 The Clarinet BBoard
|
Author: MarlboroughMan
Date: 2015-05-28 20:23
We've had a lot of dramatic exits from the BBoard recently, all with this poetically appropriate post title. It's poignancy in a clarinet forum is derived, in part, from the fact that Gordon Jenkins' tune 'Goodbye' was made famous as Benny Goodman's closing theme.
I've recently been more involved with this tune more than usual, in a musical sense, and because of this have checked out multiple versions--from Benny's many versions, to Oscar Peterson's, to a couple of different interpretations by Richard Stoltzman.
My question for this thread: what is your favorite version of 'Goodbye' and why?
Mine is Benny's recording with strings from 1952. I love the richness of Benny's tone, the arrangement for strings, which still maintains a great 'brushes' slow dance groove, and Benny's solo ideas are as poignant as the Lark Ascending to my ear. Many of us (myself included) tend to be critical of Benny's post-Kell career...but while this recording seems to emphasize the influence of Kell (it sounds very much like Kell's easy listening recordings of the era), it's a little masterpiece. Enjoy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNXFpJq1aBo
******************************
The Jazz Clarinet
http://thejazzclarinet.blogspot.com/
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: seabreeze
Date: 2015-05-28 21:13
Come to think of it, Benny seems to own that song. I'm not sure I've ever heard "Goodybe" performed except by him or in tribute to him, by Peanuts Hucko, even by Tony Scott.
It's the vocal quality in his playing that does the trick. Voices are like fingerprints--inextricably tied to their owner. The best pop and jazz players have always been the ones with the most memorable and distinctive voices. Just listen to a note or phrase or two and you immediately know its Shaw, Goodman, Bechet, or Fountain speaking/singing/playing. When others play this tune, they seem to drag but Benny swings even at a slow tempo, and the blues that hound you in the big city late at night haunt his solo and make it unforgetable. Kell may have added something to Benny's style, but the voice and the pathos were there all along, from the beginning.
I'd have to say my favorite recording is by Benny himself--the 1935 Victor 25215 78 with the smaltzy trumpets and the wide mellow sound of the tenor sax in the background
It's on YouTube but the direct URL is not working for me.
Post Edited (2015-05-29 23:06)
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Morrigan
Date: 2015-05-28 21:44
Aren't "goodbye" threads banned?
(Tongue in cheek, if it needs to be said)
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: MarlboroughMan
Date: 2015-05-28 22:00
@Morrigan 
@seabreeze--agreed about Benny's tone, and your observations in general. How long has it been since you've checked out Reginald Kell's "Quiet Music" though---that easy listening stuff he did in the late 40s, early 50s I mean. I grew up with the 1952 Benny recording, yet it only dawned on me recently how much it resembled the Kell--and I've often been pretty critical of Kell's influence on Benny. it was nice to hear something that seemed to have a really positive effect.
(That "Quiet Music" is some of my favorite Kell work, by the way.)
Eric
******************************
The Jazz Clarinet
http://thejazzclarinet.blogspot.com/
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: seabreeze
Date: 2015-05-28 22:49
I know Kell's album "Swing Low Sweet Clarinet" and appreciate his efforts to popularize the instrument. Listening to opera singers, Kell was moved to achieve a vocal effect on the clarinet. He certainly was a distinctive stylist, and instantly recognizable. Most American classical players objected to his use of vibrato and his tendency toward rubato but some, like Mitchell Lurie, found a great deal to admire in Kell's approach, though they never cared to emulate it.
Lurie nearly always played with a very straight tone without a trace of vibrato and was solidly metrical and not given to rubato at all, yet he wrote a very appreciative piece on Lurie for the Clarinet magazine soon after the death of the British artist. No one has ever duplicated Kell's tone which was rather bright and incisive rather than the dark, more hollow quality many players want today. Reportedly he played on a Wardell mouthpiece with a big A-shaped tone chamber on his Boosey & Hawkes and used the "thinnest reeds that he dared." He certainly was never part of the "homogenized mass," even among British players.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
The Clarinet Pages
|
 |
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
