Of the many stimulating, informal small-group, cross-generation recorded meetings that Alfred Lion and Francis Wolf engineered for their young Blue Note label in the late 1930's and early '40's, the two sessions brought together here, both under the leadership of veteran New Orleans clarinetist Edmond Hall, occupy special. places in the hearts and memories of jazz collectors, Both of these sets of recordings were remarkably successful, invigorating examples of what has come to be called "chamber jazz," although in those less pretentious times the term "jam session" would have seemed adequate enough a description of the kind of easy, unforced, wholly spontaneous playing that marks these nine performances as classics. And, be assured, they are classics. They were so considered at the time they were originally issued (1941 and 1944) and the passing years have only added to their luster. The joyous, buoyant playing of these two groups of jazzmen sounds as fresh, ingratiating and timeless as it did then, Ars longa, you know.
And what makes them classics is not their format, instrumentation, ensemble color or texture, nor the ingeniousness of their arrangements (all, by the standards of the day, not even slightly unconventional), but simply the astonishing caliber of the playing of the participants. Both the Hall quartet and quintet distinguished themselves for the absorbingly high levels of individual and collective imagination and interaction they sustained. These eleven works, all in small form, are unpretentious masterpieces of spontaneous improvisation—flawless, mature, considered, majestically unhurried, and of a pervasive, unaffected joy and serenity. Simply beautiful, beautifully simple.
Who can resist, for example, the utter charm and transparency of the celeste quartet's music? So artless and open is its playing, and so innocent its sound, that one simply is ravished by that fertile, relentless stream of invention. With such loveliness of sound and texture. such depths and rush of imagination are totally unexpected — gifts upon gifts. Almost prodigal, in fact, But absolutely perfect.
And consider the strange heterogeneity of the group of men responsible for it, can one imagine a more unlikely merging of talents than that of the four musicians who came together that February day in 1941 to undertake a series of recordings for Blue Note's young enthusiast-operators? First, there was the leader himself — Edmond Hall, dignified and kindly master of the art of New Orleans jazz clarinet, still playing an old Albert system instrument. He would summon up lines of cool crisp daring and phrasing with fluidity, grace and perfect control, and with a tone of surpassing warmth, purity, clarity and loveliness. A mature musician, obviously, yet one at the same time not only unafraid but eager to take chances, continually testing and challenging himself so that his playing is always fresh. ever renewing itself.
At the keyboard sat the rotund, good-natured Meade Lux Lewis: a, simple and open man of enormous enthusiasm; honors graduate of Chicago's South-Side boogie woogie and blues piano school (a hard course of instruction if ever there was one); one of the old Mecca Flats crowd; a superbly expressive and subtle player whose keyboard work was as deceptively simple as it was rhythmically resilient, And what fertility of imagination he brought to twelve bars! Though his playing rarely was spectacular, it invariably was stamped with taste, economy and a cameo-like delicacy that were surprising in a player raised in the Chicago blues dives. But, strangest of all, he's playing a celeste and its dulcet, chattering sound gives the music of the quartet a very distinctive, unusual texture.
Charlie Christian, seasoned veteran at 22 and at the time slightly more than a year with the successful Benny Goodman organization, was the quartet's guitarist, Though Christian generally is considered the father of electric jazz guitar and a pivotal figure in the development of bop, he is here heard in one of his rare recorded appearances with an acoustic instrument. He comps propulsively in the ensembles with the light, effortless swing he generated so handsomely and, in taking his solo turns, spins out supple, long-lined improvisations of masterful construction.
Israel Crosby rounds out the group as bassist. Crosby, like Lewis, was a veteran of the Chicago blues and jazz scene and a former trumpeter who had made the switch to upright bass in the mid-1930's and who had worked with boogie woogie pianist Albert Ammons. Later, he joined the big bands of Horace and Fletcher Henderson and eventually became one of the most sought-after mainstream bassists of the '40's.
Common meeting ground for these four men was, as it has been for countless jazz musicians before and since their time, the twelve-bar blues. From the very earliest days of jazz this simple yet resilient form has been one of the very basic building blocks of the idiom, and proficiency in blues playing remains today the central factor in an expressive jazz style. Then as now, the blues are the touchstone. On the basis of their superlative handling of the form in these five performances, there can be little doubt that Hall, Lewis, Christian and Crosby were perfectly at home with the blues. From the opening phrases of "Jammin' In Four," right on through to the final measures of the lovely "Celestial Express" (what an apt title that is!), the four men treat the blues with thoroughgoing familiarity; the totally relaxed character of their playing is the best proof of this. At the same time, however. their approach to the form is never jaded or stylized but is, on the contrary, always fresh and exploratory. That they could and did find so many new expressive facets to the blues in their playing of these casually organized pieces is the chief reason the legacy of The Edmond Hall Celeste Quartet has been so enduring. These four men speak to us as directly and as movingly now as they did more than a quarter-century ago when they first committed their thoughts on the blues to record in Blue Note's studios.
What is particularly interesting about the music of both the celeste quartet and the all star quintet Hall led for Blue Note three years later is the way in which it, and they, reflect their times. Neither of the sessions was particularly daring or unorthodox (even the celeste had a precedent of sorts) in terms of format and instrumentation. The sound of the small jazz group, even that of the chamber jazz persuasion, had been well established by the time the celeste quartet was assembled in 1941. Highly influential in initiating and consolidating this sound were the various small group combinations Benny Goodman began featuring within his large orchestra in the mid-1930's, starting with the trio and ranging up to the septet. Then, too, there were such aggregations as the highly successful John Kirby Sextet, Tommy Dorsey's Clambake Seven, Bob Crosby's Bobcats, Artie Shaw's 1940 Gramercy 5 (which introduced the sound of harpsichord to jazz and which possibly furnished a model for Blue Note's use of celeste in jazz context: Lewis had, at any rate, recorded a pair of celeste soli, "Celeste Blues" and "I'm In The Mood For Love," as early as 1936), and the numerous all-star small groups that flourished in the late 1930's and early '40's, a hectic, exciting time for jazz. (The New Orleans-based small group jazz of the 1920's largely had been replaced by the big Swing orchestras which assumed great importance in the '30's: early "chamber jazz"-like small units included those of Red Nichols, Bix Beiderbecke, Eddie Lang and Joe Venuti, among others of the late '20's.)
So then, Hall, Lewis,. Christian and Crosby were working with tried and true forms and contexts. Still, it is tribute to their musicianship and to the unflagging fertility of their imaginations that the five performances — the only five, one might add — by the celeste quartet should have achieved such enduring levels of artistry. Truly, inspiration ran high that cold February day.
If the quartet's music was almost wholly the product of studio rapport and a deep-seated understanding of the form with which it dealt, the music of the all star quintet stems from much more clearly defined precedents, The impress of the Benny Goodman sextet is obvious in all the lineaments of the Hall quintet: in the overall approach; in the sonorities it exploited; in the graceful, fluent arrangements it employed: in the harmonies with which it worked; and even more dramatically, in Hall's playing.
By 1944, when these four recordings were made, the clarinetist was almost completely under Goodman's vastly influential sway — given the time, it would have been impossible not to have been influenced by Goodman one way or another. Even a casual listen to the two sessions here, recorded a scant three years apart, reveals the extent to which Hall assimilated elements of Goodman's approach. On the 1944 quintet sessions, Hall's sound and phrasing have changed drastically from those of the quartet date, While they are no less controlled, they are cooler, more obviously "cerebral," more daring harmonically (though not rhythmically), and very suave. Still, he remains very much himself; in fact, perhaps the single factor most reaponsible for Hall's having been one of the most recorded jazz clarinetists during the late '30's and early to middle '40's was his success in incorporating the most viable elements of Goodman's approach into his own agile, personal style.
Assisting Hall on the four quintet sides were several the most interesting, creative musicians of the Swing period. Certainly the presence of pianist Teddy Wilson and vibraphonist Red Norvo contributed even further to the Goodmanesque flavor ot the quintet's performances.
Texas-born, conservatory trained Wilson was one of the preeminent piano stylists of the Swing Era, evolving a supple, genteel, immediately recognizable approach from his early roots in Art Tatum. Wilson, who became a professional jazz musician in 1929, had played in a long succession of orchestras and small groups (Milton Senior, Louis Armstrong, Erskine Tate, Jimmie Noone, Benny Carter and Willie Bryant) before achieving his greatest recognition and success with Goodman, whose organization he joined in 1935 and with whose trio he was extensively featured, Wilson left the clarinetist in 1939 to lead a short-lived orchestra of his own. At the time he recorded with Hall in 1944, the pianist was leading his own sextet at New York's Café Society.
Norvo, too, was widely recognized as one of the leading lights of orchestral and small-group jazz. His musical career extends back to 1925, when he turned professional at the age of 17, A wide range of musical experience, including radio studio work and several years' featured billing With Paul Whiteman's huge orchestra, preceded the formation of Norvo's first group, an octet, which debuted at New York's Hickory House in 1935, The following year he formed a 12-piece orchestra with his wife Mildred Bailey as vocalist, which enjoyed great popularity and which recorded extensively until 1939, Norvo continued to lead a band sporadically through the mid '40's, though from about 1943 on he worked mostly With smaller units, It was also during that year that he switched from xylophone to vibraphone, with which instrument he is heard on these recordings.
Also an alumnus of the Whiteman aggregation was guitarist Carl Kress, one of the masters of the chordal-styled guitar approach he helped originate, Kress was featured with such masters of the Swing style as Red Nichols, Miff Mole, the Dorsey Brothers; he recorded with them and BIX Beiderbecke, Frankie Trumbauer, Eddie Lang and Dick McDonough, among others. His years of solid experience in radio studio orchestras are reflected in his subtle, harmonically rich, insinuating playing here. Between them, he and bassist Johnny Williams set up a rhythmic foundation of great sensitivity and delicacy, This allowed Hall, Wilson and Norvo to tread wherever they would in perfect confidence that their support would be right with them.
As a result of the sympathetic foundation furnished by Kress and Williams, the three soloists turned in a particularly memorable series of performances. The work of the Hall All Star Quintet is possessed of a spaciousness and elegance that places these performances among the most engaging and artistically rewarding small-group efforts of the middle '40's, The four performances have much of the same kind of restrained excitement and carefully subdued passion that mark the Comet recordings of the following year that found Norvo, Wilson and Charlie Parker in such fruitful accord. High praise? Yes, but the work of Edmond Hall's All Star Quintet deserves to enjoy a much wider reputation than it has currently. Its four superlative recordings, as well as the five recorded three years earlier by The Edmond Hall Celeste Quartet, are among the brightest traditional jewels in Blue Note's crown. It's great to be able to hear them again, particularly in these days, when Jazz seems too have fallen on such sad, desultory times.
— Pete Welding
January, 1969
Discographical Data
Jammin' In Four
Ed Hall, cit.; Meade "Lux" Lewis, celeste; Charlie Christian, gtr.; Israel Crosby, bs. — recorded Feb. 5, 1941 (mx. R-3459-A; orig. issue Blue Note 18, BLP 5026)
Edmond Hall Blues
same date and personnel as above (mx. R-3460; orig. issue Blue Note 18, BLP 5026)
Profoundly Blue
same date and personnel (mx. R-3461 ; orig. issue Blue Note 17, BLP 5001)
Profoundly Blue No. 2
same date and personnel (mx. R-3461-2; orig. issue Blue Note, BLP 5026)
Celestial Express
same date and personnel (mx. R-3462-A;orig. issue Blue .Note 17, BLP 5026)
Rompin' In 44
Ed Hall, cit.; Red Norvo, vib.; Teddy Wilson, pno.; Carl Kress, gtr.; Johnny Williams, bs. — recorded January 25, 1944 (mx. BN 908-2; orig. issue Blue Note 30)
Blue Interval
same date and personnel as "Rompin' In 44." (mx. BN 909; orig. issue Blue Note 31 , BLP 5026)
Smooth Sailin'
same date and personnel (mx. BN 910-2; orig. issue Blue Note 30)
Seein' Red
same date and personnel (rnx. BN 911 ; orig. issue Blue Note 31,BLP 5026)
1998 Edmond Hall CD Reissue Notes
EDMOND HALL - PROFOUNDLY BLUE
Though he was from New Orleans, Edmond Hall did not play the clarinet in the style traditionally associated with the Crescent City. His distinctive tone and fiery phrasing were better suited to the vocabulary of swing, and it's not surprising that he was one of Benny Goodman's favorites.
Before Blue Note gave Hall his first dates as leader, he'd done considerable recording but was hardly a household name. Born in 1901 into a musical family (his father and three brothers all played at least semi-professionally, and Herb Hall, six years younger, also took up the clarinet.), Edmond left his home town with a band in 1923, settled in Florida, and made his first records with Alonzo Ross's De Luxe Syncopators in 1927, soloing on soprano sax. Ross tried his luck in New York, but soon had to disband, and Edmond and his friend Cootie Williams decided to stick around.
An expert doubler on all the saxophones and a good reader, Ed soon found work with various bands and was with Charlie Skeets when pianist Claude Hopkins took over as leader in 1929. Playing section alto and baritone, and soloing on the latter as well as the clarinet, he stayed with the popular Hopkins band for six years, taking good but brief solos on most of its many records. After a stint with Lucky he joined trumpeter Billy Hicks's Sizzling Six, which broke the color bar at Manhattan's St. Regis hotel and made some records, but got to be heard to real advantage for the first time on sessions with trumpeter Frankie Newton's group, supervised by Helen Oakley.
Hall also popped up on a couple of Billy Holiday sessions (sharing honors with Lester Young and Buck Clayton on "Me Myself And I") and a bit with Lionel Hampton. By 1939, Hall had earned the John Hammond seal of approval and become a fixture at Café Society in Greenwich Village in groups led by pianists Joe Sullivan and Teddy Wilson, and trumpeter Henry "Red" Allen.
He was with Allen when making his Blue Note debut, but while he was billed as leader, we can be certain that Alfred Lion was responsible for the unusual instrumentation, and the personnel. Meade Lux Lewis, who plays celeste, was a Blue Note favorite (he'd also recorded on harpsichord for the label). Hall and Charlie Christian had recorded together before with singers Ida Cox and Eddie Howard. Israel Crosby, at 22 the baby of the band (Christian was all of 24), had worked with Wilson and played at Café Society.
As was Blue Note's custom, the menu for the session was strictly blues, in a variety of tempos. The texture is quite transparent, what with the shimmering sounds of the celeste (or celesta — a five-octave range keyboard instrument of steel plates, suspended in a resonating box and struck by hammers), the quiet acoustic guitar of Christian (the only time he recorded on an unamplified instrument), and acoustic bass, a setting in which Hall's acerbic clarinet inevitably dominates — which is fine since he's in superb form and a past master of the blues idiom.
Two fast pieces bookend three slows, with the two "Profoundly Blue" takes the standouts, Christian's opening solos are both masterful, as are his five choruses on "Jammin' In Four" (where Hall hints at "St. Louis Blues"). The celeste is better suited for slow tempos (as Tchaikovsky so well knew when he used it in the "Nutcracker" ballet score), but Lewis certainly builds a nice head of steam on "Celestial Express," a kind of transposition of his famous "Honky Tonk Train" boogie woogie piano piece. Let's not forget Crosby, who, while less celebrated than his contemporary, the three months older Jimmy Blanton, was quietly contributing much to the rise of his instrument within jazz.
Three years later, we find Hall at the helm of a somewhat more orthodox unit, a quintet patterned on the Goodman model, if without drums. Hall, who'd turned down an offer from Duke Ellington, was then with Wilson still at Café Society (Duke wound up hiring his predecessor with Wilson, Jimmy Hamilton), and Wilson and Red Norvo were both on CBS radio working with Paul Barron on the Mildred Bailey Show. Guitarist Carl Kress was also part of the studio scene: having lost his duet partner, Dick McDonough, in 1938, he's making one of his rare jazz appearances here (later, he'd team up with George Barnes). Bassist Johnny Williams was then with Wilson—he and Red Norvo, born respectively on March 13 and March 31 of 1908, are, at the time of this writing, the sole survivors among the players on this CD — and had service with such stalwarts as Benny Carter, Coleman Hawkins and Louis Armstrong under his belt.
This is delightful chamber jazz. Teddy and Red go so well together in conception, and on "Blue Interval," which opens with superlative Wilson blues, Red recalls his solo on their famous 1937 "Blue Mood" encounter. "Rompin'" (Rhythm changes with a Cherry bridge) lives up to its title, and the two takes of "Smooth Sailing" (not the Goodman sextet piece) offer interesting solo comparisons. On "Seeing Red/" Kress takes his longest solo turn (you don't hear this kind of guitar anymore, except when Marty Grosz is around, and a kick), while Teddy shines again.
The Swingtet gives us Hall in consort with other horns, but again with an unusual configuration — clarinet, trombone, and baritone sax, which go very well together. Lots of nice things happen here, but the main event is Harry Carney in one of his all too rare recorded appearances outside Ellingtonia. With a first-class rhythm section behind him, he revels in the changes on "It's Been So Long" (a tune the leader obviously likes) especially on the longer alternate take. Carney's one of those players whose sound alone suffices to mesmerize the listener — no one has ever matched that majestic tone — but he's a Hawkins-inspired improviser as well, and he could swing! There should have been more of him on "I Can't Believe," but Benny Morton is in fine form, especially on the alternate. This Henderson-Basie-Carter alumnus had great chops and intonation and was among the most consistent of trombonists; he's also a blues master, as shown on "Big City." "Steamin' and Beamin'" gives Carney some space.
Harry's unsung Ellington colleague Junior Raglin is another expert bassist, and Everett Barksdale, who gets a few moments in the spotlight, was good enough to later join Art Tatum's trio. Don Frey was no slouch at the piano — a veteran of Harlem bands and a fine arranger, he spent most of his later career as intermission pianist on 52nd Street, and was a man of great warmth and wit. But the heart and soul of this rhythm team is Big Sid Catlett, quite possibly the greatest drummer ever to grace the bandstand.
Edmond Hall had a lot more music in him, but this memento from the '40s suffices to earn him a solid place in the clarinet hall of fame.
—Dan Morgenstern
