[Dixielandjazz] Plunger

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

I probably mentioned this before, but for some years I was sure there was something not enormously wrong but not quite right about the later plunger work of Cootie Williams --  though I heard him with the 1967 Ellington band and whereas reviews of other gigs on the tour were unenthusiastic he was on amazing form in Glasgow, as was Cat Anderson at the other end of the trumpet section.


Then Humphrey Lyttelton reported that Cootie had another mute fixed inside the bell of his horn while he manipulated the rubber plunger, the internal mute sufficient to prevent a poor spindly amateur from producing a  decent sound even without further effort.  

Humph pointed out that as Cootie got older the mechanics of this high-powered production were such that a fraction of a second was lost with every note produced, a gradually perceptible slippage. Of course this accumulated only in sustained passages, being corrected with every pause. 


I have to rely on memory for the statements that Cootie never cracked a note, and that he was a protege of the legendary New Orleans trumpeter Chris Kelly, but I did check the first in the records available to me at the time, and I also gained an impression of Cootie being almost pre-Armstrong in the extent to which his horn was in tune with itself, or less metaphorically the extent to which the overtones etc. of his sound were mutually in accord. 
Cootie's fluency with mutes in some Benny Goodman recordings brings to mind reports and all too few recordings by St. Louis musicians Clark Terry grew up near to. According to various reminiscences the use of various mutes, and also different applications of a kind of two-handed playing -- one hand on the valves and the other on whatever kind of mute (but unlike Cootie not growling)  -- were notable features of a lot of St. Louis trumpet playing from the 1920s through the period when none of the men who stayed in that city was being recorded. I was wondering how far Clark Terry's distinctive playing was a development of what had previously not been done without moving a mute in the bell. 
I think Marek and I came to an agreement that Clark really emerged in the context of the Ellington band. 
Perhaps it was a return of what had been repressed in a more self-consciously modernising context. 

Wycliffe Gordon has certainly been liberated, and another friend of this page has already enthused about Frank Lacey, who when I saw him was the Tricky Sam of the McCoy Tyner big band. 

Robert R. Calder 









>________________________________
> From: Stan Brager <sbrager at verizon.net>
>To: 'ROBERT R. CALDER' <serapion at btinternet.com>; dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com 
>Sent: Sunday, 1 April 2012, 18:44
>Subject: RE: [Dixielandjazz] Plunger
> 
>Most plunger users modify the plumber's plunger by cutting a hole in the
>plunger where the handle screws into the plunger. But it's not for
>trumpeters only - trombonists also use the plunger to great effect.
>Furthermore, many trombonists place a small pixie mute inside the bell of
>their horns with the plunger over it. One of the first, foremost and
>expressive trombonists using a plunger was Duke Ellington's Joe "Tricky
 Sam"
>Nanton.
>
>Stan
>Stan Brager
>