1949 - October 6

Clyde Bernhardt And His Kansas City Buddies - October 6 1949 

 

Clyde Bernhardt/Sheldon Harris: I remember : eighty years of black entertainment, big bands, and the blues : an autobiography 

We did Cracklin' Bread and three of my other numbers and just on a hunch I took the disc over to Blue Note Records. Didn't know nobody there—walked right in the front door. They liked the songs and on  
October 6, 1949, took my group into Carnegie Hall to re-record in their own way. Said they wanted that special echo sound that was popular then.  

The session was one big boresome date. Blue Note kept fussing with the mikes, running up and down the stage, moving us here, moving us there. Then coming back to move the mikes again. When they play back a number, someone holler: "Too loud." Then somebody else came running out to fix the balance again. Kept doing that over and over. Don't think those guys knew how to record a little band. I couldn't say anything, but when the sides were released, they were not as good as some of the rejects they threw out. Not even as good as my demo.  

I showed Blue Note my Decca contract, and they said I couldn't be held to a exclusive clause because it didn't guarantee me a certain number of sides each year. But it sure worked my mind a long time after the Blue Note sides came out under my name. 

Clyde with Luis Russell's Orchestra, 1949

Richard Cook - Blue Note Records: The Biography – Secker and Warburg 2001

As the forties came to an end, Lion and Wolff were facing up to the ever-present problem of a small business: how to grow, without overreaching their resources. Blue Note’s catalogue had grown to some significance, but they still had little to show for the label’s efforts beyond a small coterie of fans - divided, in all probability, by the dichotomy between the label’s original jazz recordings and it bop-inclined material. 

Richard Havers – Uncompromising Expression 

In the closing years of the 1940s, however, things were slow for the label, partly because its owners, Lion and Wolff, were trying to get to grips with new developments in jazz. The coming of bop was changing everything and Lion especially knew he needed to move with the times but worried that Blue Note wouldn't be able to sell records. It's one thing being an arts benefactor - and Lion definitely felt that he was doing something above and beyond the commercial - but to sustain a business you need profits, or at the very least the chance of breaking even.  

Around this time Lion and Wolff bought out [Max] Margulis, although given their precarious financial state and lack of real success, it's doubtful whether a great deal of money changed hands. The other original sponsor, Emanuel Eisenberg, had been killed in a plane crash in March Apparently, he attacked the pilot of the two-seater aircraft with a pair of pliers, causing it to crash. It is believed his death was a deliberate suicide; the pilot survived. 

 

Session Information 

Clyde Bernhardt, trombone, vocal; Sam Taylor, tenor sax; Dave Small, baritone sax; Earl Knight, piano; Rene Hall, guitar; Eugene Ramey, bass; Gus Johnson, drums. 

Carnegie Hall Studio, NYC, October 6, 1949 

BN366 (tk.4), Cracklin' Bread, Blue Note 1202 

BN368 (tk.3), Don't Tell It, Blue Note 1203 

BN369 (tk.3), Chattanooga, Blue Note 1203 

BN367 (tk.2), Meet Me On The Corner, Blue Note 1202