1. Much of the information in this paper concerning the Goldkette Orchestra and the conditions of jazz in the twenties was obtained by interviews with William (Bill) Challis, Bill Rank, Chauncey Morehouse, Paul Mertz, Spiegle Willcox and Stanley (Doc) Ryker at Davenport, Iowa, in 1972, 1973, and 1974. Thanks is especially due to Mr. Challis, who gave unsparingly of his time in recalling both the Goldkette and Whiteman Orchestras.

2. Stewart, Rex, “The Jean Goldkette Band,” Jazz Masters of the Thirties (New York: Macmillan, 1972), pp. 11–19Google Scholar. Rust, Brian, The Dance Bands (New Rochelle: Arlington House, 1972), p. 66.Google Scholar

3. Early in 1927, Don Redman, who was responsible for much of the Henderson book, took over the McKinney orchestra in Detroit. After the dissolution of this Goldkette band in late 1927, Goldkette turned over much of the recording to a band based in Kansas City, featuring Hoagy Carmichael. He still maintained a number of bands, among them one in Chicago with Peewee Hunt and another under Victor Young (see Rust, , pp. 66–67).Google Scholar

4. Goldkette books usually had some Grieg or Strauss or MacDowell; in 1926, Russ Morgan remembered, the Goldkette band in New York played concerts at a Fifth Avenue church on Sunday morning. See Wareing, Charles and Garelick, George, Bugles for Beiderbecke (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1956), pp. 81–82.Google Scholar

5. Not only did a dance-recording orchestra in the late twenties face the formidable Whiteman and Benson organizations, but also such bands as Jan Garber, Abe Lyman, Ben Bemie, Vincent Lopez, Art Kassell, Mai Hallett, Ted Fio Rito, Ted Weems, Guy Lombardo, Gus Arnheim, Ben Pollack, Fred Waring, George Olsen, Coon-Sanders, Leo Reisman, Fletcher Henderson, Andy Kirk, Duke Ellington, and the peerless Isham Jones, among others. There were about eighty large, nationally known dance bands in 1927. When the Goldkette group arrived in New York, Olsen, Lopez, Clyde Doerr, Roger Wolfe Kahn, and Ben Selvin were there. Duke Ellington and his Washingtonians were at the Club Kentucky.

6. The account in Wareing and Garelick is a summary of the band's early days. The definitive study, however, is contained in chapter 14 of Sudhalter, Richard and Evans, Philip, Bix, Man and Legend (New Rochelle: Arlington House, 1974)Google Scholar, one of the finest books on jazz ever written. Van Loan, Bartlett, and Sheasby did the arranging. Van Loan's “Stumbling” stayed in the book for some time after his departure. He also tried to give the band a distinctive sound by using three altos and three soprano saxes, which they soon gave up. George Crozier, too, left some excellent arrangements. See Sanford, Herb, Tommy and Jimmy: The Dorsey Years (New Rochelle: Arlington House, 1972), pp. 238–40Google Scholar for comment on the early Goldkette groups.

7. This band, with changing personnel, made fourteen records for Victor in 1924, two of them light classics—“Fox Trot Classique” and “Chanson Bohemienne.”

8. A kind of musical prodigy, Morgan arranged for Sousa and Victor Herbert while still in his teens. Before joining Goldkette, he worked with the Scranton Sirens, Paul Specht, and Eddie Gilligan. He later arranged for Lopez, Henderson, Armstrong, Fio Rito, and many others, as well as leading his own band in the thirties and playing with the Detroit Symphony.

9. Morehouse played with Paul Specht, Howard Lanin, and Ted Weems before coming to Detroit in 1925 to join Goldkette; Riskin was with Goldkette's St. Louis unit. Willcox meanwhile replaced Morgan on trombone, since Morgan found that business and arranging took up much of his time.

10. Horvath left Goldkette to open his own booking agency; Cork O'Keefe supervised the 1926 tour, the New York engagements, and the Victor contracts. O'Keefe later managed Casa Loma. Phil Romano's band and Jacques Green's had just left Roseland, described by Variety as a dancehall “of refined general demeanor.” See the full-page ad in Variety, 10 6, 1926, and 11 17, 1926.Google Scholar

11. See Stewart's account in Sudhalter, and Evans, , Bix, pp. 199–202Google Scholar. Henderson's band was composed of Russell Smith, Joe Smith, and Stewart (tpts.); Benny Morton and Charley Green (tbns.); Benny Carter, Bailey, Coleman Hawkins, and Don Redman (reeds); Charles Dixon (banjo-guitar); June Cole (tuba-bass); Kaiser Marshall (drums) and Henderson on piano.

12. Closing night at Roseland, Morgan recalled, was quite an affair, with musicians from fifty-two different bands sitting in to help consume large quantities of prohibition liquor. See Hentoff, Nat and Shapiro, Nat, Hear Me Talkin'to Ya (New York: Rinehart, 1955), p. 151.Google Scholar

13. Challis remembers that in August, 1927, when the Goldkette Orchestra was at Atlantic City's Million Dollar Pier, Paul Whiteman came out from New York to hear it and even led the band for a number, much to the crowd's delight. Rumor had it that Goldkette could no longer maintain the band and Whiteman had it well sized up. See the account of the final days of the Goldkette band by Challis in an interview with Warren Vache, International Musician, 07, 1974, pp. 5–18.Google Scholar

14. Hickman, Whiteman, Ted Lewis, Specht, Meyer Davis, Jones, Olsen, Lopez, and Garber all had well-organized dance bands before 1920. Whiteman was by far the most market-wise of the early leaders. See Nye, R. B., “A Word About Whiteman,” Popular Music and Society 1 (Summer, 1972), 231–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15. To see how arrangers of the period put something for everybody into a record, listen to Challis' fine charts of “Washboard Blues” and “Sweet Sue,” or Tom Satterfield's of “Among My Souvenirs,” for Whiteman.

16. While it is impossible to fix an exact date or to name a single originator, this so-called “hot” style of arranging appeared in the early twenties in both white and black bands. Redman's arrangements for Henderson in the 1924–27 period, Don Bestor's for the Benson Orchestra in 1923, Hal Kemp's for the Carolina Club Orchestra in 1924, and the Goldkette and Garber arrangements in 1924–25, among many others, show this characteristic, as contrasted to “straight” dance music. See Rust, , The Dance Bands, pp. 62–63.Google Scholar

17. Since Jean Goldkette also managed Fletcher Henderson, and since both bands needed bigger books, Don Redman and Bill Challis often exchanged ideas. Redman, when he left Henderson to take over McKinney's Cotton Pickers in Detroit, took a number of Goldkette arrangements with him to expand the McKinney's book. Henderson also liked Challis' work, and after Don Redman's departure, bought arrangements from him of “Natural Blues,” “Clarinet Blues,” “My Gal Sal,” “Stardust,” and possibly “Singin' the Blues.” See Allen, Walter, Hendersonia (Highland Park, N.J.: Walter Allen, 1973), p. 425.Google Scholar

18. Favorites in twenties' arranging were: single horn against reeds playing sustained chords or “organ”; solo sax or clarinet over reeds; clarinet against muted brass; trumpets in harmony against reeds; single solo instrument over rhythm section; trumpet against reeds with trombone fills or obligato; sections soli in homophonic ensemble; section against section in repeated riffs. Arrangers also liked to use reed or hom duos or trios against rhythm. The “call and response” pattern of section writing, attributed by some historians to African influence, is perfectly traditional in Western classical music; Whiteman used it in arrangements as early as 1922, and it certainly did not originate in black jazz.

19. This is apparent in the scoring for bands like Goodman, Dorsey, Ellington, Casa Loma, and others, which later arrangers like Gil Evans, Henry Mancini, and Stan Kenton carried to a high art. (cf. Neal Hefti's expert arrangements for Count Basie, or Eddie Sauter's scoring for Goodman, or the Kenton charts of the forties.)

20. Violins were rarely used by the mid-twenties, unless on concert or theater jobs, except for men like Joe Venuti, of whom there were very few. Whiteman, Lopez, Paul Ash, and others used nearly a full range of symphonic instrumentation in their concert arrangements, of course. Meanwhile, bands developed dozens of tricks and gimmicks. The more desperate wore strange costumes—clown suits, naval uniforms, riding boots and breeches, toreador clothes, and so on. Even Whiteman sometimes put a light on his baton and conducted in the dark. Who can forget Shep Fields later blowing down a straw into a glass of water to introduce his “rippling rhythm,” or John Scott Trotter's “dit-dit-dah-dit” arranging for Hal Kemp?

21. String bass was not considered suitable for jazz, and Brown had trouble finding work in Chicago. It was not loud enough to compete with the tuba, so Brown developed the “slapped” bass, a completely new sound in the rhythm section. He had featured numbers with Goldkette in which he stood in front of the band for two or three choruses while the crowd gathered round. Since string bass did not record well, the Victor director wanted Brown to use tuba in the Goldkette sessions until Jean Goldkette intervened. On the first test takes, it turned out, the slapped bass spread the wax grooves too wide. But Brown discovered that the test records were of softer wax than the master and therefore played string bass only on the final takes. The Goldkette recordings were the first to record slapped bass successfully; other companies thought Brown had some special trick and offered him fees to reveal it. See the interview with Brown by Gillis, Frank, The Mississippi Rag, 07, 1974, pp. 1–4.Google Scholar

22. Trumbauer played flute, piano, cornet, trombone, violin, all the reed instruments, and knew both opera and symphonic literature well. Probably the best-known white saxophone player, he influenced such black musicians as Benny Carter and Lester Young.

23. In Detroit, in October, 1924, Bix, interestingly enough, failed to make the Goldkette recording group because of his restrained, legato style. The Victor A and R man rejected his solo work; he wanted somebody who sounded more like Whiteman's Henry Busse. However, in January, 1925, Goldkette called Bix to join the unit led by Trumbauer at Arcadia Ballroom in St. Louis. Charlie Horvath, who brought Bix and Trumbauer to Detroit in 1926, was not enthusiastic about including Bix in the new unit, but Trumbauer refused to come without him. Trumbauer and Paul Mertz recall the period in the PBS radio series, “This is Bix,” produced by Jim Grover for Miami University Radio.

24. Lang made a series of records with Beiderbecke and Trumbauer during this period, antedating Goodman's trio and quartet records by a decade, that have been more or less neglected. See “Wringin' and Twistin” and “For No Reason at All in C,” for example, both in 1927.

25. Strictly speaking, “Dixieland” means a particular kind of voicing, in that the lead melody, usually in a clarinet-trumpet or clarinet-trumpet-tenor combination, is carried lower than the clarinet, which carries a third harmony usually an octave above its normal position in a chord and always above the lead. Actually, “Dixieland” came to mean any small-band jazz ensemble work with openings for solo improvisations.

26. Paul Mertz (quoted by Sanford, Herb, Tommy and Jimmy, p. 238Google Scholar) believed that section scoring began with the Goldkette Graystone band. Jimmy Dorsey copied out a Trumbauer chorus he liked from a record and Murray played harmony with it. Murray then wrote out a third part for Ryker and the three used it in the Goldkette version of the tune, “I'll Never Miss the Sunshine.” There is no reason to doubt the incident, but it is almost impossible to establish such “firsts.”

27. A triad is a chord of three notes, consisting of the “root” or given tone with its third and fifth. Early jazz was usually written for three parts. The saxophone was added for the fourth part; sometimes the alto was given the clarinet part as well.

28. “San,” that he wrote for Whiteman in 1928, is an excellent example. In about four minutes, he used bass sax (Adrian Rollini was on the job) over three trumpets and then three trumpets over bass sax; violin over guitar and cymbals; clarinet, C-melody, low-register trumpet and trombone over baritone and bass sax; and trombones over bass and cymbals.

29. “A Lane in Spain,” for example, has seven sections, including a full trombone chorus and a half-chorus of violin pizzicato. “I'd Rather Be the Girl in Your Arms,” which sounds like a modified stock, still has characteristic Challis touches—a violin and guitar chorus, a brief alto passage for Trumbauer, three interesting modulations, a guitar introduction. Comparison with a non-Challis arrangement, “Hush-a-bye,” shows how much more went on in a Challis chart.

30. Interview with Ryker in Storyville, no. 12 (08–09, 1967), 33 ffGoogle Scholar. The best account of these recording sessions is that of Sudhalter, and Evans, , Bix, pp. 193 ff.Google Scholar

31. Sometimes the time was so short that the band had to rehearse and revise at the studio, each section going over its part of the arrangement separately (Ryker remembered that the saxes used the ladies' room because of its acoustics), reassembling for a final run-through before the recording. The band did not know who the vocalists were until they met at the studio, so that modulations and introductions had to be worked out on the spot.

32. A good example of this cooperative creative effort is the three-trumpet passage in his arrangement of “San,” which he worked out with Bix, Jimmy Dorsey, and Charlie Margulis. Since Challis did the arrangements, and the nucleus of Whiteman's jazz group came from the Goldkette bands, the records they made for Whiteman might well be included in the Goldkette canon, especially “San” (January 12, 1928), “Dardanella” (February 9, 1928), and “Sugar” (February 28, 1928). These ought to be required listening for Whiteman detractors among jazz historians.

33. The definitive discography of the Goldkette group is that compiled by William Dean-Myatt as an appendix to Sudhalter, and Evans, , Bix, pp. 407–16Google Scholar, from which this material is adapted.

34. Challis liked to put the solo instrument out by itself, with a minimum of clutter around it. He also liked to experiment with interesting combinations—violin over bass and drums; trumpet over guitar and cymbals; sax over banjo; and so on. His Whiteman backgrounds for Beiderbecke's lovely cornet tone were carefully chosen—slapped bass and brushes (“Dardanella”), bass and organ brass (“Lonely Melody”), piano and bass (“Sweet Sue”), tenor obligato (“Sugar”).

35. The California Ramblers recorded “Clementine” for Edison two days later (September 17) and “Blue River” four days later. The Ramblers had excellent personnel—Bobby Davis, alto; Adrian Rollini, bass sax; Pete Pumiglio, clarinet; Frank Cush, trumpet; Tommy Dorsey, trombone; and a fine drummer, Stan King, who played kazoo and swanee whistle when he felt like it. Since both groups are apparently working from stock arrangements, comparison of the two is interesting.

36. Trumbauer, recording under his own name with Okeh and Vocation, drew most of his personnel from the larger Goldkette band. On dance jobs Trumbauer led a smaller band-within-a-band (anticipating Goodman and Dorsey) which played specialty jazz numbers. Of the seven Trumbauer sides, cut between February and May, 1927, six are undoubted classics—“Clarinet Marmalade,” “Singin' the Blues,” “Ostrich Walk,” “Riverboat Shuffle,” “I'm Coming Virginia,” and “Way Down Yonder in New Orleans”—chiefly for Trumbauer's and Beiderbecke's solos. These were mostly head arrangements, based on materials worked out by Bix and Frank in St. Louis. Challis, however, scored “Clarinet Marmalade” and “Ostrich Walk” for the big band, which Trumbauer used in part for his small band versions.