson and bassist Al Hall to record with Byas for multiple discs in autumn 1944.
Track after track in this collection offer ample opportunity to hear Byas’s remarkable versatility in varied environments, formations and styles: quartets, quintets, sextets, jam sessions, V-Disc sessions and even big bands. He gets down and funky for the jukebox market with blues shouter Joe Turner and boogie-woogie pianist Pete Johnson. He recorded prolifically with the fine pianist Johnny Guarnieri who had the ability to move seamlessly between Count Basie minimalism and a more ornamented style. He also cut a couple of storming sessions with irrepressible pianist Erroll Garner, recently arrived from Pittsburgh.
And then, the new movement’s manifesto, some of the earliest pure bebop recordings, now rightfully awarded classic status. In January, 1945, together with leader Dizzy Gillespie, trombonist Trummy Young, Clyde Hart (an excellent pianist who only had two more months to live), bassist Oscar Pettiford and drummer Shelly Manne, Byas cut Gillespie’s ‘Good Bait’, ‘Salted (sic) Peanuts’ and ‘Bebop’ for the Manor label. The revolutionaries were on the march.
But the gift to any reviewer was the session on January 4, 1945, supervised by the enormous Teddy Reig with his permanent halo of weed smoke. Together in the studio under the leadership of Clyde Hart, were Trummy Young, Don Byas, guitarist Mike Bryan, bassist Al Hall, drummer Specs Powell, altoist Charlie Parker and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, assembled to accompany blues singer Henry ‘Rubberlegs’ Williams. Williams, a less than averagely talented singer, had earned his nickname as a novelty dancer and drag artist and hardly deserved the stellar ensemble selected by Reig.
On arrival at the studio, Parker, no stranger to chemical stimulants, wrenched open the aluminium casing of a Benzedrine inhaler (then available over the counter in any reputable drugstore) and dunked the contents, a plug of cottonwool soaked in Benzedrine, into his coffee cup. Then during some manner of distraction or confusion, Williams picked up Bird’s coffee cup and drained its contents.
Minutes later, Williams’ Benzedrine-enhanced renditions on the session are as close to unhinged performances as it’s possible to be. Rumour has it that, at a critical point between takes, Williams threatened Gillespie with violence if he “played any of the crazy notes” behind him (a warning totally disregarded). So, particularly on the two takes of ‘What’s The Matter Now?’ and ‘4F Blues’, we get transcendental early Bird, mischievous Dizzy, first class Byas and vocal performances that stagger beyond surreal.
Towards the end of the ten CDs, we hear three tracks from the short-lived Benny Carter All Star Orchestra. Generally, ‘All Star’ is a battered cliché but, in this case, what other description for a band whose trumpet section comprises Emmett Berry, Joe Newman, Shorty Rogers and Neal Hefti? The trombone department wasn’t too shabby either featuring Dickie Wells, Sandy Williams and Trummy Young. And the reeds? Benny Carter, Russell Procope, Tony Scott, Flip Phillips and Don Byas. And, on third track, Dexter Gordon turns up.
Every Mosaic issue is a collaborative venture, deserving tribute to the meticulous and dedicated technical experts who made it possible. Given that many of the tracks were transferred from rare fragile artifacts, some over 80 years old, we can only marvel at the splendid quality of sound throughout. The original Timme Rosenkrantz discs were transferred by Nils Winther in Denmark. The mass of 78rpm pressings were transferred by Nancy Conforti and Andreas Meyer, shellac wizards both. Michael Cuscuna was executive producer and the collection was produced for release by Scott Wenzel. Congratulations to all for the journey through time and history brought to life.
4 responses
Brilliant review. The evocation of the ‘Rubber legs Williams’ session had be cackling out loud and wanting to listen!
David Rushton writes: “Your commentary on the Don Byas release is just what I wanted to hear and as a long time Mosaic customer and visitor to Stamford on one occasion, I have greatly valued my occasional contacts with Michael and Scott who have provided answers to my arcane enquiries without hesitation and precision.”
Don Byas has long been one of the most underrated saxophonists in jazz history, and one who has long deserved the Mosaic treatment. Timme Rosencrantz’ recordings are a hugely significant addition to the body of work from Byas we have available to us. Mosaic very seldom disappoints, and with this coming after the Black and White Records and Savory Sessions issues, is enjoying quite a run after a period of retrenchment.
N.B.: Ross Russell, in “Bird Lives!”, says that Rubberlegs Williams was the victim of a Parker prank in drinking that doctored coffee.
As always a stunning record review by Leonard Weinreich