 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: GBK
Date: 2006-10-24 05:06
We've all seen many of the older Benny Goodman videos/films, most which were pre-recorded and produced for particular movies, but here is a more recent rare one which I'll bet you have never seen.
Goodman, explains improvising and then plays Charlie Parker's "Ornithology" with help from Zoot Sims, Clark Terry, Ed Shaughnessy, Gene Bertoncini, Hank Jones, and Milt Hinton.
Filmed and recorded live - no retakes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgIObHj4w7M
With all respect to Benny Goodman, he could swing with the best of them, but in bebop style it is apparent that he is not as comfortable and it doesn't come as naturally. Clark Terry and Zoot Sims feel right at home, and it shows...
BTW -
The other videos in this series are equally as fascinating, if only to hear the great Clark Terry and Zoot Sims:
"Always" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wg7bB3uVtp4
"Rose Room" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNUc4spVx_U (Clark Terry's "duet w/himself")
"Air Mail Special" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5-Zl3xoqJU
...GBK
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Author: clarnibass
Date: 2006-10-24 06:58
Who of the names you mentioned is the bass player? He is really excellent! Also Clark Terry is awsome as always!
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Author: jmsa
Date: 2006-10-24 08:28
Can anyone tell what brand clarinet he is using. Also Zoot Sims on sax and Hank Jones on piano are incredible. Is that Ray Brown on Bass and Barret Deems on drums.
jmsa
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Author: SVClarinet09
Date: 2006-10-24 11:19
jmsa wrote:
> Can anyone tell what brand clarinet he is using. Also Zoot Sims
> on sax and Hank Jones on piano are incredible. Is that Ray
> Brown on Bass and Barret Deems on drums.
>
I think its a Selmer Series 9 or a CT. I'm not quite sure.
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Author: Ed
Date: 2006-10-24 11:59
I remember reading something years ago where Benny mentioned that he dabbled in playing some bop and said something to the effect that it wasn't his thing. I would have to search to see if I could ever find that again.
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Author: johng ★2017
Date: 2006-10-24 13:48
Is Benny outplayed, or is it just that clarinet doesn't lend itself as well to the style? At least to my ears, clarinet is not a sound that works well in that particular jazz concept. What do you think?
John Gibson, Founder of JB Linear Music, www.music4woodwinds.com
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Author: BobD
Date: 2006-10-24 15:11
Although I rank BG among my favorites to listen to I wouldn't have thought that Ornithology would have been something he could adapt to. Part of the listenability of BG is that his improvizations were always where you thought they would be and , so, his music was familiar and melodic. While listening to Slipped Disc yesterday it just occurred to me that one of the basic differences between BG and Artie Shaw was that Artie seemed to favor the highest registers while BG the low to middle. Am I right?
Bob Draznik
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Author: jmcgann
Date: 2006-10-24 16:18
>Is Benny outplayed, or is it just that clarinet doesn't lend itself as well to the >style? At least to my ears, clarinet is not a sound that works well in that >particular jazz concept. What do you think?
Eddie Daniels, Buddy DeFranco, Paquito, Tony Scott...each plays excellent music on clarinet with the post 1944 vocabulary, and are great to hear in this style. I think Benny had his ("pre-bop") jazz style and stuck to it (which is not to say he didn't grow as a player!)
It's not really fair to look to Benny for Buddy DeFranco style, anymore than you'd look to Benny Carter for Charlie Parker or to Louis Armstrong for Dizzy...
www.johnmcgann.com
Post Edited (2006-10-24 16:28)
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Author: GBK
Date: 2006-10-24 17:01
jmcgann wrote:
> It's not really fair to look to Benny for Buddy DeFranco style,
> anymore than you'd look to Benny Carter for Charlie Parker or
> to Louis Armstrong for Dizzy...
Well stated...
In this particular video clip, although Benny tried hard to adapt his playing to the newer bebop style, the other members of the group feel much more comfortable in this genre.
Not outplayed as much as "out-experienced" ...GBK
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Author: allencole
Date: 2006-10-24 17:13
A very interesting book about Benny is "Benny Goodman and the Swing Era" by George Lincoln Collier. I think that it's the source of this little tidbit.
The author claims that while Benny was obviously a great player, he had a relatively unsophisticated ear and took steps to remove tensions and dissonances from some of his best arrangements. Not the kind of guy to really embrace the upper extensions. I've read similar elsewhere about Count Basie. In fact, one of the guys interviewed in "The World of Count Basie" said he thought that Benny Goodman was the only clarinet player that Basie really liked.
If you want to hear his actual 1949 foray into bebop, I think that the original album name was Undercurrent Blues, with most of the more modern charts arranged by Chico O'Farrell. To me, Benny sounds like Benny, and doesn't really embrace the bop thing.
He supposedly had Stan Hasselgard in the band around that time, but I don't know if he appears on the album. I think that Wardell Gray is on it, though.
I'm dying to see this video! Gotta get down to the laundromat and log on at high speed...
Allen Cole
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Author: BobD
Date: 2006-10-24 18:33
Yeh, it's YouTube that's going to cause me to break down and go hi speed.
My impression is that this clip is sort of a BG foray into the Lenny Bernstein school of professorship. I don't think he even considered himself a bopper but that he is moderating the illustration and sitting in sort of. How many musicians can truly change their style? BG certainly gave classical clarinet playing a go....but Swing was still his thing.
Bob Draznik
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Author: graham
Date: 2006-10-24 19:18
Strange that he agreed to do a set particularly about a style he could not play; but I liked the swing playing he put into an otherwise Bebop set (though I think it was a bit obvious where he stopped the improvisations and just resumed the tune at that point - still, it meant no-one could forget what the tune had started as).
Benny's sound certainly "has something" particularly in the opening statement of the theme, but it was the piano playing I found seriously tedious.
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Author: FDF
Date: 2006-10-24 19:19
Yeah, the the whole four part series is an informative lesson on jazz improvisation. All of your observations and comments add to the lesson. Thanks. And, afterall, they did call BG The Professor.
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Author: Old Geezer
Date: 2006-10-24 21:25
Besides these wonderful Benny Goodman bits there are over 700! clarinet videos on YouTube.
There are some of Sabin Meyer, Sharon Kam, the Mighty Emma and other professionals.
Some are pretty strange...but with a peculiar interest. There's one in which some guy plays a doubled walled metal clarinet while riding around San Francisco in a cab.
Some of them, the non professionals, play OK.
Clarinet Redux
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Author: Max S-D
Date: 2006-10-24 22:08
It sounds like Benny is soloing over the changes as though they were "How High The Moon" and not "Ornithology." He definitely brings the melody from "How Hgh..." into his solo.
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Author: FDF
Date: 2006-10-24 23:01
Max S-D, without a doubt Goodman brings back the melodic line to remind the players about the send off on their improv. Does the structure remain the same? Difficult for me to tell, but there is a question here about improvisation. Should the original composer of a tune be given credit the way Goodman comes back to the theme, or should improvisations forsake a formal structure?
What I love about the video is that each musician respects what the other creates and there is joy in the creation.
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Author: Sonny
Date: 2006-10-25 02:32
Hank Jones "tedious"?
Best part of the clip. I believe the man's still cookin today.
practice,practice,practice
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Author: allencole
Date: 2006-10-25 15:56
Apologies if off-topic, but a tidbit on Hank Jones: The local public radio station is offering an album with him and Eddie Daniels as a premium.
Allen Cole
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Author: Lobo
Date: 2006-10-25 22:09
If Benny Goodman played Charlie Parker and Steve Allen played Benny Goodman, did Charlie Parker play Steve Allen?
So, if Benny Goodman wasn't fantastic at playing Charlie Parker, we shouldn't be surprised because his primary talent was not acting, but playing the clarinet.
(Or did I read the title of the thread wrong? Certainly you didn't mean that Benny Goodman played Charlie Parker as if he were a musical instrument? Or even metaphorically as when one manipulates another person?)
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Author: larryb
Date: 2006-10-25 23:09
personally, I prefer Charlie Parker plays Benny Goodman, as in the homemade recordings he made of himself accompanied by a 1936 Goodman trio record (China Boy and Avalon), circa 1943
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Author: Noel
Date: 2006-10-26 10:00
Although I agree with people's comments about BG's playing here, I think the interest also lies in the initial remarks he makes. You could see it as the 'king of swing' saying the crown has passed on to a younger man. That's not an easy thing to do, especially for a man as proud as he appears to have been. At the same time he wants to show he's not quite ready to be put out to grass, but also to emphasise this by showing that there's a hidden continuity within the two seemingly different styles.
Does anyone have a date for this recording?
I think it's interesting that BG seems to mostly centre his closing improv around 'How High the Moon' rather than Ornithology and this fits in with the pedagogic conceit he states at the beginning. Clark Terry by contrast seems to ground his playing far more in 'Ornithology' itself, so the issue of whether BG could 'do' bebop or not is perhaps not entirely resolved here.
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Author: Markael
Date: 2006-10-26 10:59
Well, all I can say is that I'm impressed.
It's easy to sit back and make casual comments about world class musicians and lose a sense of perspective about the whole thing. Everything is relative.
If we were to divide into camps (which probably is a silly thing anyway, when you think about it,) I would fall more into the Artie Shaw camp. But to watch Benny jamming with those guys at all is really something.
How many of us could do that?
John Gibson posed the question as to whether clarinet works with bebop. I don't see why not!
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Author: ken
Date: 2006-10-27 05:05
Benny to me, sounded totally out of his element throughout his solo. The bebop concept itself just wasn't there. Revealing signs were continually staying in the same octave and clinging tightly to a "swing" style melody. He played mostly licks and any idea building were choppy lines no longer than 4 measures then back to the melody or a forced "swing" signature lick. In spots, he sounded practically lost, noodling, even frustrated.
It just doesn’t work that way; at best, like jumping from one lily pad to the other you can only cross styles inserting short, catchy quotes, fanfares or bugle calls then it's back into the form. Again, I didn’t hear the bebop concept so regardless of what's played you come off sounding like a 6/8er. As well, he wasn’t playing any back beat compared to Simms and Terry; more concept issues and it shows. However, Sing, Sing, Sing? Bring it on.
But, Benny sure had GUTS to sit in with the big dogs. He persevered his whole career to be a versatile musician. I always had a tremendous amount of respect for him because he took chances; and that’s what improvisation or any great music is a good deal about ... taking chances. In particular, Benny stood up to the ridicule of the orchestral set and worked extremely hard on his classical chops. Benny to me was a phenomenal example for us all to follow. v/r Ken
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Author: MikeH
Date: 2006-10-27 21:09
If Benny wanted to play bop he could have. Indeed as many of you know, around 1948 he actually did so. I have a rare LP called Swedish Pastry that is an air check of the Benny Goodman sextet with Wardell Gray, Benny, and Stan Hasselgard plus four rhythm. Benny indeed plays bop; sometimes so well it is difficult to tell when Benny or Hasselgard is playing. That makes sense because Benny supposedly hired Hasselgard so he could pick up the style from him. For Benny to hire another clarinet player does not really make sense under any other supposition. Apparently Benny discovered that his fans wanted the same old same old so he abandoned his experiment with bop shortly therafter. An above post mentions Undercurrent Blues. This can be heard on an old Capitol release titled "Bebop Spoken Here".
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Author: ghuba
Date: 2006-10-29 02:41
GBK, thanks for posting this link. This clip is historically very interesting and illustrates what a lot of the older jazz musicians must have been experiencing as they tried to adapt their swing styles to bop. If you go back and listen to the dozen or so recordings that Charlie Parker made with the Jazz at the Philharmonic Tour throughout the 40s, you hear his own evolution (along with that of Ella Fitzgerald who sings vocals on many of these tracks) from the swing style played on the theme song from the tour (How High the Moon) into the Parker tune Ornithology which formalized his solos that clearly evolved from "swing" to something quite different over a few years. Many of the recordings of the era [including the classic 1954 recording by Duke Ellington and the classic recording by the Dave Brubeck Octet around the same time that included the clarinetist Bill Smith and alto saxophonist Paul Desmond] alternated between almost swing-like renditions of How High Moon and then much more "free" (or bop) versions of Ornithology; there are literally many dozens of such recordings floating around from the era.
I have thought for a number of years that the "transition" from How High the Moon to Ornithology is one of the most important in the history of jazz, and that understanding how musicians of the era made that transition in vocabularies by exploring both songs and the alternate styles, is a key to understanding the evolution of jazz between 1940 to 1965. [Perhaps the key recording for understanding the transition is the Dave Brubeck Octet recording of How High the Moon.]
George
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Author: Erdinet
Date: 2006-10-29 13:17
Yeah, nice clip to be sure. Benny sounds great as usual. But, to say he is conversant in the language of Be Bop is giving credit where it is most definitely not due (IMHO). To be sure a, clarinetist of few peers, Benny did not have the rhythmic flow of a Be Bop era musician. It can certainly be argued that he also lacked the harmonic sophisitcation of Parker and his generation of players, preferring to play in a primarily riff based, short (1-2 two bar) phrased, less rhythmically engaging way.
If you consider the evolution of jazz through its various eras, I believe that the primary differences are rhythmic. Listen to the famous recording of Slam Stewart and Don Byas playing "I've Got Rhythm" you can hear harmonic playing as advanced as any in history, however they are rhythmically not quite there, but swingin' like mad.
Now listen the the rhythmic flow of say Hank Jones or Zoot Simms, or Clark Terry in this footage. Then listen to Benny. They are informed by different harmonic choices but groove in their own ways. But I think it would be safe to say that they two very different concepts.
The fact that Charlie Parker (and Benny Harris) turned "How High the Moon" into "Ornithology" is not really all interesting in context. What Bird and Harris did is a very common thing throughout the history of jazz that exists even to this day. By that time there were probably thousands upon thousands of take offs on rhythm changes. Ellington and others did many take offs on "Tiger Rag" (check out "Braggin' In Brass" for some really amazing trumpet and trombone playing, btw.) The list goes on.
Benny's noteriety is mainly as a popular artist. He played his day's popular music. (This does not take away from his artistry.) Of course his public would not want him to play straight ahead jazz, music that by that time was definitely a big step away from anything remotely resembling anything was ever popular. In addition by that point, he probably had neither the time nor the inclination to go "deep in the shed" to become truly familiar with the new thing. Then again, in 1967 when this video was made, the new thing was Coltrane and Albert Ayler. Talk about a jump for Benny!
"There is a big difference between kneeling down and bending over."
-Frank Zappa
Post Edited (2006-10-29 13:25)
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Author: jmcgann
Date: 2006-10-29 13:26
>Listen to the famous recording of Slam Stewart and Don Byas playing "I've >Got Rhythm" you can hear harmonic playing as advanced as any in history, >however they are rhythmically not quite there, but swingin' like mad.
That's a great performance-I read somewhere it was spur of the moment because someone (Bird?) was late for the gig, and the duo stepped up to fill time- which might explain the rhythmic looseness...Byas superimposes a neat sequence of II V's descending in whole steps from a tritone away from the home key of Bb:
F#m7 B7/Em7 A7/Dm7 G7/Cm7 F7/Bb7
to keep 'on thread' I want to add that Benny's playing on the Bartok "Contrasts" w/ Bela and Szegeti is wonderful; I doubt that he'd have had any trouble at all assimilating the bebop language (including the rhythmic conception) if he wanted to...
www.johnmcgann.com
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Author: Gandalfe
Date: 2006-10-29 15:20
This kind of post is why I keep coming back to this forum. Thanks for the education. :o)
Jim and Suzy
Pacifica Big Band
Seattle, Washington
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Author: larryb
Date: 2006-10-29 18:02
Before there was Ornithology, there was Bean at the Met (Coleman Hawkins & Roy Eldridge's take on How High the Moon)
Before there was Salt Peanuts, there was Mop Mop...
The transition from Swing to Bop was fluid, and many musicians from both generations took part and overlapped. I view Coleman Hawkins as a pivotal figure in many ways, since, as an older generation musician, he played with and employed Gillespie, Monk, Roach, Miles and others during the early to mid 1940s.
There's no reason why Benny couldn't play the new idiom. He was just always overshadowed and intimidated when he played with superior musicians - the same timidity comes through on his recordings with Lester Young (Teddy Wilson/Billie Holiday and Holy Cats dates).
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The Clarinet Pages
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