NRR Project: Duke Ellington: 'Never No More Lament: The Blanton-Webster Band' (1940-1942)

 

NRR Project: “Never No More Lament: The Blanton-Webster Band”

Music by Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, Mercer Ellington and others

Performed by Duke Ellington and his Orchestra

Recorded 1940-1942

225 min.

I have been listening to this Duke Ellington material for a week, and I am a better man for it.

Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington (1899-1974) was, quite simply America’s greatest jazz composer. He led bands of varying composition throughout his career. He is distinguished for the marvelous complexity of his musical statements, which absolutely burst the bounds of the genre. Nobody could communicate more original ideas than he (and his fellow composer/arrangers and musical contributors Billy Strayhorn and Mercer Ellington).

Ellington could hear the complete range of what a jazz ensemble could convey. The sounds issued from his mind with ease into the scores, the rehearsals, the frequent performances on tour. For Ellington tested the merit of his tunes and arrangements night after night in front of paying crowds. He had a living feedback system that he used to hone his work. He was peddling popular music -- much like Mozart!

As a composer/performer/bandleader (he started as an acclaimed pianist), he could select his musicians carefully and with an ear for their particular strengths to which he could then write. He was like a painter with a box of living brushes. The collaboration is heavenly.

The control and precision of his group is legendary. The time period covered in the selection, recorded between 1940 and 1942, feature bassist Jimmy Blanton and tenor saxophonist Ben Webster. (Blanton bowed out due to a terminal case of tuberculosis at age 23, in 1941.) The rest of the ensemble are all-stars: there is Barney Bigard, Cootie Williams, Ray Nance, Juan Tizol. Ellington had these brilliant talents at his disposal, and he used them with verve and distinction.

Each number here is solidly within the jazz tradition. It is devastatingly tasteful. It is classic. It is ostensibly danceable, but I can’t but see a dance floor stilled to listening to it, such are its pleasures. It conveys wild bliss (“Jump for Joy”) and deep sorrow (“Rocks in My Bed”). It contains many of his classic works, such as “Take the A Train,“ “Jack the Bear,” “Concerto for Cootie,” “C Jam Blues,” “Ko Ko,” and “Cotton Tail,” but every cut is extraordinary.

Due to the limitations of 78 rpm records, each composition could be no longer than three minutes long. In that time, Ellington has to state a theme, propose variations, open up passages for improvisation, and reach a conclusion. And he does, every time, in a variety of ways but always of himself. Every song is a little universe of its own, ticking along with perfect timing.

There are gems everywhere, “All Too Soon” and “Harlem Airshaft,” “Five O’Clock Whistle” and "I Don’t Know What Kind of Blues I Got.” It pays to plow through these 66 recordings (there are extra takes of some of the numbers here as well) over and over again. Although many of his songs bear lyrics, they are at best pure music – the evocation of humanity’s thoughts and feelings at a time when great music and popular music intersected.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: the Budapest Quartet performs the Beethoven String Quartets (1940-1950).

NRR Project: 'Selections from George Gershwin’s Folk Opera Porgy and Bess' (1940, 1942)

 

NRR Project: “Selections from George Gershwin’s Folk Opera Porgy and Bess”

Music by George Gershwin; book, DuBose Heyward; lyricist Ira Gershwin

Performed by Todd Duncan, Anne Brown, et al; Decca Symphony Orchestra

Recorded 1940; 1942

This recording has a lengthy and convoluted evolution.

First of all, nobody really liked the original production in 1935; it didn’t last that long in its run (124 performances). Four days after it opened, George Gershwin supervised a recording of it in Manhattan; however, he booked two white singers – the great tenor Lawrence Tibbett and soprano Helen Jepson, instead of using the show’s original stars, Todd Duncan and Anne Brown! Why, Lord? The social climate must have still dictated that Caucasian singers were the only ones to properly interpret music. This kind of thinking would return in the 1950s, as record labels would take Black hits and re-record them with white groups to make them "acceptable."

A 1938 run of the show on the West Coast finally made the work popular. At that time, a few highlights from the production were put on record by Decca. Then, a 1942 Broadway revival caught fire and Decca decided to record many more passages from the show, and to release the 1940 material (featuring originals Duncan and Brown) and the cast of the subsequent recording session, using the 1942 personnel. Pieced together, it gives us 14 tracks in running order.

So it is not strictly speaking an original cast album, but it got the closest before the 1943 recording of Oklahoma!, which spawned the genre. (Oddly, Duncan sings Sportin’ Life’s “It Ain’t Necessarily So” here.)

Porgy and Bess is problematic in that it’s a show written by white people about Black life. DuBose Heyward, a white man, wrote the novel Porgy in 1925, and he worked with the Gershwins on the theatrical adaptation. The setting is “atmospheric;” the poor quarters of Catfish Row, Charlestown, South Carolina serve as a kind of sociological backdrop to the material. The dialogue is in “Black” dialect. It has been derided for simplifying Black behavior, of a kind of anthropological condescension.

Despite this, the opera works because of its intense emotional power. It’s a classic story of thwarted love, a universal experience. It contains some of the most memorable songs in the catalog: not just “Summertime” but “Bess, You Is My Woman Now,” “I Got Plenty O Nuttin,” and “It Ain’t Necessarily So” but also with the wrenching “My Man’s Gone Now,” “I Loves You Porgy” and the compelling hurricane scene.

Porgy is a disabled beggar, kind-hearted and noble. Bess is a young woman, the girl of a brute named Crown. Crown murders a man and escapes; Porgy takes Bess in. In the wings, Sportin’ Life, the local dope peddler, emerges and puts the moves on Bess himself.

Eventually, Porgy murders Crown, and is hauled away as a witness to the crime. Sportin’ Life lures Bess to go to New York. Porgy returns from jail to find Bess gone. He vows to follow her and win her back.

Simple. It’s a great story. It goes from one marvelous tune to another; it contains two of the most passionate duets in operatic literature. It makes you curse the gods that Gershwin died so young, at age 38 in 1937. What more might he have done? Ira Gershwin continued as a lyricist with other composers, but this was his crowning achievement.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: Duke Ellington’s Blanton-Webster era recordings (1940-1942).

 

NRR Project: Jimmie Davis sings 'You Are My Sunshine' (1940)

 

NRR Project: “You Are My Sunshine”

Music and lyrics by: disputed

Performed by Jimmie Davis with Charles Mitchell’s Orchestra

Recorded 1940

2:40

I must point you to Ronnie Pugh’s essay on this song at theNational Recording Registry. It is excellent!

Jimmie Davis (1899-2000) was an aspiring performer and an aspiring politician as well. Born and raised in Louisiana, he made his name in the early 1930s with songs such as “Nobody’s Darling But Mine” and “It Makes No Difference Now.” He parlayed his singing notoriety into two non-consecutive terms as Louisiana’s governor.

He heard the song “You Are My Sunshine” when its purported creator, Paul Rice, played it for him in 1939. Rice sold the song to Davis and Charles Mitchell for $35 – he needed the money for his wife’s hospital bill. (It was routine at the time for performers to buy songs from songwriters and take over the copyright themselves.)

The song is plaintive, and the lyrics are sad. However, the chorus is, pardon the expression, sunny. The song has been planted in our consciousness so strongly that it is difficult to remember that it is a classic country song. It has been recorded by more than 350 artists and has been translated into 30 languages.

I used to sing this little ditty to my children at bedtime – and so it passes on to the next generation.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: the ‘original’ cast album of ‘Porgy and Bess.’