[Dixielandjazz] Plunger

[Stan Brager]

Thanks for the wealth of information, Robert. The mute sounds created by
Bubber Miley, Joe Nanton and others seems to have died out in post WW2 brass
playing with the advent of bebop and "modern" jazz by Dizzy, Bird and Monk.
That said, one still hears the plunger used to perfection by brass sections
in today's jazz bands - the soloists have disappeared for the most part.

 

Stan

Stan Brager

 

From: ROBERT R. CALDER [mailto:serapion at btinternet.com] 
Sent: Monday, April 02, 2012 1:19 PM
To: Stan Brager
Cc: DixielandJazz Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Dixielandjazz] Plunger

 

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