Nimbus NI 2731 / 32 / 33  

CD1: Benny Goodman (clt), Flip Phillips (ts), Bill Harris (tb), Marty Harris (p), Leo Robinson (b) and Bob Binnix (d). Rec. 15-17 Aug 1959 CD2: Benny Goodman (clt), André Previn (p), Barney Kessel (g), Leroy Vinnegar (b) and Frank Capp (d). Rec. 3 Sep 1958 And Bernie Privin (t), Lou McGarity (tb), Toots Mondello (as), Zoot Sims (ts), Eddie Costa (vbs), Hank Rowland (p), Tony Mottola (g), George Duvivier (b) and Morey Feld (d). Rec. 24 Jan 1961 Mannie Klein, Conrad Gozzo, Irving Goodman, Don Fagerquist (t), Joe Howard, Murray McEachern, Milt Bernhart (tb), Herb Geller, Bud Shank (as), Buddy Collette, Dave Pell (ts), Chuck Gentry (bar s), Russ Freeman (p), Al Hendrickson (g), Leroy Vinnegar (b), Frank Capp (d) and Martha Tilton (v). Rec. 2 Sep 1958. Mel Powell (p) and Roy Burns (d). Rec. 16 May 1957. CD3: Benny Goodman (clt), Teddy Wilson (p), Lionel Hampton (vbs) and Gene Krupa (d). Rec. 13-14 Feb 1963 and 26-27 Aug 1963

Yale University Archives Vol. 5 – NBC Broadcast Recordings 1936-1943 ★★★★

Nimbus NI2734/35

Benny Goodman Orchestra and small groups with various personnel featuring Ziggy Elman, Harry James, Cootie Williams, Jimmy Maxwell, Al Davis, Billy Butterfield, Buck Clayton, Randy Sandke (t), Joe Harris, Vernon Brown, Ted Vesley, Lou McGarity, Cutty Cutshall, Bill Harris, Dan Barrett (tb), Toots Mondello (as), Art Rollini, Dick Clark, Georgie Auld, Vido Musso, Herbie Haymer, Ken Peplowski (ts), Lionel Hampton, Harry Sheppard (vbs), Johnny Guarnieri, Count Basie, Mel Powell, Jess Stacy, Derek Smith (p), Charlie Christian, Allan Reuss, Howie Collins (g), Artie Bernstein, Arvell Shaw (b), Gene Krupa, Nick Fatool, Dave Tough, Ralph Collier, Mousie Alexander, Louie Bellson (d), Helen Ward, Helen Forrest, Peggy Lee (v) and Eddie Sauter (arr). Rec. 1940-41, 1943, 1961 and 1986.

Five CDs of recordings and air shots originally lodged in Yale University’s archives by Benny Goodman and prepared for release by saxophonist and Goodman intimate Loren Schoenberg whose extensive notes add valuably to the overall worth of the enterprise. Not knowing volumes one, two, or three, I have no notion of their range but there’s enough here to suggest that they must be of similar importance.

Volume 4 opens with an absolutely cracking 13-track session, BG alongside the ebullient and sometimes startling Harris and the always swinging Phillips, this association encouraging Benny to pull out all the stops. The rhythm team of unknowns performs admirably and there is good guitar from Robinson along the way. Harris and Phillips had their own combo and the novelty here is to hear Benny sitting in with an established group rather than dreaming up one of his own. The arrangements are neat and tidy, and there are some nifty originals. Did you ever imagine that you’d ever hear Benny on a version of Neal Hefti’s Basie flag-waver ‘Splanky’?

The second of the three CDs places Benny among the Hollywood elite, bookended by pianists André Previn and Mel Powell, both of whom prospered in classical music later on. Many of the tracks collected here are by a good big band, quite conventional, the arrangements by Bill Stegmeyer. Volume 4’s final disc reunites the original quartet, a fairly regular occurrence after the success of The Benny Goodman Story movie in 1955.

Volume 5 ranges over BG’s swing heyday as heard by the lucky listeners to NBC and deserves more detailed attention than we can give it here. Suffice it to say that many of the sides replicate those already recorded commercially. Even so, it is still instructive to hear things like ‘Gone With What Draft’, with Basie, and to note the subtle differences of emphasis. Here were top men at the apogee of their fame, the whole band fired up and ready to strut their collective stuff, especially when Tough was at the drums, although Ralph Collier who replaced him does pretty well on Cootie’s feature ‘Superman’, arranged by Sauter.

Later tracks jump forward to 1961 and a septet with Clayton and Shaw on bass, before the great man bows out fronting Schoenberg’s big band, Bellson on drums, soloists including Peplowski, Sandke and Barrett. As Schoenberg says, BG had the “ability to make every band he led sound uniquely his”, and the tracks gathered in this immense treasure-trove attest to the accuracy of his view. Even more, they confirm, if there was ever any doubt, that he was a supreme instrumentalist and on his day, one of the most inspiring soloists in jazz.

- Peter Vacher