George Lewis And His New Orleans Stompers – April 8 and 11 1955
Robert S. Greene: George Lewis And His New Orleans Stompers Volume 1 Liner Notes: BLP 1205 (Also BLP 7027 and BLP 7028)
THERE'S A STORY to this band, and it's right here — in the music they play. It's the New Orleans story, if you like, but it's really even more than that. In a sense, it's a story that re-writes the jazz legend, and makes you wonder what, after all, really makes this music go.
Picture a studio out in Hackensack, New Jersey. Picture seven men from New Orleans walking into that studio — most of them in their forties, two of them in their middle to late sixties. Some of them know the rough planking and the hot sun of the New Orleans docks. All of them have followed the ups and downs of a jazzman's life, from the early 1900% or before. Some of their horns are in beat-up cases—the clarinetist has an old Albert, a type that was supposed to have gone out of style years ago because you couldn't get around it fast enough.
And you watch them set up — the thin clarinetist, George Lewis, with a soulful face that breaks into light when he smiles "Big Jim" Robinson, the stevedore, whose large hands make a trombone look like a toy. There's "Slow Drag" Pravageau on bass. He's sixty-seven, but he keeps it a secret...even from his bass. Near him stands "Kid" Howard on trumpet, who's not a kid any more, and who followed the riverboats up to Chicago in the old days to see how they were doing on the South Side. You watch George Guesnon tune up his banjo. It's got a funky sound, but to a New Orleans ear, it's just right. Beside him sits Alton Purnell, hitting a few chords on the Steinway. He grins. It's not exactly what a Professor's piano should look like, but if you hit it right, you can forget about the twelve coats of varnish and shellac. And there, fixing the foot pedal on the bass drum, is Joe Watkins. The bands he's played with make a long list, and he knows the feeling of New Orleans pavements gliding under his foot as he strides along, the straps of his parade drum biting into his shoulders.
It's a recording studio in Hackensack, New Jersey, and the year is 1955. The past and the present are about to rub shoulders, and you wonder what it's going to sound like. And then Lewis kicks off the beat for Mahogany Hall Stomp —and the walls move back two feet.
And as you listen, you realize something you've half known, half hoped for, but never really dared believe. New Orleans Jazz isn't dead. It's as alive and kicking today as it was on those warm nights, so long ago, when the scent of magnolias blended with the sound of whacky horns down Bourbon Street way.
If New Orleans Jazz died that night in 1917 when they closed Lulu White's, these men never heard about it. If it was supposed to have changed in Chicago in the mid '20s, and then gone through a big band phase in New York in the '30s, they didn't hear about that either. For as you listen, here is the old sound on high fidelity. It takes a minute to get used to it — to really believe it — but it won't throw you. And you know what the old records were trying to sound like — and couldn't quite.
If you've any idea that these New Orleans musicians are digging up a museum piece, just listen to any one of the cuts on this marvelous LP. For this is the only way these men know how to play — they're playing jazz, and this is what it sounds like, and if by some miracle Oliver, or Jelly, or Keppard walked in through the door, they'd think they were home again. For this is their music too—with the flags up and waving. It's certain, and sure, and it believes in itself.
Listen to the Lewis clarinet on See See Rider, with a tone a yard wide, and all velvet. Listen to Robinson on Mahogany Hall Stomp, catch the wonderful vocal of Alton Purnell on Heebie Jeebies, the incredible beat of "Slow Drag" Pavageau's bass on Lord Lord, You Sure Been Good To Me, the truly great clarinet-trombone ensemble which Lewis and Robinson cook up on Walking With The King. And if you want, you can practically slide into line behind Joe Watkins drums, as you round the corner playing Gettysburg. Marches, blues, hymns, all played as fresh as the day the music was born. "Kid" Howard's horn is the kind that made the shutters slide open on Basin Street, and George Guesnon's banjo, with its tremendous rock, is right up there at the front of the rhythm, pushing the horns, driving them, without ever stepping on them.
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| September 1955 |
Notice the tunes that they play, some of which haven't had a New Orleans going over since the last edition of the "Blue Book." And above all, listen to the ensembles—sweet, driving, hot, superbly recorded, building to peaks they can't top — and then topping them on the next Chorus. You'll hear the rhythm laying down an incredible driving beat, you'll hear Robinson holding up the bottom of the band with a trombone that opens the gates, and then shakes them, and you'll hear "Kid" Howard sliding through with a driving horn that sets down a melody line and seduces it at the same time. And all through, there's Lewis, changing the whole tone of ensembles with his clusters of clean, high, nervous notes, and then coming downstairs with a tone so broad and sweet and steaming hot you'll begin to wonder how a clarinet ever sounded like that.
The books talk about a golden age of jazz, and the legend, and the giants in the land. These records talk about the same thing, but they let you in on a secret. When New Orleans Jazz "died," somebody forgot to lock the gate. Here is the music again — as incredibly alive as the day it was born. You've got it in your hands right now.
—ROBERT S. GREENE
Cover Design by REID K. MILES
Ship Engraving from BETTMAN ARCHIVES
Photo by FRANCIS WOLFF
Recording by RUDY VAN GELDER
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| Photo by Francis Wolff |
Bruce Boyd Raeburn : 1998 CD Issue Liner Notes
The role of independent record labels in documenting and preserving American music — and especially jazz — has not always achieved the recognition it deserves. Independents such as Gennett, Paramount, Okeh and Nordskog did much to document the early New Orleans pioneers who worked their way north and west at the dawn OF the Jazz Age. But the bust of the recording industry in the latter 1 920s cleared them all from the field, if the majors had not already swallowed them up by then. Following recovery in the mid-1930s, a new generation of independent labels emerged: United Hot Clubs of America, Hot Record Society, and Commodore began with reissue campaigns that served as a threshold for more adventurous projects infused with a sense of "the righteous cause," the belief that jazz was an art form worthy of documentation and preservation. Perhaps the most adventurous of the new labels, and certainly the one that best exemplified the trend toward stylistic pluralism, was Blue Note Records, founded in January 1939 by a German expatriate, Alfred Lion. A statement of purpose accompanied Blue Note's first brochure in May 1939: "Blue Note Records are designed simply to serve the uncompromising expressions of hot jazz or swing, in general. Any particular style of playing which represents an authentic way of musical feeling is genuine expression. By virtue of its significance in place, time and circumstance, it possesses its own tradition, artistic standards and audience that keeps it alive. Hot jazz, therefore, is expression and communication, a musical and social manifestation, and Blue Note records are concerned with identifying its impulse, not its sensational and commercial adornments." This manifesto, dedicated as it was to preserving the integrity of Blue Note artists, stands in stark contrast to the usual tales of manipulation by unscrupulous A & R men within the record industry, and yet it also elucidates how viable such a strategy could be, for Blue Note successfully kept pace with the times, moving from boogie woogie, traditional jazz, and swing to bebop, hard bop, soul, and beyond. In retrospect, the Blue Note catalog amounts to nothing less than one of the nation's most significant musical treasures, and the reissue programs directed by Michael Cuscuna since 1975 have ensured accessibility to these priceless recordings.
The same impulse which generated renewed vigor among independent record labels in the late 1930s also resuscitated the careers of several New Orleans jazz musicians whose reputations had remained strictly local until the historical writing of William Russell and Charles Edward Smith in Jazzmen (1939) brought them to national attention. During the 190s trumpeter Bunk Johnson and trombonist Kid Ory held forth as the twin pillars of a New Orleans revival which vied with bebop and modern jazz for the hearts and ears of young jazz enthusiasts. Despite the impact of this jazz schism (which preoccupied critics primarily), or perhaps because of it, musicians well into middle age were able to cultivate a dedicated youthful following, satisfying a hunger for authenticity and the virtues of a seemingly less complex time before world wars and the Depression. The Bunk Johnson saga ended in anti-climax following marginally successful seasons at the Stuyvesant Casino in New York City in 1945-46, but the revival found a more reliable champion in the band's clarinetist, George Lewis, who rose like a phoenix from the ashes after the trumpeter's death in 1949. Lewis had worked with all the best leaders in New Orleans in the 920s, including Buddy Petit, Ernest "Kid Punch" Miller, Chris Kelly and Henry "Red" Allen, and during the Depression he had traveled regionally with Evan Thomas before returning home to face the hard scrabble gigs along Decatur Street on the river front. During World War II, his association with Bunk on recordings for Jazz Man and American Music in 1942 and 1944-46 afforded a degree of notoriety. However, as Paige Van Horst observed in his notes to The Complete Blue Note Recordings of George Lewis: "George Lewis was not a prime candidate to become a jazz idol. His success seems in many ways accidental. He was a small, frail, shy, soft-spoken man and probably would have finished his days playing tavern lobs in New Orleans and working as a stevedore had there not been a back-to-the-basics movement in jazz during the late 1930s." This, of course, made him perfect for the Blue Note roster.
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| Photo by Francis Wolff |
The sixteen cuts collected on this CD were recorded at Rudy Van Gelder's Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey studio on April 8 and April 11, 1955 and were produced by Alfred Lion. George Lewis's first connection with Alfred Lion and Blue Note had been a session recorded by Bill Russell in 19Å3—issued on the specially-created Climax label because it was a non-union recording — which had sold well and helped to establish name recognition for the clarinetist in his own right. The Van Gelder sessions resulted from a fortuitous engagement for George Lewis and his New Orleans Stompers at Childs' Paramount Restaurant in New York City in the midst of a national tour. It was Lewis's first return to Manhattan since his Bunk Johnson days nearly a decade earlier. The repertoire represents a cross-section of traditional New Orleans standards—popular tunes, marches, blues, hymns and stomps—all relying on the classic collective approach that makes New Orleans music so appealing. The interplay between soloist and ensemble is not always flawless, and New Orleans bands often sound rough to the uninitiated, but the intention of the musicians is to evoke surprise, and thus excitement, and to make the listener feel the music and respond to it. We can rest assured that George Lewis will not be remembered for his technique or for the number of records sold, but he had a "voice" that was unique in its emotional power and lyrical intensify, and once heard, it could never be forgotten.
—Bruce Boyd Raeburn
Curator, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University
Paige Van Vorst – The Complete Blue Note Recordings of George Lewis - Mosaic MR5-132
Alfred Lion of Blue Note had been a Lewis fan since he issued the Climax session [see May 15/16 1943] , and had even stayed with the Lewises when he visited New Orleans with Bill Russell in 1944. Shortly before the end of the engagement he made arrangements to record the band at Rudy Van Gelder's studio in Hackensack. They recorded April 8 and 11, 1955, with the results originally issued on two 10-inch LPs. Two tracks were eliminated in combining the albums onto a 12-inch LP in the late 1950s, and there remained unissued one number plus three alternate takes.
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| Photo by Francis Wolff |
The session starts with WHEN YOU WORE A TULIP, a 1914 pop tune from New Orleans composer Percy Wenrich always favored by bands from his hometown. This take, which is hitherto unissued, shows Howard playing a fairly relaxed lead supported by propulsive string bass from Pavageau. Lewis takes the third chorus, with Robinson playing away in the background. He sounds just a shade weaker than he did on the last session due to, among other things, his health and personal problems. His wife had died suddenly earlier in the year and Marrero's illness worried him; as a result he was drinking more than he should have and not eating properly.
The second number is an unissued first take of GETTYSBURG MARCH. This follows the same basic arrangement as used on the prior session, with the 6/8 opening followed by a drum break and a switch into jazz time. Lewis moves to the forefront on the second ensemble chorus, then takes a nice low-register solo on the third chorus. There is a bit of a clash when Howard and the rest of the band reenter for the fourth chorus, but it is quickly resolved and they carry the tune out in style.
WALKING WITH THE KING opens with some strong playing from Howard leading into his vocal backed by some forceful bass playing from Pavageau. Robinson comes in with a punching solo backed by some gentle noodling from Lewis. Lewis moves into high gear, starling his solo high, then dropping down into the lower register as solo continues. Howard comes back in through two driving ensemble choruses to close the side.
The second (and issued) take of GETTYSBIJRG isn't as laid back as its predecessor, playing the hot flurries of notes that had become a hallmark of his style. Robinson issues another forceful solo backed by Lewis, who follows with a strong middle register solo. Howard comes growling back into the ensemble, playing especially well in the middle register.
SAVOY BLUES was the first blues attempted at this session, and it is taken at a fairly bright tempo. Here the band is working well within the outlines of Armstrong's recording. The first solo goes to Guesnon, who plays several of his best licks. Howard contributes a thoughtful solo, marked first by growling, then some forays into the upper register. Robinson takes a half-chorus before he is joined by Howard and Lewis for some well-argued ensemble playing to end the selection.
NOBODY KNOWS THE WAY I FEEL has a piano intro, a couple of ensemble choruses followed by a wistful solo from Lewis. Howard is having a bit of lip trouble, but it doesn't keep him from taking the band through several effective ensemble choruses.
BUCKET'S GOT A HOLE IN IT features the rarely-played first strain, which the Lewis band played but which has otherwise been forgotten. Watkins takes a vocal, after which there is a nice joint solo from Lewis and Robinson.
I CAN'T ESCAPE FROM YOU, a 1936 pop tune from Richard Whiting and Leo Robin which was introduced to the New Orleans literature via a 1945 Bunk Johnson Recording. was omitted from the 12-inch version of the album. Taken at a relentless tempo, the performance spots solos from Lewis and Robinson before Parnell steps into the spotlight to take his first solo of the session. The ensemble return for a couple of chorus, with a half chorus Lewis solo just before the end.
MAHOGANY HALL STOMP, a Louis number, is largely a Howard vehicle, though he doesn't attempt to copy Armstrong's record at all. Purnell turns the performance into a boogie woogie during his solo. Howard conies back to do a Louis-type closing, but after not quite hitting some of the high notes, moves to lower ground with great effectiveness.
MOVE THE BODY OVER, an old New Orleans theme of uncertain origin, is appearing here for the first time, though Lewis did record the number a year later with slightly different personnel. Watkins takes the vocal, and Lewis has a bit of trouble with his fingering, which may explain why this wasn't originally issued.
LORD, LORD, LORD, YOU SURE BEEN GOOD TO ME, which has been done to death by contemporary New Orleans brass bands, had only been recorded a couple of times prior to this session. Howard does a shouting, Armstrong-styled vocal, followed by another of those Robinson-Lewis interludes, this one featuring a fairly subdued Big Jim. Lewis and Purnell each take a chorus before Howard comes in to lead the band out.
Howard sounds tired by the time they do the third take of GEMYSBURG. He sort of glides through the straight chorus before coming to life for the stomp section of the number. He manages some interesting touches, however, during much of his ensemble playing. Even the normally reliable Robinson seems listless through much of his solo. By the time the take is done. all seems better, and they make it out of the side with a couple of good ensemble choruses.
HIGH SOCIETY is taken at a nice, relaxed tempo and works well that way. Lewis plays around the Picou solo a bit before actually playing it. He doesn't sound like the sick man he was at the time he did this side.
SEE SEE RIDER is the first Purnell vocal in this series of records. He follows that with a vocal in HEEBIE JEEBIES. The band has obviously been listening to Louis' record, but they manage to keep the tempo down a bit from what we've become used to and the number works quite well.
With the end in sight, the band did another take of WHEN YOU WORE A TULIP, and they're all in shouting form. Big Jim punches out a solo, Howard tears in right after him first in a subdued lower register, and as he gets warmed up to it, he tries some nice variations in the upper middle register before the surprise ending. A fine recording to close a wonderful session.
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| Photo by Francis Wolff |
Down Beat 19 October 1955 Volume 22 Issue 21
This is the first of two volumes cut by George Lewis and his Nev Orleans Stompers earlier this year when the band was playing Childs. The set is called Vol. 3, however, there are two previous albums on Blue
Note. The personnel is: Avery (Kid) Howard, trumpet; Jim Robinson, trombone; George Lewis, clarinet; Alton Purnell, piano ; George Guesnon, banjo; Alcide (Slow Drag) Pavageau, bass; and Joe Watkins, drums. There are vocals by Parnell, Watkins, and Howard. This is one of the better recorded examples of march-band New Orleans style with its rough polyphony, singing horns and communal excitement.
Outstanding are Lewis' swirling clarinet and the big, rugged trombone of Robinson. The vocals are also effective. Rudy Van Gelder's engineering gives the Lewis assemblage about the best recorded sound a New Orleans group has ever received. How any one can listen to music like this and still feel Turk Murphy is of any value in jazz escapes me entirely. Very close to five stars. Blue Note LP 7027)
Avery "Kid" Howard, trumpet, vocal; Jim Robinson, trombone; George Lewis, clarinet; Alton Purnell, piano, vocal; George Guesnon, banjo; Alcide "Slow Drag" Pavageau, bass; Joe Watkins, drums, vocal.
Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, April 8, 1955
tk.3, When You Wore A Tulip (alt)
tk.5, Gettysburg March (alt)
tk.8, Walking With The King, Blue Note BLP 7027, BLP 1205
tk.9, Gettysburg March, Blue Note BLP 7027, BLP 1205
tk.12, Savoy Blues, Blue Note BLP 7028, BLP 1205
tk.14, Nobody Knows The Way I Feel This Morning, Blue Note BLP 7028
tk.16, My Bucket's Got A Hole In It, Blue Note BLP 7027, BLP 1205
Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, April 11, 1955
tk.19, I Can't Escape From You, Blue Note BLP 7028
tk.20, Mahogany Hall Stomp, Blue Note BLP 7027, BLP 1205
tk.23, Move The Body Over
tk.26, Lord, Lord You Sure Been Good To Me, Blue Note BLP 7028, BLP 1205
tk.27, Gettysburg March (alt)
tk.29, High Society, Blue Note BLP 7028, BLP 1205
tk.30, See See Rider Blues, Blue Note BLP 7027, BLP 1205
tk.31, Heebie Jeebies, Blue Note BLP 7028, BLP 1205
tk.33, When You Wore A Tulip, Blue Note BLP 7027, BLP 1205
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