Art Hodes And His Chicagoans – March 18 1944
Richard Havers – Uncompromising Expression
Art Hodes, aged 29, was born in the Ukraine, grew up in Chicago, and played good, traditional jazz. His band, the Chicagoans, included a 20-something trombonist by the name of Ray Conniff. In the Blue Note tradition of the time, they cut tunes such as ‘Maple Leaf Rag’, ‘Yellow Dog Blues’ and ‘Shoe Shiner's Rag’.
Richard Cook - Blue Note Records: The Biography – Secker and Warburg 2001
In the main, the hallmark of Blue Note’s jazz at this point was an intelligent conservatism. The label still had the feel of a collector's indulgence. The sessions under the leadership of Chicago pianist Art Hodes, ten dates across 1944-45, are typical of Lion’s good husbandry: tidy, relaxed music, the musicians apparently playing for themselves as much as for any perceived audience, but with a strong result at the end of the date. In his liner notes to a 1969 reissue of some of the sessions, Hodes, who was a gifted writer himself, recalled the atmosphere of each date:
“You walk in and there's that big bag; full of food. Once we started playing, you didn't have to leave the building for nothin'. Alfred hung his hat in the control room, while Frank was all over the place taking pictures. After a while you got used to him almost in your lap. Took good pictures too. There was a feeling of 'at ease'. And considering the times, the bread was good. Eventually the records were released (and that was before LP's), and no one got hurt.”
Hodes was also wry enough to run a small piece in the April 1944 issues of Jazz Record, the magazine he co-edited, under the heading “Blue Note Goes White.” In the long history of the label, he was one of the very few white musicians to record for the company as a leader.
The Hodes sessions were also characteristic for their use of a repertory cast of players. Edmond Hall and Sidney Bechet were on some of the dates, and Hodes himself went on to play as a sideman on some other 1940s sessions. The Blue Note team spirit was already taking shape. It was mirrored in the sessions under the various leaderships of Hall, James P. Johnson and trumpeter Sidney De Paris, some of which followed the swingtet format.
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| Max Kaminsky, Jack Bland, Ray Conniff and Art Hodes |
Photo by Francis Wolff
Dan Morgenstern – The Complete Art Hodes Blue Note Sessions
As the “Chicagoans” designation indicates, Art’s debut dates for Blue Note were prompted by a resurgence if interest in the jazz created in the later 1920s by a bunch of young white musicians in the Windy City who had been captivated by the music of Oliver, Armstrong, Hines et al, as well as by Bix Beiderbecke. Art was one of them, recording in 1928 with the legendary and ill-starred Frank Teschemacher, but when most of the others moved to New York, he remained in Chicago.
Downbeat Magazine Review – Volume 12 Issue 6 – 15 March 1945
Best white Jazz waxed since the Bluebirds of Muggsy's Ragtime Bandl Every one of these sides is on a par with the great Davison-Brunis platters on Commodore, and that’s a-plenty! Art's group is hand-picked, Max on trumpet, Ray Coniff on trombone, Rod Cless on clarinet, Jack Bland on guitar, Haggart on bass, Alvin on drums. If you think Ray's out of place. spin these again. Tunes are well-chosen too, a Joplin rag, a Handy blues an Oliver stomp, a Morton drag, a standard Chicago favorite, and two by Art himself. Discs are paired beautifully as well, one slow side and one fast in each case. Each one's a special masterpiece in itself. Can’t seem to pick the finest here, but Yellow Dog finds its way back to my turntable every free hour or so. Here's a case history of jazz, real jazz, on four truly wonderful records. Max leads with strength, Conif surprises by forgetting his Shavian associations for the moment, the late Cless drives each separate crystal note home for all its worth. Hodes plays his heart out, Bland and Haggart are there at all times, and Alvin’s something a bit more than just right. Art and Rod star as soloists. Hodes is great here, I think. Cless is great, here and anywhere, I know. Thanks for leaving these behind, Rod. No one will forget, now. Move over, Johnny Dodds and Jimmy Noone, Frank Tesch and Leon Rapp, you’ve got company up there! I’ve played these eight sides over and over, but they'll wear out before they pall on me. Absolutely stupendous all the way around, the choicest tunes by the most inspired musicians readily available on wax today! This, then, is jazz.
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| Danny Alvin |
Max Margulis – Blue Note Marketing Brochure, Nos. 505-508)
THE musicians on these records were all renowned masters of the Chicago style during the Prohibition era with its small band vogue, but unlike so many of their contemporaries, they do not today maintain a self-conscious, backward-looking style. Neither have they made an obvious and mechanical compromise with the popular technical style.
For one this, these records issue from mutually exchanged ideas and suggestions, and they reveal their players’ common approval of the ensemble, rather than the individual musician, as the driving force of their projected music. In this important sense, the records are a landmark. In a band dominated by the ensemble mode of feeling, every participant with his own musical thought, abstracted from the collective playing at any moment of time, is the soloist. The drummer, for example, is as articulate as the soloist as the trumpeter or pianist.
Although the ensemble relationship is always felt, there are outstanding solos by the group’s personalities: Art Hodes, who has achieved identity with the genuine blues consciousness: the late Rod Cless (his recent death was a severe shock), whose sensitive and tremulous musical line revies and continues the spirit once embodied in Johnny Dodds: Max Kaminsky, whose lyrical strophes are deeply evocative; and Ray Conniff, whose clear-cut trombone phrases have forceful assurance.
The selections offered on these records date back a decade or two, or even more. Most of the pieces are usually associated with blues-inspired playing, while the two pieces by Hodes (Slow ‘Em Down Blues and Clark and Randolph) rise frankly from the same source. Their performance is in consistently good taste, and therefore, is full of high distinction. Our of the independent, horizontal movement of the instruments in ensemble, there is a particular effectiveness to the fluid lyricism of Cless, the fine rhetoric of Kaminsky, the singing figures of Conniff, the ardent moodiness of Hodes. The collective quality of the ensemble is as effectively defined by the drums of Danny Alvin, the guitar of Jack Bland, and the bass of Bob Haggart and Sid Jacobs respectively. Note, among the numerous virtues of these records, that Kaminsky leads, but does not weight or overbalance the others. Note the continuous presence of the trombone and note the exemplary solos of Cless in pieces as different as Doctor Jazz and She’s Crying for Me. Especially note the eloquent expressiveness of the four slow pieces.
- MAX MARGULIS
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| Jack Bland, Art Hodes, Ray Conniff |
Photo by Francis Wolff
Art Hodes B-6508 Liner Notes
Maple Leaf Rag, is a previously unissued master. Kaminsky comes at you with melodic driving lead, and he's having a healthy day. We're playing this 'chestnut' at band tempo, and Alvin finds if to his liking. The entire track is almost an ensemble effort. It's a free wheeling opener.
She's Crying For Me, is a tune you don't hear too often. I learned it from Wingy (Mannone); definitely New Orleans. As we got into it and you hear Rod Cless, you know he digs this tune. I follow him on for a couple (choruses), but I read it blues. The swinging ensemble picks up immediately and you get that 'walk-it-on-down' feeling, as the band takes it out.
Yellow Dog Blues; and ever since I heard Bessie Smith do this I've had a thing about this tune. It tells a story, and it's the blues. There's more than 12-bars; that whole part in front. Cless was no stranger to this ditty; you listen to him weaving his part into Maxie's lead. After my chorus Rod comes right back in with Bob Haggart giving us that musical bottom. This track is one of my favorites.
Slow 'Em Down Blues, and I'm credited as author. But I'd hate to think of what that short stanza would sound like without the other player's offering. Luckily, the piano chorus and background playing is something I can live with. But wait 'til you hear Maxie come in with muted trumpet. This is another of the unissued tracks.
Rod Cless Biography – Blue Note Records
Clarinetist Rod Cless seems to have emerged from the middle of a potato field somewhere in Iowa and died in the mid-’40s after falling several stories from the balcony of an apartment. Named George Roderick Cless, he was related by marriage to the much better-known reedman Bud Freeman, but certainly had a respectable career in the Dixieland ensembles of leaders such as Muggsy Spanier and Bobby Hackett. He began playing in bands in college including the Varsity Five, darlings of Iowa State University. In the mid-’20s he relocated to Des Moines where he first came into contact with an important influence, bandleader Frank Teschemacher, known as “Tesch” to his musical cohorts. The two went to Chicago together and began playing with groups such as the orchestra of Charlie Pierce.
In the late ’20s, Cless toured in the south with Frank Quartell’s Band, including his first journey to New Orleans. Back in Chicago, Cless squatted at the Wig Wam Club and enlisted with the combo of Louis Panico, a fairly calm bandleader despite contrary indications suggested by his surname. During this time Cless began to play more saxophone and took part in gigs with a less pronounced jazz content. Often these jobs involved extended club residencies, and the stay-at-home nature of this employment also allowed him to expand his activities as a clarinet teacher.
The spring of 1939 marked in many ways a return to pure jazz work, Cless joining up with Spanier’s band the Ragtimers for the balance of the year, followed by two years with pianist Art Hodes. Other gigs in the ’40s included work with Marty Marsala, Ed Farley, Georg Brunis, and Wild Bill Davidson as well as the aforementioned Hackett. In 1944 he was associated with Max Kaminsky with whom he was employed at New York City’s Pied Piper Club when Cless suffered catastrophic injuries toppling over the railings of an apartment, subsequently surviving for only four days in the hospital. ~ Eugene Chadbourne
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| BLP 7004 |
Session Information
Max Kaminsky, trumpet; Ray Conniff, trombone; Rod Cless, clarinet; Art Hodes, piano; Bob Haggart, bass; Danny Alvin, drums.
NYC, March 18, 1944
BN960-1, Maple Leaf Rag (alternate take), Blue Note B-6508
BN963-1, Slow 'Em Down Blues (alternate take), Blue Note B-6508
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