Benny Goodman & Buddy Rich: two amiable guys (!)
My pal Michael Steinman, over at his Jazz Lives blog, has discovered some film of Benny Goodman and Buddy Rich together on the Merv Griffin show in 1979:
This is significant because Benny and Buddy had only ever worked together once before (an obscure recording date in 1947 that Rich mentions during the interview), and because both, as bandleaders, were notorious martinets: the combination could have been disastrous.
In fact, the meeting seems to have been very amiable, with Buddy paying Benny the compliment of comparing him favourably with Artie Shaw (Benny’s great clarinet-bandleader rival in the thirties), while Benny sort-of apologises for not having hired Buddy in 1939 to replace Gene Krupa (he hired the brilliant but unreliable Dave Tough instead).
Both these men could be complete assholes. The recording of Buddy screaming abuse at his band has become a legend in profanity, and would put Sir Alex Ferguson and his ‘hair-drying’ to shame. As for Goodman, he has twelve pages devoted to stories of his misanthropic anti-social antics in Bill Crow’s Jazz Anecdotes: the only problem is choosing the best one. I finally decided upon this, from pianist Dave Frishberg, who in the early sixties worked in a quartet with Goodman’s star drummer from the thirties, Gene Krupa, at the ‘Metropole’, New York:
“Must have been 1962. Benny walked in and the place went crazy. We were on the bandstand, just having finished an hour-and-fifteen-minute set. I looked at Gene and his face was white. He said, ‘It’s the King of Swing, and he’s got his horn. I don’t believe this. Here he comes.’
“Benny walked up on the stand and began to try out reeds. he stared off into space and tootled and fluttered up and down the scale. This went on for long minutes. Meanwhile Jack Waldorf [owner of the Metropole] had herded dozens — hundreds! — of passersby into the club, and he had them chanting, ‘Benny! Benny!’ Some were hollering out years — like ’1939!’ The camera girl, standing down by the bar, snapped a picture and hurried downstairs to make prints, promising autographs of Goodman and Krupa.
“Benny was finally ready. He said, “Brushes, Gene.” Gene obediently picked up the brushes and flashed a big smile, but I could see he was in a cold fury. Then Benny turned to me and said, ‘Sweet Lorraine, in G. Give me a little introduction.” I complied, and Benny entered in F. He waved me out and continued without piano accompaniment.
“He stayed on the stand for about an hour. The camera girl was going into a second printing. Then, abruptly, he packed up his horn and descended, demanding safe escort through the crowd, and he was gone into the night. he hadn’t signed one picture.
Krupa was drenched with two shows’ worth of perspiration, but he sat patiently on the steps of the bandstand and signed dozens of photos. He was writing personal notes on each one, asking each customer, ‘Who shall I inscribe this to?’ Later in the dressing room he said to us, ‘I was glad to sign this picture. This will be in a lot of homes, believe me. Did you get a load of this?’
“We inspected the picture then. And there was Benny with his horn in his mouth, perched on a stool with his legs spread wide. His fly was open.
“‘Buttons!’ Gene said. ‘Buttons!’ That suit’s probably from about 1940.”
NB: The group on the Merv Griffin Show was completed by Jimmy Rowles, piano, Bucky Pizzarelli, guitar and Jack Six, bass. I agree with Michael that Jimmy Rowles is particularly impressive. But, of course, they’re all fantastic.
‘Blue And Sentimental’: it’s Herschel, not Pres!
From Just Jazz magazine:
Three tenors: Herschel Evans (left), Eddie Miller (centre), Lester Young (right) in 1941
Lester Young? Surely not!
By James Hogg
You wouldn’t think anyone could mistake Herschel Evans for Lester Young, but BBC Radio 4 managed it in a recent ‘Archive on Four’ programme on the history of the saxophone. I understand that amongst those who spluttered into their Horlicks on hearing the howler was Wally Fawkes, who should be protected from such shocks.
The irony was that the presenter, Soweto Kinch, had reached a point in the programme where he wasa discussing with Courtney Pine the particular qualities that made Lester unique. And up comes the somewhat different sound of Herschel doing his featured number Blue And Sentimental. Producer’s clanger, definitely! The guilt of the two speakers has to remain ‘unproven’ because we don’t know whether they heard their words juxtaposed with the wrong recording or not.
The BBC has form in misidentifying Lester Young – incredibly for one of the most distinctive voices in all of jazz. Dave Green recalls a similar instance: “the ‘Archive on 4′ fiasco reminds me of a story that Humph once told me about Steve Race. Apparently Race played Humph a pre-transmission tape of a programme he had just done on Lester Young using one particular tune as an example of Lester’s Style – it may even have been Blue and Sentimental. Humph pointed out about half way through that it was a very good analysis, but the only problem was that it wasn’t Lester playing, it was Herschel Evans. Race’s response was: ‘Oh, it’s too late to do anything about it now, it’ll have to go out as it is’ – and it did.”
I suggest that in expiation Radio 4 should broadcast a whole programme on Lester Young entitled ‘Lester Leaps In – At Last.’
Fat chance.
JD adds: The great irony of this repeated misattribution of the tenor playing on Blue and Sentimental to Pres is that he and Herschel Evans were great rivals and competitors when they sat alongside each other in the sax section of the Basie band. Indeed, they were considered to represent polar opposites in tenor playing: Pres with his light, airy almost delicate sound, and Evans with a big, heavy, ‘muscular’ tone. Billie Holiday described the relationship between the two, thus: “Pres and Herschel Evans were forever thinking up ways of cutting the other one. You’d find them in the band room hacking away at reeds, trying out all kinds of new ones, anything to get ahead of the other one. Once Herschel asked Lester, ‘Why don’t you play alto man? You got an alto tone.’ Lester tapped his head, ‘There’s things going on up there, man,’ he told Herschel. ‘Some of you guys are all belly.’”
Compare and contrast Herschel’s playing on Blue and Sentimental (above, recorded 1938) with Pres playing Ghost of a Chance (below, recorded 1944):
A woman worth remembering
Nina Simone, of course:
It’s a new dawn
It’s a new day
It’s a new life
For me
And I’m feeling good
I’m feeling good
I feel so good
I feel so good
Something about Lee Wiley
After a long search, I’ve just obtained a deleted CD by my favourite singer, the now nearly forgotten Lee Wiley. It originally appeared in the mid fifties as a 10″ album called Lee Wiley Sings Rogers and Hart and the CD includes an added bonus: the original sleeve notes by George Frazier (no, not the boxer, but one of the finest jazz writers ever). As one of our missions is to bring you great writing from perhaps unexpected sources, I thought I’d reproduce the notes here. The Youtube clip, by the way, is of Lee singing Rogers and Hart’s Glad To Be Unhappy, but from an earlier (1940) recording, with Max Kaminsky (trumpet), Joe Bushkin (piano) and Bud Freeman (tenor sax) in the band:
George Frazier wrote:
Lee Wiley is one of the best vocalists who ever lived, with a magical empathy for fine old show tunes and good jazz. Indeed, I know of no one who sings certain songs quite so meaningfully, so wistfully. She is, however, an artistic snob and, consequently, simply awful when (as is blessedly rare) somebody persuades her to experiment with mediocre material. When she doesn’t get a lyric’s message, you might as well call the game because of wet grounds. But given a number worthy of her endowments — well, she is miraculous, as, in fact, she is here.
This is a portfolio of songs by Rogers and Hart — not Rogers and that other fellow (who would be Oscar Hammerstein II, who, no disrespect intended, no Larry Hart, he). These are haunting songs — songs that have withstood the ravaging headlong rush of the years, the fickleness of public taste, and the debasement of the lyric to the nadir where we are subjected to, forgive the expression, Be My Life’s Companion. But whatta hell, whatta hell. The gratifying thing is that Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart (who, although dead and buried these many years, is more artistically alive than the no-talent author of Be My Life’s Companion) turned out some lovely, lovely stuff and that Lee Wiley has a superb affinity for it. To my mind, indeed, she is the definitive interpreter of Rogers and Hart.
I do not in the least mind admitting that it gets me livid when most girl singers make it big, for it is my dour conviction that, by and large, they have plenty of nothing. Lee Wiley, however, is an artist. About the vast art of Miss Wiley there is a sophistication that is both eloquent and enduring and utterly uncontrived. Technically, she may leave something to be desired, but artistically she’s simply magnificent, projecting emotion with dignity and warmth, expressing nuances with exquisite delicacy, and always making you share her bliss or heartbreak. She came to New York from Ft. Gibson, Oklahoma, and before long all the right people were bewitched by her incomparable magic. There is no room here to catalogue all the individuals — that is, the prominent ones — who are Wiley devotees, but right offhand I can think of Bing Crosby, Dorothy Kilgallen, Ted Straeter, Victor Young, Louis Armstrong, and Marlene Dietrich. It is my feeling that they, along with a great many other people, will be grateful for this anthology. To my way of thinking, no better Rogers and Hart collection is available. Since de gustibus and so forth, I should probably mention at this point that I rather wish Miss Wiley had substituted, say, The Lady Is A Tramp or the rarely-heard Imagine for Give It Back To The Indians, but this is carping and, in any event, you cannot really fault Indians. As for my enthusiasms, the rendition of Glad To Be Unhappy is marvellous — a great love song interpreted in all its dark splendour. It is all the love affairs ended, all the marriages put asunder, from the beginning of years. It is Fitzgerald’s rich boy walking into the Plaza that stifling Saturday afternoon and suddenly coming upon his girl of once upon a vanished time, married now and big with imminent child. It is an ineffably haunting song, robust yet gentle, and this is its finest reading. It explains, I think, why Miss Wiley is an unqualified enthusiasm with such not-easily-impressed critics as, for instance, Roger Whitaker of the New Yorker, George Avakian of Columbia Records, and Jack O’Brien of the New York Journal-American.
And here, along with Glad To Be Unhappy, are such other small (and maybe not so small) miracles as My Heart Stood Still, Funny Valentine, It Never Entered My Mind and Mountain Greenery, all of them redolent of the suspenseful moments when the house lights lowered and the curtain went up on another show by Rogers and Hart. These are literate tunes, civilised tunes. Where, if you will, is there a more nearly perfect lyric than in It Never Entered My Mind? To me, it seems the greatest lyric ever written, but until I heard Miss Wiley do it, I never realized that it is the greatest by a prodigious margin.
Right about this point, I suppose, there should be the department of how-about-a-great-big-hand-for-the-boys-in-the-band. As it happens, this is a fine little ensemble, providing an accompaniment that is cohesive, rhythmic and gratifyingly unobtrusive. Its members are all, as Professor Kitteridge used to say of Sam Johnson, good men and four-squares. I would, however, like to put in an extra word or two about the stylish young trumpet player. His name is Ruby Braff and, to my ears, he sounds rather in apostolic succession to the late Bunny Berigan, who, coincidentally enough, accompanied Miss Wiley when she recorded a Gershwin anthology a decade or so ago.
Indeed, if I have any objection to this portfolio, it is that it will doubtless assail me with bittersweet memories — with the stabbing remembrance of the tall, breathtakingly lovely Wellesley girl with whom I was so desperately in love in the long-departed November when the band at the Copley Plaza in Boston used to play My Heart Stood Still as couples tea-danced after football games on crisp Saturday afternoons, with reawakened desire for the succession of exquisite girls with whom I spent many a crepuscular hour listening to cocktail pianists give muted voice to Funny Valentine, of the first time I saw Connecticut Yankee, of — Yes, of the first years of my marriage and listening to Lee Wiley late at night. My wife, who knew more about show tunes than any woman has a right to know, had a special affection for You Took Advantage Of Me and she always sang it when her spirits were high. Afterwards, when she had long ceased to sing it, when a judge had severed that which no man is supposed to put asunder, I lived for more than a year with a girl who I had hoped would make me forget. She was not witty or talented or, for that matter, particularly pretty. But she was very, very sweet and she tried very, very hard, even pretending to appreciate the Wiley records that I used to play over and over again as I clutched at the past and, for a little while indeed, it would actually seem to be kind of wonderful, with the mournful, wailing tugs in the river below and in the distance the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge stretched like a giant necklace as we sat there listening to the songs of heartbreak. There were even moments when I rather fancied myself falling in love again. But always such moments fled, because when Miss Wiley sings, there is nothing affected. So I would sit there and hurt more and more with the remembrance of other, never to be recaptured nights in the same room. Lee Wiley can do that to you — damn her! But damn her gently, because she is, after all, the best we have — the very best.
NB: ”She drank like a fish, cussed like a sailor, could treat musicians abusively, and had no qualms about stealing married men – including the star trumpeter and bandleader Bunny Berigan, with whom she recorded. ‘They had a pretty torrid affair,’ says Dan Morgenstern, the celebrated jazz historian. ’Bunny’s wife hated her.’ But Wiley got away with a lot, for she was a dish, with smoldering sex appeal and dark hair that tumbled past her shoulders.”: from a rather more critical take on Ms Wiley, here.
Derek Watkins – trumpet hero
An unsung hero of British music has died:
Derek Watkins, the British trumpet player who played on every James Bond film soundtrack from Dr No to Skyfall, has died aged 68.
He died at home in Esher, Surrey, on Friday after a lengthy illness – Philip Biggs, editor of the Brass Herald said.
Watkins was “widely considered to be the foremost British Big Band trumpet player” of all time, said Mr Biggs.
The trumpeter, who turned professional aged 17, is survived by his wife Wendy and their three children.
He was born into a brass band family and was taught to play the cornet at the age of four by his father.
Watkins then played in the band his father conducted – the Spring Gardens Brass Band in Reading – of which his grandfather was also conductor and a founder member.
He honed his skills as a both a “reader” and an “improviser” with his father’s dance band before turning professional.
Watkins was described as “Mr Lead” by Dizzy Gillespie; as well as the Bond films he played with the Beatles, Elton John, Eric Clapton, Frank Sinatra, the London Symphony Orchestra and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra during his lengthy career.
He also played with the BBC Big Band and worked for band leaders Johnny Dankworth, Maynard Ferguson and Benny Goodman, all of whom who recognised his underrated jazz ability.
Mr Biggs described his friend as “a people’s person – no side, no ego, a fun loving musician who couldn’t get enough of life, who loved his family”.
[Adapted from the BBC Entertainment & Arts website]
Recommended listening: ‘Warren Vaché meets Derek Watkins with the Brian Lemon Quartet, Stardust’, Zephyr CD ZECD9 (1996) – ignore the unenthusiastic review, here.
Details here of Derek’s Sarcoma charity – buy the t-shirt!
Hopalong Hobsbawm
Above: the final scene of the greatest Western of them all
I’ve always had great respect for the late Eric Hobsbawm as a historian, but less for his politics. I’ve warmed to the old Stalinist/Euro, though, having read that his last book, ‘Fractured Times: Culture and Society in the Twentieth Century’ deals with (amongst other things), cowboys and the Western in literature, mythology and film. Here’s a little taste:
It is clear that many white protagonists of the original wild west epic are in some sense misfits in, or refugees from, “civilisation”, but that is not, I think, the main essence of their situation. Basically they are of two types: explorers or visitors seeking something that cannot be found elsewhere – and money is the very last thing they seek; and men who have established a symbiosis with nature, as it exists in its human and non-human shape, in these wilds.
In terms of literary pedigree, the invented cowboy was a late romantic creation. But in terms of social content, he had a double function: he represented the ideal of individualist freedom pushed into a sort of inescapable jail by the closing of the frontier and the coming of the big corporations. As a reviewer said of Frederic Remington’s articles, illustrated by himself in 1895, the cowboy roamed “where the American may still revel in the great red-shirted freedom which has been pushed so far to the mountain wall that it threatens soon to expire somewhere near the top”. In hindsight, the west could seem thus, as it seemed to that sentimentalist and first great star of movie westerns William S Hart, for whom the cattle and mining frontier “to this country … means the very essence of national life … It is but a generation or so since virtually all this country was frontier. Consequently its spirit is bound up in American citizenship.” As a quantitative statement this is absurd, but its significance is symbolic. And the invented tradition of the west is entirely symbolic, inasmuch as it generalises the experience of a comparative handful of marginal people. Who, after all, cares that the total number of deaths by gunshot in all the major cattle towns put together between 1870 and 1885 – in Wichita plus Abilene plus Dodge City plus Ellsworth – was 45, or an average of 1.5 per cattle-trading season, or that local western newspapers were not filled with stories about bar-room fights, but about property values and business opportunities?
John Wayne in The Searchers. Photograph: AP Photo/Warner Bros
But the cowboy also represented a more dangerous ideal: the defence of the native Waspish American ways against the millions of encroaching immigrants from lower races. Hence the quiet dropping of the Mexican, Indian and black elements, which still appear in the original non-ideological westerns – for instance, Buffalo Bill’s show. It is at this stage and in this manner that the cowboy becomes the lanky, tall Aryan. In other words, the invented cowboy tradition is part of the rise of both segregation and anti-immigrant racism; this is a dangerous heritage. The Aryan cowboy is not, of course, entirely mythical. Probably the percentage of Mexicans, Indians and black people did diminish as the wild west ceased to be essentially a south-western, even a Texan, phenomenon, and at the peak of the boom it extended into areas like Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas. In the later periods of the cattle boom the cowboys were also joined by a fair number of European dudes, mainly Englishmen, with eastern-bred college-men following them.
Read the rest (courtesy the Graun) here.
I trust that in this last book, Hobsbawm has also written more about his love of jazz.
Louis Armstrong’s greetings to the Irish
On St Patrick’s Day, we bring you perhaps the most bizarre lyric ever sung by Louis Armstrong: “I was born in Ireland (Ha, Ha)”…
Louis Armstrong And His Hot Five, November 1926: Irish Black Bottom
Louis’s tireless biographer Ricky Riccardi writes:
Admittedly, this is not songwriting as its finest but as a novelty, it’s good fun. The “black bottom” was a popular dance of the 1920s so this tune humorously pretends that it’s also taken Ireland by storm. If Louis had to record something so silly in the 1950s, critics would scream at the producers for forcing it on him. But “Irish Black Bottom” was written by the aforementioned Percy Venable so more than likely, it was a staple of Louis’s act at the Sunset. And can’t you imagine Louis bringing down the house with that vocal? That “ha, ha” he gives after singing “And I was born in Ireland,” breaks me up every time. I can only imagine what it did to the audiences who heard him do it live.
The song begins with the funny sound of Louis and his Hot Five swinging through a sample of the Irish classic “Where the River Shannon Flows” before Louis swings out with the main melody, which is predominantly in a minor mode until the end. Louis’s lead sounds great and Dodds is bouncing around as usual but trombonist Hy Clark, a substitute for Kid Ory, sounds hesitant and doesn’t add much. After a chorus and an interlude by pianist Lil Armstrong, Louis takes the vocal. If you can’t make it out, here’s what he says:
All you heard for years in Ireland,
was the “Wearin’ Of The Green”,
but the biggest change that’s come in Ireland
I have ever seen.
All the laddies and the cooies
laid aside their Irish reels,
and I was born in Ireland
(Ha, Ha), so imagine how I feels.
Now Ireland’s gone Black Bottom crazy,
see them dance,
you ought to see them dance.
Folks supposed to be related, even dance,
I mean they dance.
They play that strain,
works right on their brain.
Now it goes Black Bottom,
a new rhythm’s drivin’ the folks insane.
I hand you no Blarney, when I say
that song really goes,
and they put it over with a wow,
I mean now.
All over Ireland
you can see the people dancin’ it,
’cause Ireland’s gone Black Bottom crazy now
I don’t know how you can’t get swept up in that offering. Armstrong doesn’t so much sing it as shout it, or talk it, but his spirit sure gets the message across (though sometimes, he’s so far from the written melody, it sounds like he’s singing a different song on top of Lil’s chording on the piano). After the vocal, Clark and Dodds take forgettable short solos and breaks before Louis carries the troops home with brio. Louis’s lip trill towards the end is particularly violent and right before his closing breaks, he dips into his bag for a favorite phrases, one that ended both “You’re Next” and “Big Fat Ma and Skinny Pa.” The concluding break is so perfect in its phrasing and choice of notes that I believe it might have already been set in stone by Pops during his live performances of the tune at the Sunset. Either way, that’s no reason to criticize him; it’s a perfect ending and puts an emphatic stamp on a very entertaining record.
That’s all for now. Have a happy St. Patrick’s day and don’t forget to mix in a little Louis with your Guiness. I hand you no blarney, it’s a great combination…
Kenny Ball RIP
Above: the band in 1969 on the Morecambe and Wise Show. Personnel included Andy Cooper on clarinet, John Bennett on trombone, Paddy Lightfoot on banjo and Ron Bowden on Drums.
By Clare Teal (reblogged from here)
RIP KENNY BALL 22/05/30 – 07/03/13
Last May I had the pleasure of spending an afternoon in the company of a British jazz trumpeter and band leader of over 54 years. I was a little nervous to be interviewing jazz royalty, but the don of dixieland immediately put me at ease, it was a sunny day but like most studios ours was windowless and quite dark, 82 year old Kenny Ball turned up suited and booted wearing big dark sunglasses, “Sorry for the shades, I’ve got terrible hay fever.” Someone asked if he’d like a glass of water, “No thanks but a coffee and a large brandy wouldn’t go amiss.” It was 2 o’clock in the afternoon. Never one to let a soul drink alone, the producer found me a bottle of cider and we started the interview with a toast.
Kenny Ball was born in Ilford in 1930. He joined the sea cadets as a boy and was given a 5 note bugle. In 1943 clutching the £10 his father had given him, he travelled across London to buy the trumpet he’d seen advertised in Melody Maker, according to Kenny at that time spare metal was collected as part of the war effort, so brass instruments were hard to come by. On arrival the chap selling said trumpet, told the youngster, “You’d better come in – there’s been an accident. I was having one last blow last night and the missis got so fed up with the noise, she hit me over the head with it.” Kenny left some time later with a bent trumpet and £2 change. He straightened it out against a tree and got to work.
He started his career as a sideman in the bands of Charlie Galbraith, Sid Phillips, Eric Delaney and Terry Lightfoot before forming his own band in 1958. Fourteen hit singles followed including ‘Samantha’ and the million selling ‘Midnight In Moscow,’ the gold disc was presented to him by none other than Louis Armstrong who called him a genius.
Kenny and the boys featured in every BBC Morecambe and Wise TV series and were the resident band on ‘Saturday Night At The Mill,’ sadly, though wonderfully entertaining, many of Kenny’s stories from this period are unprintable…
The band hasn’t stopped working since 1958, they’ve toured the world many times over delighting and inspiring musicians and music lovers everywhere.
Sadly Kenny passed away this morning aged 82. He was a much loved figurehead of the British Jazz industry and will be sorely missed. Let us remember his fantastic contribution to live music. Thanks for the great times Kenny and of course the wonderful music x
Hoagy’s ‘I Get Along Without You Very Well’
On 13th or 14th February each year I invariably post a yoube clip of a love song – all too often ‘My Funny Valentine.’
Well, here’s a different love song: ‘I Get Along Without You Very Well,’ an almost agonisingly poignant number (the lyrics partly contradict the true meaning of the song), described on Wikipedia thus:
“I Get Along Without You Very Well” is a popular song composed by Hoagy Carmichael in 1939, with lyrics based on a poem written by Jane Brown Thompson. Thompson’s identity as the author of the poem was for many years unknown; she died the night before the song was introduced on radio by Dick Powell
It was performed last November at the Whitley Bay Classic Jazz Party by the great young US singer Cecile McLorin Salvant, whose performance was captured on video by Michael Steinman of the Jazz Lives blog. Tom “Spats” Langham on guitar, Martin Litton on piano:
I get along without you very well
Of course, I do
Except when soft rains fall
And drip from leaves
Then I recall
The thrill of being sheltered in your arms
Of course, I do
But I get along without you very well
I’ve forgotten you just like I should
Of course, I have
Except to hear your name
Or someone’s laugh that is the same
But I’ve forgotten you just like I should
What a guy
What a fool am I
To think my breaking heart
Could kid the moon
What’s in store
Should I phone once more
No, it’s best that I stick to my tune
I get along without you very well
Of course, I do
Except perhaps in Spring
But I should never think of Spring
For that would surely break my heart in two
What’s in store
Should I phone once more
No, it’s best that I stick to my tune
I get along without you very well
Of course, I do
Except perhaps in Spring
But I should never think of Spring
For that would surely break my heart in two
P.S:
There’s an additional reason for posting that particular clip: very bad news about Mike Durham, the great guy who organises the Whitley Bay event …
Duke Ellington in London, 1933
Tonight’s opening episode (9pm, BBC 2) of Stephen Poliakoff’s Dancing On The Edge promises to usher in a great series, with a cast including John Goodman, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Jacqueline Bissett. Apparently, it’s about the tribulations of a black jazz band feted by the upper class in 1933 London and very loosely “inspired” by what happened to the Duke Ellington band when they visited Britain that year.
Here’s what the Duke himself (always rather impressed by royalty and the the British upper classes) wrote about that visit in his book Music is My Mistress (published in the UK in 1974):
We were absolutely amazed at how well informed people were in Britain about us and our records. They had magazines and reviews far ahead of what we had here and everywhere we went we were confronted with facts we had forgotten and questions we couldn’t always answer. Nevertheless, the esteem our music was held in was very gratifying. A broadcast we did for the BBC provoked a lot of comment, most of it favourable. Constant Lambert, the most distinguished British composer of that period, had written an appeciation of our early records years before.
Lord Beaverbrook, who owned one of the most important London newspapers, threw a big party to which the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Kent were invited. We were invited too and Jack Hylton’s Empress Club band played until we got through at the Palladium. It was all very colourful and splendid. Members of the nobility, Members of Parliament and delegates to the imperial conferences, all in informal dress, mingled happily. There was a generous buffet and the champagne flowed freely.
Prince George, the Duke of Kent, requested ‘Swampy River’, a piano solo I had a hard time remembering, but I was flattered, especially to have him leaning over the piano as I played it.
Later, the Prince of Wales had some kind words to say to us. When he suggested we had a drink together I was surprised to find he was drinking gin. I had always thought gin as rather a low kind of drink, but from that time on I decided it was rather grand. He liked to play drums, so he paid Sonny Greer a lot of attention, too. This is how Sonny remembers the evening:
‘As soon as we got the band set up, the Prince of Wales came over and sat down beside me Indian fashion. He said he knew how to play drums, so I said “Go ahead!” he played a simple Charleston beat, and he stayed right by me and the drums throughout most of the evening. People kept coming up and calling him “Your Highness” but he wouldn’t move. We both began to get high on whatever it was we were drinking. He was calling me “Sonny” and I was calling him “The Wale”.’
I think the Prince of Wales really did like us, because he came to hear us again at Liverpool, when he was up in that area for the races at Aintree. He was loved by the day people and the night people, rich and poor, the celebrities and the nonentities. He was truly the Billy Strayhorn of the Crown princes.
Here’s the band slightly earlier (1930, to be precise), playing ‘Old Man Blues’:
Incidentally, does anyone recognise the chord sequence?
