From Spirituals to Swing
Various Artists
Vanguard (3 CDs)
In the 1930s, John Hammond set out "to present a concert that would feature talented negro artists from all over the country who had been denied entry to the white world of popular music." Two shows followed under the name, "From Spirituals to Swing." The lineup of talent at each event is simply stunning. And the eight-to-the-bar style, delivered by a few artists here, created an immediate craze for boogie woogie piano.
From Spirituals to Swing was originally issued in 1959 and was reissued as a 2-CD set in 1987. Benny Goodman said, "Looking back on it, I sometimes think the thing that really made the concert important was the album that came out. I don't know what would have happened if the concert[s] hadn't been recorded. People would have remembered it, sure ... but not like this." The sound has been nicely cleaned up, but these recordings were still taken off a late 1950s mono tape made from 1938 and 1939 lacquer discs. A little extra volume helps.
Important notices of this recent reissue ran in the Boston Globe (Bob Blumenthal, 8/29/1999) and Down Beat (John McDonough, 1/2000), where we might expect them, but also in the Wall Street Journal (Nat Hentoff, 11/5/1999). Most reviews tended to look backward at the history of jazz that this album records. They place Count Basie at the heart of the music and concentrate on the jazz musicians involved--particularly Lester Young. And well they should. But those of us who are interested in the styles of music that gave birth to rock might shift the emphasis a little. We may think more about how these performances look forward to the post-Swing-Era future.
Many of the most important early rock influences appear here--Count Basie's All-American Rhythm Section, blues-shouters Jimmy Rushing and Joe Turner, amplified-guitarist Charlie Christian, and the gospel music of the Golden Gate Quartet, Mitchell's Christian Singers, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Robert Johnson was signed, but he died before the first concert. This all might seem like a curiosity of music history if there were no links between the late 1930s and the early R&B/rock communities that started to flourish just after World War II. But there are important connections--blues musicians who experimented with amplification, gospel groups from coast to coast, and especially singer/saxophonist Louis Jordan. One of the "Spirituals to Swing" singers, Joe Turner, had a string of R&B hits on the seminal Atlantic label in the early 1950s, including the legendary "Shake, Rattle and Roll." To hear him here, rocking the blues with boogie-pianist Pete Johnson, and to concentrate on his vocals, is to witness one of the most important roots of rock.
This music is not rock and roll, but it is an important forerunner. For those who want to experience where rock came from, this new, expanded edition of From Spirituals to Swing (3 CDs, Vanguard, 1999) is essential. -- Alan Lewis
Contact: www.VanguardRecords.com
This notice was origionally published in the 5/26/2000 issue of the newsletter, Crumbs from the Land of Cake.
Popular music, past and present,
with a New England twist.
| New England Music Scrapbook News | ||||||||||
| A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I-J | K | L |
| M | N | O | P-Q | R | S | T | U-V | W | XYZ | |
| New England Music Scrapbook Home Page | ||||||||||
Webmaster:
Alan Lewis