Paul Whiteman was more than one of the greatest bandleaders in the history of American music. He was one of its greatest impresarios, using his orchestra as a talent agency for some of the best composers, arrangers, instrumentalists and singers of his time. He wasalso one of its great patrons, commissioning works by well-known composers like George Gershwin and Ferde Frofe as well as lesser-known ones like Leo Sowerby and Louis Alter.
I realized the immensity of his importance when I was preparing a medley of recordings by his main featured female singer and pianist from 1932 to 1937, Ramona Davies. Davies replaced Mildred Bailey, one of the greatest jazz singers ever. And before her, Bing Crosby, who revolutionized singing in perfect response to and synch with the advent of electric recording was a featured singer. Whiteman had equal ears for great performers and great composers.
Don't forget that the highly gifted Ramona was often accompanied by an even more gifted pianist, Roy Bargy, whom Whiteman had used in premiere recordings of Gershwin's Concerto in F in 1928 and then the Second Rhapsody for Piano and Orchestra in 1932. Much of the music Bargy recorded with Whiteman was arranged by composer Ferde Grofe, whose most famous work, originally entitled "Five Pictures of Grand Canyon," was commissioned by Whiteman and premiered and recorded in jazz-band form in 1932.
THE GROFE CONNECTION
Before that recording, however, Whiteman recorded two other Grofe works of symphonic jazz: "Three Shades of Blue" and "Metropolis Suite," both in 1928. In addition, Grofe remained Whiteman's chief arranger and, as the music being sent today will show, as much a collaborator with Gershwin as an orchestrator. "Rhapsody in Blue" was a rush-job and much of it written during rehearsal and recording. Even Gershwin's piano parts were largely improvised at the work's premiere in Feb 1924 at the famous Aeolian Hall "Experiment In Jazz" concert. Elements thought to be distinctly Gershwinesque may be more attributable to Grofe than originally thought.
But let's put the Gershwin-Grofe connection aside for the moment. I have delberately ommitted "Rhapsody In Blue" because I want this to be a trip into unknown territory. As you will hear from the two works of Leo Sowerby that Whiteman also commissioned and conducted (but, alas, disn't record), Whiteman, like Stan Kenton decades later, wanted composers to write with specific members of his orchestra like reedman Russ Gorman (famous for the opening clarinet glissando in "Rhapsody in Blue") in mind. Realization of jazz-neophyte Sowerby's works shows the distinct tutelage of both Whiteman and Grofe. What were to become concert-hall jazz trademarks may often be just Grofe touches and idiosyncrasies oncoproated into the common msicla vocaulary of the time.
In short, what we think of as "Gershwinesque" may really be "Whitemanesque" and "Grofe-esque". Without a doubt, Paul Whiteman's orchestra was a watershed for every genre of American music--from classical to jazz, with lots of Hollywood and Broadway in between. His spectrum of taste and advocacy is a cultural marvel, maybe even miracle.
GETTING BENEATH THE SURFACE
What we think of as Chareslton Era cliches are actually time-sensitive characteristics of Jazz Age composing, as distinctive as the ornamentations of Baroque or Renaissance music. Our mocking distance from them is a problem with the listener not the composer or performer. For instance, the Sowerby scores demanded immersion in period music and its signatures and represent reconstruction of as much as gifted sight-reading of original scores. To this day, much performance of Gershwin is improvisation; intelligent guesswork based on research and attempted authenticity. Educated authenticity, mind you. As you can hear from listening to the many jazz-band recordings of ‘Rhapsody,’ ideas of re-creation vary. The period has encouraged a wide diversity of thought and interpretation.
As a result, I think composer-arrangers like Grofe play a role as important in preservation and performance of Jazz Age concert hall music as, say, biographer James Boswell does to Samuel Johnson. There is no way to have any accurate history of the Jazz Age without them.
So let's pretend we're at a retropsective concert of concert-hall music commissioned or just played by Paul Whiteman and some of his best reconstructionists.
I start in 1924 with an excerpt from a suite of four short Victor Herbet serenades played by whiteman at the Aeolian Hall concert and then recorded by him. While Victor Herbert had little interest in jazz, many of the songs in his operettas had becme popular hits. So it is interesting that Whiteman considered him a bridge between the straight world of symphony hall and the wilder world of the speakeasy. You'll hear two recordings--from 1924 and 1928 respectively--of Herbert's "Cuban Sernade." While both are attributed to Whiteman, only the first recording was made by him and the second an off-shoot version by frequent orchestra member and collaborator, Nat Shilkret. Notice how different in character each version is, as the first leans heavily on the skill of Russ Gorman and the second an entirely different sax player.
Paul Whiteman & Nat Shilkret, Victor Herbert's "Cuban Serenade," 1924 & 1928 recordings (played at Paul Whiteman's famous 1924 Aeolian Hall "Experiment In Jazz" concert, at which "Rhapsody in Blue" was premiered
Andy Baker, Leo Sowerby's "Synconata" (1924) (commissioned by Paul Whiteman, 1924), 2019 (Sowerby (1895-1968) was nearly as famous an American composer as Gershwin at this time; he is mostly remembered as the writer of organ works today, but this early work is skillful and inventive; its harmonies are more modern than Gershwin’s, on a par with Milhauds in “La Creation Du Monde”)
Andy Baker, Leo Sowerby's "Night Out," the 1st movement of his Symphony in Jazz, commissioned by Paul Whiteman in 1925, 2019 (Misnomered “Monotony,” a title later removed, the work was meant to be a symphonic tone poem based on Sinclair Lewis’s 1922 novel, “Babbitt,” which was the ultimate portrait of the meaningless conformity of American life; notice the distinctive symphonic traces of ragtime; the ending is a harbinger of a hangover. I can’t help but thinking Charles Ives would have loved this work.)
Zez Confrey, Kitten on the Keys, 1922 (played by Paul Whiteman's Orchestra at his famous Aeolian Hall "Experiment in Jazz" Concert and already a standard as a ragtime novelty. Here's the composer's own hit recording.)
THREE GROFE DEBUTS
Paul Whiteman, "Mississippi Suite" (1925) by Ferde Grofe, 1927 (this was pne of the first major works Whiteman commissioned by Grofe. It was truncated to fit on two sides of a 12-inch 78, but the sweeet essence is there, especially in the second movement and then with the melody to “At Twilight” in the last
Paul Whiteman, Ferde Grofe's Three Shades of Blue 1. Indigo, 2. Alice Blue, 3. Heliotrope 1928 (the second major commission, also edited to fit on two sides of a 12-inch 78; betcha Bix Beiderbecke is playing the solo trumpet parts; “Alice Blue” is a meditation on “Alice Blue Gown”; the last part owes its life to ragtime, which many might have thought a relic by then, but it was’t; rags were by then the equivalent if fugues)
Paul Whiteman (featuring Roy Bargy, piano), Ferde Grofe's "Metropolis Suite (A Blues Fantasy)," 1928 (a third Whiteman commission with themes supplied by Harry Barris and Matty Malneck; as you can see by now, Whiteman regarded Grofe as a kind of composer-in-residence, and Grofe never let him down; don’t know who the vocalists are but they might be the Rhythm Boys, which included Barris and Bing Crosby; there’s actually a jazz fugue just after the 10:38th minute mark, and I’ll bet again Bix is the trumpeter)