Stan Kenton and His Orchestra - 1947 Vol. 1-2 (1998) (Re-up)

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Stan Kenton and His Orchestra - 1947 Vol. 1-2 (1998) (Re-up)

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1947 (1998). Bucking the tide while beginning to surf on a wave of increasingly mannered modernity, Stan Kenton's orchestra maintained its popularity during the post-WWII decline of the big bands. Volume four in the Classics Stan Kenton chronology presents all of his Capitol recordings made between January 2 and September 24, 1947. June Christy continued to be the featured vocalist, often backed by Kenton's newly formed vocal group, the Pastels. Dave Lambert was the director of this ensemble and sang with them on at least the first three tracks heard here. Noteworthy instrumentalists present in Kenton's 19-piece band during 1947 were drummer Shelly Manne, trombonists Kai Winding and Eddie Bert, as well as saxophonists Vido Musso, Boots Mussulli and the largely unknown George Weidler, who demonstrated impressive skill and dexterity on the arresting "Elegy for Alto." Kenton, who is known to have been obsessed with the notion that he was "greater than Duke Ellington," had a penchant for emulating and (he thought) one-upping African-American musicians. This seems to have manifested itself in "Machito," a spiced up portrait devised by Pete Rugolo soon after Kenton's band shared the bill with Machito's Afro Cuban Salseros at a Town Hall concert in New York. Dizzy Gillespie had this to say about Kenton and the postwar big band scene: "By 1947, a lotta bands had begun to imitate our style of playing. And some of them, especially the white bands like Stan Kenton's, did better in America, commercially, than we could at that time with segregation. No one could take our style, but we had to stay in existence to keep the style alive. They had us so penned up within the concept of race that a colored big band wasn't all that economically feasible, unless you were playing and doing just what the people ordered." Living and working within this kind of a social environment, it is unfortunate that Stan Kenton sometimes exacerbated the problem by stating publicly that white jazz musicians were victims of racial discrimination! Sadly, this sort of twisted ignorant logic has survived into the 21st century.

1947 Vol. 2. Like its immediate predecessor, volume five in the Classics Stan Kenton chronology contains a substantial amount of material composed and/or arranged by Sicilian-American Pete Rugolo, a student of Darius Milhaud and Kenton's right-hand man during the mid- to late '40s. It was Rugolo who assisted Kenton during his experiments with modernized, "progressive" big band jazz. (Speaking of modern jazz, note the return of alto saxophonist Art Pepper on the session of October 22, 1947, which opened with Rugolo's "Unison Riff.") Following the example of Dizzy Gillespie, Kenton was now incorporating more Latin percussion and Caribbean rhythms than ever into his music, and even hired Cuban bandleader Machito to play maracas on the sessions which took place during the latter part of December 1947. Smug, contentious and successful, Kenton attracted controversy like a lightning rod. Part of the reason for this was the unusual and at times startling nature of his brand of musical futurism.
Interestingly, Dizzy Gillespie is heard on this disc alongside Buddy DeFranco, Bill Harris and Flip Phillips as members of the Metronome All Stars in combination with Stan Kenton & His Orchestra (a total of 28 players!) on Pete Rugolo's "Metronome Riff," which was recorded on December 21, 1947. Gillespie even toured with Kenton, sometimes leading the band. Later in life, Gillespie bluntly asserted that Kenton "left out the fundamentals," unlike Miles Davis whose music, said Diz, "is based on rhythm and also the blues." Whether or not you agree with that assessment, and while many of Kenton's recordings, including some of the examples heard on this compilation, had plenty of artistic merit, music does not exist in a social vacuum. As a member of the dominant social group, Kenton could and should have shown more respect and gratitude to the African-American artists from whom he borrowed (or swiped) ideas, textures, rhythms and inspiration. That would have been honorable.

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Stan Kenton and His Orchestra - 1947 Vol. 1-2 (1998) (Re-up)

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Stan Kenton and His Orchestra - 1947 Vol. 1-2 (1998) (Re-up)

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