[Dixielandjazz] Henry Allen Jr. Improviser

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

Some years or decades ago RCA Victor in France started a programme of reissues with the undelight of such things as entire sides of LPs devoted to every available take of something one hearing of one take had been enough of when there were only ever selections of supposed bests of.... 

The Henry Allen New York Orchestra was different, for whereas the great man had presumably been playing the same music a bit out of range of being recorded -- though not for long since it was new as well as wonderful -- and he would have ideas in advance of the session ...  well, it's wonderful what he plays on the second and third takes, and the smaller losses sustained with each gain. But on one of the King Oliver recordings with Eddie Lang I recall the tension comes from Oliver, having played one surpassingly beautiful chorus, obviously intent on playing it exactly the same. 

Louis Armstrong's TIGHT LIKE THAT is of course something else, the most stupendous trumpet chorus ever recorded, wow! -- and then when he resumes after a pause you have just heard the most stupendous trumpet chorus ever recorded, preceded by the second most stu....   Anyway he comes up for a third time.  

I'd been meaning to continue an off-list e-mail discussion with Ken Mathieson relating to Don Redman, to whom perhaps the order of service of these Hines and Armstrong masterpieces should be credited (big fee credit not tip under a saucer - "Knight and Sorcerer" allows me a very bad Bechet in-joke or ballet nuisance).I should imagine not even Louis knew what was going to be in his successive solo segments.  I gather that Louis would take solos many choruses long in the theatre -- and I suppose we have on TIGHT LIKE THAT a kind of supernatural FAST FORWARD,  a solo which for studio reasons had to be elevated to where only three choruses were possible, and during the first and second pauses Louis was speeding through in mind to somewhere he might have reached by blowing for several minutes with a climax on his mind -- and then the third one which concludes rather more like walking on water than drowning. 


One wonders about this -- just to display a memory of Milesdavisisms -- with another parody 

So different from the mouth life of John Coltrane's own dear reeds....
(for those unaware, when Coltrane had been challenged about the length of his solos and had responded that he didn't know how to finish, the St. Louis croak - of MDD - formed into the words "take the horn out yo' mouth" )
of course if he'd been George Chisholm he'd have been able to continue on his teeth 

Robert R. Calder

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