Cab Calloway 1941-1942

In my ongoing study of jazz history, I was reminded recently how little I know of Cab Calloway’s music so I got a few cds. I’d prefer to get it on vinyl but it doesn’t seem like there are any box sets or complete record sets like there are of Ellington, Goodman, Shaw, etc. Anyway, I’ll be writing about them in the next while and today I listened through Chronological classics 1941-1942.

The band

First off, the band is stellar. Calloway was a top draw at this time so he was able to hire the best musicians and one can hear this clearly in the ensembles which are tight. Sometimes swing era recordings can sound a little flat in terms of sound, but the energy of the band still comes through.

A look at the personnel also gives further indication how good the band is with a number of names in the band including Jonah Jones, Dizzy Gillespie, and Lammar Wright on trumpets, Tyree Glenn, Quentin Jackson and Keg Johnson on trombones. Jerry Blake and Hilton Jefferson on altos, Chu Berry (later replaced by Ted McRae) and Walter Thomas on tenor, and Andrew Brown on alto and bari.

Dizzy needs no introduction and I’m pretty sure that’s him on “Hey, Doc!” considering the range and the fast passages. Largely forgotten today Jonah Jones played with Calloway since the early 1930s I believe and would later go on to be a “pop” star of sorts in the 1950s. He played the entertainer role, smiling, playing melodies, with just a touch of improvisation. It reminds me of Wes Montgomery’s last recordings with A&M and has that easy listening sound: not too deep, but pleasant. Lammar Wright Sr, (both of his sons played trumpet and would go on to play in Gillespie’s bands) was a charter member of Calloway’s band when they were still the Missourians. Before that he played with Bennie Moten and appears on recordings with him from 1923 at the tender age of 17!

Tyree Glenn and Quentin Jackson would both go on to play in Ellington’s band and both stayed fairly active through the late 1960s-early 1970s. Glenn also doubled on vibraphone and while he doesn’t play it here, he does with some of Ellington’s tunes.

In the sax section, Chu Berry was the big star tenor soloist and the most prominent soloist on this recording. Sadly, he passed away on October 30, 1941, but he is known for his tenure with Calloway. Playing in the tenor tradition of Coleman Hawkins, along with Hawk, Ben Webster, and Don Byas, he contributed to emphasis on harmonic changes that would characterize bebop. Andrew Brown was a longtime member of Calloway’s band, playing with them in New York when they were still the Missourians.

With terrific brass and saxes, it’s only fitting that the band have one of the great unsung rhythm sections of the Swing Era: Bennie Payne on piano, Danny Barker on guitar, Cozy Cole on drums, and Milt Hinton on bass. For my money, particularly since the drums were never well recorded during this era, Hinton is the one driving the band. You can hear his pulse clearly on tracks like “I want to rock” and he sounds terrific. He had a few spotlights with the band but none here.

I wasn’t familiar with Payne, but reading about him briefly O found out that in the 1920s he gigged with Wilbur Sweatman and recorded a piano duet with Fats Waller in 1929 before joining Calloway in 1931.

So that’s a solid band and Calloway is excellent on vocals. He doesn’t really have one vocal style and seems flexible enough to record novelty/comedy numbers, swing dance hits, one rhumba and romantic ballads. Allmusic and Gunther Schuller both single out his performance on “Ill be around” from February 2, 1942 and it’s excellent, as is his ballad performance on “The Moment I laid Eyes on You”.

No doubt, this was intended to be popular music product and one can hear it with the emphasis on vocals with a brief instrumental section that sometimes featured a soloist (often Berry on tenor or sometimes trumpet). Besides plenty of call and response between the Calloway and the band, the Palmer Brothers are singing backup vocals. They often sing in harmony and provide a sweet counterpoint to Calloway’s on singing. It’s a wonderful sound and it reminds me of the Mills Brothers and especially the Delta Rhythm Boys. As far as I know, that was the sound of popular music from this era. You can hear it on Paul Whiteman’s records from the 1920s and during the big band era, having a vocal group in the big band was not unusual back then (Glenn Miller had the Modernaires).

Cab Calloway

Calloway sounds terrific. He varies his timbre frequently from his raspy low notes to belting notes at the top of his range. Schuller in his book, The Swing Era, praises his singing and it’s easy to hear why. Unfortunately, jazz popular music and vocals are underfilled (as they say) and so few people are away of this history. Jazz history is indeed very vast and there are so many angles to presenting it. We like to emphasize the artistic aspects of jazz and so the music of men like Calloway tend to be underrepresented and even unknown to generations of jazz musicians.

Pre-1945 jazz is difficult for people to listen to and this is commercial jazz and so is a far cry from the ethos of say Charlie Parker. Still, the playing is solid and the singing is incredible. Interestingly enough, Calloway is known for scatting, but he doesn’t do so on this record.

Like a lot of Swing Era recordings, there are a LOT of songs here. 22 recorded between July 1941 and July 1942 and it can be a task to listen to 22 new songs---actually 20, his most famous song “Minnie The Moocher” is here and he covers Benny Goodman’s “A Smo-o-o-th One”. The rhumba “Conchita (cares nothing about love)” has an interesting introduction with, dare I say it, dissonance (!) and prominently features Cole playing a New Orleans-esque pattern on the drums before switching up to swing.

Still this music is fun to listen to. It’s light-hearted and there’s rarely a sad moment, making the romantic ballads, which are more emotional, stand out.