[Dixielandjazz] the Goldkette Stable

[Ken Mathieson]

Hi Don et al,

Apologies if I've bored you with his before! I got to know Benny Carter after backing him and Herb Ellis in a concert in Edinburgh in 1984. In the early 1990s, my wife and I spent a few days in LA catching up with old pals and were invited to dinner by Benny and Hilma. We spent a fascinating afternoon in conversation in Benny's music studio and one of the things he talked about at length was the week in 1926 (I think) when he (Benny) was playing in Fletcher Henderson's band opposite the Goldkette band at the Roseland Ballroon in NYC.

Benny described it as perhaps the most important week in his life as a musician, as he was profoundly influenced by 3 people in the Goldkette team. He was very impressed by Trumbauer's technical command of the saxophone, but more so by his musicality and the fact that this massive technique was used in the service of musical ideas. Carter had started out on trumpet as a kid, but had switched to sax when he discovered that he couldn't play trumpet fluently on day one. At the time of the Roseland gig, he was starting to become interested in trumpet again, and a factor in his decision to start studying it again was hearing Bix with Goldkette. He was particularly struck by Bix's quality of sound, his harmonic thinking (in particular the way he got "outside" the chords) and, like Tram, his subjugation of technique to the development of cohesive musical ideas.

At this time, Benny was also just starting to become interested in arranging and hearing Challis's charts was a major factor in Carter's decision to start studying arranging. Some 70 years on from that week at the Rosleand, Benny still spoke very warmly of Bill Challis and especially of the times they spent together in Detroit in the early 1930s when Carter was Musical Director of McKinney's Cotton Pickers and the two of them had the chance to trade ideas and work together virtually daily.

Incidentally, I've got a copy of a 1986 Circle recording called 'Bill Challis' "The Goldkette Project"' by Vince Giordano's Nighthawks (with Spiegle Wilcox and listmate Dan Barrett in the trombone section). The performance is very much in the style of the late 1920s, but the arrangements are full of interesting musical ideas which haven't really dated and are played with great gusto by the band. If you don't know this record and want to hear how the Goldkette band sounded in its heyday, this is possibly more representative than the original Goldkette recordings, which reportedly concentrated on their commercial repertoire (complete with vo-de-o-do vocal group), rather than their hot material.

Keep up the reminiscences, Don, this is important (and interesting) oral history you're setting down. And, if it takes a wee dram of the "cratur" to get the creative juices flowing, so much the better!

Regards,

Ken Mathieson
www.classicjazzorchestra.org.uk