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Thursday, September 17, 2020

Harry James plays the bejesus out of an insane arrangement of "St. Louis Blues" (1946)



It's hard to describe what's going on here, but it's obviously from a movie (Do You Love Me? 1946). The introduction is silly and pretentious, but James shows his blues chops at 0:33. From there to the end it's up and down, and James is always so down he's up. Or is it so up he's down?

Let's take a closer look, for this is a performance that has layers within layers, worlds within worlds. The tune itself is one of the best-known tunes in jazz and pop, "St. Louis Blues," by W. C. Handy. Handy was a trumpeter, composer and band leader who was born in 1873 and died in 1958. "St. Louis Blues" was published in 1914 and was no ordinary blues. It had three distinct melodies, two based on the 12-bar blues form and a 16-bar melody based on a habanera rhythm, giving the song what Jelly Roll Morton called that "Latin tinge."

The audience for this movie would surely have been familiar with James and with "St. Louis Blues," which had been recorded many times by many artists, including W. C. Handy himself, the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, Bessie Smith with Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, Cab Calloway, Rudy Vallee (the sheet music with his face on the front includes ukulele tablature), Bing Crosby with Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Django Reinhardt, Guy Lombardo, and on and on – you get the idea. So the audience knows that "St. Louis Blues" is not the kind of song that goes with a symphony orchestra sitting in front of classical pillars. 

Moreover, my Spidey sense tells me that a movie with that song in that setting probably features a conflict between "straight" music and "hot" swing, a theme played out in many movies and cartoons from the 1930s through the 1940s. Note that this theme is not simply about music. It's also about social class and about America vs. Europe.

The Wikipedia plot summary for the movie doesn't say much, but it says enough to confirm my intuition:
Jimmy Hale (Dick Haymes) is a successful singer. He chases Katharine "Kitten" Hilliard (Maureen O'Hara), a prim, bespectacled music school dean who, after traveling to the big city, transforms herself into a desirable, sophisticated lady. Jimmy isn't the only one eager to win Katharine's affections: it turns out that the smooth-as-silk trumpeter and bandleader Barry Clayton (Harry James) has designs on Katharine as well.
The plot summary provided by the American Film Institute is considerably more detailed and describes this scene early in the film:
Katherine then leaves for New York to consult with Dr. Herbert Benham, a composer and critic, who is to be guest conductor at the Festival. On the crowded train into New York, Katherine is forced to stand in the vestibule of a car reserved for Barry Clayton's band, and he invites her in. Barry and the band attempt to entertain her with a swing number but, much to Barry's chagrin, she announces that she doesn't like it, prompting Barry to declare that she has "ice water in her veins."
There you have it, the squares vs. the hep cats all tangled up in romance. This performance of "St. Louis Blues" takes place late in the film, so the audience has been watching the battle of the musical styles play out for over an hour by this time. They know what they're going to hear, a highly polished pastiche featuring some superb trumpet playing by Harry James.

This is not great music. But it is well-crafted and highly polished. That's what makes it worthy of our attention. Such arrangements were served up in movie after movie by staff arrangers. This is routine musical craftsmanship of a very high order. It's a craft that takes conceptions and techniques from different musical traditions and remixes them, thereby laying a foundation for the emergence of new forms and styles.

The arrangement begins with a legit introduction where the strings and brass play two phrases from one of the two blues themes in a straight, almost march-like, style, not a hint of swing. This quickly gives way to a clarinet melody (c. 0.17) that drops down low and works its way up in a series of arpeggios – I can't help but think this is a sly reference to and revision of the clarinet line that opens "Rhapsody in Blue". This quickly (0.27) gives way to a fast punchy orchestral passage culminating in a brass fanfare (0.32) that builds to a climax, and then stops (0.37) and drops you over the edge of a cliff, as you didn't see it coming.

We've been set up.

James turns around (he'd been conducting the orchestra up to this point), picks up his trumpet, and digs deep into nasty blusey jazz trumpet on the Latin theme (0.40). Notice how he bends his notes, plays notes with valves only half depressed, and throws in "shakes," jazz ornaments that are a bit like trills, but utterly different in that they are rough while trills are delicate. This is jazz trumpet technique that's not taught in conservatories, at least not in those days. That band, for that's what the orchestra has become, a jazz band, plays a slinky vamp to back him up. That goes on until 1.34.

At this point we've been presented with two (opposing) musical worlds, the classical world (played for laughs), and jazz (played with utter sincerity). The rest of the arrangement plays in the space opened up between them.

James lowers his trumpet and returns to conduct the orchestra, which goes into a straight rendition of the blues theme that opened the piece, played in sweeping romantic fashion by the strings. We get through 12 bars of that and have another change of pace. Starting at roughly 2:16 the strings take up the other blues theme, straight time, played pizzicato, as unjazzy a sound as you could imagine. They finish the 12-bars and the brass comes crashing in at 2:33. Now the violins switch to their bows playing rapid figures of the sort I associate with bustling street scenes where people are rushing about doing things. James comes in playing rapid trumpet figures in a complementary fashion. This is 19th century virtuoso showpiece material with slight swing inflections. We're poised between the legit and jazz musical worlds – a very American bit of stylistic juggling.

Trumpeting brass figures signal a change (2:51) and we move to a more or less standard big-band shout chorus where the ensemble, sans strings, plays a thick texture of backing riffs while the soloist wails over the top.  James stops playing and the strings join in (3:29) and, once things get moving, James returns and puts a cherry on top (3:42), riding it for a few bars, pausing for a pair of simple two-note trumpet figures, and closing it out with an ascending triplet run (3:53) leading to the final chords.

Applause. And well deserved.

Crossover music wasn't invented yesterday. It's as American as sweet potato pie.

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Two other posts about Harry James: Terry Teachout appreciates Harry James; A Monday Morning Music Lesson: Harry James, concerto for Trumpet, 1941.

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