Indigenous Music
Hentoff, Nat
Savoring the Licorice Stick When I was a lad, polishing my metal clarinet, there were all sorts of jazz players to serve as models, each with his own distinctive flavor. Benny Goodman and Artie...
...Also full of loping gusto is Jazz Moods (AP-176) with Allan Vache...
...Until bop (or modern jazz), al-toists didn't play as fast as clarinetists...
...Could he stand up to "Bird...
...The same spirit of transcendence courses through a newly reissued Jazz at the Philharmonic concert, Bird & Pres/ Carnegie Hall 1949 (Verve 815 150 1, distributed by Polygram Classics, 810 Seventh Avenue, New York, NY 10019...
...Neither lost the decision...
...Jazz does keep folks young...
...Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw were, of course, household words—even in those households that otherwise didn't especially dig jazz...
...U Choice Cuts In my wayward youth, I was willingly seduced by overstuffed arrangements of Bach and even Mozart that made them sound as if they were chocolate-eating Nineteenth Century Romantics...
...And the extra layers of sound remained in many performances until fairly recently...
...On the other hand, of course, there is the music of the last century that was intended to be robust though lyrical...
...You could get addicted to that sound, like junk food...
...Fortunately, my musical soul was eventually saved by a series of performances of those and other pre-Nine-teenth Century compositions that used the scores as originally written and, where possible, instruments of the time...
...Hedges, meanwhile, can be heard again in a characteristically rambunctious Wild Bill Davison set on Live at the Memphis Jazz Festival (J-133...
...everyone, including the orchestra, transcends the notes and ascends into sheer music...
...All of it—time, chords, the very definition of melody...
...This was a dramatic, historic, mutual testing of skills and spirits...
...The notes point out that the original scores were fattened during the Nineteenth Century by adding instruments to match the greater size of the new concert halls...
...Another reason, offered by jazz critic and sometime drummer Stanley Crouch, is that the alto sax took over the clarinet's territory...
...He is, by the way, the brother of the world-class mainstream cornetist Warren Vache...
...For performances of similarly bracing energy and lucidity, there are the new sets by the Academy of Ancient Music, directed by Christopher Hogwood: Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, for instance (L'Oiseau Lyre D279D2), and Mozart's Symphonies No...
...The one to start with is Clarinet Climax with Chuck Hedges and Allan Vache (J-131...
...And when the combo is lustily rounding that last chorus, steaming for home, there's nothing quite as exhilarating as the clarinet...
...Davison is into his seventies by now, but his calliope-like sound and whipsnapping beat are those of a man in his twenties...
...For example, Johannes Brahms's Double Concerto (Deutsche Grammophon 410 603-1), as performed with unusually vibrant presence by two young virtuosi, violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter and the Brazilian cellist Antonio Meneses...
...It was the big sound I liked...
...40 (L'Oiseau Lyre DSDL 716...
...There's much more untrendy but timeless jazz on Jazzology and on Buck's other labels...
...Charlie "Bird" Parker was clearly, by 1949, in the process of radically changing the jazz language...
...Accordingly, there is a consistency of taste in his catalog, and that taste is solid...
...But once the altoist Charlie Parker turned the jazz world upside down, alto players were not only just as fast, but their sound—light, yet more macho than that of the clarinet-appealed to the new players...
...In the early years—in New Orleans and then Chicago and New York—there was a lot of counterpoint in the hotly improvised ensemble passages...
...Behind them, Herbert von Karajan conducts the Berlin Philharmonic to make an inspiring performance...
...It is with the anticipation of much shared pleasure that I tell you about three new clarinet releases on George H. Buck Jr.'s Jazzology and Audiophile labels...
...Parker and Young, each challenged by the other's presence, played with remarkably sustained inventiveness and—a term not much in use then—soul...
...Well, not all the licorice sticks are gone...
...Far less well known and far more original players, however, included such specialists on the licorice stick (most clarinets were black and made of wood) as Irving "Fats" Fazola, Joe Marsala, Rod Cless, Barney Bigard, Pee Wee Russell (who could not be imitated for even one note), Omer Simeon, Darnell Howard, Sidney Bechet (when he wasn't shaking the firmament with his soprano sax), Buster Bailey, and a good many more...
...But nowadays, the clarinet is seldom heard in jazz, and almost never in gatherings of young players...
...One reason may be that the textural shape of jazz has changed so greatly...
...To feel the youthful elan and lean resilience of that music was astonishing, and I left Fantasia forever...
...Lester "Pres" Young was the most original and far-hearing of the players who had come up during the swing years...
...Being a jazz fan rather than just a merchandiser, he releases only music that he would play for you in his home...
...For a catalog, write George H. Buck Jr., Jazzology Records, 30008 Wadsworth Mill Place, Atlanta, GA 30032...
...Whatever the reason, the near disappearance of the clarinet is a great loss to the music...
...Among others on hand is trumpeter Roy Eldridge, who was afraid in those revolutionary years that the new jazz might make him obsolete...
...The way he played that day, nothing could...
...31 ("Paris") and No...
...This one has a spaciousness of time, a relaxed but deeply swinging pulse, that is just plain joyful...
...Each horn played its clear countermelody, intersecting with the others, and the clarinet's light but penetrating sound was just right to set off the contrasting strands...
...It's like the old radios and jukeboxes with built-in exaggerated bass...
...No other instrument has that liquid, flowing sound, so softly and roundly sensuous on dream-like ballads and in the blues...
Vol. 48 • March 1984 • No. 3
