Listening to Prestige extra: James Moody in Sweden

As I go back over my earlier entries, thinking about preparing them for a book, I run across a few sessions that I wasn't able to find and listen to at the time, but have since been able to rectify that problem. Moody worked with a lot of Swedish musicians during this period, and most of them were pretty good -- certainly all must have benefitted from playing with him, and the other Americans who made Sweden a second home during this period. Dave Liebman, in an article on European jazz, says "the typical Swedish jazz musician is the best overall equipped craftsman around." By 1953 Prestige would have released 11 albums made in Sweden and featuring Swedish musicians, either with or without an American star such as Moody or Stan Getz or Lee Konitz, and in 1954 Lars Gullin, who I don't believe ever toured the US, won the Down Beat award as best new talent. And the Swedish musicians brought a lot of Swedish folk music into jazz, most notably the tune originally known as "Ack Värmeland, du sköna"/"Värmlandsvisan," perhaps better known by the title Stan Getz, Miles Davis, John Coltrane and others recorded it under: "Dear Old Stockholm."

James Moody, after a three-year apprenticeship in Dizzy Gillespie's big band, went to Europe in 1949. New York, the road, and the jazz life of the late 40s had put him in harm's way, and his mother was worried about his drug use. She had an uncle in Paris, and she asked him if he would take young James in and get him away from bad influences. He stayed in Paris until September of 1949, then decamped for Sweden, then Switzerland, then Paris again, and then Sweden again in the fall of 1951 before returning to the United States. He did a lot of recording in Europe. These were his first sessions as a leader, and a powerful period of growth and maturity for him, from age 23 to 25. Sweden wasn't necessarily the best place to escape drugs -- Lars Gullin had a lifetime heroin, and then methadone, addiction, which ultimately led to his death from a heart attack at age 48.

But people find different ways to their creative voices, and Moody found his among blond-haired Vikings. His most famous recording, the one that came to be known as "Moody's Mood for Love," was cut on his first visit to dear old Stockholm.

This session, or rapid-fire series of sessions, came in January of 1951, shortly  before he returned to the States. He was into the studio for three days, with a virtual revolving door of Swedish musicians (well, what else was there to do in Sweden in January?) , including a string section. Charlie Parker With Strings had first been released in 1950, and records didn't travel as easily back then as mp3s do today, but the idea of playing modern jazz with a classical string section certainly started with Bird, and if Moody hadn't heard the records, certainly he must at least have heard of them. There are some who question Parker's decision to record with strings, though not too many by now. And if there were more people to hear Moody's two cuts (they're pretty hard to find), there might be those who'd question them too, but actually it's hard to see how. He does some of his strongest soloing and improvising on "Cherokee." And the interplay between Moody and the string section on "Pennies From Heaven" is inspired -- witty, imaginative, musical. There's also a wonderful piano solo from Rolf Larsson, a musician whose reputation never traveled far beyond Sweden.

All of these were originally released on Sweden's Metronome label, but all of them were picked up pretty quickly by Prestige and issued on 78 and 10-inch LP -- a plucky call on a young and relatively unknown expatriate. Although by 1951, he wasn't quite so unknown, was he? Not after the jukebox success of "I'm in  the Mood for Love."

Listening to Prestige Records Part 40: Roy Eldridge

Back to Sweden, this time with Roy Eldridge, one of the swing era greats to still command respect in the modern era. There's a bit of an oompah feeling to the Swedish rhythm section, especially on "Echoes of Harlem," but they give Little Jazz a chance to play, and that's always worth listening to.

Once again, what was it with the jazz musicians of the 40s and nursery rhymes? Was it to prove that they were so hip that they could even make nursery rhymes sound cool? I don't know, but cleverness doesn't always stand the test of time, and this isn't just an interpolated quote from a nursery rhyme -- the whole number is Eldridge singing one nursery rhyme after another. As usual, I had my Spotify Prestige playlist on for auto trips -- you can listen to everything through a couple of times on one trip to Sam's Club and back, and usually this is perfect -- some quiet alone time for serious listening, a chance to really focus on the music, and fifteen or twenty minutes each way of sheer pleasure. But this time, after about the first three listens, I found myself skipping over "School Days."

"Saturday Night Fish Fry" is Eldridge on vocals again, this time with a great Louis Jordan novelty number, and Eldridge handles it just fine, although the trumpet solo after the vocals is really the best part. The Swedish backup vocalists do an interesting and not unpleasant job with a phonetic reading of "It was rockin'."

"The Heat's On" is back to a solid instrumental, great Little Jazz, and the best work by the Swedes. Excellent cut, and one hopes the heat was on, in Stockholm in January,

Two days later, the same group recorded two blues numbers with Eldridge in fine form both on vocals and trumpet, and one blistering instrumental cut.

 These were released on the Swedish Metronome label, and Prestige put them out on 78, concentrating on the vocals -- "School Days" was the A side of one, and "Saturday Night Fish Fry," in two parts, on both sides of the second. The two sessions were also released on a Prestige 10-inch as Roy Eldridge in Sweden, and apparently at pretty much the same time by EmArcy, Mercury's jazz label, as Roy's Got Rhythm.

 No one seems to have posted videos for any of these, but they're all on Spotify in a collection called The Heat's On.

Listening to Prestige Records - Part 13: Swedes

A lot of American expats ended up in Sweden in the late 40s and early 50s, and a lot of Swedes were playing jazz too. Arne Domnerus (also sax and clarinet) recorded with a quintet in Stockholm in August, September and October of 1949, for the Sedish jazz label Metronome, and the sides were released in the US, in the Prestige 100 series of 10 inch LPs, PRLP 134, as New Sounds From Sweden, Volume 4. Bob Weinstock must have made quite a deal with Metronome Records, because there were also volumes 1 - 3: PRLP 119, 121 and 133, mostly led by Domnerus or Lars Gullin. Another Swedish jazzman, Reinhold Svensson, had PRLP 106 and 129. The Domnerus sessions were recorded earliest, though not released earliest. I listened to "Body and Soul" from the first session, and it's not bad at all. He seems to have been a versatile little devil. His catalog, which is extensive on Spotify, includes standards, Dixieland tunes, modern compositions, and a lot of songs with Swedish names, in which you can pick out word like "tango" and "Polska."

Lars Gullin could and did hold his own with some of the best American jazz musicians, and was the 1954 winner of DownBeat's Most Promising Newcomer award for 1954.

Other Swedes who had records released by Prestige: Bengt Hallberg, Ulf Linde, Rolf Blomquist, and Leonard Feather's Swingin' Swedes. I mention all this now because as daunting a task as this is, I may decide to stick to American musicians.