The Swing Book (19 page)

Working as a bartender and almost forgotten at the time of his death in 1969, Harris was one of the best-selling blues shouters
of the postswing era. First a singer in Lucky Millinder’s band (an important swing-to-R&B transitional orchestra), Harris
went solo in 1945, recording a string of R&B hits for such “race music” labels as Aladdin and King. Harris—who by all accounts
lived as wildly as he sang—wasn’t afraid of taking double entrendre to the limit, singing about liquor, sex, and more sex.
For an example, check out “Keep on Churnin’,” in which he exhorts his baby to do it til “the butter comes!”

Classic Songs:
The comic “Good Morning Judge” and “Who Threw the Whiskey in the Well?” his big hit for Millinder.

Swing Trivia:
A prodigal spendthrift, Harris was known for entering bars and declaring, “Mr. Blues is back in town, and I have enough money
to air-condition hell.”

CD Pick:
Rhino’s
Bloodshot Eyes: The Best of Wynonie Harris
includes eighteen of his best down-and-dirty numbers, plus a shout-out duet with Big Joe Turner. Guaranteed to make you blush.

Founded by twin brothers Claude and Cliff Trenier, the Treniers are a hard-rocking, shout-out group from Alabama who’ve become
the band to know within the hard-core swing set. Their new popularity owes a lot to the group’s longevity. The Treniers, who
formed back in the forties, still perform (with original members brother Claude and sax man Don Hill) in casino lounges around
the world. They got their start with swing big bands—Claude sang with Jimmie Lunceford for a while—but eventually became one
of the most rousing early rock bands of their time. When the Treniers shout “Go! Go! Go!” you’d better be on your feet.

Classic Songs:
“Rockin’ Is Our Business,” which they sang in the Jayne Mansfield movie
The Girl Can’t Help It,
and “Say Hey (The Willie Mays Song),” their highest-charting number.

Swing Trivia:
Claude and Cliff made an inauspicious but satisfying debut while studying at Alabama State in Montgomery. “We’d go into Pope’s
Luncheonette and sing with the jukebox and the people would give us hamburgers,” says Claude, who recently passed the eighty-year
mark. “At one time we had ten hamburgers stacked up on the jukebox. We had five or six guys we hung out with and they’d say,
‘We’re hungry. Go in and sing a song and get some hamburgers.’”

CD Pick:
They Rock! They Roll! They Swing!
(Epic/Legacy) is a terrific collection of greatest hits. True to their billing, half of the songs have the word
rock
in the title. The CD also includes the band’s off-color novelty number “Poon-Tang!” recorded in 1952. “We said ‘a poon is
a hug, a tang is a kiss,’” remembers Claude. “We tried to clean it up. But they wouldn’t play it on the air at the time.”
Go figure.

Called the Boss of the Blues, Turner backed up that claim with his unstoppable freight-train voice during his influential
sixty-year career. He came out of the wild and swinging jazz scene of 1920s Kansas City, where he met up with pianist extraordinaire
Pete Johnson, with whom he helped popularize the all-over-the-key-board sound of boogie-woogie. Both R&B and rock ’n’ roll
owe a tremendous debt to his powerful mixing of jazz and blues. For example, Ike Turner hit it big with “Rocket 88,” a song
about the classic Olds, six years after Joe Turner recorded the original version “Rocket Boogie 88” in 1948. Sun Records’
Sam Phillips later hailed Ike’s hit as the first rock ’n’ roll record.

Classic Songs:
The boogie-woogie “Roll ’Em Pete,” one of his first breakthroughs, and “Shake, Rattle and Roll” (Bill Haley’s megahit was
a cleaned-up version of this Turner tune).

Swing Trivia:
Turner got his start as a singing bartender at Kansas City’s Sunset Club. Before that he worked as a guide for a blind guitarist.

CD Pick:
It’s a tough choice between
Boss of the Blues
(Atlantic), with Johnson, which features great selections of the pair’s early hits, and
Big Joe Turner: Greatest Hits
(Atlantic Jazz), a solid sampling of Turner’s more rockin’ work.

Fletcher Henderson:
Henderson laid the foundation of swing with his influential band in the 1920s, is credited with sparking Benny Goodman’s
breakthrough, and had the most awesome lineup of sidemen of any bandleader ever (with Louis Armstrong at the top of the list,
followed closely by all three great tenor sax players, Hawkins, Webster, and Young). His famous arrangements, many put together
by reedman Don Redman, include “Tozo,” “Henderson Stomp,” “Whiteman Stomp,” and, for Goodman, “Blues Skies” and “Christopher
Columbus.” But huge commercial popularity always eluded Henderson, which some historians attribute to his failure to be a
tough taskmaster, something Henderson himself copped to. “When I’m lucky enough to get them all on the bandstand, I’ve got
the baddest-ass band in the world,” he once said.

Fats Waller:
A renowned showman, Waller established himself as a jazz giant in the preswing era of the 1920s. Born in 1904 in New York
and dead of pneumonia in 1943, Waller got his start as a protégé of Harlem stride piano innovator James P. Johnson. He soon
began to rival his mentor in ragtime virtuosity and wrote such enduring hits as “Honeysuckle Rose” and “Ain’t Misbehavin’,”
which he performed with trademark flamboyance, his nimble eyebrows always highlighting his mischief-making tone. Bandleader
Bill Elliott recommends buying anything and everything Waller ever recorded, an approach that Fats would have approved. Anecdotes
abound of Waller’s more-is-more lifestyle. Whether it’s to be believed that he could eat three chickens and three steaks in
one sitting is another story.

Charlie Barnet:
Barnet proved that even Park Avenue could swing. A rich Yale dropout, the sax-playing Barnet formed his own big band in 1933
and struggled for a few years for acclaim. By the mid-thirties, however, Barnet—a devoted admirer of Ellington—began to really
swing it. Soon
Metronome
magazine had dubbed his group “the blackest white band around.” Barnet’s biggest hit is “Cherokee,” a hard-swinging number
that had a successful second life as a bop standard after Charlie Parker reworked it and renamed it “Ko-Ko.” But the band’s
most entertaining choice of material came after the orchestra lost its arrangements, uniforms, and instruments in the fire
that destroyed LA’s Palomar Ballroom in 1939. The first song the band played after regrouping was a tune called “We’re All
Burnt Up.”

Benny Carter:
One of the true geniuses of jazz, Carter led his own bands throughout the late twenties and beyond; composed and arranged
tunes for Henderson, Ellington and Goodman; and along with fellow musician Johnny Hodges, carved out the distinctive place
of the alto sax in swing. His song “When the Lights Are Low” became a standard, but others have failed to reach a wider audience.
According to Ted Gioia’s
History of Jazz,
Carter’s moody, more “reflective style” was in opposition to the hot up-tempo tenor of the times. Carter turned ninety-two
in 1999, having had one of the longest careers in his field.

Woody Herman:
An adored bandleader and reedman, Herman was as adept at reinventing himself as any nineties pop star, but he did it with
leagues more depth. Nicknamed the Wood-chopper, he first scored it big in 1939 with the jaunty “Wood-chopper’s Ball.” After
a string of swing hits—including a version of Louis Jordan’s “Caldonia” and the theme song to the Gene Tierney film
Laura
—Herman’s orchestra morphed by the mid-forties into a bop-influenced big band, one of the few orchestras, along with Stan
Kenton’s, to successfully pursue what they called a “progressive” approach to the music. The band’s theme song, “Blue Flame,”
is inspired by a locker room trick involving a match and …

Earl Hines:
Without Hines the jazz piano may never have existed as we know it. Known as “Fatha” Hines, this inventive player—in seminal
recordings with Louis Armstrong in the late twenties—moved the piano beyond its more limited ragtime and stride structures
into the looser rhythms of the swing era. In 1928 he began recording under his own name and led a band throughout the thirties
that played the famed Grand Terrace Ballroom in Chicago. Hines also helped incubate bop in the late forties, hiring such greats
as Charlie Parker, Billy Eckstine, Dizzy Gillespie, and Sarah Vaughan for his orchestra. His hit song “Second Balcony Jump”
was purportedly inspired by a too-high cat who tried to fly off the balcony of a nightclub.

Les Brown:
Known as Les Brown and His Band of Renown, Brown’s orchestra made it big once it hired Doris Day as its vocalist. Their hits
together included “My Dreams Keep Getting Better All the Time” and the touching “Sentimental Journey.” Brown, who also fronted
the house band on the
Dean Martin Show,
still does a radio show with his son, Les Jr.

The Casa Loma Orchestra:
Formed in 1929, the Casa Loma Orchestra was one of the only white bands on the circuit that regularly played hot tunes during
the bleak jazz years of the early thirties. With fast-tempo hits like “Casa Loma Stomp” and “Maniac’s Ball,” they helped prime
college audiences for Goodman’s later breakthrough. And unlike most bands, the Casa Loma was run not by a leader but as a
cooperative venture. How about a quarterly dividend instead of a salary?

Bob Crosby:
Always performing in the shadow of his hugely famous older brother Bing, Bob nevertheless put together a real solid sender
of an orchestra back in the thirties, creating a distinct swing sound with a Dixieland vibe. His best tunes, many done with
his smaller combo the Bobcats, include “Wolverine Blues” and “March of the Bobcats.”

Harry James:
One of the most inspiring trumpeters of his generation, James enjoyed only a short honeymoon with jazz critics. A flashy
high-stepping soloist, he first gained national attention with the Benny Goodman Orchestra, appearing most notably in the
epochal concert at Carnegie Hall in 1938. (“I feel like a whore in church,” a nervous James reportedly said before the curtain
rose.) But after he left to form his own band in late 1938, he poured on the syrup, with great success. By late 1942 he had
a band that topped all others in popularity, scoring hits with Helen Forrest’s “You Made Me Love You,” and “Two O’clock Jump,”
a reworking of Count Basie’s “One O’clock” standard. The quintessential celebrity bandleader, James gained further fame the
next year by tying the knot with pinup queen Betty Grable.

The International Sweethearts of Rhythm:
One of the few all-female bands to break through during the male-dominated swing era, the International Sweethearts of Rhythm
got its start in the thirties in Mississippi and struggled for years to be taken as more than a curiosity. It also numbered
a few white musicians among its members, who attempted to pass as black during tours in the South.

Sammy Kaye and Kay Kyser:
Reviled by serious jazz fans and adored by millions, both the Kyser and Kaye orchestras played sugar-cube music and laid
on cute gimmicks. Kaye’s band, dubbed a “Mickey Mouse” outfit by
Metronome,
let audience members come onstage and wave a baton during a musical number. Kyser had a quiz-show-themed radio show,
Kay Kyser’s Kollege of Musical Knowledge.
But history buffs will want to hear the patriotic World War II songs each turned into hits, Kaye’s “Remember Pearl Harbor”
and Kyser’s “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition.”

Andy Kirk and His Clouds of Joy:
For a while, Kirk’s outfit gave the Basie band a run for its money in the hot Kansas City jazz scene. Kirk’s best songs include
“What’s Your Story, Morning Glory?” singer Pha Terrell’s “Until the Real Thing Comes Along,” and the evocatively titled “Mess-a-Stomp.”
But his greatest contribution may have been to provide a roost for pianist Mary Lou Williams, one of the only female instrumentalists
allowed to really shine during the swing era. She began as a chauffeur for the band and worked her way up, eventually earning
top billing as “the Lady Who Swings the Band.”

The Andrews
Sisters: The best-selling girl group of all time, LaVerne, Maxene, and Patti Andrews were so magnitudinally square—they poured
so much innocent glee into their impeccable harmonies—that the group’s music seems almost bizarrely tweaked today. Nostalgic
symbols of wartime America, they created a multicultural musical stew, with influences ranging from polka to calypso to boogie-woogie
bugle boys. They even sampled Yiddish on their first big hit, 1937s “Bei Mer Bist Du Schoen.”
(Greatest Hits: The Sixtieth Anniversary Collection,
MCA, which includes many of their famous duets with Bing Crosby, is a super collection.) But just how naive were they? The
trio recorded at least two risqué songs back in the day: “Rum and Coca-Cola”—its lyrics were about both mothers
and
daughters in Trinidad “working for the Yankee dollar”—and the fairly obvious “(Hold Tight) Want Some Seafood Mama.” About
the former, Maxene told Fred Hall in
Dialogues in Swing,
“We didn’t have any idea what it meant.”

Peggy Lee:
That instant when smoke comes off a flame? Lee seemed to sing from that place all the time on such sultry hits as “Fever”
and “Black Coffee.” Her talent, however, lay in much more than imparting a sexy purr to a song. She joined Benny Goodman’s
band in 1941, finding her first big hit two years later with the sweetly goading “Why Don’t You Do Right?” She had hits from
there on out, culminating in 1969’s Top 40 smash, “Is That All There Is?” which she recorded despite resistance from her label.
A talented songwriter, she penned “Mañana,” wrote part of the score for Disney’s
Lady and the Tramp,
and turned “Fever” into a hit after adding some of her own lyrics. Oh, and then there’s that Oscar nomination for the 1956
jazz film
Pete Kelly’s Blues.
Seemingly unstoppable, she has in fact retired twice. Since falling onstage in Las Vegas in the eighties, she’s been confined
to a wheelchair and largely out of public view. Back in the late forties, after marrying former Goodman guitarist Dave Barbour
and becoming a mother, she left the business … for a spell. According to
Dialogues in Swing,
after she was coaxed by producer Dave Dexter to return to recording, Lee thought about it for a moment and replied, “Well,
I think I can get a babysitter.”