Volume Three: Jumpin' with Symphony Sid - Swing to Bop

47. Hal McIntyre and his Orchestra: This Is the Army, Mr. Jones
(Irving Berlin) 1942

48. Spike Jones and his City Slickers: In Der Fuhrer’s Face
(Oliver Wallace) 1942

49. Mickey Katz and his Kosher Jammers: Bagel Call Rag
(Billy Meyers-Elmer Schoebel-Jack Pettis) 1952

50. Duke Ellington and his Orchestra: Mood Indigo
(Duke Ellington-Irving Mills-Barney Bigard) 1957

51. Count Basie Orchestra: The Kid from Red Bank
(Neal Hefti) 1957

52. Stan Kenton and his Orchestra: Artistry in Rhythm
(Stan Kenton) 1944

53. Gene Krupa and his Orchestra, featuring Anita O'Day: Opus No. 1
(Sy Oliver) 1946

54. Billie Holiday with Tony Scott and his Orchestra: God Bless the Child
(Billie Holiday-Arthur Herzog, Jr.) 1956

55. Frank Sinatra: One for My Baby
(Harold Arlen) 1958

56. Ella Fitzgerald: Too Darn Hot
(Cole Porter) 1956

57. Nat King Cole Trio: Straighten Up and Fly Right
(Nat King Cole-Irving Mills) 1944

58. Les Paul and Mary Ford: How High the Moon
(Morgan Lewis-Nancy Hamilton) 1951

59. Harry "The Hipster" Gibson: Who Put the Benzedrine?
(Harry Gibson) 1947

60. Charlie Parker with Strings: Autumn in New York
(Vernon Duke) 1952

61. The Quintet: Perdido [live]
(Juan Tizol) 1953

62. Dizzy Gillespie: Caravan
(Juan Tizol) 1954

63. Bud Powell: Get Happy
(Ted Koehler-Harold Arlen) 1950

64. Art Tatum: Sweet Lorraine [live]
(Cliff Burwell-Mitchell Parish) 1955

65. Lester Young with the Oscar Peterson Trio: Stardust
(Hoagy Carmichael-Mitchell Parish) 1952

66. The George Shearing Quintet: Jumpin’ with Symphony Sid
(Lester Young) 1949

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"What makes bebop legitimate is the fact that when it was done, it was illegitimate."

-- Matthew Shipp



Much of the sentimental wartime pop produced in the early nineteen forties falls outside the purview of this project; early rock and roll was in many ways a reaction against the music of the period and much of the most famous pop of the period (Glenn Miller, the Andrews Sisters) had a tendency to be both repetitive and vapid, although, on occasion, the humor and creativity of early jazz and hot swing did show through. As examples of songs of the period, Miller veteran Hal McIntyre’s recording of Irving Berlin’s patriotic “This Is the Army, Mr. Jones”, and, especially, Spike Jones’s gloriously obnoxious “Der Fuhrer’s Face” (from a Disney short of the same name) manage to balance humor, swing, and patriotism in a blend not often found in agit-prop songs. In a similar vein, the unjustly overlooked Mickey Katz (father of Joel Grey and grandfather of Jennifer Grey), who had contributed glugging sounds to a series of Jones’s parodies, produced Yiddish song parodies from the late the forties until the early sixties, combining a trad. Jazz / Swing fusion with Klezmer breaks he termed “Yiddish jazz.” The members of his “Kosher Jammers” were mostly veterans of the Goodman and Dorsey bands and his “Bagel Call Rag” features some astonishing breakneck soloing from Katz on clarinet and Mannie Klein on trumpet.

The war years were a period of very rapid change in popular music, due not only to the war itself, but to the American Federation of Musicians undertaking a recording strike, prompted by disputes of record royalties, from August, 1942, until late 1944. Musicians could not record (except on V-Discs, recordings made especially for use by the armed forces), although vocalists could and did. In an era in which swing bands balanced their repertoires between swinging instrumentals and softer, sweeter vocal tunes, the effect of the recording ban was profound: by the close of the ban, vocalists had become central to the American popular recording industry, a condition that has not changed since the forties. Also, freed from the constraints of commercial recording, many musicians focused on more adventurous playing; it’s generally agreed that bebop, with lengthy, complicated solos replacing full band or sectional playing of a song’s melody, developed during the recording ban.

Thus, in the post-war era, there are three distinctive major stylistic changes to swing-based jazz: the rise of non-danceable, intellectually and artistically-rigorous small group bebop (which effectively distanced jazz from mainstream pop), the further development of more compositionally complex full-band jazz (the golden age of Duke Ellington’s and Count Basie’s bands, and the experimentation of Stan Kenton), and what is usually thought of as the Golden Age of Traditional Pop Singing – solo jazz-inflected vocalists influenced by Armstrong and by Billie Holiday, singing selections from the Great American Songbook (the Gershwins, Cole Porter) in lightly swinging arrangements by former swing musicians (Nelson Riddle, especially, but also Billy May, Gordon Jenkins, and many others).

These stylistic changes were accompanied by very rapid technological changes – particularly the introduction of magnetic tape and Les Paul’s experimentation with tape-based overdubbing (“How High the Moon” features only Les Paul’s overdubbed guitars and Mary Ford’s overdubbed vocals). Further, the introduction of the long-playing album and the 45-rpm single in 1948 accompanied the boon in post-War incomes in America. Increased disposable income meant increased money that could be spent on entertainment; singles gradually becoming the province of casual listeners and, especially, teenagers while lps focused on classical, jazz, and “adult” pop. The greater track times available on lps made the reproduction of lengthy bebop performances on disc a reality and allowed concept-based albums by singers (particularly the classic Capitol Sinatra albums of the fifties) possible.

Bop grew out of earlier swing-based precursors, especially the rhythmic and harmonic innovations of Coleman Hawkins and Charlie Christian (both included on Volume Two): improvising complex melodic lines over a standard’s chord changes until the original melody is either unrecognizable or disappears completely. The bop musicians’ reliance on the same standards the pop vocalists were recording and re-recording, often songs from the previous twenty years that had initially been written for Broadway, further solidified the sense that these songs were the high point of uniquely American art – “Stardust” by Lester Young, “Sweet Lorraine” by Art Tatum, “Get Happy” by Bud Powell. By taking songs that were familiar to audiences and reinventing them harmonically and melodically, bop soloists created an effect similar to that already present in blues and much later evident in hip hop – the presentation of a singular individual vision against a pre-existing framework, resulting in the equivalent of modernist (and post-modernist) intertextuality.

Saxophonist Charlie Parker and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie are the recognized fathers of the genre. Parker’s favorite among his own recordings was the Bird with Strings album, which saw him playing more conventionally than his more critically-lauded recordings while the live recording of “Perdido” features him (billed as Charlie “Chan” for contractual reasons), Gillespie, Charles Mingus, Max Roach, and Bud Powell as “The Quintet.” Parker’s influence on jazz and, in particular, on the growing pre-eminence of the saxophone as the jazz instrument cannot be understated. As Mingus titled a composition, “If Charlie Parker Were a Gunslinger, There’d Be a Lot of Dead Copycats.”

Similar techniques were being employed by the pop vocalists; Billie Holiday’s technique of lagging behind the beat and ‘acting’ the song’s lyric was a profound influence on all pop singing to follow: Frank Sinatra named her as his greatest vocal influence (and her influence is clearly heard in the vocals included here by both Sinatra and by Anita O’Day), while Nat King Cole and Ella Fitzgerald extend Louis Armstrong’s scat improvisation on the melody into swing territory.

The recording industry had changed massively by the end of the forties: technology allowed for greater innovation while the gulf between jazz and pop started to widen into one that would never again be closed. As pop became big business again, the album became the venue of “adult” artists and singles started to be where novelties, dance records, and unproven artists found their outlet, thus setting the stage for the rhythm and blues and rock and roll revolutions to come.

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Volume Two: Sing, Sing, Sing – The Depression and the Rise of Swing

25. Bing Crosby: Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?
(E.Y. "Yip" Harburg-Jay Gorney) 1932

26. Fletcher Henderson and his Orchestra: Shanghai Shuffle.
(Gene Rodemich-Larry Conley) 1934

27. Hoagy Carmichael and his Orchestra and Bix Beiderbecke: Georgia on My Mind
(Hoagy Carmichael-Stuart Gorrell) 1930

28. Bessie Smith: Gimme a Pigfoot
(Wesley Wilson) 1933

29. Albert Ammons and his Rhythm Kings: Boogie Woogie Stomp
(Albert Ammons) 1938

30. Robert Johnson: Walkin’ Blues
(Robert Johnson) 1936

31. Lead Belly: In the Pines
(Huddie Ledbetter) 1944

32. Memphis Minnie: Night Watchman Blues
(Memphis Minnie McCoy) 1949

33. Bunny Berigan and his Boys: I Can’t Get Started
(Ira Gershwin-Vernon Duke) 1937

34. Django Reinhardt and the Quintet of the Hot Club of France: Minor Swing
(Django Reinhardt-Stephane Grappelli) 1937

35. Cab Calloway and his Orchestra: Minnie the Moocher
(Cab Calloway-Irving Mills) 1931

36. Jimmie Lunceford and his Orchestra: For Dancers Only
(Don Raye-Vic Schoen-Sy Oliver) 1937

37. Jimmy Dorsey and his Orchestra: Stompin’ at the Savoy
(Edgar Sampson-Benny Goodman-Chick Webb-Andy Razaf) 1936

38. Tommy Dorsey and his Orchestra: Well, Git It!
(Sy Oliver) 1942

39. Artie Shaw and his Orchestra: Frenesi
(Alberto Dominguez) 1940

40. Benny Goodman and his Orchestra: Sing, Sing, Sing (with a Swing) [live]
(Louis Prima) 1938

41. Charlie Christian: Blues in B
(Benny Goodman) 1941

42. Coleman Hawkins and his Orchestra: Body and Soul
(Edward Heyman-Robert Sour-Frank Eyton-Johnny Green) 1939

43. Harry James and his Orchestra: Ciribiribin
(Alberto Pestalozza) 1939

44. Lionel Hampton and his Orchestra, featuring Illinois Jacquet: Flying Home
(Benny Goodman-Eddie DeLange-Lionel Hampton) 1942

45. The Ink Spots: If I Didn’t Care
(Jack Lawrence) 1939

46. The Mills Brothers: You Always Hurt the One You Love
(Allan Roberts-Doris Fisher) 1944


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“'Swing' is an adjective or a verb, not a noun. All jazz musicians should swing. There is no such thing as a 'swing band' in music.”

-- Artie Shaw



During the latter half of the nineteen-twenties, “sweet bands” dominated record sales and concert attendance. Also called (somewhat erroneously) “society bands” (because their highest-profile gigs were at the behest of East Coast socialites), these bands (the orchestras of Paul Whiteman and Lester Lanin are the best-remembered; Lanin played Presidential Inaugurals from Eisenhower to Carter) predicated their music on making jazz simpler and more danceable. That is to say, they often simplified arrangements of (black) jazz and subdued its backbeat. Their greatest legacy to modern ears is the use of the term orchestra, even for bands of fewer than ten members. This appeal to a sort of late-Gilded-Age respectability continued into the Swing Era and is responsible for the ubiquity of “and his Orchestra” among this volume’s selections.

Now commonly seen as the anthem of the Great Depression, Bing Crosby’s version of “Yip” Harburg’s “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” is a vaguely Socialist and terribly sentimental (yet, still affecting) ballad that directly addresses, with startling frankness, the changing nature of American identity engendered by the aftermath of the Stock Market Crash of 1929 : “Once in khaki suits; gee we looked swell / Full of that Yankee Doodly Dum, / Half a million boots went slogging through Hell, / And I was the kid with the drum!” The popular music of the Depression is often shocking in its political, sexual, and social realism (Bessie Smith's "Gimme a Pigfoot" and Cab Calloway's "Minnie the Moocher" are rife with explicit drug references, for instance) that was mirrored in the oft-exploitive films of pre-Hays Code-Hollywood, revealing a struggle with the perceived failure of the American Dream and a reassessment of the ideals of American identity.

This questioning and reconstructing of identities was frequently balanced with blatant sentimentality, a trend prevalent in all the American arts of the decade. Crosby’s Louis Armstrong-influenced vocal inflection (and that of Hoagy Carmichael) reflect the influence of African-American jazz on the larger white culture; Crosby and Carmichael were both veterans of Paul Whiteman’s orchestra, but their early solo work has more in common with Armstrong’s than Whiteman’s, emphasizing rhythmically and vocally challenging solo lines. As the lines between black and white pop and jazz blurred in the thirties, Armstrong and Cab Calloway (whose “Minnie the Moocher” remains iconic – he performed it in 1980 in The Blues Brothers) became stars who ‘crossed over’ racial divides.

At the same time, serious attempts (chiefly those of A&R man John Hammond) were made to lift country blues from the world of marginalized ‘race records’ (as they were promoted and marketed) to acceptance within "cultured" circles. Hammond recorded Bessie Smith (heard here in her last session) in a jazz-blues context (with, among others, Benny Goodman, accompanying her) and promoted first the integrated band of Goodman and later the all-star Spirituals-to-Swing concert in shows at Carnegie Hall, long the ultimate signifier of American cultural success in music. Among those Hammond invited to play the latter show was Robert Johnson (who had, in fact) died months before the show. Johnson is justly acclaimed as one of, if not the, major figure in the blues; his “Walkin’ Blues” expands Son House’s “My Black Mama” in intensity, stylistic vocabulary, and focus, in the process inspiring generations of blues guitarists and singers.

The thirties saw the expansion and gradual domination of swing, a music born of the necessity of jazz bands to make a living during the Depression; sweet bands dominated radio play and earned their paychecks playing venues that promoted dancing. Every band was expected to play the very ‘white’ sweet music for slow dancing, but many also played hot; that is to say that the music the musicians themselves wanted to play was closer in spirit and technique to Dixieland and Traditional Jazz, involving improvisation and a backbeat. Of this compromise was born swing; “hot” soloists being incorporated into “sweet” arrangements that were danceable. Fletcher Henderson’s arrangements on early thirties recordings became the standard for ‘the big band sound’ when clarinetist Benny Goodman began using them for his own (integrated) band; the basic idea of Henderson’s arrangements being that individual soloists could improvise between full-section (brass or reeds) playing of the song’s melody, all done to a "swinging" beat. From this idea emerges a revolutionary American aural variant on Mikhail Bakhtin’s idea of heteroglossia: multiple voices/visions within a communal/ shared structure – and you can dance to it.

By the late thirties, Goodman was pronounced “The King of Swing”; his volcanic “Sing Sing Sing” still sounds extraordinary, with intense soloing from Goodman himself, trumpeter Harry James (who would later employ Frank Sinatra in his own band), pianist Jess Stacy, and drummer Gene Krupa (whose influence is heard in the playing of Keith Moon, Ginger Baker, and John Bonham, and, thus, in the drumming of nearly every hard rock and metal band to follow).

Swing would be the dominant American popular musical style from the late thirties to the mid-forties, with the most popular bands balancing sweet songs (often with vocalists) with hot songs featuring pure jazz soloing. Within the swing framework were many attempts to broaden the palate and appeal of jazz: Artie Shaw incorporated European classical (chiefly Romantic) motifs on “Frenesi” (as did Harry James, less successfully, on “Ciribiribin”), swing reached Europe with the Quintet of the Hot Club of France (featuring Django Reinhardt and Stefan Grappelli), and many credit Illinois Jacquet, tenor saxophonist on Lionel Hampton’s “Flying Home” with the first honking rock and roll sax solo. At the same time, Coleman Hawkins and Charlie Christian (while still a member of the Goodman band) were laying the groundwork for bebop, improvising melodies to the chord changes of jazz standards and seldom playing the written melody at all.

By the early forties, a kind of truce between blues singing, sweet bands, and swing was reached by the black vocal groups The Ink Spots and the Mills Brothers, both of whom became incredibly popular singing sentimental pop tunes with tight blues (and gospel) influenced harmonies. Sentimentality would dominate pop music as America entered the War, but the structural developments made in jazz and pop during the thirties continue to be heard in pop music today: ensemble playing alternating with intense, abstract, often-improvised solos: aural heteroglossia.

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Volume One: Tiger Rag - Dixieland and Country Blues

1. The Original Dixieland Jazz Band: Tiger Rag
(Eddie Edwards-Nick La Rocca-Henry Ragas-Tony Sbarbaro-Larry Shields-Harry Da Costa) 1917

2. James P. Johnson: Keep Off the Grass
(James P. Johnson) 1921

3. King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band: Snake Rag
(King Oliver) 1923

4. Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra featuring Bix Beiderbecke: Lonely Melody
(Sam Coslow-Benny Meroff-Hal Dyson) 1928

5. Frankie Trumbauer and his Orchestra featuring Bix Beiderbecke: Clarinet Marmalade
(Henry Ragas-Larry Shields) 1927

6. Louis Armstrong: Dinah
(Harry Akst- Sam M. Lewis-Joe Young) 1930

7. Sidney Bechet: Summertime
(George Gershwin-Ira Gershwin-DuBose Hayward) 1939

8. Jelly Roll Morton and his Red Hot Peppers: Dead Man Blues
(Ferdinand Morton-Anita Gonzales) 1926

9. Walter Page's Blue Devils featuring Jimmy Rushing: Blue Devil Blues
(Don Stoval) 1929

10. Ma Rainey and her Georgia Jazz Band: Jealous Hearted Blues
(Lovie Austin) 1925

11. Charlie Poole with the North Carolina Ramblers: White House Blues
(Traditional, Arr. Charlie Poole) 1926

12. Clarence Ashley: The Coo Coo Bird
(Traditional, Arr. Clarence Ashley) 1929

13. Dock Boggs: Country Blues
(Traditional, Arr. Dock Boggs) 1928

14. The Carter Family: Wildwood Flower
(Traditional-A.P. Carter) 1928

15. Jimmie Rodgers: Blue Yodel #10
(Jimmie Rodgers) 1932

16. Charley Patton: High Water Everywhere Part 1
(Charley Patton) 1929

17. Blind Willie McTell: Statesboro Blues
(Blind Willie McTell) 1928

18. Blind Lemon Jefferson: See That My Grave Is Kept Clean
(Blind Lemon Jefferson) 1927

19. Blind Willie Johnson: John the Revelator
(Traditional, Arr. Blind Willie Johnson) 1930

20. Skip James: Devil Got My Woman
(Skip James) 1931

21. Son House: My Black Mama (Part 1)
(Son House) 1930

22. Ishman Bracey featuring Rosie Mae Moore: Stranger Blues
(Rosie Mae Moore) 1928

23. Tommy Johnson: Cool Drink of Water Blues
(Tommy Johnson) 1928

24. Bukka White: Shake ‘Em on Down
(Bukka White) 1937
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“Anyone can learn what Louis Armstrong knows about music in a few weeks. Nobody could learn to play like him in a thousand years.”

—Benny Green


The music of the first two decades of recorded jazz and blues is today sorely neglected; what is revealed in these twenty-four songs recorded between 1917 (“Tiger Rag” by the Original Jazz (or “Jass”) Band) and 1939 (“Summertime" by Sidney Bechet, the pioneering saxophonist of the Dixieland era rediscovered at the dawn of the Swing era) is a time brimming with creative energy that both looks back on the America of the nineteenth century and anticipates the full-blown dominance of a uniquely American identity in music in the latter half of the twentieth century.

“Dixieland”, itself a term of controversy, or, “traditional jazz”, now seems to be seen, at best, as the scratchy soundtrack of dimmed and out-of-synch early nineteen-thirties cartoons or, at worst, as the last refuge of aging misanthropes from their tired (and tiring) visions of irredeemable humanity (think Woody Allen or R. Crumb).

This association with the comic and the misanthropic is not accidental, however; the break-neck doubled lines of King Oliver and Louis Armstrong on the former’s “Snake Rag” or of the other great trumpeter of the period, Bix Beiderbecke’s ebullient soloing on tracks with both Frankie Trumbauer and Paul Whiteman (the oft-disputed “King of Jazz”) create comedy out of the chaos of the period. In the urban melting pots of New Orleans, New York, and Chicago, traditional jazz gave voice to the collision of European and African traditions playing out in every big city neighborhood and in every juke joint, vaudeville show, and silent film - emotions and attitudes hustle one another for dominance and all exist simultaneously in uneasy alliance in this world. In his brilliant study Hip: A History, John Leland sees the “hipness” of the burgeoning American hipster (Armstrong and Bugs Bunny are given roughly equal play as trickster figures) as performative representation of the similarly elastic, liminal American identity of the period: comedy and tragedy exist side-by-side and the audience is never entirely sure which is which.

As the twenties drew to a close, jazz transitioned from a form of group improvisation to a soloist’s art. In Ken Burns’ Jazz, Stanley Crouch convincingly argues that Louis Armstrong is the single figure most responsible for this change: his version of “Dinah”, with Armstrong contorting the melody both vocally and instrumentally to shade increments of emotion and meaning shows clearly Armstrong’s singularity in the realm of jazz. What Crouch doesn’t point out, however, is how much Armstrong echoes the flipside of the urban jazz that now signifies the “Roaring Twenties” – the “Old Weird America” as Greil Marcus terms it, the America heard on the rural folk-blues and country records of the period.

On Harry Smith’s landmark 1952 Anthology of American Folk Music, scholar, “magus”, and all-around beatific crank Smith gathered together pre-War folk, blues, gospel, and country records that shared a singular vision of an America that didn’t need the Depression to make it collapse: it had already collapsed – under the weight of poverty, racism, the still-present aftermath of the Civil War, but its artists exhibited the sort of rugged individuality Armstrong had to bring to jazz - a strength in their otherness that is startling in its intensity. The artists who follow Armstrong, whether black or white, ostensibly ‘country’ or ostensibly ‘blues’ sound simultaneously ancient and very modern. Blind Willie Johnson’s “John the Revelator” is terrifying, hopeful and vindictive and holy, mapping a stylistic locale populated not only by Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf , but by Captain Beefheart and Tom Waits. The songs of the Mississippi Delta and the songs of the Appalachians encompass black and white traditions side-by-side: to listen to the blues inflections in Jimmie Rodgers’s “Blue Yodel #10” and the Carter Family’s “Wildwood Flower” and the proto-bluegrass strumming in Blind Lemon Jefferson’s stark “See That My Grave Is Kept Clean” is to hear the whole of rock and roll tradition in miniature. And that is, in its way, majestically comic.


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