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During the
years that the box set, Central Avenue Sounds: Jazz in Los
Angeles (1921 - 1956), surveys, Eastern musicians and critics
erroneously claimed that there were no music or musicians of
any consequence in the city. This attitude took root early and,
by the nineteen fifties, Los Angeles wore the bitter sobriquet
of the place where "musicians go to die." This collection firmly,
if belatedly, rebuts this entrenched critical prejudice by presenting
the breadth and depth of some of the most important of Los Angeles'
ignored or forgotten musical heritage. Inspired by the fine
UC Press book of musicians' oral histories with the same title
makes it necessary to understand the encoded meaning in the
term "West Coast Jazz." "West Coast Jazz" does not, as it would
seem, describe all jazz produced on the west coast. Rather,
it refers specifically to the 1950's movement of "cool" cerebral
jazz that followed the success of the Stan Kenton Orchestra
and which was primarily played by white musicians, often Kenton
sidemen. While a Stan Getz or an Art Pepper may have played
in clubs on Central Avenue, the cultural center of black Los
Angeles, this was the exception rather than the rule. The box
set Central Avenue Sounds explores another form of Southern
Californian jazz, one that African-Americans created in the
city during the first half of the twentieth century.
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This collection
provides an intelligent, well-chosen overview of  African-American
musical activities in Los Angeles, presenting many key recordings
and groupings assembled from commercial recordings, live transcriptions
and rare 78 r.p.m. releases. American enthusiasts have had to
dig through rare record shops or swap meets to find old LP's
and 78's that contain this sadly neglected wealth of music,
as European imports previously provided Americans with the best
sources of available recordings. Domestically, Savoy's Black
California, Vols. 1 & 2 on LP and Norman Granz's Jazz
at the Philharmonic series contained valuable documents
of the postwar period. Only recently has Fantasy Records released
the period Specialty, Contemporary and Prestige catalogs. Central
Avenue Sounds' greatest strength thus comes from gathering
so much important and disparate material together for the first
time.
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The music
in this set is more a survey of the production of a specific
place and time than of any one particular musical style. The
city of Los Angeles had a deserved reputation of being rigidly
segregated: restrictive housing covenants were enforced until
they were declared unconstitutional in 1948. African-American
citizens had no choice but to settle within the narrow corridor
situated just to the south and east of the city's downtown.
Traversing this corridor and "the Main Stem", the community's
commercial and entertainment heart grew up along Central Avenue.
While African-American musicians could take work outside of
their own tightly restricted district, audiences of color were
barred from attending theaters and clubs in other parts of the
city. Unless nationally famous touring bands or developing local
players appeared in Central Avenue venues, African-American
audiences could at best only hear them over live nightly radio
broadcasts from white-only clubs. Practically no work existed
for African-American musicians in the city's recording and film
studios until Lee Young (Lester's brother) and Buddy Collette
broke the ban in the forties. There were also separate Musicians'
Union locals, one white and one black, that did not amalgamate
until 1953. The bulk of the selections in this set were created
and recorded in this atmosphere of near total de facto segregation.
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During World
War II, the population of South Central swelled to bursting
due to a tremendous influx of African-Americans seeking defense
industry work, providing the financial impetus for both the
resuscitation and opening of clubs that featured all kinds of
musical entertainment. During and after the war, "breakfast"
clubs (after-hours, quasi-legal, establishments) opened to keep
the action of the regular club scene going around the clock.
In these years, Central Avenue was a wide open and swinging
place that provided plenty of work for musicians. With the concomitant
rise of postwar independent record companies, Los Angeles quickly
became a magnet for young African-American musical talents.
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Some listeners
may quibble about how broadly the anthologizers have defined
the term "jazz." However, reed player Buddy Collette, perennial
Los Angeles session man and "keeper of the flame" for the city's
African-American musical history, remembers that as late as
the mid-forties musicians hadn't begun to place their music
into categories. Since working musicians could play whatever
was required within the various group settings they found themselves,
Collette claims that they would simply emphasize the particular
style that the job required. There was no sense that they were
playing "different" types of music. Because of this outlook
and the plentitude of work, Los Angeles musicians were open
to the hybridization of styles that allowed for the kind of
uninhibited experimentation that gave rise to west coast rhythm
and blues. Collette states that the strict compartmentalization
of musical styles (bop, rhythm and blues, swing) that appeared
during the postwar period came more from the pressure of record
company executives to produce what they felt were commercially
marketable recordings than from any impulse on the part of musicians
themselves. (Collette 1992). Like the Avenue's original players,
the Rhino staff has defined "jazz" very broadly and thereby
has come up with many diverse treasures.
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As the African-American
community in Los Angeles began to grow in the first decades
of the century, its "ears", like those of other cities, turned
eastward toward New Orleans, New York City, and Chicago for
the nascent sounds of jazz. At first, transplanted Southern
musicians gave the locals direction. Freddy Keppard was part
of the group that formed the Creole Band in Los Angeles during
1914. In 1921 another group, centered around Kid Ory and Mutt
Carey, locally recorded "Ory's
Creole Trombone," the first release by a small black band,
and the "Holy Grail" of west coast recordings. The set's accompanying
booklet provides a thorough overview of events and personalities
from the entire era and gives considerable space to establishing
this record's provenance. Jelly Roll Morton lived off and on
in Los Angeles between 1917 and 1923 and returned there to die
in obscurity in 1941. He is represented in Central Avenue
Sounds by four selections. However, except for Carey who
remained in town as a bandleader, these famous musicians were
essentially transients who moved on when their careers demanded.
Lionel Hampton, Nat "King" Cole, in addition to less well-remembered
musicians and leaders-Sonny Clay, Charlie Echols, Les Hite,
Paul Howard, Curtis Mosby, Leon and Otis Rene, and Ben and Reb
Spikes-all based their operations in Los Angeles. They were
the earliest "movers and shakers" of twentieth century African-American
popular music in Los Angeles.
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The producers
of this box set state that they sought to provide the best general
evocation of the variety of African-American musical activity
rather than making it a survey of interest only to collectors
or completists. They have succeeded remarkably well. However,
in its first disc, the collection occasionally succumbs to a
problem that has plagued the reputation of Los Angeles' music.
Many of the early selections either feature touring stars who
played in Los Angeles with their own discrete bands or feature
local musicians as sidemen to an established (non Los Angeles-based)
star like Louis Armstrong, thereby taking the focus away from
the hometown players and putting it on the "star." Certainly
this is not an unusual practice in the music business, and one
understands the compilers' desire to include widely recognized
names in their package. However, in this particular set, I missed
hearing the Sonny Clay Orchestra, Curtis Mosby's Blue Blowers
and/or the Spikes Brothers Orchestra sides that demonstrate
the state of early homegrown jazz, rather than the Morton and
Armstrong selections that can be easily found in other collections.
On balance, two Paul Howard's Quality Serenaders recordings
from 1930 and the famous Les Hite side with T-Bone Walker do
appear. Later on, I would also have liked a track featuring
Maxwell Davis as a leader and one by Wynonie Harris with the
Johnny Otis Orchestra from their long Club Alabam stand during
the final days of the war. What about Dootsie Williams when
he was still a working musician? If Charles Brown's Texas blues
piano stylings make the cut, what about Amos Milburn? Where's
Pamla Watson's "A Little Bird Told Me" or Mabel Scott, briefly
Charles Brown's bride, with "Elevator Boogie" or "Boogie Woogie
Santa Claus"? Ah, well-this may just be the start of one completist's
wish list for a second volume of this collection.
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Nit picking
aside, Central Avenue Sounds documents several significant
local developments in music, following young Cotton Club Orchestra
drummer Lionel Hampton through his discovery of the vibraphone
at one of Louis Armstrong's west coast recording sessions and
then on to the glories of "Flying Home." It also charts the
rise of the King
Cole Trio from Hampton's early patronage when it was only
a local sensation to its work as a major performing and recording
act in its own right. Central Avenue Sounds also contains
important early works by Howard
McGhee, Teddy Edwards, and Roy Porter, key West Coast bop
musicians, whose already highly-developed sense of bop music
took further flight from their association with Charlie Parker
during his chaotic California stay. There are rare early singles
from John Dolphin's Recorded in Hollywood label that feature
Charles Mingus, Buddy Collette, and many of their colleagues
from the locally famous (but short-lived) "Stars of Swing" ensemble.
Wardell Gray, whose mystique was enhanced by his untimely and
mysterious death, appears both in his familiar Prestige sides
and, to the credit of the set's producers, in rare group performances
which prominently feature him. West Coast rhythm & blues is
well represented with notable work by Charles Brown, Pee Wee
Crayton, Cecil Gant, Joe Liggins, Roy Milton, Johnny
Otis, T-Bone Walker, and Jimmy Witherspoon. On the distaff
side, female lounge singers like Nellie Lutcher and Hadda Brooks,
a classically trained pianist who got her commercial push by
adding a "boogie beat" to her material, are each showcased in
two songs.
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Now just
stop and think about it for a moment: Cab, Count or Duke holding
court in the cocktail lounge at the Dunbar Hotel; Art Tatum
playing from midnight until noon at Lovejoy's Breakfast Club;
The King Cole Trio solidifying its new star status at the Last
Word; Charles Brown noodling on the piano at Ivy's Chicken Shack;
Joe Liggins closing his nightly set at the Samba Club with "The
Honeydripper": Wardell Gray and Dexter Gordon head cutting all
comers in jams at Jack's Basket Room; Howard McGhee and Teddy
Edwards pushing bop's envelope at the Finale Club; Gerald
Wilson's Orchestra mesmerizing crowds at Shepp's Playhouse;
T-Bone Walker showboating for the folks at the Little Harlem
Club; The Barrelhouse rocking with The Johnny Otis Review or
simply all of the local and touring musicians hanging out together
at the 59th Street Drug Store after their jobs were over for
the night.
- If this
were the place where musicians went to die, then South Central
was one hell of a graveyard. This set conjures up the best of
the spirit of those times. Prepare to jump for joy!
Ralph Eastman
Mt. San Antonio College
SOURCES:
Collette, Buddy. 1992. Interview with author. Los Angeles, Ca.,
December 21.
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