Benny Carter and A History of Saxophone Ensembles

Over the Rainbow is the latest in a series of Benny Carter-led saxophone ensemble recordings spanning some 50 years. The inspiration for this project, and several predecessors, is one of the milestones of jazz recording: a 1937 Paris date which launched the French Swing label of Hugues Panassie and Charles Delaunay. On that epic occasion, Carter and his friend, tenor giant Coleman Hawkins, were joined by their French counterparts, Andre Akyan and Alix Combelle, along with the legendary gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt. Carter's writing for the sax quartet on Honeysuckle Rose and Crazy Rhythm inspired perfect performances, including some of the greatest Hawkins on record. The other two titles cut that day were more informal but equally satisfying performances on which Carter played trumpet. Happily, on the present album, Carter has included one of them (Out of Nowhere), and based a new melody (The Gal from Atlanta) on the other; after fifty years, we now have the opportunity to hear them fully scored for the sax ensemble.

The saxophone ensemble did not develop in a vacuum, but was inextricably tied to the development of big band jazz in general. Most major jazz orchestras had distinctive reed section sounds, which were a function of both players and arrangers. Many well-known big band, scores emphasized the sax section: Don Redman's Tea for Two (1932), Sy Oliver's Stomp It Off (recorded by Jimmie Lunceford in 1934), Fletcher Henderson’s Sometimes I'm Happy (recorded by Benny Goodman in 1935), Duke Ellington's Cottontail and In a Mellotone (1940), Mel Powell's Mission to Moscow (recorded by Goodman in 1942), and two Woody Herman classics -- Four Brothers (arranged by Jimmy Giuffre) and Early Autumn (arranged by Ralph Burns), recorded in 1947 and 1948 respectively. Occasionally, an orchestra would record a piece written specifically for the reeds, omitting the brass entirely (e.g. Stan Kenton's 1942 recording of Reed Rapture).

Benny Carter played an essential role in the evolution of what became known as the swing era big band style. Self-taught as an arranger, Carter learned his craft by studying the stock arrangements of the day. ln 1926, while with Charlie Johnson's Orchcestra at Small's Paradise, he began to bring in his own sketches for the saxophone section. The importance of his innovative scores for Fletcher Henderson’s orchestra as early as 1928 and his own orchestra beginning in the early 1930s has been acknowledged by historians and musicians alike. Within the big band context, however, the saxophone section has always remained Carter's special domain. Richly harmonized, f1owing saxophone choruses have been the cornerstone of his writing from his very first recorded arrangement for Johnson's band in 1928 (Charleston is the Best Dance After All), right up to his 1987 collaboration with the American Jazz Orchestra which yielded the magnificent Central City Sketches suite. Carter's skillful integration of these daring reed excursions within the overall orchestral setting renders them all the most effective.

Among the earliest and most influential masterworks by Carter’s orchestra were the 1933 recordings Symphony in Riffs and Lonesome Nights. During his European period (1935-38), Carter continued to produce inventive sax choruses, among them Stardust and All of Me (both 1940) (recorded by the Willie Lewis Orchestra with Carter in Paris in 1936) and Skip It (recorded in Holland in 1937 by Carter's international orchestra). Back in the US, Carter formed a new band which yielded such gems as O.K. for Baby and an updated All of Me (both 1940), and Cuddle up, Huddle Up (1941). In the mid-1940s, Carter's California-based orchestra reflected the bebop leanings of many of its younger members, including Miles Davis, JJ. Johnson, and Max Roach. While accommodating these new voices, Carter continued to produce stunning reed tours de force on arrangements like I Can't Escape from You (1944) and Somebody Loves Me (1946). Although he no longer led a regular orchestra after 1946, Carter made the most of recording opportunities using studio orchestras under his own name and for other leaders and singers. Carter's two albums of arrangements and compositions for Count Basic (Kansas City Suite, from 1960, and The Legend, from 1961), for example, contain many delightful saxophone passages.

All-saxophone groups (as opposed to big-band sax sections) have had an episodic history in jazz. Early ragtime-flavored recordings by such groups as the Six Brown Brothers (1911-20) only hinted at the possibilities of an all-saxophone instrumentation. Far more prescient are some little-known but intriguing 1929 Columbia recordings by a sax quartet led by Merle Johnston. One year after the 1937 Carter/Hawkins epiphany, Carter himself used the same instrumentation (but without Hawkins) to produce an even more ravishing display of reed writing on I'm Coming Virginia. And a few months later, he devised an equally inventive reed chorus on I’m in in the Mood for Swing, which was recorded at a Lionel Hampton all-star date in July 1938, Carter's first session after returning from Europe.

In the early 1940s, one of the most ambitious reed ventures ever came from a rather unlikely source: bandleader Shep Fields. Fields had come to fame with his Rippling Rhythm band, whose formulaic approach involved introducing each number by blowing through a straw into a fishbowl. In 1941, he scrapped that group and formed his New Music, consisting of ten reeds and a rhythm section. This group's output, although largely dance music, includes some interesting jazz-styled arrangements; Fields, in fact, once invited Benny Carter to join the ensemble, presumedly as an arranger. There were few other saxophone ensemble experiments in the 1940s, although a Coleman Hawkins-led studio group with Don Byas and Harry Carney recorded some memorable sides for Keynote in 1944. The arranger and alto saxophonist on that session was Tab Smith.

Sax ensemble recordings proliferated in the 1950s. Although many were simply all-star jam sessions involving little written material, arrangers Hal McKusick, Lennie Niehaus, Spud Murphy. and Manny Albam, among others, explored a wide variety of reed textures. Two long-standing ensembles were formed, one on each coast; the Hollywood Saxophone Ensemble and the New York Saxophone Quartet reflected the prevalent "third-stream" movement. As early as 1949 there were notable spin-off recording groups from one of the most celebrated sax section in history: the Four Brothers of Woody Herman's Second Herd who were immoralized in the arrangement of the same name by Jimmy Giuffre. These efforts continued in the 1950s, usually involving some combination of the original group (Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, Herbie Steward, and Serge Chaloff) and Al Cohn, who Joined Herman a bit later.

Among other saxophone recording projects during this period were Prestige's Four Altos (1957) and Very Saxy (1959) albums, the latter bringing together tenor stars Coleman Hawkins, Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, Buddy Tate, and Arnett Cobb. Hawkins also was featured ln a 1958 recorded encounter with the Count Basie reed section and on Bob Prince's Saxophones, Incorporated. The 1957 Quincy Jones-supervised Go West Man included three tracks by an alto quartet, consisting of Carter and ''West Coast” modernists Herb Geller, Art Pepper, and Charlie Mariano; Lennie Niehaus and Jimmy Giuffre provided the arrangements.

Sax ensemble experiments in general waned in the 1960s, but it was during that decade that Benny Carter reentered the arena. A 1961 session, intended by producer Bob Thiele as a retrospective of the 1937 Paris date, reunited Carter with Hawkins and paired them with two leading saxophone voices of a younger generation: Phil Woods and Charlie Rouse. Using the same instrumentation as on the Paris date, Carter prepared eight new arrangements; the result was the monumental Further Definitions. Five years later, Carter recorded a less-celebrated but highly successful follow-up album, Additions to Further Definitions, using leading West Coast reedmen. In the interim, Carter undertook one other intriguing saxophone group recording project. In 1964, he arranged for and led an ensemble of ten saxophones for Vee-Jay Records. Only one tantalizing track -- Tickle Toe -- was ever issued from that session; the masters have since disappeared.

In 1972, the formation of Supersax sparked new interest in sax ensembles. Playing Charlie Parker solos harmonized for five saxes, the group spawned other projects, such as Dave Pell's Prez Conference, which based its repertoire on the improvisations of Lester Young. Decades after the Carter/Hawkins Paris meeting, Europe: continued to prove fertile ground for sax ensembles. The British group S.O.S. and several Scandinavian efforts sought to convey many of the prevailing improvisational motifs of free jazz through the medium of the reed ensemble. The World Saxophone Quartet, the most influential of the sax groups to arise in the past decade, has synthesized many of the characteristics of previous movements. Performing without a rhythm section, this group reflects a wide range of influences, melding some of Jazz' s earliest forms of collective improvisation with rhythm and blues and free jazz.