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The Complete Capitol Recordings Of Woody Herman

Topics: Woody Herman, Milt Jackson, Red Mitchell, Vince Guaraldi, Oscar Pettiford, Chubby Jackson

Item Size: 2.2G

This six-CD collection contains all the recordings made by Woody Herman & the Second Herd beginning in 1948 and ends with the Woody Herman Orchestra (the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Herds) in 1956. As a record of Herman's activity and accomplishments, it far outweighs what the First Herd was able to pull off in the swing era. That band ended in 1947. Herman was looking to embrace the energy -- and the harmonic conception and rhythmic inventions -- of the beboppers who were beginning to make their indelible mark on the jazz scene of the late '40s. Herman was looking for a band that could not only play tight, quick, harmonically advanced charts, but for musicians who were able to improvise freely and creatively in light of the size of the band and the new material. Mosaic has painstakingly compiled the evidence -- the all too few recordings of the Second and Third Herds as well as all of the superior Capitol material -- into a box that tells a story of a musician and bandleader out of time and space, a man interested only in excellence and expression. Herman was a bandleader who got excited by the possibilities inherent in the combinations of musicians in his bands. This is evidenced from the very first session, recordings of "That's Right" and "Lemon Drop," immediately after the first Four Brothers sides recorded for Columbia. Shorty Rogers wrote the charts and the saxophone section included Serge Chaloff, Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, Al Cohn, and Sam Marowitz (Jimmy Giuffre left after the Columbia sides but would return later). The first two tunes of the Capitol sessions are astonishing in their fury: First, there's the screaming tempo of a 12-bar blues chorus going by in about nine seconds -- confirming that Lou Levy (a swing pianist who could play as fast as Bud Powell), Red Rodney, and Shorty Rogers could trade fours with such blurring sensationalism that it's almost as if the Four Brothers sax section wasn't needed. Of the 29 sessions recorded here, this one comes out of the gate like a charging horse.

This lineup would be short-lived, however, as vocalist Ann McCall joined the band for five more tunes from a session the next day, and by the time May had rolled around and a couple of tours had taken their toll on certain members of the band who left -- including Getz with his heroin addiction, Cohn, Sims, and Herman's longtime bassist and champion Chubby Jackson -- it would be a newer version of the band that recorded 13 sides from May to July of 1949. New members included Giuffre on tenor (who could also arrange), Oscar Pettiford on bass (later to be replaced by Joe Mondragon), Gene Ammons on tenor, and drummer Shelly Manne. With McCall still fronting the group as vocalist, some beautiful outings were recorded, including "More Moon," "Detour Ahead," "Not Really the Blues" (an instrumental with a killer Giuffre arrangement), "I'll Be Glad When You're Dead, You Rascal You," and a swinging vocal by Herman on "You've Got a Date With the Blues." There are also guest recordings of Woody with other bands, such as his "Rose of the Rio Grande" with Chuck Tomas & His Dixieland Band from later in July of 1949, and two sides recorded with the Nat Cole Trio in November ("My Baby Just Cares for Me" and a Cole and Herman duet on "Mule Train"). Herman's Capitol recordings don't resume until May of 1950, when Conte Candoli, Dave McKenna, Red Mitchell, and Milt Jackson join the band, and Cohn makes a return appearance on sessions that include the stunningly beautiful "Pennies From Heaven," "You're My Everything," and "Spain." All of these latter performances feature the all but unknown Alyce King Vokettes on vocals.

For the next six years, Herman's fortunes changed with the times. He stopped counting configurations of the Herd and the jazz stars of the future -- Gerald Wiggins, Billy Bauer, Pete Condoli, Chuck Flores, Red Kelly, Victor Feldman, and dozens of others -- were slipping in through the out doors of his bandstand. What is remarkable, however, is the consistency of the material recorded for Capitol. From those early days in 1948 and 1949 right through the final sessions recorded in December of 1955 and in March and May of 1956, Herman wouldn't release anything substandard. Give a listen to the gorgeous Herman clarinet solo on "Wonderful One" from the March 1956 session or, from the same date, Feldman's vibes interplay with Vince Guaraldi's piano on "You Took Advantage of Me," and contrast it with any of the early material. The arrangements are still out of this world, ahead of their time, full of both subtlety and dynamic power when they are least expected. Herman's harmonic conceptions were adventurous to say the least, and used counterpoint as a method to make his material swing -- not to reflect upon. In the final session, with Billy Bauer arranging, the unissued "5-10-15 Hours" tells the story of a man who could push his band's conception no further. The lilting guitar and clarinet lines feel as much like a farewell as they do a track that didn't make the album, but they reflect an entire life in the mainstream of the world of jazz, yet one that continually opened its corridors wider and wider, bringing in an entire world of music -- including the hard bop that was shining its gorgeous bald pate in those years. In all, containing a total of 13 unissued performances from all the band's periods, setting the record straight on actual titles that have been released on numerous pirates, and providing all the true master takes of these definitive performances, one thing becomes clear: Herman's recordings for Capitol are far superior in both imagination and execution to his earlier material -- and indeed any subsequent label he recorded for, including his brief stint with Norman Granz at Verve. The fact that he was a nurturing bandleader who encouraged his players to arrange and solo rather than rein them in to comply with his vision is what made that vision so deep and wide as to encompass the entire world of jazz -- whether or not it appreciated everything he did to expand its scope in American popular music.