The Sound of Jazz
Encyclopedia
"The Sound of Jazz" is a 1957 edition of the CBS
television series Seven Lively Arts
, and was one of the first major programmes featuring jazz
to air on American network television.
The one-hour program aired on Sunday, December 8, 1957, at 5 p.m. Eastern Time, live from CBS Studio 58, the Town Theater at 851 Ninth Avenue in New York City
. The show was hosted by New York Herald-Tribune media critic John Crosby
, directed by Jack Smight
, and produced by Robert Herridge
. Jazz writers Nat Hentoff
and Whitney Balliett
were the primary music consultants.
The Sound of Jazz brought together 32 leading musicians from the swing era including Count Basie
, Lester Young
, Ben Webster
, Billie Holiday
, Jo Jones
and Coleman Hawkins
; the Chicago style players of the same era, like Henry "Red" Allen, Vic Dickenson
, and Pee Wee Russell
; and younger 'modernist' musicians such as Gerry Mulligan
, Thelonious Monk
, and Jimmy Giuffre
. These players played separately with their compatriots (see the song list below), but also joined to combine various styles in one group, such as Red Allen's group and the group backing Billie Holiday
on "Fine and Mellow
".
The show's performance of "Fine and Mellow" reunited Billie Holiday with her estranged long-time friend Lester Young for the final time. Jazz critic Nat Hentoff
, who was involved in the show, recalled that during rehearsals, they kept to opposite sides of the room. Young was very weak, and Hentoff told him to skip the big band section of the show and that he could sit while performing in the group with Holiday.
During the performance of "Fine and Mellow", Webster played the first solo. "Then", Hentoff remembered:
Noting that the cameras were employed as "straight reportorial tools", Jack Gould observed in a New York Times review: "It was the art of video improvisation wedded to the art of musical improvisation; the effect was an hour of enormously creative and fresh TV."
"The Sound of Jazz" was also released as a recording by CBS' then-subsidiary, Columbia Records
, although the gramophone version is actually a rehearsal that preceded the telecast (recorded on December 4th at Columbia's 30th Street studios
), and is not its soundtrack. The LP was released in 1958 as Columbia CL 1098, with liner notes by Eric Larrabee, and the cover photo by Tom Yee. It is the only LP of a Seven Lively Arts presentation. The recording does not include all of the performers on the TV show (Mulligan refused to participate because no additional payment was involved) and includes several who were not on the show. Bassist Walter Page
rehearsed, and is featured on the LP, but collapsed on the way to the studio for the telecast. In the early 1980's Bob Hilbert's Pumpkin Records released the LP The Real Sound of Jazz which is the actual soundtrack to the television program.
(personnel and tracks listed on )
DVD Extras (Not on idem DVD release, 2003)
On the 1958 LP
Side 1
Side 2
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
television series Seven Lively Arts
Seven Lively Arts
The Seven Lively Arts was a short-lived Sunday afternoon hour-long television anthology series produced in 1957 by CBS television and executive producer John Houseman. It was hosted by New York Herald Tribune critic John Crosby...
, and was one of the first major programmes featuring jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
to air on American network television.
The one-hour program aired on Sunday, December 8, 1957, at 5 p.m. Eastern Time, live from CBS Studio 58, the Town Theater at 851 Ninth Avenue in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. The show was hosted by New York Herald-Tribune media critic John Crosby
John Crosby (media critic)
John Crosby was a newspaper columnist, radio-television critic, novelist and TV host. During the 1950s, he was generally regarded as the leading critic of television....
, directed by Jack Smight
Jack Smight
Jack Smight was an American theatre and film director.Smight was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota and went to school with future actor Peter Graves...
, and produced by Robert Herridge
Robert herridge
Robert Herridge , was a television producer and writer who created the CBS television program Camera Three, among more than 1,700 hours of TV programming, beginning in 1950....
. Jazz writers Nat Hentoff
Nat Hentoff
Nathan Irving "Nat" Hentoff is an American historian, novelist, jazz and country music critic, and syndicated columnist for United Media and writes regularly on jazz and country music for The Wall Street Journal....
and Whitney Balliett
Whitney Balliett
Whitney Lyon Balliett was a jazz critic and book reviewer for the New Yorker and was with the journal from 1954 until 2001....
were the primary music consultants.
The Sound of Jazz brought together 32 leading musicians from the swing era including Count Basie
Count Basie
William "Count" Basie was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. Basie led his jazz orchestra almost continuously for nearly 50 years...
, Lester Young
Lester Young
Lester Willis Young , nicknamed "Prez", was an American jazz tenor saxophonist and clarinetist. He also played trumpet, violin, and drums....
, Ben Webster
Ben Webster
Benjamin Francis Webster , a.k.a. "The Brute" or "Frog," was an influential American jazz tenor saxophonist. Webster, born in Kansas City, Missouri, was considered one of the three most important "swing tenors" along with Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young...
, Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday was an American jazz singer and songwriter. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and musical partner Lester Young, Holiday had a seminal influence on jazz and pop singing...
, Jo Jones
Jo Jones
Jo Jones was an American jazz drummer.Known as Papa Jo Jones in his later years, he was sometimes confused with another influential jazz drummer, Philly Joe Jones...
and Coleman Hawkins
Coleman Hawkins
Coleman Randolph Hawkins was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. Hawkins was one of the first prominent jazz musicians on his instrument. As Joachim E. Berendt explained, "there were some tenor players before him, but the instrument was not an acknowledged jazz horn"...
; the Chicago style players of the same era, like Henry "Red" Allen, Vic Dickenson
Vic Dickenson
Vic Dickenson was an African-American jazz trombonist. Dickenson's career started out in the 1920s and led him through musical partnerships with such legends as Count Basie , Sidney Bechet and Earl Hines...
, and Pee Wee Russell
Pee Wee Russell
Charles Ellsworth Russell, much better known by his nickname Pee Wee Russell, was a jazz musician. Early in his career he played clarinet and saxophones, but eventually focused solely on clarinet....
; and younger 'modernist' musicians such as Gerry Mulligan
Gerry Mulligan
Gerald Joseph "Gerry" Mulligan was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, composer and arranger. Though Mulligan is primarily known as one of the leading baritone saxophonists in jazz history – playing the instrument with a light and airy tone in the era of cool jazz – he was also...
, Thelonious Monk
Thelonious Monk
Thelonious Sphere Monk was an American jazz pianist and composer considered "one of the giants of American music". Monk had a unique improvisational style and made numerous contributions to the standard jazz repertoire, including "Epistrophy", "'Round Midnight", "Blue Monk", "Straight, No Chaser"...
, and Jimmy Giuffre
Jimmy Giuffre
James Peter Giuffre was an American jazz clarinet and saxophone player, composer and arranger. He is notable for his development of forms of jazz which allowed for free interplay between the musicians, anticipating forms of free improvisation.-Biography:Born in Dallas, Texas, of Italian ancestry,...
. These players played separately with their compatriots (see the song list below), but also joined to combine various styles in one group, such as Red Allen's group and the group backing Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday was an American jazz singer and songwriter. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and musical partner Lester Young, Holiday had a seminal influence on jazz and pop singing...
on "Fine and Mellow
Fine and Mellow
Fine and Mellow is a 1974 studio album by Ella Fitzgerald, accompanied by many famous jazz musicians. It opens with the eponymous song written by Billie Holliday...
".
The show's performance of "Fine and Mellow" reunited Billie Holiday with her estranged long-time friend Lester Young for the final time. Jazz critic Nat Hentoff
Nat Hentoff
Nathan Irving "Nat" Hentoff is an American historian, novelist, jazz and country music critic, and syndicated columnist for United Media and writes regularly on jazz and country music for The Wall Street Journal....
, who was involved in the show, recalled that during rehearsals, they kept to opposite sides of the room. Young was very weak, and Hentoff told him to skip the big band section of the show and that he could sit while performing in the group with Holiday.
During the performance of "Fine and Mellow", Webster played the first solo. "Then", Hentoff remembered:
Lester got up, and he played the purest blues I have ever heard, and [he and Holiday] were looking at each other, their eyes were sort of interlocked, and she was sort of nodding and half–smiling. It was as if they were both remembering what had been—whatever that was. And in the control room we were all crying. When the show was over, they went their separate ways.Within two years, both Young and Holiday had died.
Noting that the cameras were employed as "straight reportorial tools", Jack Gould observed in a New York Times review: "It was the art of video improvisation wedded to the art of musical improvisation; the effect was an hour of enormously creative and fresh TV."
"The Sound of Jazz" was also released as a recording by CBS' then-subsidiary, Columbia Records
Columbia Records
Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...
, although the gramophone version is actually a rehearsal that preceded the telecast (recorded on December 4th at Columbia's 30th Street studios
CBS 30th Street Studio
CBS 30th Street Studio, also known as Columbia 30th Street Studio, and nicknamed "The Church", was an American recording studio operated by Columbia Records from 1949 to 1981 located at 207 East 30th Street, between Second and Third Avenues in Manhattan, New York City...
), and is not its soundtrack. The LP was released in 1958 as Columbia CL 1098, with liner notes by Eric Larrabee, and the cover photo by Tom Yee. It is the only LP of a Seven Lively Arts presentation. The recording does not include all of the performers on the TV show (Mulligan refused to participate because no additional payment was involved) and includes several who were not on the show. Bassist Walter Page
Walter Page
Walter Sylvester Page , nicknamed "Hoss," was an African American jazz bassist and leader of the Oklahoma City Blue Devils jazz orchestra from 1925–1931...
rehearsed, and is featured on the LP, but collapsed on the way to the studio for the telecast. In the early 1980's Bob Hilbert's Pumpkin Records released the LP The Real Sound of Jazz which is the actual soundtrack to the television program.
Trumpet
- Henry "Red" Allen
- Emmett BerryEmmett BerryEmmett Berry was a jazz trumpeter.Berry was born in Macon, Georgia. He began with study of classical trumpet in Georgia, but by 18 had switched to jazz and moved to New York City. He became a member of Fletcher Henderson's band and later replaced Roy Eldridge as soloist...
- Doc Cheatham
- Roy EldridgeRoy EldridgeRoy David Eldridge , nicknamed "Little Jazz" was an American jazz trumpet player. His sophisticated use of harmony, including the use of tritone substitutions, his virtuosic solos and his strong influence on Dizzy Gillespie mark him as one of the most exciting musicians of the swing era and a...
- Joe NewmanJoe NewmanJoseph F. Newman is co-founder and CEO of the American Basketball Association . He was formerly owner of the Indiana Legends, which played two seasons in the ABA. He was also CEO of Joe Newman Advertising, Inc. for twenty years, and CEO of Alliance Broadcasting Group, Inc. for seven years...
- Rex StewartRex StewartRex Stewart was an American jazz cornetist best known for his work with the Duke Ellington orchestra....
- Joe WilderJoe WilderJoe Wilder is an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. He best known for his beautiful tone and lyrical style.Wilder was awarded the Temple University Jazz Master's Hall of Fame Award in 2006...
Trombone
- Bob BrookmeyerBob BrookmeyerRobert Brookmeyer is an American jazz valve trombonist, pianist, arranger, and composer.-Biography:Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Brookmeyer first gained widespread public attention as a member of Gerry Mulligan's quartet from 1954 to 1957. He later worked with Jimmy Giuffre...
- Vic DickensonVic DickensonVic Dickenson was an African-American jazz trombonist. Dickenson's career started out in the 1920s and led him through musical partnerships with such legends as Count Basie , Sidney Bechet and Earl Hines...
- Benny MortonBenny MortonBenny Morton , born in New York City, was a jazz trombonist most associated with the swing genre. He was praised by fellow trombonist Bill Watrous among others. One of his first jobs was working with Clarence Holiday, and he appeared with Clarence's daughter Billie Holiday towards the end of her...
- Frank RehakFrank RehakFrank Rehak was a jazz trombonist.Rehak, one of the finest bop players of the fifties and sixties, first came to fame in 1949, when he joined Gene Krupa’s Orchestra along with fellow trombonist Frank Rosolino...
(LP only) - Dickie Wells
Baritone Saxophone
- Harry CarneyHarry CarneyHarry Howell Carney was an American swing baritone saxophonist, clarinetist, and bass clarinetist mainly known for his 45-year tenure in Duke Ellington's Orchestra. Carney started off as an alto player with Ellington, but soon switched to the baritone. His strong, steady saxophone often served as...
(LP only) - Jimmy GiuffreJimmy GiuffreJames Peter Giuffre was an American jazz clarinet and saxophone player, composer and arranger. He is notable for his development of forms of jazz which allowed for free interplay between the musicians, anticipating forms of free improvisation.-Biography:Born in Dallas, Texas, of Italian ancestry,...
- Gerry MulliganGerry MulliganGerald Joseph "Gerry" Mulligan was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, composer and arranger. Though Mulligan is primarily known as one of the leading baritone saxophonists in jazz history – playing the instrument with a light and airy tone in the era of cool jazz – he was also...
(not on LP)
Bass
- Jim Atlas
- Milt HintonMilt HintonMilton John "Milt" Hinton , "the dean of jazz bass players," was an American jazz double bassist and photographer. He was nicknamed "The Judge".-Biography:...
- Eddie Jones
- Ahmed Abdul-MalikAhmed Abdul-MalikAhmed Abdul-Malik was a jazz double bassist and oud player of Sudanese descent....
- Walter PageWalter PageWalter Sylvester Page , nicknamed "Hoss," was an African American jazz bassist and leader of the Oklahoma City Blue Devils jazz orchestra from 1925–1931...
(LP only)
Songs
On VHS/DVD- Open All Night (aka Fast and Happy Blues) - Count Basie All Stars: Emmett Berry, Doc Cheatham, Joe Newman, Joe Wilder (tp); Roy Eldridge (tp, flhn); Vic Dickinson, Benny Morton, Dicky Wells (tb); Earl Warren (as); Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster (ts); Gerry Mulligan (bs); Count Basie (p); Freddie Green (g); Eddie Jones (b); Jo Jones (d)
- The Count Blues - Basie, Green and E. Jones playing as John Crosby introduces the show.
- Wild Man Blues - Composed By Louis Armstrong, Performed by: Henry "Red" Allen, Rex Stewart (tp); Pee Wee Russell (cl); Coleman Hawkins (ts); Vic Dickenson (tb); Milt Hinton (b); Danny Barker (g); Nat Pierce (p)
- Rosetta - Composed by Earl "Fatha" Hines and William Henri Woode. Personnel same as Wild Man Blues.
- Dickie's Dream - Same personnel as Open All Night
- Eyes of a Stranger (does not appear on 2003 idem DVD release)
- Blue MonkBlue Monk"Blue Monk" is a jazz standard written by Thelonious Monk that has become one of his most enduring tunes. It is a B flat blues, based on the jazz tune "Pastel Blue".-Performances:*1960: The Great Kai & J.J. by J. J...
- Thelonious Monk (p); Ahmed Abdul Malik (b); Osie Johnson (d)
- I Left My Baby - Jimmy Rushing (v), with Count Basie All Stars (personnel same as Open All Night)
- Fine and MellowFine and Mellow (song)"Fine and Mellow" is a jazz standard written by Billie Holiday, who first recorded it on April 20, 1939 on the Commodore label. It is a blues lamenting the bad treatment of a woman at the hands of "my man".- Notable performances and recordings :...
- Billie Holiday (v), with Mal Waldron All Stars: Roy Eldridge, Doc Cheatham (tp); Vic Dickinson (tb); Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Lester Young (ts); Gerry Mulligan (bs); Mal Waldron (p); Milt Hinton (b); Osie Johnson (d)
- The Train and the River - Jimmy Giuffre Trio: Jimmy Giuffre (cl, ts, bs); Jim Hall (g); Jim Atlas (b)
- Blues My Naughty Sweetie Gave to Me (appears on idem DVD release, 2003), performed by Jimmy Giuffre, Pee Wee Russell (cl); Jo Jones (d); Danny Barker (g); Milt Hinton (b).
(personnel and tracks listed on )
DVD Extras (Not on idem DVD release, 2003)
- Jumpin' With Symphony Sid; The Count Basie Orchestra
- South; Coleman Hawkins & Red Allen
- Dali; Coleman Hawkins
On the 1958 LP
Side 1
- Wild Man Blues
- Rosetta
- Fine and Mellow
- Blues - Jimmy Giufffre (cl), Pee Wee Russell (cl), Jo Jones (d), Danny Barker (g)
Side 2
- I Left my Baby
- The Train and the River
- Nervous - Mal Waldron (p) solo
- Dickie's dream