Carnegie update version 1-3
Transcription
Carnegie update version 1-3
1 DEDICATION For my brother Bob. This is a supplement to: Benny Goodman – The Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert. By Jon Hancock. ISBN 978-0-9562404-0-8 Available to download from: www.Prancingfish.com Text Copyright © 2016 Jon Hancock. [email protected] Illustrations copyrighted as marked. First published in the UK in 2016 by Prancing Fish Publishing Ltd. The information in this booklet is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. All recommendations are made without any guarantee on the part of the publisher, who also disclaims any liability incurred in connection with the use of this data or specific details. All rights reserved. Version 1.3 2 Update BENNY GOODMAN The Famous 1938 CARNEGIE HALL JAZZ CONCERT C Introduction ollecting together evidenced facts for any research of this type is a time consuming endeavour. It was always my goal to present an accurate depiction of the events that took place in those months leading up to Benny Goodman’s famous concert and the concert itself. An enormous amount had been written about this concert that we love so much, but it seemed to me that the same few stories were being repeated over and over. Like so many people, that concert grabbed hold of me when I first heard it in the late 1950’s and it won’t let me go. The music still enchants. Once you embark on this type of thing it’s difficult to stop and ever since my book was published in 2009, I have continued to scour archives, books and magazines for ‘new’ material. Over the last few years I have received hundreds of emails from Goodman fans located all over the world, many of whom have told me versions of the same touching story, “My Dad played me the records when I was a kid and I have loved them ever since”. I am always delighted to hear from fans of Benny Goodman and some true nuggets of information have come from these Goodmanites - I thank you all once again. It has been great fun and I have made some very good friends along the way. Together we have increased the sum of knowledge on this remarkable event. Benny was a great clarinet player, probably the best of his era, but you need more than that to be successful. To build on his early successes, Benny had assembled a crack team of publicity and media experts to escort him, like Sherpas on to the very pinnacle of his career. The Goodman organisation was a family affair too. In those days, Benny’s sister Ethel was the grand ringmaster for the Goodman orchestra. She made sure that the band were fed and watered and she also supervised the running of the accounts, Ethel handled all of the money that came in and went out. It takes a huge amount of stamina There are still a few copies available! www.BG1938.com The LP cover is reproduced courtesy of Sony BMG Music Entertainment. 3 to keep up the phenomenal work rate that swing bands of the 1930’s used to achieve. The number of performances they gave was far greater than those listed in the discographies, sometimes five or 6 shows a day. That is almost superhuman. It is no wonder that there were so many personnel changes in those heady days. Keeping track of all this is challenging, but fun. It is so rewarding to find a long forgotten snippet lurking on page 9 of an obscure local paper or magazine and slotting it neatly into the jigsaw of orphaned cuttings and stories that I keep filed away, just in case. Here, I have tried to piece together all of the ‘new’ material in chronological order and publish it as an update to my book. I am assuming that you have read the book but it is not essential for your enjoyment of this missive. One day I might put it all together as a glossy ‘deluxe’ edition of the book, possibly with a CD too, but that’s an expensive business! I might just launch it as an ‘e-book’. In the meantime time, I hope you will enjoy these odds and ends which I think will help us to understand what was happening in the kingdom of swing all those years ago. My research would not have been possible without the help of many friends and acquaintances who have freely offered their expertise over the last few years to help make this possible. There will be some who I have unintentionally missed, but I am indebted to: George Avakian, Fred Cains, David Jessup, Brooks Tegler, Gino Francesconi, Earl Caustin, Carl Hallström, Ricky Riccardi, Fernando Ortiz de Urbina, Doug Pomeroy, John McDonough, Arthur Newman, Peter Manders, Mark Cantor and also Loren Schoenberg for giving me access to Ross Firestone’s interview recording with Bill Savory. My family deserve a mention too for coping with my lunacy! L January 16, 1938 - The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. I’m very much looking forward to the demo! et us begun in July 1937, here is a little more on the subject of the illusive ‘Wynn’ Nathanson as he joins the Tom Fizdale agency. Research for my book lead me to all sorts of places but throughout the course of my investigations, I could un-earth precious little about the famed publicity agent Wynn Nathanson. Irving Kolodin’s liner notes tell us that it was Nathanson who came up with the idea of staging a swing concert in Carnegie Hall featuring Goodman’s band. I started to wonder whether Nathanson ever existed, perhaps just a made-up character, invented to embellish a good story? These days, there is a lot more material available to researchers and I made a small breakthrough by establishing that his Christian name was in fact Irwin. Armed with this information I was quickly able to find out a little more. Nathanson joined the Tom Fizdale Agency in the summer of 1937. In October 1937, Fizdale merged its business with the Robert Taplinger Agency and absorbed a huge portfolio of nationally famous clients, a list which 4 included Benny Goodman. The newly formed Tom Fizdale Inc. moved into the Taplinger office in New York. They also had offices in Hollywood, Chicago and London, from where they worked their publicity magic. So, in late November 1937, when Nathanson suggested taking Goodman into Carnegie Hall, he had only been working with Goodman for barely a month. He certainly made his mark early! Nathanson went on to head the agency and in 1947, Fizdale changed its name to Win Nathanson and Associates. It seems Nathanson retired from the publicity business early to go back to college to study archaeology. I started research in earnest on my book in around 2005. In the intervening years, I have been able to understand better the relationship between the key people who worked on Goodman’s first Carnegie Hall concert. A short list of these people would include: Win Nathanson, Savington Crampton, Bill Goodwin, Sol Hurok, Willard Allexander and John Hammond. I was correct in saying that Crampton played a major role in developing Goodman’s on-air presence. He was a radio producer at the William Esty Agency - who held the Camel cigarettes account - and it was Crampton who produced the Camel Caravan Radio shows. Bill Goodwin, the Master of Ceremonies we hear on the Camel shows, had been a CBS Hollywood announcer and producer in his own right. Bill Goodwin had been hired by The Esty Agency as assistant to Crampton in July 1937. It was the Esty Agency who later sponsored the Carnegie Hall concert and Crampton produced it. The impresario Sol Hurok and his publicist Gerald Goode had the reputation and contacts to open the doors of Carnegie Hall to the Goodman band. Hurok also liaised with Willard Alexander, Benny’s manager at the MCA booking agency. John Hammond was involved with the programme notes and proposed the inclusion of guest musicians from the Basie and Ellington bands. August 3 1937 – Camel Caravan rehearsals. The first few Swing School shows were broadcast from California where the Goodman band were busy filming Hollywood Hotel. That was a heavy schedule, an 8 o’clock start at the Warner Brothers studio for the first camera call (It was Ethel’s job to get them there on time.) and then, after a day in the film studios, they decamped en masse and moved to the Palomar Ballroom for the evening, they were performing and broadcasting 5 nights a week until 1.00 in the morning. In August 1937, Screen & Radio Weekly, a Sunday supplement magazine, published an unusual account of a rehearsal for an early Camel Caravan Swing School which aired on August 3rd. Savington Crampton had recently been put in charge of Esty’s Hollywood offices, so he was personally able to lead the production of those early programmes. Crampton’s authority is clear in this article. Martha Tilton and Bill Goodwin also lived in California and they were friends before Tilton became Goodman’s vocalist. It was Goodwin who suggested that she audition for Goodman. Her first Swing School was on August 24 1937 where she was affectionately referred to as ‘our pet freshman’. 5 There is an engaging account of Martha’s audition with Goodman in the August 1938 issue of ‘Love and Romance’ magazine. August 1937 Savington Crampton hired James Bloodworth as scriptwriter for the Swing School. Bloodworth went on to be a well-known screen writer, in later years he also played some minor roles on screen. November 11 1937 - LIFE magazine In response to the photo-article in Life Magazine the week before, Goodman wrote a letter to the magazine with a correction about Teddy Wilson and Lionel Hampton being members of only the Quartet and not the full band. They also published an autographed, hand written manuscript page of Harry James’ tribute to the magazine, ‘Life Goes to a Party’. I wonder where that is now?! December 7 1937 – Movie News Daily Martha Tilton completed work on her first film, a short for Columbia entitled ‘Topper’ in which Martha appears. The film starred Cary Grant and Constance Bennett. Martha appeared briefly with her vocal group Three Hits and a Miss. She also dubbed some of the singing voice-overs. How about this for hype!Sol Hurok’s publicity flyer for the concert. Courtesy: Carnegie Hall Archives. 6 December 7 1937 - NY Sun We can push back the date of the first announcement of the Carnegie concert to December 7 1937. I had originally suggested that the first press releases went out on the December 11. Irving Kolodin was the music critic for the New York Sun and, as we know from the original LP liner notes, Kolodin was in Sol Hurok’s office on the day that the idea for a concert was first discussed. No surprise then that it was the NY Sun which had the ‘scoop’ on the story. The newspaper states that Carnegie Hall will host the first swing concert in its history on January 16 1938 and plans were being advanced for various musicians to appear as guest artists. A selection of names come up in the press including Mary Lou Williams, Joe Turner, Beatrice Lillie and W C Handy. The eventual line-up for the night ended up looking like a who’s who of jazz in the 1930’s. December 1937 - Spanish Loyalists – George Avakian. In 2010, I was thrilled to be able to spend the afternoon talking to the legendary record producer George Avakian at his home in New York. We sat and chatted about the BG era whilst sipping a lovely bottle of Single Malt which I had brought over from the UK. George’s memories of the swing era came flooding back as I sat spellbound with my portable recorder running. The afternoon was full of stories and I was just about rolling on the floor with laughter when George told me about his encounter with a group of Spanish Loyalists in 1937. It went like this: As a school boy, George Avakian was the editor of the Horace Mann Record, the weekly newspaper of the Horace Mann School for Boys in New York City. Late in 1936, George had given himself the assignment of interviewing Benny Goodman and the band for a lengthy article published on 25 November of that year. Benny liked it, he was impressed that somebody was writing about his music and not the gossip. It was through that article that George became friends with Dwight Chapin, then Benny Goodman’s assistant. Only Dwight could arrange back-stage visits to the band. When word got round that George had written an intelligent review of the band’s climb to fame, George was given an open invitation to attend rehearsals and mingle with the musicians (with the permission of his parents of course!). George Avakian and me at Doug Pomeroy’s apartment in Brooklyn. Doug’s studio is up those stairs. George remembers one occasion when Benny had been invited to play a benefit for the Spanish Loyalists who had come to New York to raise money for their cause. George explained: 7 During that period, which was my senior year at Horace Mann of course, my school friend, Charlie Miller, and I used to hang around and help Chapin with odds and ends. One very snowy night, Chape said, “Look, the Quartet is playing a benefit for the Spanish Loyalists, the anti-Franco people, up in Columbus Circle and I need some help to pack the drums and vibraphone to get them up there. Would you guys help me?” Of course, we said, “Sure, delighted!“ back of the taxi and Chapin said, We strapped the vibraphone to the “Look, the three of us will go up there and the musicians will follow in about fifteen minutes.” Unfortunately, as I was un-strapping the vibraphone, I cut my thumb on the sharp metal frame and it started to bleed. Chape took a white handkerchief from his pocket – because everybody was well-dressed around the band, including the band.- and wrapped it around my hand and said, “You go on up, take Benny’s clarinet and tell the people that we’ll be up in a minute with the vibraphone and drums.” So he and Charlie schlepped the vibraphone and drums after me. I remember seeing the frames of the door in this beat up old tenement building on the second floor. I knocked at the door, which was open, out came a rush of cigarette smoke like you can’t believe, and the loud noise of drunken Spaniards. I had the clarinet, I didn’t speak Spanish of course, but when Chape arrived I was being mobbed by these people and finally I was lifted up and put on a table. Chapin said, “They saw you with the clarinet and they think that you’re Benny Goodman so act the part until Benny comes!” So here I am, standing on this table and Charlie and Chape are having a ball laughing at me. There was one gorgeous girl who looked a little like Ava Gardner with a low cut dress and a red flower in her hair - she was like ‘Miss Spanish Loyalist of 1937’. She poured me a drink of what I assumed was a tumbler of red wine, then people were starting to shout and holler and yell at me, and Chapin said “Well, they still think you’re Benny and you’re going to be toasted and you have to give a toast back.” I said “I don’t know Spanish!” He said, “It’s very easy, after they have raised a toast to you, just raise your glass and say “Muerte a Franco” which means death to Franco.” I was a sensation! When I took that first slug, I took a big swallow and I nearly died because it was neat Brandy. It damn near killed me! Everybody’s laughing because I’m choking on it. So there I was, standing on a table, holding Benny’s Clarinet and everybody is chanting “Benny Goodman, Benny Goodman” and then in comes Benny and my masquerade ended right there! I don’t remember what the quartet played, they just played a couple of numbers and split. Benny wasn’t a political person but certainly would have done something for the Spanish Loyalists. 8 The original photo outside of Carnegie Hall in 1937/8 Here, I have corrected the perspective to square it up. This is a still from the newsreel film. Have a look a the first letters of Benny Goodman and his Swing Orchestra. They appear to be a lighter colour. I am guessing that they were red, but they could have been grey, or blue or any other colour. On the next page I have mocked-up a poster showing how the original poster may have looked. 9 The quest for the Carnegie Hall concert poster! One of the things that I was never able to find whilst researching my book was the poster that can be seen in photographs taken in 1938. Unfortunately, there were probably only ever two or three of these posters ever printed, one outside the hall and one above the box office window. In those days the ‘three-sheet’ poster was exactly that, three separate sheets of paper stapled or nailed into the back of the poster case. My good friend Gino Francesconi, the archivist at Carnegie Hall told me “I used to watch it myself when the guy putting up a new one would just staple on top of the old one or rip them down!” Given that there were so few printed and that they used to be routinely discarded, the chances of finding the original poster are pretty remote, but that’s not to say that the poster isn’t somewhere out there! Looking at the photographs, it seems quite clear to me that the original poster was printed in two colours. Studying contemporary posters, red seems to be the most predominant colour used. They were all printed by the same company and using a standard format. To see how it might have looked to passers-by in 1938, I have reproduced the poster here using black and red, it looks quite eye catching! The Carnegie Hall poster in its full colour glory! You couldn’t possibly miss that if you were walking down 7th Avenue in January 1938. 10 December 30 1937 Goodman was offered $100,000 for a 3 year exclusive contract with Brunswick Records. Benny chose to stay with RCA-Victor until May of 1939. From there he moved over to Columbia records where he stayed until 1946. Courtesy: Carnegie Hall Archives January 6 1938. Reports early in January suggested that Benny was rehearsing daily for the concert. I deduced in my book that on Thursday 6 January Benny’s band had assembled at Carnegie Hall for a rehearsal. John Totton, the stage manager at Carnegie Hall, got the band to sign autographs, but four members of the band are conspicuous by their absence, James, Wilson, Krupa and Reuss. Both Harry and Teddy were in the recording studios that day, James with his own band and Wilson with Billie Holiday. I believe that Gene Krupa was sick and Reuss is unaccounted for. Writing in Screen & Radio Weekly, Jack Sher mentions a lad who was trying to blag a backstage pass whilst the band were rehearsing at Carnegie that Thursday, which was January 6th, confirming that the band were indeed rehearsing that day. One of the rehearsal sessions at Carnegie Hall. Babe Russin, Benny, Krupa, Freddie Green and Walter Page. January 14 1938 – Gene Krupa It has always been suggested that Krupa left the Benny Goodman Orchestra in March 1938 as a result of a very public argument on stage at the Earl Theatre in Philadelphia. There is no doubt that the argument took place but it only served to hasten Gene’s departure by a few weeks. It seems that Gene had been planning to leave Benny for at least a couple of months. I mentioned 11 two stories that cropped up in the press in January 1938 concerning Gene’s plans to leave and start his own band. It was even announced that Goodman himself would help finance the venture. Further confirmation of this plan was published in the Long Island Daily Press on the January 14 1938, explaining that Gene will leave Goodman in April to front his own band. There seems little doubt that Benny would have known about Gene’s imminent career move, up to band leader, even before the Carnegie Hall concert. There were comments starting to appear in the press that young fans were mobbing Goodman shows just to see Krupa, not Goodman. The writing was on the wall and Benny knew it. January 15 1938 - RCA Victor ad I couldn’t believe my eyes when I found this advert in the New York Sun. Dated 15 January 1938, this is the day before Goodman’s famous concert at Carnegie Hall and look who is promoting Goodman’s records on the back of that concert….. RCA-Victor! As we now all know, it was Columbia Records who issued the concert in 1950 and shortly after the records went on sale, there was some pretty lively discussion between Columbia and RCA Victor as to who owned the rights to the recordings. First reports of this cropped up in The Billboard Magazine in January 1951. RCA-Victor had an exclusive contract with Goodman in 1938 when the concert was recorded and they felt justifiably aggrieved that Goodman had sold the rights of the concert to Columbia Records. George Avakian was the director of popular music at Columbia at the time and he explained to me how they resolved this delicate situation. The solution came from a loophole in the RCA contract itself. The contract only covered studio recordings, RCA had no right to prevent Goodman from making live recordings. Goodman signed with RCA-Victor in 1935, since nobody really made live records in those days it would not have seemed important to cover that eventuality in the contract. Early in 1951, neither party would have known how phenomenally successful the records were to become. Couple that with the fact that Columbia had already paid the American Federation of Musicians in the region of $10,000, calculated on basis of scale for every 3 minutes of performance. It wouldn’t really be feasible to withdraw the records, they had to find a workable solution. 12 As it happens, RCA wanted to use a live recording they had recently made which included one of Columbia’s opera stars, Richard Tucker, a leading tenor at the Metropolitan Opera. This live performance was conducted by Toscanini. So it was agreed to make a reciprocal arrangement where RCA could issue Tucker’s recording if Columbia could issue Goodman’s. It was agreed and they spoke no more about it. If it wasn’t for the fact that Columbia and RCA are now one and the same thing, I’m sure this ad would re-ignite the issue! January 16 1938 - How was the concert recorded? In chapters 19 and 20 in the book I discussed how the concert might have been recorded. I can add a little more to that topic here. Albert Marx, Jess Stacy, Martha Tilton and a host of other Goodman alumni and experts were special guests at the IAJRC convention in California in August 1987. In a session on the Carnegie concert at the convention, Albert and Jess Stacy spoke in detail about their recollections of the Carnegie concert and how the recordings came to be made. The convention was a memorial tribute dedicated to BG, who had recently died, and it was chaired by Wayne Knight. Some readers might remember Wayne’s great series of Camel Caravan LP’s issued in the1980’s, many of which had liner notes by John McDonough. John has kindly sent me some of his photos especially for this update. I was fortunate to bump into Peter Manders recently at a re-creation of the Carnegie concert given by Pete Long and his ‘Goodmen’ orchestra in Malvern, UK Peter is a talented artist and caricaturist, he attended the 1987 conference and drew many of the delegates as they sat on the various panels. You can see his sketches reproduced in the October 1987 IAJRC Journal report on the event. Peter fondly remembered meeting Albert and Jess at the convention and he told of how he went to Albert’s house afterwards. They talked long into the night and Albert showed him the photographs that his brother Lawrence took at Carnegie. Peter gave me a copy of his drawing of Albert which I have included here. Peter Manders’ caricature of Albert Marx from the IAJRC convention in 1987. I am indebted to Lee Cohen in California who got in touch regarding his good friend Albert Marx. Albert had commissioned Harry Smith to make the recordings of the concert. Lee had responded to a request that I had posted on my website asking the identity of an unknown man photographed with BG backstage at Carnegie Hall. (Page 122) Lee is quite sure that the man in the photo is Albert Marx. We know from the 13 report in Down Beat Magazine that Albert’s wife Helen Ward and their new baby, were there back stage on the night. Lee kindly sent me a photograph of Albert taken in the 1970’s and it certainly does look like the man with Goodman at Carnegie. Lee and I also talked about how the concert could have been recorded. At the time of the IAJRC convention 1987, detailed information about how the LP’s came to be recorded was still largely unknown. John Hammond said, at Benny’s Carnegie reunion in 1968, that it was Zeke Frank who recorded it from his studio within Carnegie Hall itself. (There is a large complex of apartments, workshops and studios there.) We now know that not to be the case. Albert had explained that he had instructed Harry Smith to record the concert. At that time, Harry had studios at 156 W44th Street, about 10 blocks from Carnegie Hall. Lee told me last year of how Albert remembered the events in the 1970’s. Albert said then that Harry Smith literally strung up cables down the street to the recording machines in his studio. There already was an established way to record from Carnegie Hall using broadcast quality telephone lines linked to Columbia Broadcasting System master control. The term telephone lines is perhaps misleading. These were broadcast quality lines capable of carrying a very high quality signal. Many of the small studios had lines to CBS master control and all they had to do to make a recording was arrange to be patched in. (It is worth noting here that CBS at that time was not the same company as Columbia records.) Harry Smith’s work was mainly in the classical field. He had strong links with Carnegie Hall and Town Hall from where he often made classical recordings. He had a thriving business making demos and test records for orchestras and band-leaders. The control booth at Carnegie Hall was built in 1930 by CBS, at which time they also installed the single microphone suspended over row ‘H’! The booth was situated backstage where sound engineers could monitor performances at the console and balance things ready for broadcast. In the early 1930’s, 9 million people used to tune–in to the New York Philharmonic on Sundays, broadcast live from Carnegie Hall. The suggestion from Lee was that the powerful trade unions at Carnegie, would not have allowed their equipment to be used for a private recording. Lee had been at Albert’s house on many occasions in the 1970’s and on at least one occasion, he was there with Wayne Knight. Both Lee and Wayne The building where Harry Smith had his studios in 1938. Photographed in 2011. 14 A few people have asked about the photo montage that appears on the back cover of the book, a version of which is shown here. The photo is a montage of the 3 photos shown at the top, with a lot of stretching and warping to make the ceiling line match. It took a long time but I think the result is quite pleasing. The event shown here never actually happened but it is pretty close to the real thing which is depicted in grainy shot above. That shot is interesting in itself, because it shows very clearly the single microphone hanging high above the band. 15 confirm that Albert was sure that cables were installed especially for that recording. This idea seems implausible to me, the cables would have to cross too many road junctions. Harry Smith could have used a studio which was much closer, as there were a few more convenient studios in the area at that time. I think the clincher for me is the fact that the Universal labels on the acetates that were retrieved from BG’s closet in 1950, have ‘CBS’ typed on them, indicating the source. In other words, they were recorded using the CBS feed. The microphone that Martha used on stage in the second half of the concert had the CBS logo emblazoned on it. I would say that it was ‘probably definitely‘ recorded using the standard CBS lines….but I could be wrong!! January 16 1938 The well-known Hollywood actor Douglass Montgomery was at the concert. A review from Screen & Radio weekly said he was bobbing up and down with the natural enthusiasm of a jitterbug. The reviewer also noted that the gyrations of the press at times surpassed that of the band! January 17 New York post - Standing room only! I have tried to pin down exactly when the concert sold out, Variety magazine reported a ‘virtual sellout’ in their 12 January edition and that would have gone to press a few days before. A Photo published in New York Post the day after the concert shows fans in line outside of Carnegie Hall, waiting for standing room tickets. The general consensus seems to be that there were about 200 people crammed in at the back. A report in the Times-Union suggests that the lucky few who got those golden standing tickets were six deep at the back of the hall. Later in the month, when the numbers were tallied up, it was reported that 7500 people had tried to get tickets and were turned away! I was sceptical, at least 2 newspapers carried the story, so it must have come from somewhere. I am not sure that the Carnegie Hall box office would have been keeping track of this kind of information. However, when we consider that just 10 days later, 25,000 people saw Benny and the band play at the Paramount theatre on the first day of a 3 week run, then the figure of 7500 fans turned away in the last few days before the Carnegie concert seems quite probable. That might still be some kind of record too. Top: The Universal label on the acetates discs used for the original 1950 release and the 1999 re-issue. Note ‘CBS’ typed in as the station. Bottom: Martha Tilton singing to the CBS microphone at Carnegie. January 21 1938 – RKO Pathe Newsreel release. For a long time now, I have been trying to find out more about the newsreel footage of Benny Goodman’s first Carnegie Hall concert. Could there be some additional footage languishing in an archive somewhere? There are various stills from the film in my book and on my Facebook page. According to Motion Picture Daily of 21 January 1938, the latest RKO Pathe newsreel to be 16 released (Vol 9 No 53), included the footage of BG at Carnegie Hall. Up until now, I have never seen this footage with the titles intact. My good friend Earl Caustin mentioned my quest to the jazz film expert, Mark Cantor. (He has a wonderful Youtube channel!) Mark very kindly looked out his copy of the film, transferred it to DVD, and sent it over to me. I was very excited to see the opening title intact for the first time. I had always assumed that this newsreel was silent, so I was interested to see that the film had a soundtrack with a commentary by Andre Baruch. I am not an expert on the capabilities of newsreel cameras in 1938. There were certainly newsreel films made at that time with ‘live’ sound. Is it possible that the original Carnegie Hall newsreel film had music recorded that evening? A review of the film in Variety Magazine in January 1938 says that the Pathé coverage “is good though the camerawork isn’t tops and the sound is uneven”. Is there anybody out there reading this who has a copy of this film with the original sound? I would love to see it and hear it. The title page from the RKO Newsreel. From Mark Cantor’s collection. In the absence of the original soundtrack, I set about trying to synchronise the film with the Columbia recordings. In total, the running time for the newsreel is only just over one minute. The film was shot from various locations within Carnegie Hall, much to the annoyance of the audience who gave a public library “Shusssh” to the noisy camera man during the quiet passages of music. The finished product as seen in movie theatres in 1938 is an edited version of the concert that night. It is only possible to synchronise the music with small section of the film. The film finishes with Sing Sing Sing and so I chose that track as the basis for my compilation. By using photographs taken that night, I managed to stretch the 1 minute newsreel to over 8 minutes. Some of it, 17 especially the ending, is synchronised perfectly. You can watch the movie on Youtube, there is a link to it on my website. www.bg1938.com So far my little film has had over 250,000 views! January 20 1938 Sometime around the 20 January, Goodman and the band went off to Miami for a vacation, according to Motion Picture Daily, their first for over two years. A report in the Southern Israelite (Atlanta) on the 28 January, stated that Benny, ‘Daddy of Swing music’ had started work on his autobiography. It seems that the break in Florida gave him the time to sit down and ponder on his first thirty years for his book ‘The Kingdom of Swing’, co-written by Irving Kolodin was published by Stackpole in 1939. May 10 1948 I am grateful to Lars Westin in Sweden for pointing out that the BG concert in Carnegie Hall in 1948 was indefinitely postponed (cancelled). The reason given was that Benny hadn’t yet completed his sextet – which at that time featured Stan Hasselgard on clarinet. Ticket sales at Carnegie Hall had slumped in the 1947/48 season. This was especially true for jazz performances. Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, and Kid Ory and His Creole Jazz Band all had disappointing turnouts at that time. It was suggested in Downbeat magazine that the cause could be the heavy attraction of television which had taken its toll. Autumn 1950 George Avakian’s recollections in 2011 of how the concert recordings were mastered and who was responsible for the various aspects of the process, differ a little from that told by Bill Savory. Savory was interviewed by Ross Firestone in the early 1990’s for his extensive biography on BG. Of course, it is not surprising that when remembering events from so long ago, events which only formed a tiny part of long and busy careers, memories get mixed up. According to George, Bill was one of the people on the Columbia staff who worked on the creation of the LP in the late 1940’s. His specialty was cutting the masters, he developed the cutter heads that made the microgroove such a big success. “That experience of having Bill drop the pick-up on the record, the first time that I heard a note from the Goodman Concert was enough to solidify a life-long friendship.” 18 Columbia’s Press release launching the double LP in 1950. 19 One person at Columbia, whom I neglected to mention in my book, was mastering engineer Paul Gordon. He was also involved in the production of the Carnegie LP. Gordon had worked with Howard Scott on producing Columbia’s first 100 classical LPs of the Masterworks label and it was his great experience in creating LPs from multiple acetates that Ted Wallerstein needed for the ground breaking Goodman release. In later years, Paul went on to form the Tin Roof Jazz Band in Connecticut. November 4 1950 First ad for the LP (Billboard) This Billboard Magazine carried probably the first printed advertisements for the forthcoming LP release of the concert. It looks like the work of Columbia graphic designer James Amos who designed the, now Iconic, blue LP cover of SL160. Perhaps showing a tentative start to the Carnegie concert publicity campaign, the advert features Benny’s new recording of ‘Oh Babe’ with vocals by ‘Rickey’, the Carnegie concert is relegated to the bottom of the page which does at least proclaim ‘A Fabulous Event in Music’. November 6 1950 Columbia Records sent out a 9 page press release under their ‘Speaking of Records’ heading, it announced the forthcoming issue and tells some of the now well-known stories associated with the concert. The press release also gives us an edited version of Irving Kolodin’s liner notes. Invitation courtesy of John McDonough 1951 - Stacy got paid $122.51 In 2010, BearManor Media published the book ‘Chicago Jazz and then Some – as told by one of the original Chicagoans, Jess Stacy’. This is a wide ranging study by Jean Porter Dmytryk. During the course of the narrative, there are several references made to the Carnegie concert and one comment struck me as being particularly noteworthy. In 1951, a disc jockey brought an album into Jess for him to autograph the cover. Jess was very surprised to see the title of the Columbia Carnegie 1938 LP as he didn’t know that it had even been recorded. Over the next few days Jess contacted other members of the 1938 band and discovered that none of them knew that it had been recorded or released as an LP either! The next week after his enquiries, Jess received a cheque for $122.51 in the mail ‘As payment for the Columbia Records release of the 1938 Carnegie Hall concert’. Jess says in the book “The whole thing seemed wrong somehow, but I kept the money.” 20 Photographs taken at the January 1968 reunion. Above: Benny, Cootie, Gene, Hymie, Lionel and Russ Connor. Right: Gene being Gene! Courtesy: John McDonough 21 I have scribed lines across the photos to align them at the correct scale. Doing this highlights the similarities and differences between the photographs. 2015 - Krupa drum kit Smithsonian. Comparing it with the Carnegie Hall drum. There is an enthusiastic group on Facebook who compare notes on drums and drummers and there is always interesting discussion on Krupa’s kit and in particular, the kit that is housed at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington. There was a suggestion that this was the Carnegie Hall Drum. I prepared some illustrations for the Facebook group, comparing photographs of Gene Krupa’s Bass Drum heads during the Goodman years. It is clear that this is not the drum used at Carnegie Hall in 1938. The drum housed at the Smithsonian Institute is the very same drum used by Slingerland in publicity shots taken at the Palomar Ballroom in 1936. The noted drummer and drum expert Brooks Tegler is writing a book in which he examines Krupa’s kit in forensic detail. We eagerly await its publication. The Palomar drum (top half) photographed in 1936, fits perfectly with same drum photographed over 70 years later at the Smithsonian Institution (bottom half). Brooks Tegler with the gene Krupa’s drum at the Smithsonian in 2012. 22 July 1953 Columbia starts to release BG’s Carnegie Hall recording on 45’s in 1953, if you can find a clean copy they sound very good. My guess is that they went back to the masters when they cut these, they have quite a raw feeling to them, slightly different to the early LPs. March 1954 Following their mutual arrangement with Columbia records in 1953, Philips Records announce that they would be issuing the LP in England in 1954. January 1968 Benny’s band was always in a state of flux as members came and went for various reasons. The permutation that played at Carnegie Hall was only stable for a couple of months before the next inevitable change. Strange as it may seem now, Benny had completely lost touch with the members of his Carnegie band and the star guests who played that night. So, when Benny decided to have a party to celebrate the 30th anniversary at his New York apartment in 1968, he had to send out a plea on WNEW and in the press for veterans of the concert to come forward. In all, 14 of the 26 original Carnegie Hall veterans attended. Buck Clayton, Jess Stacy, Lionel Hampton, Gene Krupa, Vernon Brown, Bobby Hackett, George Koenig, Hymie Schertzer, Art Rollini, Martha Tilton, Cootie Williams, Chris Griffin and Ziggy Elman. John McDonough wrote a very detailed account of the party in the March 7 1968 issue of Down Beat magazine in. Worth reading if you can find a copy. May 2009—Lincoln Centre NYC 2009 would have been Benny’s centennial year and to mark the occasion, the Jazz at the Lincoln Center Orchestra staged an extravaganza of Benny’s music led by former Goodman band member and arranger, Bob Wilber. The evening featured guest appearances by Ken Peplowski and Buddy DeFranco on clarinets and Warren Wolf on vibes. They played a variety of Goodman classics. Later that same evening, the band, members of Benny’s family and various other special guests got together for a birthday party upstairs in the Lincoln Center. I had timed the launch of my book to coincide with BG’s centenary and was fortunate to be invited to the party by Benny’s former publicist Phoebe Jacobs. (She was at the concert in1938!) It was pretty surreal being at a party chatting to the likes of Bob Wilber, Ken Peplowski and Victor Goines. I had a supply of books with me and that helped me with introductions! There was one very special guest there that evening, a man who I really wanted to meet, the great George Avakian. His association with Benny Goodman and in particular, the Carnegie Hall concert, is the stuff of legend. Susan Satz from the Benny Goodman Estate, whom I had met before at Carnegie Hall, had been so helpful during the preparation of my book and offered to introduce me to George. I was quaking in my boots at the thought and I nervously offered to show him the book that I was clutching. I don’t know why, but for some reason, I thought he would be very critical of it, I was completely wrong, George was delightful. He sat me down next to him and he went through it page by page. As he flicked through he would stop and say something like “Ahh, there’s Bill Savory” and launch 23 into a tale about his days working with Bill at Columbia Records. It was difficult to believe that I was sitting with one of the masterminds of jazz and popular music. He had met Fats’ Waller and Charlie Christian, he signed the likes of Sonny Rollins and Miles Davis. He produced classic albums with stars of the magnitude of louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. It was an evening I’ll never forget. The next day I flew back home to the UK and on checking my emails I noticed a message from George. He said how much he had enjoyed talking to me about BG and would I like to drop by his house in The Bronx this afternoon to talk more?! I could have kicked myself, I almost went straight back to the airport. I did get to go back to New York to see George in 2011. I had spent several years researching and writing the book, which was very rewarding. It took over my life. Now, with the book finished and published, I was at a loose end. My wife suggested that I work towards getting the set of acetates I have of the concert released as a CD. These acetates had come to me from the estate of Savington Crampton, the 14 discs are dubs, made in 1938 from the original set. Savington had kept them as a souvenir of his work with BG. The discs had been transcribed for me and there are some differences that I mentioned in the book. One thing that I had not done was George Avakian munches his way through a huge pile of birthday cake whilst chatting to me about the concert! 24 to gang up Sony’s latest issue by Phil Schaap alongside Crampton’s set on a computer screen, play them simultaneously to see how they matched. Playing through the track ‘I Got Rhythm’ I made an extraordinary discovery, something that nobody else seems to have noticed in the 10 years since the ‘complete’ version was released. There are 34 bars, about 30 seconds, of this track missing from the Sony/Legacy issue! It’s true! There is an editing error on the first disc which means that the section between the ‘trick endings’ towards the end of the track has been left out. The amusing thing is that all of the so called restored versions, there are several of them, have copied the same error, thus proving their provenance back to the Sony issue. I was a couple of weeks too late to include this new information in my book but I was able to pass on the information to Dave Jessup. Dave included it in his wonderful Supplemental Discography published by Scarecrow, an update to Russ Connor’s series of books. What to do? I sent an email to George telling him the story about the missing section and he was flabbergasted. He told me that he had a tape in his basement that Bill Savory had made for him in 1950, so that he could think about the running order and timings at home. These are 10 inch tapes, at 15 ips on 4 Fairchild reels. George had copies made and sent them to me. They sound very good to my ears and more importantly, they have the complete concert. These tapes were made in 1950 when the acetates were still in good condition, they contain little crackle and a lot more warmth than the later versions. My set of dubs of the concert. 14 discs in all. They once belonged to Savington Crampton radio producer at William Esty. September 2013 - Probably the most significant re-issue since 1999. BG at Carnegie Hall 1938 – Sony Music Entertainment (Japan). Blu-spec CD2 SICP 30223-4 I received a review copy of the new Japanese Blu-spec CD2 , Carnegie Hall concert in 2013 and played it through a couple of times. The packaging is exactly the same as the 1999 version with the same liner notes booklet, barring some typographic corrections to the early versions. The print quality is much better than the original 1999 issue. SME Japan have used the original master from the 1999 issue for this new format issue. The sound quality however is different, it certainly sounds more detailed. The Japanese issues of this concert have always been good and this is no exception. There does seem to me to be a lot more to hear. The sound of the drums is realistic; you can feel the beautiful warmth of those calf skins. The cymbals too have sparkle, compared to the Bill Savory, Dave Chertok Helen Ward and Diane Eisese. Jaunuary 16 1978. Courtesy: John McDonough. 25 ‘splash’ of the earlier incarnation. The same goes for the piano, which sounds – to my ears – a lot more rounded, full and engaging. Some extra subtleties of the orchestrations start to peek through as well, this is wonderful. As always, every time I play this concert I hear something new. This Blu-spec CD2 will provide a whole new layer of little details to discover for years to come. But there is a downside (isn’t there always!). Again, to my ears, this extra fidelity has brought the crackle and surface noise into even sharper focus, it is quite intrusive in places and the overall sound of this CD is still quite shrill. That is a shame; surely there is no need for this. And yes, we are still missing a fair chunk of ‘I Got Rhythm’. I can’t write this without mentioning the amazing job that Harry Smith made of recording this concert, remotely, from his studio a few blocks away from Carnegie Hall. The original recordings cover 28 sides of acetate discs. With a maximum of about four minutes per side, Harry must have been working frantically that night to capture it all without missing anything. All-round, this offering is probably only for purists and fanatics like me (us?), it does bring us a couple of inches closer to what it must have been like to hear that incredible 1938 band in the flesh. Universal label Sadly, Howard Scott at Columbia Records who was the producer of the first LP issue of the concert has recently died. Recording engineer Seth Winner was fortunate to obtain the original acetates from Howard’s estate. These were used for both the Columbia issue of 1950 and the Schaap CD issue 1999. Seth told me that the The Holy Grail! This is photo of the first side of the legendary Goodman Acetates. The very ones that Benny’s sister-in-law Rachel Speiden found in Benny’s old apartment. Courtesy: Seth Winner. 26 acetates were close to being thrown into a dumpster! He has kindly sent me sound samples from the acetates and at long last, a picture of one of the record labels. The picture confirms that the acetates were indeed cut on Universal blanks. It is generally accepted that Harry Smith recorded the concert under the direction of Albert Marx. However, why these acetates have Universal labels is still unexplained. Bill Savory suggested that Harry Smith had probably asked Raymond Scott, who owned Universal, to record another set in parallel, as Albert may have asked for 2 sets. That would account for why the set which Goodman’s sister-in-law found in her closet in the summer of 1950, were Universal. Back in 2009, I sent a copy of my book to Howard Scott. George confirmed that Howard had received it but I understand that he was too ill to respond, I would have loved to have heard from Howard. George Avakian and I were working on a reissue of the concert and we were trying to contact Howard but alas, he never responded. I am still trying to get our re-issue off the ground, I’ll update my website with any news of progress. In the meantime, I wish every body a happy 78th anniversary of this remarkable day back in 1938. I’ll keep digging for those illusive nuggets and I hope to be able to report back in future with more ‘Discoveries’. Very best wishes. My photo montage of the ‘Quartette’ at Carnegie. Teddy Wilson is hiding behind the vibraphone. 27 Cheers George! © Copyright 2016 Prancing fish publishing Ltd. 28