Bennie Moten's Kansas City Orchestra 1923-1929

Bennie Moten was the most successful Kansas City bandleader during the l920s and through the early 1930s.  On Bennie Moten's Kansas City Orchestra 1923-1929, the transition of the band from a young, ragtime/jazz dance band in 1923 to a more sophisticated and more sounding band in 1929 is documented.  Though the liner notes indicate that the focus is on the recordings from 1923, there are in fact more songs from 1925. Although Moten recorded every year between 1923 to 1929, the only other years documented are two songs from 1927 and one from 1929.  All in all, not a perfect compilation but the transition during this period is clear.  I'm generally not a fan of incomplete compilations, like a 'greatest hits' collection, but since Moten recorded 106 sides, reviewing them in smaller doses makes it easier to digest and to understand.

The band in 1922 (L-R):Willie Hill, Lammar Wright,
Bennie Moten, Thamon Hayes, Woodie Walder
The 1923 sides are represented by the two instrumental tracks, "Elephant's Wobble" and "Crawdad Blues",  and two vocal tracks with Ada Morgan, "Evil Mama Blues" and "Break O Day Blues".  There's a terrific article on the background of these recordings entitled "Break O'Day Blues: The 1923 Recordings of the Bennie Moten Orchestra" and was published in The Musical Quarterly in 2002.   The only other academic scholar who talks about these tracks is Gunther Schuller in Early Jazz, and Rice greatly expands upon it with transcriptions and biographies of the musicians involved.  Recorded and conceived of during the period before political corruption impacted the music one (encouraging live music as a means of distraction from the illicit activities that were going on), the author, Marc Rice, demonstrates that these recordings were very much a local byproduct of the Kansas City music community.  

Bennie Moten
Not much I can add except that the rhythm and feel on all four tracks emphasize beat one so strongly that it sounds  as if they were playing a backbeat.  One reason for this is the lack of tuba player---there wouldn't be one until 1925 and Moten covers the rhythm, the bass notes, and the chords in his accompaniment.  As a result, it sounds closer to a marching band, especially with the snare drum pattern, and they make the group sound like a novelty band.  For example, Herman "Woody" (or "Woodie") Walder's solos on the clarinet mouthpiece blown into a drinking glass, creating a wah-wah type sound.  While King Oliver was the master of these sounds, it just doesn't sound the same on clarinet;  being high pitched with a thinner tone, it sounds closer to a kazoo.  Also the banjo solos, which were indeed a product of vaudeville, are gimmicky and those tremolos don't help.   

Moten band in 1923 with Mary Bradford, Ada Morgan, 
and in the middle is most likely Kansas City entrepreneur
Winston Holmes who organized the recording session
 
There are highlights such as Lammar Wright's solos on cornet with a strong tone and playing with a good variety of rhythms.  His blues playing is especially strong on "Crawdad Blues" and contributes a nice cadenza on "Elephant's Wobble".  His two sons, Lammar Jr. and Elmon, would also be trumpeters playing and recording in big bands and small groups from the 1940s through the 1960s.  Trombonist Thamon Hayes, though sounding limited in ability, is spirited in his down-home blues solos. In the liner notes to Parlophone's Bennie Moten Kansas City Orchestra 1923-25, the great jazz discographer Brian Rust comments that Hayes is improvising in the manner of Honore Dutrey from King Oliver's band.  

Overall, the instrumental tracks are rooted in the music of New Orleans and collective improvisation: cornet on the melody, clarinet is busier, and the trombone is playing those slides to the root.  Both instrumental tracks are remarkably similar with the same backbeat-type rhythm.  Plus being in the same key, some of the musicians' licks (like Wright's) are repeated.  One of the points in Rice's article is the fact that the frontline, Wright, Walder, and Hayes, were all eighteen at the time of the recording and recent high school graduates.  

Portrait by Robert Crumb
Recorded during the blues craze of the 1920's, the instrumental tracks were more thrown in as an afterthought to the main tracks featuring Ada Morgan and Mary Bradford.  Only Morgan's tracks are included here and her voice is very much in the style of Mamie Smith: based in principles of musical theater and sung tongue in cheek---I can picture her smiling and engaging the audience as she sings.  At this point in 1923, swing feel was not part of the Moten's vocabulary, but the blues was there in the solos and the tunes.   Only "Evil Mama Blues" is not a twelve-bar blues, though the A section begins the way a blues form would before ending up as an eight-bar phrase.  I think some of Schuller's disappointment in listening to those sides is the fact that Moten's later work very much had that swinging feeling.

Harlan Leonard
The tracks from May 14, 1925 feature a stronger band with a different character.  The ensemble is also larger with the addition of Harry Cooper on second cornet, Vernon Page on tuba, and future Kansas City bandleader Harlan Leonard on clarinet and alto sax.  The tuba, appearing for the first time with Moten on this recording session, better connects the rhythm section section together and the two-feel is an improvement from the earlier session; it also better compliments the New Orleans-style collective improvisation.  Walder's clarinet mouthpieces are still here, but the banjo solos are gone.  Harlan Leonard is a stronger instrumentalist with more technically proficient solos on alto, having taken private lessons and having a background in math and engineering in junior college.    

This time around, three of the six tracks are blues tunes and the other three have a stronger ragtime identity, with the repeated melody played as a three beat phrase agains the four four time.  The ragtime principles were also present on the 1923 sessions, but somehow the ragtime and jazz fusion is stronger here.  It might due to Hayes and Wright sounding much stronger with two more years of dance band experience; their solos are a highlight of these tracks.  On "Kater Street Rag", which is similar to "Dixie Jass Band One-Step", the rhythm section drops out and Moten gets a solo spotlight.  His ragtime-style piano (he studied with a student of Scott Joplin's), is good and as Rice pointed out, this setting highlights his time feel which is much more relaxed, possibly pointing the way toward the band's future music.   Overall these tracks sound energetic and they sound like a good dance band with a little bit of down-home blues.   

1928
The two tracks from the June 11, 1927 recording session featured an even larger band with two extra woodwind players, including one who could play baritone.  Wright and Cooper were gone but in his place were Ed Lewis and Paul Webster on cornet.  The new woodwind players are Jack Washington and LaForest Dent.  There is also a new banjo player, Leroy Berry. The collective improvisation is gone and, following the Fletcher Henderson and Don Redman, the band is now divided and arranged by section.  All of this can be heard on "Sugar" which also features a good arrangement with melodic bass lines, stronger degree of syncopation (thus a stronger playing band), and the Don Redman special, a clarinet soli.  There's still some sliding trombone, but overall the band sounds much more sophisticated than it had.  

1928
Finally the two tracks from 1929 feature a more accomplished band.  First off, it's the same personnel from 1927 with a new cornetist, Booker Washington, and one less saxophonist with LaForest Dent not present. With a stable band used to playing together, the performance inevitably gets stronger and it can be heard on these tracks.  "Let's get it" from July 16 features an elegant sounding band with strong solos from Leonard on alto and Hayes on trombone---him and Walter are the lone musicians left over from 1923.  "Moten's Blues", recorded the next day, foreshadows the Swing era, with repetitive blues riffs played by the band and serving as backgrounds.  Besides all of this, the other big change is the addition of Moten's nephew, Ira "Buster" Moten, playing second piano and piano accordion.  An unusual sound, it really sets the band apart from others.  

The evolution of the band and its music did not stop in 1929 and continued through its final recordings in 1932 and onwards when the band came under Count Basie's direction.  Still, this collection documents a band from its origins in New Orleans, ragtime, and vaudeville towards a mighty unit participating in the birth of the big band, swing, and the history of jazz.

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