Key to the Highway
2017-04-26
Jazz
Chick
Webb and Ella Fitzgerald
Mose
Allison
Octobop
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With the annual KKUP Jazz Marathon beginning in two
days, it gives me another excuse to indulge a little farther away from my Blues
roots, although this year I have been incorporating more Jazz into my
airings. But today it is all Jazz, with the
largest share going to Chick Webb and his orchestra and, since Ella Fitzgerald
graces this year’s commemorative tee shirt and Chick was the one who presented
the thirteen year old Ella to the world, her vocals will be heard on the bulk
of that half of our show.
Pianist Mose Allison kinda straddles the fence between
Jazz and the Blues. Guess which side we
will be taking today’s portion from. We’ll
get into his Blues side in a future show when I will be giving you his
biography. Suffice it to say that many
thought this white man was black, read authentic, making it possible to write a
song titled Ever Since I Stole the Blues.
If the name Octobop doesn’t jump out at you, it is
because it is the South Bay Jazz group with whom Bill Hazzard played vibes. You may remember Bill’s KKUP The Hazzard Zone
which was firmly entrenched in the five to eight PM time slot when I began my
show in 1990. I don’t recall exactly how
long I preceded Bill but it had to be at least twenty years, then the Razzberry
took over the time slot. One of my fond
memories is, one year when I decided to drop Christmas cards in people’s mail
slots at the station, Bill appreciated my humor in referring to him as my
longest follower.
I am very fortunate to have the Razzberry after me because
he will allow me to run a bit into his show.
Bill was not like that; if it ran more than about ten seconds into his
show he would cut it off …. until I ended the show with a couple of Octobop
tunes. I found humor in that and so I
decided last year to wind up my pre-Jazz marathon shows with a short set of
Octobop. Bill turned me on to three
albums he played on so we’ll see if my memory lapses before I run out of music.
Sources vary on the year that Chick Webb was born, somewhere in the span between 1902 and 1909
(for our purposes we will use 1909 as our reference date), but all sources
agree he celebrated his birthday on February 10th. What is not in doubt is that Chick was among
the top, if not the very peak, of drummers of his time. Buddy Rich: “He represented true
hipness. His playing was original,
different, completely his own.” And Gene
Krupa: “I found direction when I first heard Chick. He changed everything around me not long
after I first came to New York.
Why? He thought in an original
way and knew exactly what to do particularly in a big band. He had style.
But there was so much beyond style.
Chick had drive and ingenuity and magnetism that drew drummers by the dozens
to where he was working. All of us in
that ‘learnin’ groove’ in the 1930s were enlightened by him.”
Webb had to overcome more hurdles than the normal
black musicians. Very early on, several
of his vertebrae were smashed when he was dropped on his back, allowing him to
reach only four feet in height, and ultimately contracted tuberculosis of the
spine. A 1939 Downbeat article described
him as “deformed, dwarfish and delicate”.
He was always in pain but found an outlet in percussion. Enticed by the drums of a marching band he
heard every week on his way to church, Chick could be found slapping out his
rhythms on doorsteps, garbage cans, pots and pans, just about anything he came
across that stayed still long enough.
Born William Webb in Baltimore, Chick was the youngest
of three children who were raised in his grandfather’s home after his mother
moved the family there. Because of his
diminutive size, he acquired the name Chick from his playmates and it stayed
throughout his short life. By the age of
nine, Webb had foregone schooling and was selling newspapers, which allowed him
to buy his first set of drums that he played relentlessly in his grandfather’s
front room.
In 1922, when he was presumably thirteen years old,
Webb became part of Brown and Terry’s Jazzola Boys, an early hot band around
Baltimore that played on Chesapeake Bay’s excursion boats, where he forged a
lifelong friendship with banjoist / guitarist John Trueheart. The two left the Jazzola Boys in 1924 to head
to New York City.
Now roommates in Harlem, the pair found work rather
quickly with Edgar Dowell’s band at the Palace Garden Café, but that didn’t
last long and Chick worked occasionally but was mostly unemployed. He did, however, make the Monday night jams
at Small’s Paradise Café as well as going down to the Band Box where musicians
hung out in hopes of setting up gigs.
Despite the small number of appearances, Chick did not
miss the scrutiny of some prominent players on the New York Jazz scene. When Duke Ellington was offered a residency
at the Black Bottom he could not accept because he had a commitment ar the
Kentucky Club in Manhattan, he convinced Chick to put together his own five
piece band for the gig. In addition to
Trueheart, Webb employed saxophonist Johnny Hodges, trumpeter Bobby Stark and
pianist Don Kirkpatrick for the five month run that ended in the summer of
1926. Ellington kept Chick working with
a gig at the Paddock Club, for which the band added tenor saxist Elmer Williams
and a trumpeter remembered only as Slats.
The job lasted almost ‘til the end of the year when the club was closed
due to fire damage
Chick Webb and his Harlem Stompers were not shut down
too long, as they began a residence at the Savoy Ballroom in January of
1927. It was during his tenure there
that they took part in a show that was dubbed the Battle of Jazz on Sunday, May
15th 1927, pitted against three of the top contemporary orchestras,
those of Fletcher Henderson, King Oliver, and Fess Williams. They must have held their own or the New York
Amsterdam News would not have proclaimed that it was “difficult to determine who
won this historic battle of music”.
Also while at the Savoy, the band went into Vocalion’s
studio on August 25th 1927 and laid down some tracks that never went
on the market. When his contract with
the ballroom expired, Chick took the band on a short tour. Upon returning, he requested management of
the Savoy to renew with a larger orchestra but the club declined. Webb was able to get some gigs at the Strand
Roof and Healy’s Balconnades, but the pickings were slim until he got a
residency at the Rose Danceland at the end of 1927.
Chick made an ill-conceived decision to go on a
vaudeville tour despite the Danceland offering more money to stay, but when the
tour turned out to be a disaster and Webb returned to New York he discovered
that the Danceland was so upset with the drop in business upon his departure
that they marked him permanently persona non grata. Unable to find gigs to keep working, his band
disintegrated. Ellington took Hodges,
Stark went to Henderson, Ward Pinkett signed on with Jelly Roll Morton and Benny Carter took half the
men to start his own band.
Chick was seldom able to find work, but he was now
quite resigned to being a bandleader, turning down offers to join both the
Ellington and the Henderson bands. He
took on more TOBA vaudeville tours which rarely turned a profit, but he had a
core of musicians who stuck with him through rehearsals just waiting for things
to get better. In June of 1929, the Webb
ensemble recorded two sides for Brunswick under the name The Jungle Band, a
reference to the style the Ellington band was currently popularizing, with the
titles Jungle Mama and Dog Bottom. In
July, Webb covered Ellington’s commitment at the Cotton Club while the Duke
went on tour.
Late in 1929, Chick signed on with Moe Gale’s
agency. In addition to becoming Webb’s
personal manager, Moe was the booker and part owner of the Savoy Ballroom. Gale got the band a booking at the
prestigious Roseland Ballroom which paid $1500 a month, a tidy sum at this time
in the Depression. In addition to
regularly playing Roseland over the next two years, the band was also heard
with some regularity at the Savoy.
An unusual turnover took place when saxophonist
Russell Procope and trombonist Benny Morton moved to Fletcher Henderson’s
orchestra while Benny Carter and Jimmy Harrison joined Webb at the end of March
1931. As reported in the New York Age,
“None of the musicians lost a day’s work and both principals are satisfied and
think their orchestra is strengthened by this unprecedented incident”. Not only did Carter play alto sax and clarinet
for the band, he also did the arrangements of the three songs they recorded on
March 30th for Brunswick.
These numbers kick off the Proper 4CD box, Stomping at the Savoy, but we
don’t get into it until a few years later when Ella Fitzgerald was singing with
the band.
The records had little commercial impact and in June
1931 Webb lost his gigs at Roseland.
Webb took on a booking at the Savoy Ballroom, with a substantial
reduction in pay, followed by a tour of one-nighters. When the band hit a two week dry spell in
August, Carter left to take over McKinney’s Cotton Pickers with half of Chick’s
orchestra joining him. Once again, Webb
had to break in a new batch of performers.
In August 1932, Chick was booked in at the Savoy. During this stay, the band took part in a
breakfast show with the orchestras of Cab Calloway and Fletcher Henderson which
set an attendance record of 4600. On
December 8th 1932, the band backed Louis Armstrong on an RCA-Victor
session which elevated the public’s awareness.
Early in 1933, Chick acquired a residency at the new
Dixie Ballroom which was the site of the old Rose Danceland. By August, Webb became a prime choice again
at the Savoy Ballroom now that the club had ridden the storm of financial hard
times and was able once again to employ the highest caliber groups. On December 20th 1933, Chick Webb’s
Savoy Orchestra was in the studio again, this time for Columbia. Another Columbia session was held on January
15th 1934, from which I Can’t Dance (I’ve Got Ants in my Pants)
climbed to #20 in the Hit Parade ratings.
Chick achieved the pinnacle of success with the May 18th
1934 recording of Stompin’ at the Savoy, becoming a big hit upon its release in
June 1934 and climbing to #10 on the Hit Parade. The song was written and arranged by Edgar
Sampson, who would create the mood for much of the Webb sound as its primary arranger. When Benny Goodman chose Sampson’s song and
arrangement for his big band in 1936 (and a few months later with his quartet),
it became one of the Swing era’s monster hits.
Chick’s final session with Columbia was on July 6th
1934. The label suffered a severe blow
from the depression, so Moe Gale signed the band onto the new Decca Recording
Company and, as one of the label’s earliest signees, was in their studio on
September 10th 1934, followed up about six weeks later on November
19th and producing another hit (#20) in Don’t Be That Way, another
Sampson number that Goodman took to even loftier heights with his larger fan
base when he put out his version in 1938.
Another Swing standard from that November date, again entirely Sampson’s
creation, was Blue Lou.
Webb was now on firm financial ground and was able to
move to better digs, buy a car and hire a chauffeur who made the cripple’s life
generally more bearable in many ways. A
1938 Down Beat article noted, “Now followed what is in a sense the most
interesting period of Chick’s career … Up until this time he had always had
astoundingly good bands about which there was certainly nothing commercial. He had a style, but it was a purely musical
style and not one which would be easily recognized by the general public. He had seen Fletcher Henderson and Duke
Ellington and Cab Calloway work out their futures and he observed the manner in
which business was conducted. He began
to understand that it was the finished product that mattered …”
At this point, when a singer was desired, it would be
either Charles Linton or trumpeter Taft Jordan, but now Chick was urged to find
a girl singer to bring in a larger mainstream following and Webb agreed. Finding the right girl was put on Linton as
he knew the club scene and his looks made him popular with the ladies. One of the chorus girls at the M & S
Theater made him aware of the seventeen year old winner of the Apollo Theater’s
November 21st 1934 amateur night.
The girl had also won the January 1935 Tuesday Amateur Night at the
Harlem Opera House but had no set address, so it took a few days for the chorus
girl to find her for Linton. Enter Ella
Fitzgerald.
Ella chose the number that earned her the Apollo award
to sing for Linton and he promptly took her to Webb. Despite her less than great looks, the
Fitzgerald voice was sufficient get a two week trial at the Savoy. With many other musicians regularly coming to
hear the band, Chick solicited their opinions.
Fletcher Henderson’s drummer Kaiser Marshall expressed it thoroughly: “You
damn fool – you better take her.” Ella’s
recording debut came on June 12th 1935 with two vocals among the
band’s four tune session.
Ella’s addition increased the vocal opportunities both
on stage and in studio for even the male singers in the band that had
previously devoted itself mostly to instrumental Jazz. The winter of 1935/1936 was spent at the
Savoy with the exception of a week at the Apollo Theater in November.
Our show today opens with a February 9th 1936
radio transcription of Webb’s version of the classic instrumental King Porter
Stomp before we get to hear the magnificent voice of Miss Fitzgerald. Crying My Heart Out for You comes from an
April 7th session as do Under the Spell of the Blues and When I Get
Low I Get High, but sandwiched in there is the earlier (October 12th
1935) instrumental, Facts and Figures. One
song that was the last to be cut from today’s show, Sing Me a Swing Song (and
Let Me Dance, recorded June 2nd) climbed to #18 one week in July
1936.
After that session, the band went on a 3+ month tour,
returning to New York and the Savoy Ballroom in October and the Decca studio on
the 29th of the month, and we present you (If You Can’t Sing It) You’ll
Have to Swing It and Swinging on the Reservation. We close the set with Clap Hands! Here Comes
Charley, an instrumental from a March 24th 1937 session.
Louis Jordan adds his alto sax as well as occasional vocals
to the ensemble, but his stay was cut short when Chick decided to drastically
cut his chances to sing, leading to Louis’ massively successful career with his
Tympani Five. Indeed, it was my wanting
to hear Jordan’s contributions to the band that led me to the purchase of the
Proper 4CD set, Stomping at the Savoy, from which all three sets of Webb material
are taken. With the exception of the
Little Chicks jams, Louis appears on all tracks laid down beginning with the
October 29th dates through the first tune of the final set, but not
included are any of his vocals. This is
Ella’s show.
Radio broadcasts brought the mass appeal Chick had
been seeking when Moe Gale convinced NBC to air nationwide Gale’s production,
Good Time Society, which presented the orchestra plus Linton and Fitzgerald
along with the occasional guests every Saturday. The show brought in 5,000 fan letters weekly. Ultimately, Chick would host a record eight
shows a week including three broadcast from the Savoy Ballroom.
In 1937, the Savoy hosted Battles of the Bands where
the Webb orchestra would take on significant competition and rarely lose. Three competitions of note were February 28th
being challenged by the Fletcher Henderson group, March 7th when
Chick lost out to Duke Ellington and his Orchestra, and especially May 11th
when the challenge from Benny Goodman brought in a Savoy record audience of
over 4,000 admissions while another 5,000 were turned away. Webb won that one, too! One of Chick’s trumpeters, Mario Bauza,
recalled, “It was a helluva night. Do you
know, Chick say, he tell everyone the night before, ne say, ‘Fellas, tomorrow
is my hour, anybody that miss notes don’t look for notice, don’t come back to
work!’ This was a big night. Everybody in Benny’s band, you know, they
were congratulating Chick, and Gene Krupa, Chick was like a father to Gene
Krupa.”
Perhaps Louis Jordan’s first vocal charting came on
his March 24th 1937 recording of Rusty Hinge for the Webb orchestra,
reaching #17 on the Hit Parade. The
session also brought out some standout drumming which can be heard on our first
set closer
Our second Webb set opens with a couple of
instrumentals (Sweet Sue, Just You and I Got Rhythm) by Chick Webb and his
Little Chicks, trimming the band down to five pieces with Chauncey Houghton’s
clarinet and Wayman Carver’s flute playing over the rhythm section of Webb,
bass player Beverly Peer and pianist Tommy Fulford. Then the brass is back (trumpeters Mario
Bauza, Bobby Stark and Taft Jordan, trombonists Sandy Williams and Nat Story,
tenor saxist Ted McRae, alto sax man Louis Jordan and guitarist Bobby Johnson; here,
Carver plays tenor sax as well as flute and Houghton plays both clarinet and
alto sax), joining the Little Chicks to make up the full orchestra for Holiday
in Harlem.
The band was on the road in December but returned
again to the Savoy in January 1938, having another notable face-off on the 16th
when they took on Count Basie and his band.
Earlier that evening, Benny Goodman performed at a special Carnegie Hall
Concert, so several Jazz luminaries were in the audience. Metronome gave Webb the victory while Down
Beat saw it as a win for Basie, but everyone agreed that Ella had outshone the
Count’s vocalist, Billie Holiday on this occasion.
In February, Chick moved on to Boston for a five week
gig at the Flamingo Room of Levaggi’s restaurant but the reception, much from
Harvard University students, was more than sufficient enough to extend the
contract until May 1938. As Down Beat
noted, “Business in what is one of the worst slumps Boston night life has ever
experienced is downright stupendous. Chick
himself is exciting as hell. Ella
Fitzgerald is fine, of course … Her
appeal to the public is an amazing thing.
Every time she sings she stops things cold, and if the patrons at
Levaggi’s are any indication, she’s far and away the most popular songstress in
the business today.” Toward the end of
the residency, Chick had to be hospitalized and had to be replaced on drums by
his friend Scrippy for two weeks in April.
Returning to our set two, May 2nd 1938 brought about
the recording of what would become Ella’s best-known tune, A-Tisket, A-Tasket,
the highest selling release of 1938 and among the highest of the decade. It held the #1 spot on the Hit Parade for ten
weeks beginning in April and not coming down until June, winding up with over a
million sales. We also hear a great
rendition of Duke Ellington’s instrumental, Azure, and I’m just a Jitterbug
from the same session before we close down with Harlem Congo, another
instrument that came from an earlier session back on November 1st
1937, the same date as the set opener although this number is a full orchestra
piece.
Our third and final set of Chick and Ella presentations
begins with a great drum tune recorded on May 3rd 1938, Liza (All
the Clouds Roll Away), followed by a couple of numbers from June 9th,
MacPherson is Rehearsin’ (to Swing) and Everybody Step. Between those two sessions, the band played a
week at The Apollo and a bunch of one nighters before returning to the Savoy
Ballroom. We also hear three tracks from
an August 17th and 18th session, Gotta Pebble in my Shoe,
I Can’t Stop Loving You and the instrumental Who Ya Hunchin’.
The band then went on a Mid-West tour including a two
night stay in Kansas City, the first night for a white audience and the second
for blacks, showing that Chick was a universally appreciated artist crossing
over into the Pop world. The gig in St.
Louis, guaranteed at $750, was so successful that after the split the band left
with an amazing $1600. Back in New York
in September, the band surpassed a five year record for the huge “whites only”
Paramount Theater as the third black band to appear, preceded by only Louis
Armstrong and Cab Calloway. That same
month, Chick’s manager Moe Gale had to turn down an offer to appear in a Dick
Powell movie because the band was all booked up. In December, the band was the first black act
to appear at the Coconut Grove in the Park Central Hotel since Noble Sissle a
number of years earlier.
Continuing on with our closing set, we hear a
transcription made for NBC on January 9th 1939, the instrumental By
Heck. The orchestra followed their
Coconut Grove residency with another tour, but Chick’s health was so bad that
he had to frequently rest backstage due to his contracting tuberculosis of the
spine.
We moved February 17th 1939’s In the Groove
at the Grove up to the fourth song of the set while, from the same date, we
also hear Undecided and ‘Tain’t What You Do (It’s the Way That Cha Do It). Chick’s final Decca date was on April 29th
1939, after which he entered Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins Hospital to take care of
the fluid in his back. The band kept
working with Jesse Price, Sid Catlett or Bill Beason behind the drum kit. Our closing number, Breakin’ ‘em Down, comes
from a May 4th broadcast taken from Boston’s Southland Café as the
band took up residency after Louis Armstrong moved on.
Following the Southland gig, the b and had to continue
its tour with Bill Beason filling in due to Chick’s return to Johns Hopkins on
June 9th, where Chick would die in his mother’s arms on June 16th
1939 at the age of 32.
This
essay deals mostly with Chick Webb, but almost all of his music presented today
features the vocal talent of Ella Fitzgerald, who graces this year’s KKUP Jazz
marathon tee shirt. enjoy
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Since it is still relatively new, I thought I’d
mention that KKUP is now streaming on the internet and, while it is still in a
developing stage, we have been putting out the word. I’m not all of that good with high-tech
stuff, but it seems pretty easy to access.
If you go to our website at KKUP.org you will see on the home page a
strip of options immediately above the pictures of the musicians the next to
the last option being LISTEN ONLINE. By
clicking this, it brings up a choice of desktop or mobile. I can only speak for the desktop but after
maybe a minute I was receiving a crystal clear feed. As already mentioned, this is still a work in
progress and we are currently limited to a finite number of listeners at any
one time. I mention this so you will be
aware to turn off the application when you are not actually listening. (I put the player in my favorites bar for the
easiest of access.) Now we can reach our
listeners in Los Gatos and Palo Alto, even my family in Canada. Let your friends elsewhere know they can now
listen to your favorite station, and while they have the home page open they
can check out our schedule.
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King Poretr Stomp
Crying My Heart Out for You
Facts and Figures
Under the Spell of the Blues
When I Get Low I Get High
(If You Can’t Sing It) You’ll Have to Swing It
Swingin’ on the Reservation
Clap Hands! Here Comes Charley
Chick Webb with Ella Fitzgerald 25mins
Ask Me Nice
Back on the Corner
Swingin’ Machine
Stop this World
I’m the Wild Man
You Can Count on me to Do My Part
If You’re Goin’ to the City
Everybody Cryin’ Mercy
Feel So Good
Your Molecular Structure
Wild Man on the Loose
Mose Allison 27mins
Sweet Sue, Just You
I Got Rhythm
Holiday in Harlem
A-Tisket, A-Tasket
Azure
I’m Just a Jitterbug
Harlem Congo
Chick Webb with Ella Fitzgerald 27mins
I Don’t Want Much
Western Man
The Tennessee Waltz
Ever Since the World Ended
Top Forty
Josephine
You Call it Joggin’
Gettin’ There
The Getting’ Paid Waltz
Big Brother
Mose Allison 37mins
Liza (All the Clouds’ll Roll Away)
MacPherson is rehearsin’ (to Swing)
Everybody Step
In the Groove at the Grove
Gotta Pebble in my Shoe
I Can’t Stop Lovin’ You
Who Ya Hunchin’?
By Heck
Undecided
‘Tain’t What You Do (It’s the Way That Cha Do It)
Breakin’ ‘em Down
Chick Webb with Ella Fitzgerald 34mins
Westwood Walk
Playboy Theme
Broadway
Octobop
13mins
