Listening to Prestige 346: Claude Hopkins

I can't find a producer credit for this, but it has to be part two of Chris Albertson's welcome into the Prestige fold. He had brought Claude Hopkins on board with the Lonnie Johnson session, and Hopkins would stick around to do a couple of sessions as leader for Bob Weinstock's labels--something he did remarkably little of, in a long career. He did record with his orchestra in the early 1930s, but after that nothing. In fact, it would have taken a dedicated aficionado like Albertson to even remember him, though once remembered, he wouldn't have been that hard to find. Unlike Lonnie Johnson, he hadn't vanished from sight. He always found work with trad jazz or Dixieland ensembles.

A few thoughts about Bob Weinstock and his Swingville label. Looking back, it seems like a natural. All those great musicians were still around, and it would have been a shame if their later music had gone undocumented. And from a business standpoint, it had to have been a good gamble. No jazz musician made the really big bucks, but Claude Hopkins had to come a lot cheaper than John Lewis or Erroll Garner.

But remember the era. We were past the 1940s, but the jazz wars between the progressives and the moldy figs were not entirely over, and they had been fierce. Nowadays, on your mixtape if anyone still made them, on your Spotify playlist or Pandora radio station, you might perfectly easily go from Ornette Coleman to Jimmie Lunceford, and be admired for it by that discerning friend who happened to be looking over your shoulder. But back then, you really were expected to choose sides. You had to stand with Eddie Condon, who said, "We don't flat our fifths, we drink 'em!" or Louis Armstrong, who railed against bebop as "Chinese music," or Tommy Dorsey who said it had set music back twenty years. Or you could be like the Down Beat critic dismissing Louis Armstrong and Bing Crosby's "Now You Has Jazz" from High Society with "Jazz? I'm still waiting to hear it."

In 1960, we stood on the brink of change. Rock and roll would turn in rock, would start becoming culturally respectable, would make a new trend out of what jazz had always done by inventing "supergroups" and jams. The blues would be rediscovered (Weinstock was again ahead of his time with the Bluesville label), and the jazz culture wars of the 1940s and 1950s would fade into oblivion, But there was some serious apostasy in a bebop/progressive label embracing the moldy fig sound the way that Weinstock did with his Swingville line. He may have played it safe out of the box with Coleman Hawkins, because no one of any age or musical taste was going to put down the Hawk, but with this group led by Claude Hopkins, the mold was seriously on the fig,

And we, in the 21st century, can only be grateful.

Hopkins is joined by Emmett "Chu" Berry on trumpet, Buddy Tate on tenor, Prestige stalwart Wendell Marshall on bass and J. C. Heard on drums. Tate is a Prestige veteran by this time, having debuted with Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis and Shirley Scott and then led his own session. Berry had been with Fletcher Henderson (replacing Roy Eldridge) and Count Basie. He had also been featured on some of Billie Holiday's classic recordings. Heard, like Marshall, was equally at home with swing and bop ensembles. He had begun his career with Teddy Wilaon, had worked for the Big Three (Armstrong, Goodman, Ellington),  and had also played with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie.

They play standards, a Bessie Smith blues, and the Sy Oliver swing composition that became the title tune, and which was having a renaissance, with recent versions by Ray Charles and Shirley Scott. They play uptempo swing and moody blues. They take great solos and work together in ensemble sections like the old pros they are. Wendell Marshall demonstrates his facility as a swing bassist.

Yes Indeed! was released on  Swingville. A later CD release saw Hopkins sharing leader credit with Tate. Nothing on 45, and there could have been. Swing was, after all, the original dance music.