The Charlie Barnet 1949 recording of Johnny Richards' arrangement of (...) featuring Maynard Ferguson.
In the mid-70s record companies began re-releasing classic jazz albums (i.e., LPs), often paired together as 'two-fers', 2 LPs with a cover than opened out, some kind of artwork and sometimes good liner notes. Impulse, Prestige, Riverside, and most of the other big labels. These reissues introduced a lot of people, the youthful version of myself included, to some really great music.
About
the same time some intriguing 'bootleg' albums surfaced, available in the usual
stores, not under the counter. Labels with names like "Swing Era
Records", "First Time Records". No copyright, no credits save
for the band personnel, probable location and date. They were often radio
airchecks, some were recordings that somehow never made it to general release.
For collector's only, they present a part of big band jazz not always
apparent on the 'legit' (authorized) releases.
These
recordings give us a slice of musical life in the '30s, '40s up to the early '50s, and
in listening to some of them, one can almost hear the decline of the big band
era in slow motion. You get a sense what was popular before WWII, and how
things suddenly changed after it. How people before the war just wanted to go
out and dance, then after the war it was all about staying home, having babies,
watching TV and buying shit. And it's been that way pretty much ever since. So who really won the war?
On some of these LPs, there is often buried gold. This one, Swing Era Records
LP-1019, "Rhapsody In Barnet", one track stands out. A great
arrangement by Johnny Richards, featuring Charlie Barnet on alto, tenor and
soprano saxes and the very young (22 year-old) Maynard Ferguson taking a
trumpet solo nobody could miss.
Richards' chart is a
wonderful case study in great arranging—arranging in its true sense of taking
another composer's material and reworking it. I like to call the process 'transmuting',
because the artist is like an alchemist trying to extract gold from base metal.
The goal is to end up with something that's better than what you started out
with. When you think about it, arranging is really 'composed spontaneity' whereas
improvisation is 'spontaneous composition'.
The arranger's role
is a bit like a screenwriter in a Hollywood production; he's the one figuring
out what will sound good - when, why, how, where. And of course he does this in isolation, a solitary process using his mind. In movie production, while everyone else has been going at it for two years, the composer is often the last down the line to get to do his bit - that is, come up with a great score in like two weeks before movie premiere. I read somewhere that Jerry Goldsmith rewrote a whole movie score in two weeks because the producers didn't like their original composer's work.Johnny Richards, Juan Ricardo Cascales, born 1911, died 1968. (There's the very word 'scales' in his name!) I like this photo of the 'The Arranger at Work', though when the real work's getting done there's usually no photographer around. Looks like one hot night in NYC maybe. This guy produced some fantastic music over the years; he composed one of Frank Sinatra's big hits of the early 50s "Young At Heart", and played various instruments on many recordings. As an arranger/composer he is probably best known for his work for Stan Kenton - notably his "Cuban Fire Suite".
Even in a great
recording of a great arrangement—no matter how great the arrangement—it’s the
musicians playing on that recording that really make it happen. And the thing is, they don't have to be always great soloists; but they have to be good musicians in the sense they know how to play with each other.
Personnel:
Charlie
Barnet - alto, soprano and tenor saxes
Saxes:
Vinnie Dean, Art Raboy (altos), Kurt Bloom, Dick Hafer (tenors), Danny Bank (or
could be Manny Albam) (baritone)
Trumpets:
Doc Severinsen, John Howell, Maynard Ferguson, Rolf Ericson, Lammar Wright, Jr.
Trombones:
Obie Massingill, Dick Kenney, Ken Martlock
Piano:
Claude Williamson
Bass:
Eddie Safranski
Drums/Tympani:
Cliff Leeman
Congas:
Ivar Jameniz
Recorded
by the Charlie Barnet Orchestra for Capitol Records March 17, 1949, in New York
City.
Part Two coming soon.