A DISC FOR EVERY YEAR AND EAR: George Buck celebrates 50 years with 50 new releases
Art Hodes’ All Star Stompers
Tony Parenti’s New Orleans Shufflers
Wild Bill Davison with Freddy Randall’s Band
The Eddie Condon World Broadcasting Jam Session
(Jazzology)
Vintage Art Hodes
(Solo Art)
Pops Foster with Art Hodes
(American Music)
Johnny Dodds on Paramount
Volume One
(Black Swan)
Louis Nelson and His Palm Court Jazz Band
Jazz at the Palm Court Volume One
(GHB)
Mabel Mercer
Echo’s of My Life
(Audiophile)
Tony Pastor and His Orchestra
1944-1946
(Circle)
The Zoot Sims Quartet
Zoot at Ease
(Progressive)
It’s been close to ten years now since I expressed my frustration and troubles in finding work here in New Orleans to the legendary jazzer Danny Barker. It was at the Palm Court on a Friday evening in April of 1990. “Why don’t you get ya a job upstairs, hunh?” he said, and then poked my sternum with his index finger. “What’s upstairs?” was my naïve reply. It turned out that upstairs was the strange and fascinating world of George Buck, and his GHB Jazz Foundation. On Danny’s advice, I took the job.
It wasn’t much at first, George and I would fill the orders that came in to the record company. It seemed very odd to me at the time that Buck, who had made very good decisions in the radio business, was still the one personally filling every single order that passed over the desk. I would open the letter, read it and call out the catalog numbers (for some reason J-90, a Red Nicholls LP, was my favorite to say, which proved to George that I had communist leanings) and he would mosey through the stacks collecting the records and CD’s. After retrieving an item, a disembodied “got it!” would echo through the office. I would enter the customers order on an index card and make a mailing label. George would package the records, affix the label, and then say, with excitement, “What’s next?” At the time, his little magazine Jazzbeat was mailed to close to 12,000 people around the world and George would spend long nights affixing labels by hand to the bulk of that number. Very long nights.
It has been many years since I last worked in that office, but the only change, besides receiving some orders via e-mail, is that a direct-mail house affixes the labels to the magazine. And one wonders why he does it. George Buck, now 71, still fills every order personally. The thing is he doesn’t have to. His radio business has made him quite comfortable. He could spend his days monitoring his radio stations via satellite or making deals to acquire small obscure and defunct record labels, or preparing his weekly program of vintage radio comedies and serials. He does all of this of course, and he fills every order personally. And another thing is that George has something called retinitis pigmentosa. He’s had it since he was quite young and for many years he has been unable to see. Yet he fills every order, personally.
I say all of this because the GHB Jazz Foundation and its family of nine record labels (and a publishing imprint) is not your ordinary record company. You see, a few months back (August 16, to be exact) George celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of his initial recording session. It was done in fine style at the Palm Court Café by his wife Nina and featured a band playing in the rugged Chicago style George loves so much. Other than the party, the event passed rather quietly with the only local reporting in the pages of this magazine. A certain daily paper failed to even pick up the story off of the AP wire. And the anniversary of the recording of Jazzology J-1, Tony Parenti and his New Orleanians, was eminently newsworthy. Jazzology, you see, is the world’s oldest independent record label.
In the half century since that initial session, the number of records and CDs that Buck has released approaches 2,000. Many he has recorded himself, and many times he has rescued recordings from silence by purchasing small defunct labels, and making the material available once again. To celebrate his fifty years in the recording business, Buck recently announced the release of an unprecedented fifty recordings on the various labels that comprise the GHB Jazz Foundation. On Jazzology alone are 22 new compact disc releases. Jazzology, the label that started all of this, is dedicated to what has come to be known as “Chicago Style” jazz. Its progenitors were the young men based in that city who were overwhelmed by the music of King Oliver and Louis Armstrong soon after they traveled up river. As time passed Eddie Condon, guitarist and band leader came to symbolize this hard driving style of jazz. One can get a marvelous overview of the style on the new two CD set, The Eddie Condon World Broadcasting Jam Session. Recorded in 1944 for the World Broadcasting Company exclusively for radio airplay, these discs feature Condon, and his mob of musical cohorts including that singular clarinetist Pee Wee Russell (who pleases throughout). Special treats include appearances by Jack Teagarden on both trombone and vocals (including his “updated” version of “Sheik of Araby”), and the always stunning singing of Lee Wiley. Multiple takes of some tunes make for interesting comparative listening, however I’d rather do without the false starts and incomplete sides, which although few, tend to annoy. Otherwise just plain great music. Those today who listen to jazz with their eyes might attempt to dismiss this as mere “Dixieland,” but they’re just idiots.
The bulk of the Jazzology new releases feature the musicians who participated in Buck’s initial effort. Five discs feature cornetist Wild Bill Davison, including a fine outing with Freddy Randall, “Memories of You” captures the essence of the Davison style, at once pretty and raw. Six new CD offerings are led by New Orleans born clarinetist Tony Parenti. His long-out-of-print New Orleans Shufflers LP, with Danny Barker on banjo, and Jack Fine on cornet, is once again available. Recorded in New York in 1954, it leads off with a seven minute version of “Someday Sweetheart,” and features a low-down version of “Buddy Bolden’s Blues,” one of Danny’s favorite tunes. Parenti is also heard to advantage on Art Hodes’ All-Star Stompers, a recording produced by Buck in 1966. Hodes, active in music from the 1920s until his death in 1993, not only was a leading pianist, but also a prolific writer on jazz. The fine original session is augmented by a number of previously unissued takes, most notably “Parenti Blues.”
Four Hodes CDs are also being released on Buck’s Solo Art label (dedicated exclusively to jazz and ragtime piano). Of special interest is Vintage Art Hodes, which includes the first piano solos recorded by Hodes (1930) and released here for the first time.
On American Music, a label dedicated to the “pioneers of New Orleans Jazz,” Hodes is joined by bassist Pops Foster in what may be the most pleasing disc out of the whole bunch. For forty minutes Hodes and Foster play duets and reminisce. It’s wonderful stuff. Highlights include Foster’s bowed bass melody on “Closer Walk,” and his advice to bass players: when traveling, they should rent their instruments rather than pay an extra plane fare.
Another jazz pioneer was clarinetist Johnny Dodds. Buck’s Black Swan label has culled 20 sides from the Paramount Records catalog featuring Dodds in a variety of settings, including recordings with Freddie Keppard’s Jazz Cardinals, Jimmy Blythe and his Ragamuffins, as well as an accompanist to a number of blues singers.
Other New Orleans jazz greats can be found on Buck’s GHB label. The most pleasing of the 11 new CD releases is the digital debut of a live recording from 1989 of Louis Nelson and his Palm Court Jazz Band. This disc can teach us a lot about what New Orleans Jazz is through their wonderful performances of an incredibly diverse mix of tunes. Everything from “Whispering” (with lovely trombone work by leader Nelson), to the Rudy Vallee hit, “Sweetheart of All My Dreams” and even country favorite “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” are given the New Orleans stamp. Those missing Danny Barker and his wonderful performances will relish the version of the Creole favorite “Eh! Las Bas” served up here, its Danny at his best.
Early jazz is not the only music in the Buck catalog. His Audiophile label is devoted classic popular singing and song. Of three new releases one stands out as something sublime. It is a recording of Mabel Mercer, well known as one of the finest interpreters of popular songs. Of British birth, Mercer, who got her start on the English vaudeville circuit, came to fame in the cabarets of Paris between the Wars. Although much of the material here is unfamiliar (most compositions from the ’60s and ’70s) Mercer, with her perfect enunciation (replete with rolling r’s) is so compelling she makes every song a classic. Her reading of the Rodgers and Hart standard “Dancing on the Ceiling” is a revelation. By the way, this recording is the only one ever purchased from Buck by Frank Sinatra, a man who knew a little something about singing.
Saxophonist Tony Pastor gained a bit of notoriety for his singing in the Artie Shaw Band in the late thirties. On the Buck’s Circle label one of the four new big band and swing CDs shows Pastor’s own band to advantage on sides cut for the Lang-Worth Transcription service from 1944-1946. His vocal on a “Hence it Don’t Make Sense,” a study of hepcat vocabulary—example: “Well a skunk is a fur, and a fur is a fleece, and a fleece is a theft, and a theft is a sin, and a sin is taboo, and Tabu is perfume from France, but a skunk ain’t perfume from France, hence it don’t make sense”—is great fun.
On his Progressive label (yes, George Buck does produce modern jazz), is the release of a an outstanding CD of sides recorded by Harry Lim of the Zoot Sims Quartet in 1973. Sims, on both tenor and soprano saxophones is backed by Hank Jones on piano, Milt Hinton on bass and either Louis Bellson or Grady Tate on drums. Highlights include a funky take on Ellington’s “Alabamy Home,” “My Funny Valentine” and especially “Cocktails for Two.” Jones delights throughout.
Many of Buck’s recordings are available through local record outlets, especially the Louisiana Music Factory. But the GHB Jazz Foundation is mainly a mail order operation. Details on all of the new releases as well as a complete catalog of the material that is available can be had by calling (504) 525-5000, and if you decide to order something you can be sure George Buck himself will fill it. For lovers of the varied forms of American music, Buck should be regarded as a sort of national treasure.
