Incredible Stash of 30s Jazz Broadcasts to finally be heard.

[Teddy Ray]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/ar...html?ref=music

By Larry Rohter

For decades jazz cognoscenti have talked reverently of the Savory
Collection. Recorded from radio broadcasts in the late 1930s by an
audio engineer named William Savory, it was known to include extended
live performances by some of the most honored names in jazz but only
a handful of people had ever heard even the smallest fraction of that
music, adding to its mystique.

After 70 years that wait has now ended. This year the National Jazz
Museum in Harlem acquired the entire set of nearly 1,000 discs, made
at the height of the swing era, and has begun digitizing recordings of
inspired performances by Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Billie
Holiday, Count Basie, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Bunny Berigan,
Harry James and others that had been thought to be lost forever. Some
of these remarkable long-form performances simply could not fit on the
standard discs of the time, forcing Mr. Savory to find alternatives.
The Savory Collection also contains examples of underappreciated
musicians playing at peak creative levels not heard anywhere else,
putting them in a new light for music fans and scholars.

Some of us were aware Savory had recorded all this stuff, and we were
really waiting with bated breath to see what would be there, said Dan
Morgenstern, the Grammy-winning jazz historian and critic who is also
director of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University. Even
though I ve heard only a small sampling, it s turning out to be the
treasure trove we had hoped it would be, with some truly wonderful,
remarkable sessions. None of what I ve heard has been heard before.
It s all new.

After making the recordings, Mr. Savory, who had an eccentric,
secretive streak, zealously guarded access to his collection, allowing
only a few select tracks by his friend Benny Goodman to be released
commercially. When he died in 2004, Eugene Desavouret, a son who lives
in Illinois, salvaged the discs, which were moldering in crates; this
year he sold the collection to the museum, whose executive director,
Loren Schoenberg, transported the boxes to New York City in a rental
truck.

Part of what makes the Savory collection so alluring and historically
important is its unusual format. At the time Savory was recording
radio broadcasts for his own pleasure, which was before the
introduction of tape, most studio performances were issued on 10-inch
78-r.p.m. shellac discs, which, with their limited capacity, could
capture only about three minutes of music.

But Mr. Savory had access to 12- or even 16-inch discs, made of
aluminum or acetate, and sometimes recorded at speeds of 33 1/3 r.p.m.
That combination of bigger discs, slower speeds and more durable
material allowed Mr. Savory to record longer performances in their
entirety, including jam sessions at which musicians could stretch out
and play extended solos that tested their creative mettle.

Most of what exists from this era was done at home by young musicians
or fans, and so you get really bad-sounding recordings, Mr.
Schoenberg said. The difference with Bill Savory is that he was both
a musician and a technical genius. You hear some of this stuff and you
say, This can t be 70 years old.

As a result, many of the broadcasts from nightclubs and ballrooms that
Mr. Savory recorded contain more relaxed and free-flowing versions of
hit songs originally recorded in the studio. One notable example is a
stunning six-minute Coleman Hawkins performance of Body and Soul
from the spring of 1940; in it this saxophonist plays a five-chorus
solo even more adventurous than the renowned two-chorus foray on his
original version of the song, recorded in the fall of 1939. By the
last chorus, he has drifted into uncharted territory, playing in a
modal style that would become popular only when Miles Davis recorded
Kind of Blue in 1959.

Glimpsing the Jazz Hierarchy

Asked if the Savory recordings were likely to prompt a critical
reassessment of some jazz musicians or a reordering of the informal
hierarchy by which fans rank instrumentalists, Mr. Morgenstern
responded by citing the case of Herschel Evans, a saxophonist who
played in the Count Basie Orchestra but who died early in 1939, just
before his 30th birthday. Evans played alongside Lester Young, who was
one of the giants of the saxophone and constantly overshadowed Evans
on the Basie group s studio recordings.

There can never be too much Lester Young, and there is some wonderful
new Lester Young on these discs, Mr. Morgenstern said. But there are
also some things where you can really hear Herschel, who is woefully
under-represented on record and who, until now, we hardly ever got to
hear stretched out. What I ve heard really gives us a much better
picture of what he was all about.

The collection has already shed new light on what is considered the
first outdoor jazz festival, the 1938 Carnival of Swing on Randalls
Island. More than 20 groups played at the event, including the Duke
Ellington and Count Basie orchestras, and though newsreel footage
exists, no audio of the festival was believed to have survived until
part of performances by Count Basie and Stuff Smith turned up on Mr.
Savory s discs.

Other material consists of some of the most acclaimed names in jazz
playing in unusual settings or impromptu ensembles. Goodman, for
example, performs a duet version of the Gershwins Oh, Lady Be Good!
with Teddy Wilson on harpsichord (instead of his usual piano), while
Billie Holiday is heard, accompanied only by a piano, singing a rubato
version of her anti-lynching anthem, Strange Fruit, barely a month
after her original recording was released.

[butterfly]

..................this sounds incredibly interesting, one of these days will hopefully get the time to kick back and listen to what I'm sure requires a lot of hours of undisturbed listening, cheers Teddythumbsup

[Marlan]

Can't wait! So damn exciting.

[RichS]

In case you missed it while reading the NY Times article, here's a direct link to a page with samples from the collection.

Jazz Lost and Found - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com

[cartrouble]

The Blues Jam with Fats Waller, Louis Armstrong, and Jack Teagarden is great!

[AngusF]

Thank you for posting this. What a treasure trove!

[Uncle Russ]

I am very glad to see some people here responding positively to music of the '30s and '40s. Most posts on this site with music of the '50s and later. Regarding jazz, it's often Rudy van Gelder and Columbia.

From an engineering standpoint, that is completely understandable; the early mono recordings used relatively primitive equipment. But the best music of that era was anything but primitive. On some levels it was more sophisticated than many examples of what came later and certainly more sophisticated than the majority of today's popular drivel.

The best examples of '30s and '40s jazz might be analogous to music by some of the great classical composers. The Golden Age of American music was between about 1925 to about 1945 (perhaps later). Some of you may debate that (and I am friends with some who would) but I still think a good case could be made ....

[Douglas Whates]

Originally Posted by Uncle Russ

The Golden Age of American music was between about 1925 to about 1945 (perhaps later).

Och, does it really matter? Let's just enjoy good music regardless of era, yes?

[Boschen]

I'm on pins and needles....

when can we hear this? I want advance releases!


Edit--thanks for the link! Holy Cra$ but that Hawkins clip is sick....