[Dixielandjazz] Goldkette Memories

Ken Mathieson ken at kenmath.free-online.co.uk
Wed Oct 28 19:14:33 PDT 2009


Hi Don et al,

Fascinating stuff about a fascinating period. The Goldkette stable was full of outstanding players and arrangers. I became quite friendly with Benny Carter in the 1980s and he talked about how impressed he and the other members of Fletcher Henderson's band were with the Goldkette band which played opposite them at the Roseland Ballroom in NYC in the late 1920s. That Goldkette band had Bix and Tram in its ranks and charts by Bill Challis. Benny singled all three of them out for special mention. He told me that his own trumpet playing had been influenced by hearing Bix on that gig: he was especially taken with the sound, the harmonic thinking and the underlying sense of structure in his playing. This stuck with him when he started to play trumpet seriously towards the end of the 1920s. He was also hugely impressed by Tram's C-Melody playing, by his sound and his complete mastery of the instrument, but above all by his subjugation of a massive technique to the business of playing coherent music. Challis too came in for great praise and was cited by Benny as being a major influence on his own arranging. Coming from somone of Carter's immense talent and achievements, that's no small praise.

My major project for 2009 was a programme of Carter's music, which was a great succes for the Classic Jazz Orchestra and guest soloist Alan Barnes at the  Edinburgh Jazz Festival. Our major project for 2009 is going to be the music of the early big bands and will cover late-Oliver, early-Ellington, Chick Webb, Fletcher Henderson, Russell, Moten etc, but will concentrate in the outstanding charts written for McKinney's Cotton Pickers by James Nesbitt. The Cotton Pickers were part of the Goldkette stable and there was apparently quite a free exchange of ideas and influences among the musicians and arrangers of the different bands. For instance Challis, Don Redman and James Nesbitt are known to have discussed arranging concepts and exchanged ideas.

Don, I'd love to hear more about those particular guys if you've got any info. All three were trailblazers in their different ways: Challis and Redman are pretty well documented, but Nesbitt remains a shadowy and short-lived figure, although the recordings show him to be a capable trumpeter and a more than capable arranger.

Cheers,

Ken Mathieson
www.classicjazzorchestra.org.uk
 


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