Lucky Millinder - Let it Roll

Lucky Millinder (born Lucius Venable, 1900-1966) was one of the great bandleaders of the Swing Era who fit less into jazz and more into the burgeoning rhythm and blues or more precisely, jump blues category. For myself, this is what makes him so interesting. His name pops up in the biographies of other jazz musicians, so wanted to hear his music.

Born in Alabama and raised in Chicago, Millinder worked in New York and first gained recognition leading the Mills Blue Rhythm Band from around 1933. This band eventually became Lucky Millinder and his Orchestra and the tracks on this album are from between 1941 and 1947.

Even though the music doesn’t carry a strong “jazz” flavor, the outstanding jazz musicians who passed through his band is what interested me about Millinder: from Henry “Red” Allen, J.C. Higginbotham, Harry “Sweets” Edison, Charlie Shavers, Buster Bailey, to Dizzy Gillespie. Unfortunately this LP from 1982 doesn’t carry extensive personnel credits, but according to the liner notes by Steve Hoffman, some featured musicians include bassist George Duvivier, pianist Sir Charles Thompson, tenor saxophonist Clarence “Bullmoose” Jackson, and guitarist/vocalist Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

There’s another MCA compilation that features mostly Tharpe and in the future I will write about that one. This one includes two tracks by Tharpe: “Rock Me” and “I want a skinny papa”. While she sings on both, her guitar is heavily featured on “Rock Me”. Written by gospel great Thomas A. Dorsey (a.k.a. Georgia Tom), her energy on guitar and vocals is clearly evident and she sounds incredible. It’s also a nice mélange of stylistic variety: a gospel song played by a big band with heavy dose blues.

Blues is the key word here as it is all over Millinder’s music. All of the solos and the arrangements rely heavily on the blues idiom to un-jazz-ify his music, and helps turn it into “rhythm and blues”. Eight of ten tracks are vocal numbers and the other vocalists are Trevor Bacon, Annisteen Allen, and Judy Carol.

Bacon’s three tracks are from 1941. He has a smooth delivery and seems relatively unknown (he appears to have passed away in the mid-1940s), but he sounds good on the ballad “Sweet Slumber” and “Let me off uptown” made famous by Gene Krupa and Anita O’Day. That song has bass fills in the beginning and I’ve been wondering who it is---it could very well be George Duvivier who had excellent technique.

The melody to “Big Fat Mama” was a big revelation for myself because it’s the lick that Lee Morgan plays at end of his famous solo on Art Blakey’s “Moanin’” in 1958. I’m sure Morgan knew where it came from, but as time goes on, we lose track of where these licks or ideas originate from. I should add that just about every track on this compilation, true to the rhythm and blues genre, includes at least one tenor saxophone solo---I’m not familiar with the sounds of the players mentioned, but since he co-wrote it with Millinder, I’ll assume it’s Stafford Simon. Millinder’s success was such that he was able to make a short video in 1941 of this song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xr1kvxThe_4

Not the greatest video, but we get to see Millinder, Bacon and the musicians. In 1941, African Americans on film were rarely depicted as regular people, and this video is no different with the band depicted to look like country hicks with plaid shirts, overalls, and straw hats. Playing and dancing in a barn, they look very un-sophisticated.

Musically, this is shorter than the LP version, but the arrangement is similar. There’s more call and response with the band and for some reason, handclaps are overdubbed in. While they start clapping on ‘2’ and ‘4’, whoever dubbed it in messed it up half-way through and they start clapping on ‘1’ and ‘3’ and it sounds absurd.

Annisteen Allen sings on two tracks including the title of the collection,“There’s good blues tonight” and“Let it roll” from 1947. This track is a good example of Jump blues with a boogie woogie-type bass line in the piano and bass and piano right-hand chords on the off-beats. This is an exciting arrangement and they really dig in to new bebop sound with extensive flat 5ths! It’s actually the hook of the song and was popular enough to be include in the 1948 film “boarding house”: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=df2IrFCICpY

Like Bacon, Allen also has a really smooth delivery and is quite subtle. Later on I feel like rhythm & blues singers in big bands tend to want to dominate with a huge voice, but since we’re barely out of the Swing Era that raucous-style delivery hasn’t developed yet. Allen sounds like her conception came from jazz---she reminds of many of those singers from big bands--- so I believe that she too fits in that jazz-blues area, hence her being with Millinder.

   

Judy Carol sings the blues ballad “Don’t Cry Baby” from 1943 and, of course, sings in that subtle-style of Bacon and Allen. What strikes me is that she appears to be of Asian descent. Not entirely sure an Asian woman singing with an African American band was acceptable, so she could potentially be half-Asian, half-African American or “bl-asian” as I’ve heard it described. The other highlight of the track is the muted trumpet solo that could be Harry “Sweets” Edison?

Both instrumental tracks definitely standout from the vocal tracks and likely designed that way to emphasize those vocalists. “How about that mess” features anatypical arrangement with shout sections leading into solos---some without bass, just brass/drums. Solos are heard on both tracks including two bars for drummer Panama Francis on “Beserk Boogie”. Francis had a long career that started in the 1930s with George Kelly, Tab Smith, and Roy Eldridge, through the 1940s with Millinder, Willie Bryant, Cab Calloway, all the way into the 1970s with Lionel Hampton, Sy Oliver, and many others. He also worked in the studios playing uncredited on numerous sessions by Ruth Brown, Clyde McPhatter, Buddy Holly, the Four Seasons, James Brown, Bobby Darin and others. Now that’s a career! Yet I wonder how many people know his name.

The flatted fifths heard on “Let it roll” is also everywhere on “Berserk Boogie”. With Billy Mann on piano and Danny Barker on guitar, there’s dissonant harmonies and it’s swinging hard.

Overall, there’s quite a bit going on on this compilation! Besides the terrific music which mixes jazz and blues with references to gospel and bebop. We have Sister Rosetta Tharpe, that rare breed of guitarist who also happened to be a woman and an African American woman at that. If Judy Carol does have Asian ancestry then there would be a rare example of an Asian American in a jazz group----there are so few of us. Filipino American drummer Danny Barcelona might be the most prominent having played with Louis Armstrong for so long.

What about Millinder? I haven’t said a thing about him. On the internet, he supposedly doesn’t read music, play an instrument, or sing (!), but he knew a thing or two about entertainment and certainly business if he was able to make an early video in 1941 and appear in a Hollywood film in 1948 (also in 1939 with “Paradise in Harlem”). He was the boss and he seemed to know his product well, knowing what audiences liked, and was ultimately a successful bandleader. Ultimately it was his vision of music---that merger of jazz and blues---that lasted. Along with Louis Jordan and others, he helped to pioneer the music away from jazz towards what we now call “rhythm and blues”.