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LOUIS ARMSTRONG
[Continued from page 92]
other dance bands can play
them at all, and very few with
anything approaching the ease
and spirit of Ellington’s musi-
cians. Reading his scores, other
orchestras quickly discover that
he continually expects things
from his men which even the
best players elsewhere are sel-
dom called upon to deliver. He
conceives his music, for in-
stance, in terms of piano chords
and indicates certain notes for
the fourth saxophone, regard-
less of whether the intervals and
sequences are convenient for a
saxophonist to play. Ellington
knows his men can play them;
other leaders are not so for-
tunate. Manager Mills wastes
considerable money buying El-
lington special arrangements of
standard tunes. By the time the
orchestra plays them they are
Ellingtonian—lustered with his
own harmonies, pungent with

his rhythm.
Ellington spends his spare



JACK TEAGARDEN





JIMMY AND TOMMY DORSEY

THE GENUINE JAZZ EXPERIENCE

... 1is to be had from the gentlemen on this page, not from such highly pub-
licized bandmasters as Guy Lombardo, Rudy Vallée, Fred Waring. Louis
(“Satchel Mouth”) Armstrong blew his apprenticeship on Mississippi river
boats; he has delighted Paris and appalled London. Announcing “I'm ready,
I'm ready, so help me, I'm ready!” he executes trumpet licks of wild, brazen
lyricism and terrific swing. Armstrong cannot play straight if he tries, but
other jazz heroes such as the Dorseys (Jimmy, clarinet; Tommy, trombone)
and Bennie Goodman, all of New York, have become more or less legitimate
musicians for radio purposes. Yet the Dorseys, with a hand-picked orchestra,
still record the most impeccable syncopation, and Goodman, a serious student
of counterpoint, still blows the hottest clarinet in the world. Jack Teagarden
is a pansy for the jigs (daft about Negroes); he plays the darkest, most agitated
trombone with Ben Pollack’s Orchestra. Loring F. (“Red”) Nichols, of Cleve-
land and points Mid-West, is a crack director and trumpeter. His orchestras
have made jazz history, have included a galaxy of hot notables: Violinist Joe
Venuti, Pianists Arthur Schutt and Joe Sullivan, Clarinetists Dorsey and Good-
man, Trombonists Teagarden and Miff Mole, Drummers Vic Burton and Gene
Krupa, Guitarists Eddie Lang and Carl Kress, and Adrian Rollini, who draws
from his bass sax unsettling nether-clef rhythms. Ellington appears with
Manager Irving Mills and the famed pianist-composer, Percy Grainger.

BENNIE GOODMAN

moments writing a score for a
Negro musical show to be pro-
duced next season by John Hen-
ry Hammond Jr., son of the
New York lawyer John Henry
Hammond, and one of the
leading jazz connoisseurs of the
country. Ellington is also con-
ceiving a suite in five parts, ten-
tatively entitled Africa, The
Slave Ship, T he Plantation,Har-
lem—the last being a climactic
restatement of themes. Wheth-
er this will be arranged for his
band as now constituted or for
an augmented group has not
been decided. The composer ex-
pects to leave the piano, taking
a baton in the form of a drum-
stick which, while conducting,
he will beat on an elaborate
choir of tom-toms. And he is
trying desperately to find a reed
instrument lower even than a
contrabassoon with which to
produce voodoo accents in the
opening section. His friends say
he will ultimataely invent one.

With this suite in his reper-





RED NICHOLS