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(bb) August 30, 1938

The band sounds energized miss hallelujah brown, a sprightly genre piece that has a superior Calloway vocal, Haughton clarinet, more trombone (I’m inclined to think it’s Johnson), but the centerpiece is Berry’s solo in dialogue with the band for 16 bars – Randolph also has a short spot. There may just be a hint on the next tune of the author of some of the Calloway credited tunes in the previous sessions. shout, shout, shout is credited to Calloway and Blake. It has some similarities to penguin/peck-a doodle-do, and if Blake is Jerry Blake, known to us from his work with Fletcher Henderson (he joined Calloway in 1940), he may very well be the missing ghost writer. It’s a well conceived and orchestrated piece, full of variety. For those interested in such things, there’s a baritone sax in the saxophone section, probably played by Brown. Basie, Goodman and many other bands featured reed players who doubled beyond alto and tenor saxophones yet this is not reflected in most discographies. Berry and Randolph (screeching up to a high Gb) have short stints, but the best moments come from Haughton, who plays an elegant solo. Something about the ending feels abrupt.

jive (page “1” of the hepster’s dictionary) was the first and best of many similarly titled opera (or do you prefer opi -go check it in the dictionary I prefer “opuses,” which people will understand!) in which Calloway introduces the listener to the secrets of black street lingo. It was an effective “hook” for him and from a commercial standpoint, it did paid off handsomely. As we hear the trumpet section strain and go out of tune, it’s hard to fathom why his management or Calloway himself didn’t get to the root of their problem. Doc Cheatham was already a renowned lead trumpeter and claimed to have played all of the first trumpet in the band after the demise of Edwin “King” Swayzee in 1935. He was certainly perfectly in tune in all the other bands with which he recorded, so the Calloway sessions are an anomaly. I can think of no other contemporaneous band of this stature that had similar (and consistent) pitch problems. But all that is washed away by the sheer drama and pacing of Berry’s stealthy solo and the bouncing quality of Hinton’s bass. It’s one of his best. Countless saxophonists were influenced by this sound and phrasing; one of the best at the time was Sam Donahue, who was featured in Gene Krupa’s band. The other side of the original 78 issue, referred to by Calloway, was clambake carnival.

(cc) October 27, 1938

Calloway’s vocal do you want to jump children is proof of his great musicianship. No matter what he does with register, phrasing and/or diction, he is always right on the money rhythmically and on pitch. He clearly had a sophisticated ear and heard the harmonies. Chu follows in inspired fashion, confronting those same old chord changes as though he had never played them before. In this sense, he is like one of the great character actors of the era (Hugh Herbert, Franklin Pangborn, Eric Blore and Robert Grieg come to mind first) who never seemed to tire of repeating a stock characterization. Unlike them, Berry did get the chance to break the mold, most frequently during after hours jam sessions and on special recording dates. As noted, the arrangements were getting better and better. Milt Hinton told Stanley Dance in The World of Swing, “When Ben Webster left, Chu Berry took his place, and Chu was a real string-saver and swapper, a real changin’ man. He’d go to Chick Webb and say, “’Cab’s got a couple of arrangements that would sound good for your band. I’ll get Cab to give them to you if you’ll give us one of those Benny Carter made for you.’ Then he’d go to Cab and say, “It won’t cost you nothin’. You’ve got a good band and we’ve got to have something to play. Chick will let you have a Benny Carter arrangement if you’ll give him two of those Swayzee and Harry White arrangements.’ Chu was very frank and forward. And Cab liked him, and would listen, and they’d make the switch. Chu also sold him on the idea of getting somebody to write for the band, and he was very much responsible for our having good music in the book.” It seems as though Berry did not want to be wasted in this band as he had eventually come to be in Henderson’s, and he accomplished his goal.

Benny Carter had written for the Calloway band before he went to Europe in 1935, and shortly after his return in the summer of 1938, Calloway recorded his blue interlude. Comparing Berry’s work here with his slightly over ripe style on the 1933 original is as good an indication as any of his growth; as an added bonus, Berry gives a close approximation of Carter’s alto style as he ascends to his upper register for the bridge. The arrangement starts out beautifully, with carefully placed bass notes set against offbeat saxophones. Strangely, Calloway bluffs his way through the vocal, never really giving us Carter’s melody, though his approximation manages to capture its essence. Berry’s solo is an inspired melodic paraphrase, but the closing trombone figures and ending are atypically clumsy. Carter’s less adventurous but more cohesive arrangement for Benny Goodman, recorded a couple of months earlier, gets the tune across better. 

(dd) November 2, 1938

fdr jones, another “darkie” genre piece, is given the Hollywood treatment by the arranger (longtime Callowayite Walter “Foots” Thomas, who played all the reeds and flute, is undoubtedly responsible for many of the uncredited arrangements). The band responds with a spirited rendition, featuring at least one flute in the reed section and a unified brass section. Calloway chooses to give us this melody literally; it had been a solid hit for Judy Garland. The cheering trombones after the vocal are a nice touch, but things come together when Berry charges in for the last 16 bar bridge; it’s one of those magic moments when a solo merges with an arranged background to create something greater than the component parts.

(ee) January 20, 1939

This is Berry’s last session with Billie Holiday and, although he gets an opening break and an extended solo, the lack of organization both in how the horns were utilized and in the rhythm section (and these are fine players all) shows precisely what it was that men like Sauter and Teddy Wilson brought to the music. There’s also a funny turned-around feeling going on with some of drummer Cozy Cole’s brush figures. that’s all i ask of you has a lot to recommend it, most importantly a supremely relaxed and well recorded Holiday who has already changed from 1935; she is far more languorous. The first, unissued take has a botched break before the tenor solo. They tightened it up for the issued one, and Berry’s 16 bars are more focused as well. Schuller’s comments about Berry’s deficiency of tone are hard to fathom in light of solos such as these.

It was just two weeks after this session that Berry filled in for the ailing Herschel Evans on two Count Basie sessions, going toe to toe with Lester Young (and to some, getting the upper hand) during lady be good and playing an obbligato chorus on evil blues.

(ff) March 28, 1939

Cozy Cole’s coming into the band made a huge difference in the evolution from the original Calloway personnel, which had formerly been The Missourians, to a stable of younger, more contemporary players. A technician of the first magnitude with a crisp approach to the instrument, Cole sparked things in a way that Leroy Maxey (who may have even swung more, in an older style, however) didn’t.  floogie walk is distinguished by its modulation into and out of the solo section (Randolph, heard twice--, Berry, Haughton), but the most impressive element is Cole’s tasteful rim shots, bass drum beats and generally subtle way of underlining things.

(gg) April 3, 1939

Vibraphonist Lionel Hampton led a series of small band dates for Victor between 1937 and 1940, and, as Max Harrison and Gunther Schuller have noted in their reviews of the series, they are extremely uneven affairs. Unlike his fellow Goodmanite and Armstrong alumnus Teddy Wilson, Hampton did not have a refined point of view or an overarching aesthetic but rather grafted his playing on top of whomever he happened to invite into the studio. The sessions with Berry resulted in some very fine music; it’s fair to assume that Berry enjoyed this short respite from the Calloway show, as did his band mates Randolph, Hinton and Cole. As on the Krupa and Holiday dates, the superlative guitarist is Allan Reuss; pianist Clyde Hart, close to both Berry and Eldridge (they had recently recorded together on Eldridge’s classic Little Jazz Ensemble date for Commodore), reveals his versatility; Hymie Schertzer and Jerry Jerome joined Hampton in coming over from the Goodman band; and Russell Procope, a Henderson, Chick Webb and Teddy Hill alumni, was a member of the John Kirby Sextet. The serviceable arrangements were written by trombonist Fred Norman, formerly with Claude Hopkins and at the time branching out to many other bands.

i can give you love is played in a way that hints that the Goodman band was on the guests’ minds that day. Grounded by Schertzer’s smooth lead alto playing, we hear Randolph sounding strangely like Harry James and Hart throwing some atypical Jess Stacy-like octaves and tremolos behind Hampton’s homespun, heartfelt, but ultimately ho-hum vocal. The real jazz moment comes when Berry breaks in on the last bridge with a long, flowing statement distinguished by pentatonic sounding phrases and a couple of very slick and beautiful trills.

The band looks toward New Orleans with high society what with Randolph’s clarion calls and a load of field drumming from Cole to kick it off. This was clearly a band of wonderful sight-readers who could tackle a notey arrangement with just the slightest rehearsal. Hampton enters with a quote from the famous high society clarinet solo long thought to have been the creation of New Orleans’s clarinetist Alphonse Picou. What Picou actually did was to create a series of variations on a piccolo phrase from a 1901 orchestration of the piece. Regardless of its origins, it was later cemented into the jazz lexicon when Charlie Parker used it in his landmark ko-ko solo in 1945. There is short break in Hampton’s solo for three or four clarinets, again rarely listed in the discographies. When Jerome joined the Goodman band in late 1938, he needed a bass clarinet to play bach goes to town. Goodman lent him his which he hadn’t used since his days as a studio sideman; we hear Jerome play it fluently here. Procope splits a fluent chorus with Berry, separated by a single but emphatic Cole rim shot. The drummer develops the rim shot into some quiet but thrilling crashes throughout the last chorus as Hampton plays over the band.

johnny get your horn is a dog of a tune but since jazz is “how” and not  “what,” it’s brought to life by Randolph’s melody chorus (with a bridge by the leader), injecting a much needed dose of the blues. Hampton’s vocal is sandwiched by Berry wailing over a Cole press roll – there’ll be more of this on the next session. There is some nondescript riffing in the out choruses with a respite from Procope.

(hh) April 5, 1939

There was precious little about sweethearts on parade to inspire a jazz musician until Louis Armstrong made his classic recording of it in 1930 with a band which included the young Hampton, then a drummer. Indeed, this 1939 version was the first time a jazz musician had touched it in the intervening nine years, and it was well worth the wait. A landmark in Berry’s discography, this is the only one of the Hampton Victor sessions to featuring a lone horn player. Possibly inspired by what we heard on the previous session, made just two days earlier, we witness the birth of the combination that was to bring Hampton to fame just a few years later; a stomping tenor saxophone relying on repeated notes and phrases to get its point across, married to the leader’s never-ending stream of propulsive solos. Reborn as a barrel house shuffle, sweethearts on parade finds Berry playing throughout the recording, including Hampton’s solo and vocal. We know the way Berry approaches ballads and up-tempos but this grooving piece finds him in yet a different vein. The precision with which the rhythm section manages the shuffle beat without every getting heavy is a wonderful thing to observe. Much of the credit must go to Cole who plays different angles of the beat with different parts of his drum set. Try and feel his tremendous bass drum work and then each of the various component parts of the shuffle beat to fully appreciate this act of rhythmic independence.

The tempo is raised for shufflin’ at the hollywood, with Berry laying out for the vibraphone and piano solos. The piece itself is a themeless jam spiced with modal allusions both in the chords (Phyrigian) and in the solos (both Dorian and Mixolydian). The static feeling of the A sections is offset by Hinton’s moving lines during the chromatically descending bridge that become a highlight of every chorus. Hart’s versatility and penchant for unusual and questioning phrases is hard to appreciate at times because he couched everything in a modest approach to the piano, but it’s fair to say that his style was a unique one at the time; he was also a superb ensemble player. Both takes are very similar in content, though the alternate has a slightly more spontaneous feeling, especially the moment when Cole lifts the intensity as Berry reenters after Hampton’s solo. Hampton was famous for his two-fingered piano style, the technique of which far outshone its musical value.

On denison swing , another jam on standard changes, he uses both hands and we get a clearer picture of his pianistic capabilities. There are a handful of Walleresque right hand figures and single notes in the left hand, which on a few occasions plays fuller chords when not reverting to his rapid “mallet” mode. Berry alternates with the piano choruses, and he and Hampton finally arrive at a rhythmic common denominator on the third measure of the last eight bars; to that point it sounds as though Berry is talking and Hampton is nodding his head without hearing a thing he is saying. The origin of the title remains obscure, but it’s worth noting that six plus decades later the University of Idaho’s School of Music has a renowned organist on their faculty, Susan Billin, who attended Denison University in Granville, Ohio.

wizzin’ the wizz uses the harmonies of honeysuckle rose for an up-tempo jam featuring Hampton’s jackhammer piano. He plays so relentlessly that neither the music nor the listener gets much of a chance to breathe. The pressure is alleviated to a degree when Berry enters, but Hampton is relentless in the background. This makes for a good contrast to sweethearts on parade where Berry was cast in the background, but he accompanied while listening to what Hampton was doing in the foreground; Hampton’s monomania here makes that impossible. The newly discovered alternate take clears up a mystery. The original issue seemed to have a six-bar first A section; something highly unusual and contrary to Hampton’s modus operandi. For whatever reason, it now seems that the 78 take was faded two bars into Hampton’s opening solo, since the alternate clearly contains eight bars and close listening to the 78 take reveals it to start in media res. Berry gets one chorus to himself on each take, and to extend Schuller’s mammalian metaphor, Berry flies like an (admittedly large) bat out of hell. It’s easy once again to see what Charlie Parker found so attractive in Berry’s playing and why he named his first son after him the year before this recording was made?. No one else was manipulating the tenor saxophone in this fashion. Lester Young may have been known as a fast player, but he did not rely on long strings of eighth-notes the way Berry did. It was Parker’s genius to look beyond just the alto saxophone and to assimilate so many disparate styles and sensibilities into his own expressive mode. As with most of the Hampton titles, the alternate takes do not vary much in any significant aesthetic detail.

                                                (ii) April 26, 1939

There have been significant improvements since the previous Manone session, with clarinetist Buster Bailey and drummer Cozy Cole raising the level of musicianship appreciably. The leader sounds like a different man whether singing or playing and some thought has gone into what the reeds are going to do. downright disgusted blues is heard with both verse and chorus intact, and the solo feature goes to Berry, whose closing break is shared with Manone as they do a real “Dixie” ending. corrine corrina is taken at a brisk enough clip to give Berry 32 bars, Bailey 16, and still have enough room for an out chorus that is half written and half jammed. Manone quotes King Oliver’s famous dippermouth blues solo as things wrap up, especially appropriate since Bailey had been in the great man’s band. i’m a real kind papa highlights the fact that this sort of material was dated in the extreme at the time of these recordings and were as much a part of a looking back to jazz’s early days as the Armstrong Hot Fives and Seven’s were in their day. Bailey gets the lion’s share of solo space, with Berry taking his bridge. Cozy Cole’s dry sound, technical mastery, and ability to fit in many different settings is reminiscent of the place drummer Kenny Washington occupies in today’s jazz world.

In 1929, Manone became the first person to record the ascending arpeggio that became the main theme of in the mood. Here it is again, a few months before Glenn Miller’s iconic version was made. Rumor had it that Manone was paid off by Miller’s publishers not to bring suit. jumpy nerves taken on its own terms, is a catchy blues with a verse; it also has an interesting chord in the last few bars of each solo chorus. Bailey’s two choruses are backed by Cole’s clickety-clack drumming that would have made the ODJB’s drummer Tony Spargo proud. He plays even more anachronisms behind Manone before reverting to state of the art hi-hat work for Berry’s chorus. Conrad Lanoue (1908-1972) gets the spotlight on boogie woogie. He was a pianist with a (at times) graceful style and refined touch. He was born and died in upstate New York, played and wrote arrangements for various big bands as a young man before falling into work with society band leaders, most notably Lester Lanin. Bassist Cassard, a veteran of the early days of Chicago jazz and guitarist Julian, whose recording debut this was, make an attractive team behind the Berry and Bailey solos, the latter getting an extra-fancy flourish at the end of his chorus.

(jj) June 9, 1939

With largely the same personnel as on the previous Hampton full band date, it’s good to hear the leader back on the vibes as he chords the introduction to ain’t cha comin’ home?, an above-average ballad. The opening chorus is distinguished by Ziggy Elman’s singing (and not too Yiddish) trumpet playing and a gem of a bridge by Hart in his best Teddy Wilson manner. Guitarist Danny Barker does his best with fills behind both Berry’s and Hampton’s half choruses.

(kk) June 19, 1939

Barker is the only new musician in the Manone band, replacing Julian from the last session. The leader’s vocal exhortations to the reed soloists during royal garden blues are very much in the Hot Five Armstrong vein. Without much room to stretch out and in a relatively informal setting there is not much time for Berry to make his mark on the Manone sessions. in the barrel was recorded by the Hot Five, and has a minor vamp section that Armstrong previously used on his own king of the zulus. Berry always excels in minor keys and this is no exception as the tune itself zig zags between major and minor. The ending of the record is abrupt.

farewell blues finds Manone both playing lead and soloing as strongly as ever. It’s worth remembering that with only one arm, he could not maintain the same kind of pressure on his lips that other trumpeters could. This undoubtedly contributes to his at times shaky sound. Bailey tended to sound slightly dated in contemporary swing settings, but in this retro atmosphere he sounds refreshingly loose and “modern.” Berry seems to be just warming up when his short solo ends. Both he and Bailey sound as though they had been playing these tunes and with this band for years. Berry’s inspired fills during the opening of fare thee, my baby, fare-thee-well and later on during his solo are indications that he was indeed starting to feel his oats. The tune is a cousin of such Armstrong hits as i’ll be glad when you’re dead you rascal you.

Berry finally gets a chance to “go to town” as the expression used to go on limehouse blues, one of his set pieces. He is in inspired form, creating unusual dissonances from odd intervals. These are spaced with great care, almost at geometric angles, and create an almost tangible feeling of musical architecture. After so many sessions where we get just a sample of his tremendous capabilities, it’s a joy to be able to revel in 64 measures of untrammeled Chu. Bailey’s solo starts out with a phrase close to what he played on the classic 1934 Fletcher Henderson Decca recording. As well as he plays here, wouldn’t it have been lovely to hear Berry stretch out for four choruses? He does come back for a moment in the out chorus and we’re lucky that Wingy was willing to turn over this much space to musicians who weren’t even in his working band.

(ll) July 17, 1939

Earl Bostic was one of the few saxophonists of the era who could have given Berry a run for his money when it came to sheer technique. John Coltrane learned a lot about how to play the instrument during his stint in the Bostic band in the early ‘50s. In 1939, Bostic was still under most people’s radar in the jazz world; this changed in 1941 when he arranged and composed let me off uptown for Gene Krupa’s band featuring Roy Eldridge and Anita O’Day. Named after one of central structures of the 1939 World’s Fair (held in Flushing, Queens), trylon swing is an excellent piece with a good melodic “hook,” and was among the very first Bostic arrangements to be recorded; Bostic himself made his recording debut a few months later on a Lionel Hampton session. The clear sound and excellent recording of the band suggests that this session was made at Columbia’s legendary Liederkranz Hall. Playing over a bumping Cole shuffle, the band (with new ex-Chick Webb trumpeter Mario Bauza in the section) is playing on a higher level than they have on disc heretofore. Berry’s half chorus is by his standards average, but is still noteworthy for the way he sustains the mood and essence of the arrangement before handing things back to the ensemble. Bostic catches our attention during the coda with a few unusual parallel harmonies that only Bill Finegan with Glenn Miller’s band were using.

utt da zay begins with something that sounds like Mussorgsky had been commissioned to do The Jazz Singer at the Cotton Club. Credit must go to Calloway for the outrageousness of the conception and his ability to pull it off on such a high musical level. In the minor mode, Berry comes up with a surging solo full of strong melodic detail. crescendo in drums is naturally a feature for Cole written by Edgar Battle, who by this time had already been writing for a variety of bands for over a decade. Its Lunceford-esque sound reveals the Calloway band’s lack of a style of its own. Most of the performance is taken up with Cole’s beautifully played rudiments and swing figures. Berry’s 32 bar chorus in the middle is a saving grace, compositionally. the jumpin’ jive was a major hit for the band, and it’s good to hear such a clear transfer- most previous issues have been sonically cloudy. There are brief solos by Berry, Randolph and trombone. The real innovation is the complex interplay between the leader and the band’s glee club.

(mm) August 30, 1939

Roy Eldridge wrote pluckin’ the bass at a time when bass features were few and far between; the trumpeter was playing it his own big band at the time this recording was made. Milt Hinton, who knew Eldridge back in Chicago, is heard slapping the bass on the front and back sides of the tune, but the real musical meat comes in the middle with the entrance of Dizzy Gillespie in the band. His approach was daring to say the least in 1939. There was no Armstrong to be heard in his sound or in his phrasing. He had begun as a Roy Eldridge man and was at this point paring away the derivative influences on his way to becoming as original as his idol had been a few years earlier. Berry had a hand in Gillespie’s being hired to replace Mouse Randolph and, if this recording is any indication, was clearly inspired by Dizzy. Needing no time to warm up or get in gear, Berry charges in with some characteristic off the chord phrases, playing with the great control of air that gives his solos that unique, flowing quality. Lester Young achieved a similar, long-lined flow, heard most notably on the 1940 Basie aircheck of twelfth street rag. Clarinet is by Haughton, soon to leave the band. The alternate take has a slightly goofed band entrance, and in general the issued version is superior except that Berry’s solo is slightly more conservative and he doesn’t use any of his out of the key phrases. Gillespie, on the other hand, is far better composed. His solo starts with a riff that was the cause of some controversy, as Gillespie wrote in To Be or Not To Bop: “When I moved to New York, I’d compose little things for Teddy Hill, ‘headers’, mostly. I created the head arrangement on a tune they called the dizzy crawl, and later on when Shad Collins left Teddy’s band, he took it over to Count Basie. They recorded it and named it rock-a-bye basie, but that was my composition…Later on they acknowledged it and gave me some money… a little chump change…A lotta tunes got stolen by bandleaders, too that way.”i ain’t getting nowhere fast is a superlative arrangement/composition by one of the forgotten giants of the era, Chappie Willett. The emphasis is on ensemble work with lots of complicated material for the band to tackle, which they do expertly. There are short appearances by Berry (who always thrives at these fast tempi) and Gillespie, who barely have time to say hello before they have to get back on the merry go round.

(nn) September 6, 1939

Berry’s final go around with Manone has a superior repertoire, and with Cole driving things, it’s a fine session indeed. blue lou is a million miles away from the streamlined Henderson version Chu had made back in ’36; here it’s a romping traditional jam. As quiet as they are, listen for Cole’s empathetic cymbals behind Manone’s solo (one of the trumpeter’s best in this set, especially the bridge where he really seems to be spontaneous); few drummers could drive a band which that level of control. The sound is not transparent, but there is a cleanliness to it that doesn’t cover the other instruments. Clarinetist Fetterer and Berry solo as well. Fetterer, bassist Sid Jacobs and trombonist Buck Scott, who kicks off when the saints go marching in did not have extensive recording careers, but were fine players in this idiom. This was the first recording of this tune after Armstrong’s 1938 version, and it would take several more years for it to become the warhorse of all traditional jazz warhorses that it remains to this day. Manone is in a rather loquacious Armstrong-inspired mode, humorously bringing in Berry with “here comes that Satan with that saxophone; blow it out there, boy” (and it’s a generic boy, by the way, not a specifically racial one), and then talks over much of the solo. This was all part of Manone’s mise en scene and harmless as far as it went. Given the lackadaisical quality of the first Berry-Manone dates, the arranging touches that distinguish these sides are most welcome. my honey’s lovin’ arms is a good tune to begin with and the band makes the most of it. Cole’s Zutty Singleton-like “in the clear” ride cymbal beat backs both Berry (who gets a half-step motif going for a moment) and Fetterer. Ernie Hughes has few two-fisted moments at the piano; he would later work with Jack Teagarden and Bob Crosby before spending years in the Los Angeles studios. when my sugar walks down the street has a lovely melody and the kind of changes that flow naturally for improvisers. There’s more jabbering by Manone over Berry, Hughes and Julian (taking a rare solo) before he takes it out, with great backing once again by Cole.

(oo) September 11, 1939

This was a heady time for tenor saxophonists. Lester Young had just recorded lester leaps in the previous week, and this Hampton session marked Coleman Hawkins’s first appearance on disc since returning from five years abroad. There had been much speculation as to whether he still had it. That all came to end one month to the day after this session when he recorded body and soul, a tune Berry had already done twice himself. No one knew that, however, when Hampton gathered Hawkins, Ben Webster, Berry, Benny Carter (musical director/arranger for the date), Clyde Hart, Hinton, Cole and two relative unknowns in the Victor studios. They were Gillespie, so obscure that his name appeared as C. Gillespie on the original issue, and guitarist Charlie Christian, having just arrived in New York with the Goodman band and making his debut on disc. Berry and Webster soloed on one tune each, with Hawkins getting two spots, as befitted his stature as their musical mentor. hot mallets was Berry’s opportunity to show how he had evolved into his own man during Hawkins’ absence. Whereas the other tunes on the session were Carter’s arrangements, this is a string of solos with a few riffs at the end. But what solos they are. Gillespie always credited this as being the real recorded debut of his nascent style. In his book To Be Or Not To Bop, he wrote: “Milt Hinton and Cozy Cole probably told Hamp there’s a new trumpet player in Cab’s band…they brought me down to this record date, and talk about giants, man, this was superroyalty…man, I was so scared…all of them kings were in there, and I was just a young dude.” So it’s all the more fitting that Gillespie began his solo with a quote from cheek to cheek, where the lyric is “Heaven, I’m in Heaven”. Carter takes bridge with a solo buttoned at the end with two sets of repeated quarter notes. One has to applaud Berry’s confidence in unfurling a balanced, flowing and original solo in Hawkins’s company (Webster sounds almost unhinged when his turn came on early session hop also from this session but not included here). Berry’s statement is a very good one including a few trademark “outside” notes in the second eight and bridge, which is linked to the last eight, something quite unusual at the time. Much has been made of Fats Navarro’s doing similar things at Tadd Dameron’s behest years later, but clearly Berry was the progenitor of this particular fancy.

(pp) November 20, 1939

In 1938, Berry recorded a session for Commodore with Roy Eldridge and on sittin’ in we get to hear the two of them in a brief verbal conversation. The only other place where Berry’s solo voice was commercially issued is on a bee gizindt, a novelty tune by Henry “The Neem” Nemo, a Jewish hipper-than-thou hipster with a kernel of real compositional talent (he also wrote don’t take your love from me and ’tis autumn). We hear four bandsmen introduce themselves after the band prelude, the first being Chu “the Fool” and the last being Diz “The Wiz”. Following Calloway’s vocal chorus, Berry, Gillespie and Cole play brief solos, indicative of their premier status in the band. give, baby, give is a superior arrangement and sadly the trumpets relapsed into some of their previous disunity. Calloway’s vocal is excellent, though the style was slightly antiquated by 1940 standards. Berry gets two four bar solos answering the band which is enhanced at the end by Cole’s various bass drum explosions, which Gillespie, given his preference for Kenny Clarke’s liberation of the bass drum from strict 4/4 timekeeping, must have enjoyed. do it again is not the Gershwin classic; it sports a slightly off mic Berry solo with a virtuosic run, a conceit Gillespie tries at the end of his eight bar solo only to muff. As mentioned before, no other band of this magnitude was so lacking in  personal style.

(qq) May 15, 1940

At first, it appears more than a bit ironic that the Calloway had Benny Carter arrange two tunes by other composers for this session, one by critic Leonard Feather and another by a minor arranger, Wen D’Aury; but it’s also possible that Carter, leading his own band at the time, chose to keep his tunes for himself. As a tune, Feather’s calling all bars doesn’t have much meat in the bone, and Carter didn’t seem compelled to beef it up. We hear it in two takes, the first being the alternate, the second was issued and is the notably faster issued take. The band has been graced by the entry of lead alto saxophonist Hilton Jefferson, long thought by his peers to be a possessor of a beautiful sound and cliché-less style that owed nothing to Benny Carter or Johnny Hodges, the leading influences of the era. It’s clear from the brass clams, and other instances of nonchalance that the band knew the first take would not be issued. Nonetheless, Berry and Gillespie get off good solos. Things gel on the issued take, with Gillespie, whose style was not nearly as clean as it later became, getting off a pithy quote in his second eight, Berry taking the bridge and returning later for a second brief solo, and a typically polished statement from trombonist/vibraphonist Tyree Glenn.

do i care? no, no comes in the same alternate/issued format as above. It still comes as a shock that a name band that paid some of the highest salaries in the business could have a trumpet (and at time trombone) section that was as untogether as this one. There are many similar alternate takes from other bands at this time (Goodman, Basie, Krupa) none of them suffer from this level of intonation and consistency problems. Gillespie and Berry once again get short solos, and on the issued take Berry especially produces a solo filled with fresh details.

D’Aury’s the lone arranger is not much as a tune, but in Carter’s hands, it’s a minor masterpiece; its paucity of material through streamlined saxophones, simple yet effective pacing of musical events, and, above all, its sheer organizational intelligence. Key to its success is the rhythm section, which functions in a Basie-like style, commenting on the proceedings like a Greek chorus. The first, slower take finds the band and Gillespie not quite on form, though Berry once again takes a fresh path through the most standard of standard changes. The faster, second take would have been one of Calloway’s best instrumental recordings if producer John Hammond hadn’t nixed it.

hard times is another one of those recordings that suffered from poor transfers over the years or, perhaps, like some of the Basie recordings made at this time, the masters used for reproduction were themselves second-generation. This version clearly comes from a better source. It has excellent solos from both Gillespie (pacing himself in a Lester Youngish manner and doing some half valves reminiscent of Harry “Sweets” Edison and Berry, who reacts with typical inspiration in the minor mode; he also seems to respond to the slightly atypical chord structure.

who’s yehoodi ? is an early tune by Matt Dennis, partnering with Bill Seckler. According to radio historian Elizabeth McLeod, “Bob Hope was just another fresh-guy comedian thru the late thirties, and while he was a rising star on the Pepsodent Show at the dawn of the new decade, it took a chance exchange with stooge Jerry Colonna over possible names for announcer Bill Goodwin's infant son to capture the national imagination. Was "Yehoodi" a figment of Colonna imagination? A reference to violinist Yehudi Menuhin? Or a mysterious personification of prewar jitters? No one knows -- but that didn't stop all America from asking. And as Americans became Yehoodi-conscious, they soon made Bob Hope the top-ranked radio comedian in the land.” Luckily for us, Calloway’s recording finds Berry in rare form, trading with the (out of tune) trumpet section. There are two takes, with Berry more relaxed on the first, slower one.

(rr) Chicago, June 27, 1940

Andy Gibson was one of the best arrangers of the early ‘40s, having come off an apprenticeship with Duke Ellington and writing many classics for the Basie and Charlie Barnet bands. come on with the come on is an up-tempo romp that the band attacks with relish. Berry gets the main solo in the middle, with shorter statements from Gillespie, newcomer Jerry Blake (who we met in the Henderson band), Glenn and Cole.

a ghost of a chance is probably the performance most readily associated with Berry, and it’s the only record he made where he is featured from top to bottom. In a sense, it is his response to Hawkins’s body and soul, which in its way was a response to the version Berry had made with Eldridge in 1938. In addition, there were the ballads that Ben Webster was just starting to record with the Ellington band at this time; there is no doubt that Berry, as well as the record-buying public, viewed these performances in this context. These men, along with Lester Young, were the titans of the era, and they were definitely in dialogue with one another; indeed Young chose to record his response to both ghost of a chance and body and soul not too long after the Berry and Hawkins version came out. Why is it then that Berry remains a remote and less attractive figure to students of contemporary saxophone today? It probably has to do with his way of phrasing and the large vibrato and florid conception. The notes he plays deserve as much study as anything the others played, but the manner in which he played them has long lost its resonance. Sidney Bechet’s music has suffered the same fate, though the fact that he came from a musical world that thrived a good couple of decades before Berry’s and his stature as one of the music’s totems have been mitigating factors. Ultimately, there is something 19th century, something European about the way Berry presents his ideas on ballads such as these. Hawkins and Webster also have strands of that heritage in their sounds, but there is far more frontier, far more America in their music. Berry’s concept at faster tempi needs no explanation, but this recording has become for many his calling card. The issuance of this collection may go a long way in bolstering his reputation by giving fuller representation to the breadth of his talents. Andy Gibson’s spare arrangement leaves plenty of room for Berry’s rhapsodizing. He alternates short shards of the melody with faster passages, some of which are quite outrageous by any measure. As Schuller has noted, Berry’s ascending tritone phrases towards the end are references to the Hawkins’s use of the same phrase in body and soul. The two takes heard here are absolutely equal in quality. Usually it’s not hard to hear why one was chosen over the other but not here. Gibson makes a brilliant move for the last eight bars. ghost of a chance has one chromatic jump in its harmony, which occurs in the second half of the bridge, where it jumps a diminished fifth (or tritone) before ultimately resolving its way back to the tonic. During the second bridge, Gibson continues business as usual until the penultimate measure, which is an augmented dominant or a tritone substitution. We’re in Db (the same key as Hawkins’s body and soul), so the chord is D. Gibson freezes the moment and uses this chord as the dominant of G, shooting us up a tritone from where the rest of the performance has been. He executes this in such an offhand manner that it’s hardly noticeable.

bye bye blues taken at fast clip, with not much more than whole note backgrounds and occasional hits for the ensemble. The focus is on the soloists – Berry, Gillespie and Glenn on vibes and Hinton, doing a Walter Page with Basie plinks behind him. The band was on a roll at this session – this was the upside of their inconsistency. The issued take heard second has more concentrated solos all around, with Berry’s being especially adventurous. When the band plays in “two” and the clarinets play whole notes, it sounds like a cousin of Ted Weems’s theme song heartaches.

(ss) August 5, 1940

Hilton Jefferson’s gorgeous sound leads the reed during the introduction to papa’s in bed with his britches on with the band in general sounding very good. There are three takes of this negligible novelty (similar in content to the contemporaneous five o’clock whistle), distinguished by a 16 bar coasting Berry solo, followed by a Gillespie bridge that is largely “set” – he plays the same thing on all three takes. The trombone isn’t Glenn and doesn’t sound like Johnson, so it may very well be the underrated Quentin “Butter” Jackson, fresh out of Don Redman’s band. Glenn and Jackson would both play in the Ellington band and inherit the Tricky “Sam” Nanton plunger chair.

boo wah boo-wah was arranged by Buster Harding, like Gibson one of best of the composer/arrangers of the early ‘40s. His voicings, especially for the saxophones on this tune, are all his own. The first, unissued take has the feeling of a rehearsal and the rhythm section is atypically unsteady, seeming to want to speed up at times. Hearing Gillespie play and contemplating all the analysis that has been written about this early work of his, there are times when it just sounds technically awkward and not at all convincing. His peers Charlie Shavers and Harry “Sweets” Edison were both superior players at the time and while their harmonic sphere was not as complex, they both pulled off many feats that were equally “avant-garde”. The second, issued take is much more cohesive. The slightly faster tempo has settled in, and Berry doesn’t wait before entering over the brass backgrounds as he did on the alternate. Cole drops some “bombs” as they were called at the time behind both Berry’s and Gillespie’s last eight in the manner of Jo Jones in the Basie band.

(tt) August 28, 1940

cupid’s nightmare is a Don Redman original that refers back to his theme song chant of the weed  with its eccentric, off beat introduction settling into the ballad-with–a-beat mode. Redman was one of the founding fathers of big band orchestration and his mastery is apparent in the way he blends together many disparate compositional elements into a unified, though somewhat unfocused whole. In this way, it accurately reflects the band’s lack of an orchestrational identity. We get a rare glimpse of Gillespie at a ballad tempo with a slightly fuller tone than usual. He handles the chromatic harmony effortlessly, as do Berry and Glenn, though all the solos are more melodic paraphrases than actual improvisations.

On the original lacquer disc, are you hep to the jive starts with producer John Hammond telling Cab and the band that the ten-second mark has been hit and that the recording is about to begin. Gibson’s creates a handsome setting for yet another Calloway ode to hep cats. Blake is heard with some throaty clarinet behind the vocals, and Berry gets a short solo.

hot air is an undistinguished riff tune with two Berry bridges, a longer Gillespie solo and a taste of what must be Keg Johnson’s trombone.

Finally we get a true Berry gem. Benny Carter’s lonesome nights (a/k/a take my word) opens with a brass chorus that has Berry soloing atop it, then playing a bridge passage before coming back for a gorgeous last eight bars. This stands alongside ghost of a chance as a vital component of his legacy and captures the intimate side of his tone. In the alternate take, heard first, Berry doesn’t come in right away on his last eight, and somehow, hearing him enter suddenly brings him closer to us, as does the moment in the second eight of the first chorus when the engineers either turned up his mike or he turned closer to it. Jefferson does a beautiful job leading the saxophone section on the famous Carter reed soli. This is one of the best examples extant of the Calloway band on record.

(uu) October 14, 1940

Calloway, his arranger and band deserve credit for making a mindless novelty like a chicken ain’t nothin’ but a bird listenable. The rhythm section blends well, as do the reeds. Once again, the brass, when compared to its peers, leaves a lot to be desired. Listening to nothing but the Calloway band can make you forget how precise, in tune and powerful the average big band trumpet section was. This may be what led George Simon, writing under the pseudonym Jimmy Bracken, to write after attending this session, “Heard several moments of a Cab Calloway record date. How come that band does so badly on wax and sounds so fine in person and on the air? Must be those self-conscious novelties.” We get the bird in three takes; each one finds Berry in inspired fashion for his 24 bars and Gillespie’s 8. The middle one contains the Berry solo with the most unusual details; he floats even more than usual and comes up with phrases in his second eight that we haven’t heard from him before.

the worker’s train is a pretty dreary thing with the unfilled promise of an interesting introduction. The previously unissued breakdown take was halted after a flubbed Gillespie solo and Cab shouting “We can’t take that one Dizzy”. Listening to him on tune after tune reveals that Gillespie’s unorthodox embouchure which involved puffing his jaws out not only brought on the bulging cheeks but also gave him intonation problems. Berry gets 16 bars, Gillespie 8.

(vv) January 16, 1941

We get a glimpse of studio chatter as producer John Hammond talks to Calloway about the band’s schedule and Hinton rehearses and sings a bass line, a trombone blats out some notes and finally someone (not Elmer Fudd) says “Let’s skin this rabbit now, let’s get that rabbit out”. Fun. run, little rabbit  is a Gibson original with the band remarkably out of tune on the first run through. Things get just a little better on the issued take, when the rhythm section switches to a rumba beat. One wonders what Berry must have been thinking as he contemplated yet another 16 bar solo on yet another novelty tune – most of his peers were playing with bands that played a much larger percentage of serious music. Chu’s blowing moments of any significance on disc were comparatively few and far between. are you all reet sounds like almost the same tune as rabbit . Berry and Gillespie (playing a memorized solo) are heard from as usual and nothing special happens, with the exception of Berry’s mid-solo break on the alternate take.

(ww) March 5, 1941

special delivery  is another Gibson original, this time an up-tempo blues. Berry gets three consecutive choruses and hauls out of some his best material. There are all sorts of odd melodies delivered with that unique rolling Berry rhythm. Each take offers its own treasure. Berry seems to be playing with a special determination and hardly repeats himself. What a powerhouse he must have been in person! Jonah Jones, just having joined the band, is introduced by a Sousa-esque fanfare that is sadly way out of tune, and then blows two choruses. The trumpet section was hurting since the departure of Mario Bauza left only Lammar Wright to play lead.

(xx) July 3, 1941

take the ‘a’ train  was the third version recorded, following Ellington’s and Glenn Miller’s. This is one of Berry’s last solos with the Calloway band. He follows Jones with a surging 16 bars, which serves as a reminder that his tremendous confidence and ability to just pick and blow shouldn’t be taken for granted.

(yy) July 24, 1941

It would have been nice if there were some significant valedictory moment in Berry’s penultimate recorded solo with the band in which he spent the last three years of his life but it didn’t happen that way. hey doc! has a vaudevillian vocal by Calloway and Glenn and a muted solo by Jones; Berry’s eight bars reveals that he was being featured less and less as the year went by.

(zz) September 10, 1941

my coo-coo bird (could swing) starts with a minor-hued vamp that in this context sounds like a dirge for our man Chu – this is his last recorded solo. There is an undated location home recording of a jam with his disciple Charlie Ventura from this period, but this was the last time Berry went into the recording studio. What we hear is a spirit in no way diminished by his role as occasional relief to his hi-di-hoing bandleader. Even in a cameo appearance his signature is still there - the sound of surprise.