[Dixielandjazz] Transitional Horns

[Ken Mathieson]

Hi All,

In the last convulsions of the Charlie Parker thread, Robert mentions two interesting musicians, Rudy Williams and Earle Warren, whose roots were both in swing. 

Williams was an eccentric and adventurous (although harmonically fairly orthodox) player in the context of the Savoy Sultans. His fleet-footed, off-the-wall solos made him the most interesting soloist in the band. He certainly had the instrumental facility to make the transition to bebop and I'm sure he was attracted by the challenge of playing it. However, on the evidence of the recordings he made with Tadd Dameron in the late 1940s, his playing had become less fluent and less individualistic, certainly by comparison with some of the company he was mixing with (Fats Navarro, Allan Eager, Kenny Clarke etc). I think Robert hit the nail on the head when he said that he was trying to emulate rather than be himself and this shows up in his somewhat stilted phrasing on these sides. It could be just about any  competent alto player, whereas in his Sultans days, he was immediately recognisable. He was roughly ages with Benny Carter and perhaps if he had lived longer he might have found his own voice in the new idiom.

On the other hand, Warren didn't alter his style drastically.and merely took what he needed from bop to be able to play in the company of boppers without sounding too out of place, yet still able to function comfortably within the swing band environment. Another altoist who did this with conspicuous success was Benny Carter. There are essentially two Benny Carter styles: the hugely influential pre-bop style and the post-bop variant which had adopted a lot of bop phrasing (triplet runs, rather than eighth notes etc) and was more virtuosic in delivery. There was also an interesting period around 1948 when he was trying to get into the new idiom and was suffering the same difficulties as Rudy Williams, with very boppish phrasing that somehow fails to convince. It didn't take long for his own musical personality to reassert itself, but now with a vocabulary that was informed by bop and enabled him to work seamlessly with players on either side of the bop divide, while remaining as immediately identifiable as he had been in 1940.

For musicians, it's a fascinating topic from a fascinating time and is captured memorably in Ira Gitler's book "Swing to Bop," I hope non-musicians find it just as engrossing!

Cheers,

Ken Mathieson
www.classicjazzorchestra.org.uk