Yet again, with this monumental seven-CD collection of Vanguard’s small group swing sessions, Mosaic salutes the courage, fortitude and sheer bloody-mindedness of small, independent labels and their contribution to the development of jazz in the United States.

In 1950, two brothers, Maynard and Seymour Solomon, enter the record business by establishing the Bach Guild label, releasing high quality classical music performances by megastars like premier Russian violinist David Oistrakh. Eager to breach the worlds of folk and jazz, but cautious, because neither brother is particularly jazz savvy, they launch the Vanguard label and hire an Artists and Repertoire person who’s better acquainted with the music.

That person is John Hammond, a seasoned jazz insider, not unknown to be a control freak. Harvard-educated, he’s signified by his crew-cut and permanent armful of newspapers and left-wing journals, Hammond’s a visible misfit inside his aristocratic Vanderbilt dynasty. In a 1938 profile, jazz critic Otis Ferguson writes perceptively: “John won’t compromise on anything because he never learned to, and he never learned to because he never had to.” An enthusiastic activist in radical causes, Hammond also happens to be Benny Goodman’s brother-in-law.

The word ‘impressive’ was invented to describe Hammond’s jazz credentials. Equipped with billion-dollar ears and an unerring nose for authenticity, he has supervised recording sessions by Bessie Smith, Empress Of The Blues as well as Billie Holiday’s immortal Columbia small group recordings led by pianist Teddy Wilson. Typically, Hammond’s automobile is fitted with a mighty speaker powered by a muscular 12-tube Motorola radio receiver, a piece of tech that picks up a broadcast of the unknown Bill Basie’s outfit in remote Kansas City. In a blink, Hammond responds by having the band transported to New York and fame.

When travelling musicians report about an exceptional guitarist heard in Oklahoma named Charlie Christian, Hammond finds him and smuggles him into a Benny Goodman quintet rehearsal against Goodman’s wishes. After an electric display of dazzling improvisation, Goodman surrenders and the small band immediately morphs into a sextet. And have I neglected to mention that Hammond moves on to launch the careers of Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Aretha Franklin?

Spurred by his new role, Hammond immediately swings into action launching the Vanguard Jazz Showcase, totally in accord with the Solomon brothers’ view that the music should be recorded with only a single microphone. Early 50s is still in the mono age and, judging from the sublime sound of these seven CDs, the founders’ decision is wise.

Hammond’s personal taste sculpts the Vanguard Jazz Showcase catalogue. Above all, he admires Count Basie and the laid-back mid-western style. His kind of jazz is the music played by former star soloists of the big band era, musicians who produce what British jazz writer and producer Stanley Dance termed ‘mainstream’. Unfortunately, during the mid-50s, their style is marooned by powerful currents of fashion and increasingly, is being regarded as old hat. Watching public disregard endanger the earning ability and self-regard of his heroes, Hammond is determined to help (never to be forgotten, Jazz At The Philharmonic impresario Norman Granz is performing the same function with his mainstream-crammed Clef and Norgran catalogues. At the time, Granz also records the Count Basie band).

Fortunately, the mainstream is not yet reduced to a trickle. In 1953, Columbia Records releases an unusual 12-inch LP, A-side featuring an extended performance of The Hucklebuck, a 12-bar blues based on Charlie Parker’s Now’s The Time and B-side, a hip jazz standard, Robbin’s Nest, composed by Sir Charles Thompson, who is also pianist in the band. For the first time, a bunch of swing era veterans is allowed to stretch one number across an entire side of an LP in a jam session band with sketchy head arrangements led by ex-Basie trumpet star Buck Clayton. The Hucklebuck album climbs the charts steadily, proving that an audience exists for the relaxed small band swing sessions of the 1930s. The producer is John Hammond.

Ed Hall. Photo from album booklet supplied by Mosaic Records

So, for Vanguard’s first offering, the group of musicians trooping into the Masonic Temple on Brooklyn’s Clermont Avenue at the tail end of 1953 is led by trombonist Vic Dickenson, the not-yet-famous trumpeter Ruby Braff, clarinettists Ed Hall, pianist Sir Charles Thompson, guitarist Steve Jordan, bassist Walter Page and drummer Les Erskine. Together they deliver a 10-inch LP of jazz standards, Russian Lullaby, Jeepers Creepers, I Cover The Waterfront and Keeping Out Of Mischief Now plus one original, Sir Charles At Home, a brisk 12-bar blues. Everyone’s on point, Dickenson spinning lazy, but witty, epigrams, Braff responding with curling arabesques and Hall biting hard with his trademark spiky edge. Thompson, whose style hovers somewhere between bop and Basie, plays with restrained elegance.

Eleven months later, with Dickenson still in charge, Shad Collins assumes trumpet duties and Jo Jones is the chosen drummer to cut five standards and a blues for another 10-inch LP. Jones (of whom jazz writer Whitney Balliet comments in awe: ‘he plays like the wind’) is the drummer who has propelled the Basie band like no other and makes his presence felt, particularly by reuniting with Walter Page, his old Basie rhythm section colleague. Hammond, never a rabid bebop fan, encourages the band to recall the informality of their 1930s sessions. Of all the resulting laid-back tracks, You Brought A New Kind Of Love To Me is a museum quality example.

Buddy Tate. Photo from the album booklet supplied by Mosaic Records

Less than a year later, Hammond, not one to abandon a winning formula or ignore a receptive market, assembles Clayton, Ruby Braff, trombonist Benny Morton, tenor saxophonist Buddy Tate and an effervescent rhythm section of Jimmy Jones on piano, Steve Jordan on guitar, bassist Aaron Bell and Bobby Donaldson on drums to repeat their Columbia success for the benefit of Vanguard with a couple of standards and two originals. The two trumpets are well matched and spark each other to swap fresh phrases in a mostly amicable cutting contest.

Then Hammond organises Sir Charles Thompson’s return to the Masonic Temple to lead Emmett Berry on trumpet, Benny Morton on trombone, Earle Warren (previously leader of Basie reed section) on alto saxophone, plus Steve Jordan, Aaron Bell and drummer Osie Johnson. What promises to be a good band becomes an exceptional band with Coleman Hawkins in full form on tenor, providing a magnificent version of It’s The Talk Of The Town. The crafty Thompson even manages to sneak in an original composition called Bop This.

And so the Vanguard albums go, a series of notable mixed groups curated by Hammond, usually led by trumpet players like Ruby Braff, Buck Clayton, and Joe Newman, but, twice, pianist Sir Charles Thompson receives star billing.

Still firmly tuned into the Count Basie zeitgeist, Hammond organises three sessions in 1954, 1955 and 1957 for a couple of 12-inch albums featuring Jimmy Rushing (a.k.a: ‘Mr Five-by-Five’), the almost spherical blues shouter who achieved nation-wide fame with Basie’s band in Kansas City.

In a massive blues fest covering two dozen titles including Goin’ To Chicago (“Anybody ask you who done sung this song, tell ‘em little Jimmy Rushing’s been here and gone”) and Every Day I Have The Blues, Rushing, who likes to have the brass players blasting ffff close by his ears, is supported by swing era stalwarts like trombonists Henderson Chambers, Lawrence Brown and Vic Dickenson, reedmen Buddy Tate and Rudy Powell, pianists Sammy Price, Pete Johnson and Marlowe Morris and rhythm sections that reunited him with his old Basie bandmates, Freddie Green, Walter Page and Jo Jones.

The final Vanguard album in this collection, ‘A Night At Count Basie’s’, is recorded live at the atmospheric Harlem club owned by Basie at the time. Emmett Berry, Vic Dickenson, Marlowe Morris, Aaron Bell and drummer Bobby Donaldson appear in varying combinations and, on five of the nine tracks, they back Basie’s vocalist and blues singer Joe Williams. On Too Marvellous For Words, Marlowe Morris exchanges Hammond B3 for the piano somaestro and club boss Basie himself can sit in with the band.

Ruby Braff. Photo from the album booklet supplied by Mosaic Records.

Among the thrilling highlights that occur throughout this collection of nine Vanguard 10-inch and six 12-inch albums are Ruby Braff’s breath control and scrumptious lower register tone; Sir Charles Thompson‘s piano artistry; the rotund altoist Pete Brown (a favourite of Paul Desmond’s) abandoning his signature bounce jump style to attempt the more angular bebop. And hearing the magisterial Coleman Hawkins effortlessly assume charge while never permitting a decent arpeggio to escape his fingers.

There’s also a hard-swinging set led by Jo Jones with Emmett Berry plus two boppers, Bennie Green on trombone and Lucky Thompson on tenor saxophone plus Nat Pierce on piano, Freddie Green on guitar and the leader on drums. Knowledgeable readers are well aware that three members of the band are founder members of the Count Basie band’s four-piece ‘All-American Rhythm Section’. On 11 August, 1955, as the group starts rehearsing, none other than the fourth member, Count Basie, steps into the Temple to check on his alumni. Pierce, the go-to guy when Basie is unattainable or unaffordable, bows to the master and offers his piano stool for a couple of takes of Shoe Shine Boy, which, surprise, surprise, are perfectly-formed capsules of the snappiest Kansas City swing.

As we can hear, the Masonic Temple’s natural reverb neatly suited Vanguard’s single microphone policy. Thanks to masterful mastering, the music’s enormous presence has been retained by Shane Carroll and Ben Hadley. The accompanying 12 pages of sleeve notes by jazz authority Thomas W. Cunliffe provide an insightful running commentary plus photographs and full discography.

The collection (incidentally, Mosaic are planning a second collection of Vanguard jazz) was produced by Michael Cuscuna and Scott Wensel. Cuscuna was one of Mosaic’s original founding pair and this was almost his final act before he died in 2024. His loss will be deeply felt by collectors everywhere. R.I.P.

from https://ukjazznews.com