[Dixielandjazz] Nat Hentoff Column

[Stephen G Barbone]

Nat Hentoff's column from the August 2008 Issue of "Jazz Times"

Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband

Jazz Revelations for Baby Boomers

A lawyer I know began his jazz listening with the bebop of Bird and  
Dizzy, although he knew they had forebears whom he intended to sample  
eventually. Upon hearing Louis Armstrong’s “West End Blues” on Newark  
jazz station WBGO, he excitedly called me: “Where can I get more  
records by Armstrong?” (The sobriquet “Satchmo” was unfamiliar to him.)
I obliged, having had similar calls from listeners decades younger  
than I am. To all of them, I recommend they get the catalog of Mosaic  
Records, which has set international standards for rediscovering and  
regenerating much of the timeless history of this music (www.mosaicrecords.com 
).

In 1983, I bought its first release, a boxed set of The Complete Blue  
Note Recordings of Thelonious Monk. Ever since, Michael Cuscuna, Scott  
Wenzel and the late Charlie Lourie have been formidable jazz  
detectives. Leasing jazz product from major labels, they burrow into  
those companies’ vaults, discover unissued sessions and alternate  
takes, and call surviving musicians to get accurate personnel for  
these Mosaic releases.

There is also an online music store, True Blue Music (www.truebluemusic.com 
), that I recommend to baby boomers curious to learn how much pleasure  
they’ve been missing. A convenient place to start the surprises is the  
True Blue 2007/2008 catalog that has a set I urge everyone to buy,  
regardless of age: Lester Young: The “Kansas City” Sessions.

When I was 19, I bought the original Commodore release—with Pres on  
clarinet and tenor, Buck Clayton, Dicky Wells, Eddie Durham and, on  
many of the tracks, the core Basie rhythm section (Jo Jones, Freddie  
Green and Walter Page) that quintessentially defined what it is to  
swing. It is the first record I’d pick to take to the proverbial  
desert island because, as Loren Schoenberg says, it is “among the most  
prophetic and profound meditations on jazz ever recorded.”

Also in that True Blue treasure trove is a set my lawyer friend may  
well put in his will—Louis Armstrong’s Portrait of an Artist as a  
Young Man (1923-34).

On another True Blue page, I was brought back to a revelation I  
experienced at 16 when, in a secondhand record and book store in  
Boston, I found a 1929 Mound City Blue Blowers session with Pee Wee  
Russell and Coleman Hawkins. I played it so often I almost drove my  
mother crazy. In 1961, during my brief time as an A&R man, I brought  
Coleman and Pee Wee into a studio together for the first time since  
1929, for Jazz Reunion: Pee Wee Russell/Coleman Hawkins, originally  
issued on Candid.

When the session ended that afternoon, pianist Nat Pierce, who had  
arranged all the tracks, said to Hawkins, who was enjoying his well- 
deserved cognac, “Did you notice Pee Wee’s ‘28th and 8th’ tune sounded  
like something Monk might have written?” Hawkins, the patriarch,  
nodded affirmatively, adding: “And for 30 years, I’ve been listening  
to him play those funny notes he used to think were wrong. They  
weren’t. They didn’t have a name for them then.”

It’s one thing to have had the privilege of writing about jazz for  
some 60 years, but it was an extraordinary experience to have been a  
part of putting some of this music into the grooves. As a record  
“producer,” all I actually did—after finding out if the leader was  
available—was to keep track of how long each take was, send out for  
sandwiches, and make sure the leader was in the studio for the final  
editing. It was his or her byline, not mine.

I was very pleased to see in that True Blue catalog another of my  
Candid sessions. It was by a Texas tenor, Booker Ervin, who is hardly  
mentioned anywhere anymore. He died in 1970, just short of his 40th  
birthday, of kidney disease, but his signature room-filling sound and  
daring unpredictability made Charles Mingus, for whom Booker had  
worked, say, “Nearly everybody I’ve worked with whom I’ve liked seems  
to get into a trance when they’re at their best. When Booker was  
really going, I’d say something to him and he just didn’t hear me. He  
was somewhere else—inside the music.”

And if I’ve contributed nothing else lasting to jazz, I was able to  
send out into the world “Booker’s Blues” in this set. The album title,  
That’s It, came to me when, in the studio, listening to a playback,  
Booker said, “Yes, that’s it!”

That deep sense of fulfillment—answering Duke Ellington’s song, “What  
Am I Here For?” (from the Hawkins-Russell reunion session)—resounds  
through so many sessions that Michael Cuscuna and his colleagues have  
brought back to life, and with much more than was in the original  
grooves.

In Dan Morgenstern’s essential book, Living With Jazz, he writes of  
Mosaic’s beginning and its release of the Thelonious Monk set: “Not  
only are there 11 previously unissued alternate takes, including one  
each of the masterpieces, ‘Criss-Cross’ and ‘Horning In,’ but there  
are also two entirely new pieces. One is a delightful trio version of  
the pop tune, ‘I’ll Follow You,’ which Monk never recorded before or  
again. The other (in two takes) is a Monk original, ‘Sixteen,’ from  
the memorable sextet date of 1952. These discoveries alone make this  
Mosaic issue a major event.”

In 2004, the National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters designations  
were expanded to include non-musician “Jazz Advocates,” of which I was  
the first. In that spirit, there ought to be room in Jazz at Lincoln  
Center’s Jazz Hall of Fame for Michael Cuscuna, Charlie Lourie and  
Scott Wenzel.



Steve Barbone

www.barbonestreet.com
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband