New Reissue Tells a Tale of Two Jazz Cities

Mosaic Records has just released one of its most ambitious big-box sets, “Classic Black & White Jazz Sessions.” What’s most impressive about the package is not just the size — some 11 CDs containing about 250 tracks (most recorded between 1944 and 1949) — or even the dozens of bandleaders, soloists, sidemen, and singers featured, but the range and variety of the music. Most independent labels of the same period had a very specific agenda: Blue Note, Commodore, and Dial Records all were founded by music lovers who wanted to capture a certain style of jazz. The sounds released by Black & White Records during the half-decade of its existence were literally all over the musical map: everything from early New Orleans pioneers, Chicago jazz stalwarts, swing bands both big and small, jazz singers, pop singers, blues singers, beboppers, and modernists. It’s an amazing musical mix that I advise loading into your musical player of choice and listening to at random. Virtually any track on any disc contains something worthy of attention.Part of the label’s strength of diversity is due to its having two distinct owners. As the informative liner notes by Dan Morgenstern, Billy Vera, and producer Scott Wenzel tell us, Black & White was founded by a Brooklyn-based jazz buff named Lester Schriber. Thus, a lot of the earliest sessions have a metrocentric appeal, and tend to gravitate toward more traditional styles. Then, after a year or so, the firm was sold and relocated to Los Angeles, where sessions were produced by Ralph Bass and others, with more of a rhythm-and-blues orientation. Yet certain traits run through both the NYC and LA sessions: There’s abundant swing as well as modernism, and excellent, often lesser-known vocalists seem to have been plentiful on both coasts.The first three CDs or so here are mainly New York dates from between March 1944 and February 1945, and as Mr. Morgenstern points out, they’re almost all by musicians and bands then working in Greenwich Village. When we think of jazz in New York, we think of Harlem and 52nd Street; conversely, to this day we think of the Village as a hangout for folkies, old and young. These recordings make a convincing argument that the jazz scene around Washington Square Park has always been diverse and vibrant.As a producer, Schriber was highly piano-centric: His first date, from 1942, spotlighted the Chicago keyboardist Art Hodes. Nearly all of the 1944 sessions are led by a notable jazz keyboardist, and even those that aren’t feature ivory giants among the sidemen. Stride master James P. Johnson turns up in support of the fine clarinetist Rod Cless, and within a few days in New York in January 1945, Black & White recorded both the legendary Art Tatum (in support of another clarinetist, longtime Ellington reedman Barney Bigard) and an imposing newcomer named Erroll Garner. Cless, who died following an accident a few months after these sessions, had a penchant for working with great stride giants; he is also heard on a date led by Willie “The Lion” Smith. As Mr. Morgenstern explains, this is actually trumpeter Max Kaminsky’s band from a Village club, The Pied Piper. There are two well-played traditional jazz classics here, “Muskrat Ramble” and “Bugle Call Rag,” where the chief assets, in addition to Smith, are the inspired solos of Kaminsky and Cless. The Lion also sings, somewhat awkwardly but endearingly, on two equally awkward but endearing originals, a ballad (“How Could You Put Me Down?”) and a rhythmic novelty (“Let’s Mop It”).Where James P. and the Lion are true jazz colossi, Dick Cary and Gene Schoeder were talented players who worked with major bandleaders, like Louis Armstrong and Eddie Condon, but rarely got the chance to shine on their own. Cary is particularly strong on a pair of Lion-like duos with drummer George Wettling. Even less known are Tommy Todd, Wilbert Barranco, Nat Jaffe, Hank Duncan, and Ray Stokes, all pianists who lead worthy dates here.The package makes a major case for the excellence of Cliff Jackson, who played all Manhattan for more than 40 years, and here leads several sessions of various sizes. There are four excellent solos on early jazz warhorses, as well a terrific quartet with the one-of-a-kind Pee Wee Russell on clarinet. Jackson also leads an outstanding group billed as his “Village Cats,” but featuring a New Orleans-centric lineup with Sidney and Wilbur DeParis, trumpet and trombone, bassist Wellman Braud, and, most unexpectedly, Sidney Bechet. The clarinet-and-soprano maverick, who rarely took a sidemen gig, plays with admirable and uncharacteristic restraint.The biggest surprise here is roughly 35 minutes of music from a February 1945 session in which almost all the players are well known to jazz fans, though not known to have ever worked together, with the exception of the pianist-leader. Billed as “Mike LoScalzo and his Dixieland Woodshedders,” the group features the unique multi-instrumentalist and arranger Brad Gowans, jazz age star cornetist Phil Napoleon, drummer Tony Spargo of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band (who also plays a surprisingly sonorous kazoo), and modernist guitarist Chuck Wayne (soloing on “Indiana”). The tunes are all warhorses, not the most imaginative repertoire, but this is a highly memorable session.This particular date makes a remarkable point about jazz history: We are told that immediately after World War II, the various factions of the jazz world were engaged in something of a world war of their own, with the traditionalists on one side and the modernists on the other, even as the swing style players tried to stay out of the line of fire. The LoScalzo session is one of many — another is a date led by Chicago clarinet star Joe Marsala that features not only our old friends Cliff Jackson and Chuck Wayne but even Dizzy Gillespie — that shows how players of different generations and styles could put their differences aside and work together in the service of great music. If some enterprising impresario were, in the 21st century, to launch a new label called “Black & White Records,” everyone would assume he was making a statement about race. Yet that seems to be the last thing that any of these musicians or producers were thinking about in these joyful, ebullient performances. It’s all about the music, man.

New Reissue Tells a Tale of Two Jazz Cities

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