Ward Lay’s string bass boomed out on a new-to-me releaselast week, yet he was there all along on an old favorite!
Lay completes a rich, warm, lightly swinging string trio below Venuti’s viola-like violin lead and guitarist Lang strumming and arpeggiating a la mandolin–with extra points for pianist Frank Signorelli filling out the harmonies from within and for drummer Neil Marshall’s subtlety. Jack Teagarden’s slightly louder lead gets slightly more thump thanks to the bassist’s sensitivity to dynamics.
Benny Goodman then goes buck with an ornate solo but the rhythm section stays solid. They alternate a shuffle pattern—Lay playing four while Lang strums uneven double-time (“chug-a-CHUG-a”) and tremolos—with a hard-edged Chicago-style two-beat feel powered by the bass’s syncopated hits (“beh-BOOM…beh-BOOM”).
Lay keeps the ground pulse but never settles into predictable quarter notes. He’s much more interesting as well as strong but flexible and always well-balanced behind soloists. The soloists make this performance a cohesive arrangement that builds in intensity and contrasts textures and beats. This record is much more than a string of solos.
In the collective improvisation that closes this side, Lay is as much a jamming participant as he is the rhythmic and harmonic foundation. He really comments underneath the horns, similar to bass saxophonist Adrian Rollini’s approach but adapted to the string bass’s lower volume and wider timbral frame. This sort of responsive rhythm section playing seems to be often (and unfairly) associated with later developments in jazz but this side is a revelation. Fiddle with the equalizer, on the stereo or in the mind, and enjoy it.
Thank you to the meticulous and passionate members of the Bixography forum! I’ve known about the 1959 LP tribute to the Jean Goldkette orchestra, directed by the man himself, for years. Yet I was unaware some generous person uploaded the full album. Issues of stylistic fealty aside, Dance Hits Of The Twenties In Stereo bursts with smartly arranged charts (by no less than Sy Oliver), bright soloists and sheer joy.
The original Goldkette ensemble never recorded “Varsity Drag” but this edition’s version of the 1927 dance catalyst stands out—literally from the bottom up. Chauncey Morehouse was the only member of the first Goldkette group on this record. From the first downbeat, hearing him click in with bassist Ward Lay produces a micro master class in the grooving two-beat tension of a twenties-era rhythm section:
The skins of Morehouse’s snare and kick drum create groove as well as sonic fiber with the grain and slap of Lay’s bass, but his cymbals are crisp and light for the more modern solo outings. Airtight ensemble hits also show a thoroughly professional band drummer.
It’s all “in living stereo,” as heralded by the album cover. Yet aside from differences in the audio, jazz records from the twenties usually featured young musicians. This LP spotlights Morehouse in his late fifties, hardly an old man but with decades more experience as a musician. Lay was a dance band veteran who made switching between tuba and string bass sound as commonplace as a reed section double. Not all band reunions are up to these standards, but they keep me coming back for similar revelations.
The Bixography forum has posted typically copious information about this record here.
Photo courtesy of Steve H. via the Bixography forum.
In case any producers were wondering, “The Complete Sudie Reynaud” would fit on one compact disc.
A whole CD devoted to an obscure Jazz Age bassist might require some snappy marketing, and many collectors already own this collection via reissues under Reynaud’s more well-known collaborators. Sudie Reynaud will undoubtedly, and thankfully, remain unknown in every sense of the word.
“Maybe Brass Bass, or Bass Sax, On My Next Album…”
His discography lists him as playing both string bass and tuba, which evidences a basic, and therefore all the more impressive, skill needed to gig in Reynaud’s time. “Bass” meant both “string” and “brass” varieties during this transitional period in jazz and American pop, so “bass player” meant someone who could double both instruments. Steve Brown did so reluctantly, preferring his bull fiddle and the chance to unleash a signature slap technique. Cyrus St. Clair on the other hand preferred to puff rather than pluck: he stuck to brass bass well into the forties, developing jazz tuba into an art decades before Howard Johnson or Bill Lowe. John Kirby split the difference through clean, fast and clever bass lines on both instruments. Chink Martin doubled without drawing too much attention to himself on either instrument, yet his foundation and lift can be heard on dozens of recordings.
Reynaud cut just sixteen sides in his life, recorded sporadically between 1926 and 1933 in Chicago. Like Martin, he serves a functional but spurring role (except for two barely audible sessions on tuba with Fess Williams that can be heard here). On “High Fever” with Doc Cook’s band, Reynaud catches all the ensemble hits and resonates under the band without overwhelming it, even through a stomping final chorus:
While Freddie Keppard‘s ranging cornet dominates this side as well as “Sidewalk Blues,” Reynaud’s part is simple and well-defined: provide ground rhythm and outline the harmonic skeleton (while doing so musically, as Tom Smith’s comment below explains). That role doesn’t allow any insight into Reynaud’s influences, his style, or his personality. All that’s left is pure music, which makes the strutting atmosphere on Jelly Roll Morton‘s tune possible:
If Reynaud were known for nothing other than contributing to “Here Comes The Hot Tamale Man” he’d have an enviable legacy. It remains one of the most rhythmic, confident examples of “hot” artistry from this or any other era, and it’s hard to imagine without those roots and fifth punching away underneath:
Five years later Reynaud was back in the studio under the direction of trumpeter and would-be Louis Armstrong rival Reuben Reeves. The antiphonal lines of reedman Franz Jackson‘s arrangements and the loose, declaratory, Armstrong-inspired language of the soloists illustrate the evolution from hot jazz to nascent big band swing, as do the four steady beats of Reynaud’s string bass, which never steals the show but does make it possible.
He’s felt rather than heard through the swirling darkness of “Zuddan.” He nourishes the stream of solos on “Mazie” and “Screws, Nuts and Bolts” (which includes the simply dirtiest growl imaginable, courtesy of Reeves). Only on “Yellow Five” does Reynaud peek out from the curtain, with thwacking strings and a strong four beat slap towards the end of the side:
There’s no way now to understand him as an artist, no recorded innovations or theatrics to shed some light on him as a human being as well as a sideman (for this listener, his tone isn’t even as distinct as that of Country Washburne, Pete Briggs or John Lindsay). There aren’t any memoirs, interviews or even biographical entries pertaining to Reynaud, either because no researchers have bothered to look or he died without leaving any to find. Whoever Sudie Reynaud was, he did his job. In other words, “Sudie Reynaud,” historical enigma, biographical cipher and musical everyman, is now pure music. There are far worse fates.
The Pop of Yestercentury 