Your Favorite Big Band

[vitanola]

Dude, I'm a musician who digs Lester Young, Duke Ellington and company. You figure it out. Like the George Hamilton IV song goes, If You Don't Know, I Ain't Gonna Tell Ya

Some of us dig 52nd Street and uptown, the rest dig something else. Not all swing is jazz. I am a jazz fan. Figure it out. Miller was the shlockmeister from the planet wongo. For me, listening to him is like eating baloney sandwiches when there is steak, crawfish etoufee and caviar to be had. With a $200 bottle of Chateau Margaux to wash it down.

I'm so done with this thread. Enough of the Republican swing music fans. Done.... so done.

"Miller was the shlockmeister from the planet wongo. "

What an original turn of phrase!

I think that I see what you are getting at, but just because music is not exactly JAZZ doesn't mean that it is BAD. Would you fault Mendelsson because he did not write jazz? What about Schnittke? I myself lose interest in jazz music as it more closely approaches "Bop" just as I do for (so called) Classical of the latter part of the last century, and perhaps for the same reason. In both classical and jazz music, as the century wore on the music which appealed cognoscenti became more and more "sophisticated", that is it moved away from a strong emphasis on melody. In the case of both jazz and classical music, much of this move was motivated by a conscious effort to make the music less accessible to the unwashed masses, or the "squares", if you will. the effect of this was to severely limit the audience for both musical forms.

Remember that a number of Jazz masters of the older generation had a great admiration for melodic music. Louis Armstrong professed great admiration for the Lombardo band's arrangements and emphasis on melody, and remember, he enjoyed Miller's music immensely.

Now, the younger generation of Jazz musicians, those coming of age in the 1940's tended to be much less tolerant, and also tended to take a more militantly political view of matters.

Perhaps you should put a stack of Sauter-Finnegan records on your New Orthophonic or your Columbia 360 and relax a bit.

 

[Aristaeus]

Anybody want to buy some Miller 78s? Cheap?

How much?:cool2:

 

[Mysterious Mose]

Dude, I'm a musician who digs Lester Young, Duke Ellington and company. You figure it out.

...

Some of us dig 52nd Street and uptown, the rest dig something else. Not all swing is jazz. I am a jazz fan. Figure it out. Miller was the shlockmeister from the planet wongo.

Forgive me, I couldn't resist:
http://www.youtube.com/v/l33g5jn7p18

You dig?

 

[Paisley]

lol

Every now and then at the one of the clubs where I go, a girl will ask to sing with the band. They're always such awful singers that it's hard to keep a straight face.

 

[Shangas]

If you like hot or sweet, traditional or outre, any Big Band is fair game for discussion in this thread, and there are no "right" answers.

I'm a big fan of 'sweet' jazz, although I admit, I find it a very hard genre to try and define. Hot Jazz to me can sometimes just sound like noise, although I do enjoy some tracks from the Hot Jazz era. The Charleston being one of them.

I love big-band music because of all the wide range of emotions it has. It can be festive, moody, relaxing, reflective, sad, dancable in almost every way imaginable or it can be just plain party music.

 

[WH1]

OK, now that he's gotten that out of his system, let's keep in mind this thread isn't about your favorite *jazz* band, or sticking your tongue out at those who prefer "Republican Swing Bands" (Wendell Willkie and his Ten Red States, with vocals by Tom Dewey and the lovely Claire Booth Luce -- what a swell band that was!)
.

:eusa_clap :eusa_clap :eusa_clap :eusa_clap lol lol

I love it Lizzie, you always manage to bring the world back into perspective for us with a firm but very humorous hand.

 

[dhermann1]

Ah, yes, Tom Dewey, the little man on the wedding cake. I can just hear the two of them. lol
Just to wander within the subject a little more, I heard a nice arrangement on WBGO last night of "Under A Blanket of Blue", by the Stan Kenton orchestra from 1954. Nicely done big band arrangement. But for all the extra notes, it still didn't beat the original Miller version for me. Now maybe you don't like that song, I do a lot. Who else but Miller could or would ever have done it? It's quintessentially Miller, extremely elegant and simple at the same time, and with just the slightest lilt of swing feeling to it. My point is that musicians like Miller have their place. How about Claude Thornhill's "Snowfall"? Or Ellington's "Warm Valley"? All very lilting, just a hint of swing, and very enjoyable. Just sayin'.
And as far as the personalities of some of the band leaders, wasn't Goodman also capable of being kind of a ba***rd? Most of those guys had the mentality of the time of "I'm the boss! My way or the highway!" That was part of Fletcher Henderson's problem, too nice a guy. Show biz can be brutal. A band or orchestra is definitely not a democracy!

 

[LizzieMaine]

Given the way the business end of music works, I'd think it's the rare successful bandleader who wasn't, to a greater or lesser extent, a self-absorbed jerk in private life. (I love Artie Shaw's music, but if he tried any of that stuff on me he tried on his various wives, he'd have to bend over backwards to find his clarinet.)

The nice guys in the band business either had to go to work for the jerks to survive or they hired managers to do the dirty work they didn't want to face.

 

[Fletch]

Excellent point. My man Joe Haymes failed repeatedly because of being a good guy. Not because he was lax musically - his bands were always fine disciplined outfits - but he was a semi-functional alcoholic who simply couldn't stand up for his own interests. It cost him sideman after sideman and something like five orchestras. Where business was concerned, Haymes simply wasn't.

Of course there were the amiable taskmasters, like Ted Weems or Dick Jurgens, each of whom kept his sidemen for years and years, and the holy terrors like Tommy Dorsey, with whom every day on the job was your first, and might be your last.

The intermediary system worked for Ray Noble, whose drummer Bill Harty was also his straw boss and hatchet man. And in reverse for Isham Jones, whose manager Arnold Frank had been a leader himself and soothed tempers after Jones' inevitable tirades.

My favorite story was about Blue Steele, the "King of Rythm" (sic) on Victor Records. He dished out plenty of treatment and was always wary of men jumping ship. It's said the only way out of his band was to be thrown bodily.

 

[Paisley]

And as far as the personalities of some of the band leaders, wasn't Goodman also capable of being kind of a ba***rd? Most of those guys had the mentality of the time of "I'm the boss! My way or the highway!" That was part of Fletcher Henderson's problem, too nice a guy. Show biz can be brutal. A band or orchestra is definitely not a democracy!

Such is the nature of business, especially a business that a lot of people would love to work for.

 

[Fletch]

So true. All talk of teamwork aside, we're rarely "all in this together."

Sometimes I think present-day changes like putting the head honcho in just another desk or cube on the floor are just postponing the inevitable. Competition selects for those who are, at best, callous to inferiors.

 

[LizzieMaine]

And business will always triumph over art. Unless art figures out how to turn itself into business -- would we know Duke Ellington if he'd never met Irving Mills?

 

[Aristaeus]

Talking about tyrants or jerks as band leaders has anyone heard Buddy Rich cuss out his band? WARNING allot of cursing.

Buddy Rich Chews Out His Band.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCF9wgMU7es

 

[Fletch]

The art that gets ignored - and roundly so - is the stuff that had some eye to commerce once, so it was never palatable to the esthetes, but is no longer profitable, so it is just as useless to the marketers.

As well crafted and enjoyable as these artifacts may be - and as respected as their counterparts are, say, in the visual or industrial arts - they are rarely given respect in the field of music.

A Henry Dreyfuss clock and a Leo Reisman foxtrot might show equal elegance and craft, they might both have increased dramatically in collector value, but they do not enjoy equal status as art.

Why? Could it be that the established market value of the Big Ben clock somehow enhances its esthetic appeal - whereas the Reisman 78 is worth something (if only 99¢ for an .mp3 copy), but no one agrees how much? Or how much is performance and how much artifact?

 

[LizzieMaine]

Price -- a factor of Demand

Demand -- a factor of Marketing.

Marketing -- a factor of what's trendy.

"Industrial Design" artifacts are fashionable among a certain crowd of free-spending collectors, because they get talked up by the right sort of hipster decorators whose clients tend to be free-spending collectors. And the hipness just trickles down -- pointing to such a clock on your shelf is a shorthand way of telling everyone just how COOL you are. Never mind I had one of these all thru high school, and I wasn't the least bit cool.

Leo Reisman records have no hipster cachet, and therefore no one is writing about them and talking them up to the big spenders. Alas, not even the ones with Bubber Miley trumpet solos.

 

[Paisley]

^Sounds like StuffWhitePeopleLike.com.

I'm off to buy some organic socks and find out what kind jazz I should be listening to.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Yeah, imagine my surprise on discovering that, according to that site, I'm not that white at all. Me, who loves Wonder Bread, boloney, and Horace Heidt.

 

[Mr. 'H']

Dude. Figure it out. Miller was the shlockmeister from the planet wongo.

I really can't help myself - it's two days later and I am still in tears laughing every time I read this line. lol lol lol It's priceless - where did you dream it up??!!

For me, listening to him is like eating baloney sandwiches when there is steak, crawfish etoufee and caviar to be had. With a $200 bottle of Chateau Margaux to wash it down.

 

[dhermann1]

"Miller" . . . "Schlockmeister" . . . Them's fightin' words, son!

Actually, I've come to appreciate even Lawrence Welk in my old age. I mean, the old flatulant saxophones routine still makes me want to urp, but when he cranks up a swing tune, the technical excellence of his musicians is clear. Definitely danceable, at least.

 

[Harp]

Me, who loves Wonder Bread, boloney, and Horace Heidt.

Baloney on Wonder Bread with Skippy Peanut Butter.
Also works well with Cotto Salami.