Great Post-War big band swing records (No Basie / Ellington)

[Rabshakeh]

I posted yesterday about a Georgie Auld record I was enjoying (In the Land of Hi-Fi). 

It's not ignorant of bop (look at the players), and there's a big chunk of R&B in the sound, but overall, this is some great big band swing of the pre-war style. 

I'm pretty familiar with 1950s-80s small group 'mainstream' records, and with the post-war work of the greatest of the swing groups, Ellington's and Basie's, but my knowledge stops there. 

What are some other really great post-war swing records of the pre-war type? I'm looking for anything on level with the Auld record.

I should add, on the edit, that it needn't be that big a band. If Artie Shaw or whoever made a great sextet record in 1957, I'd love to hear about it.

Edited August 22, 2023 by Rabshakeh

[Big Beat Steve]

Honestly, those Georgie Auld 50s recordings are a mixed bag in my humble opinion. Those that I've heard from that period of his recording career are O.K. but they are relatively middle-of-the-roadish, with In The Land of Hi-Fi clearly being near the top.

So I am not quite sure how "advanced" (i.e. boppish/moderrn) you'd accept your post-war swing big bands to be. Would Boyd Raeburn, Elliott Lawrence or Claude Thornhill (or Earle Spencer, as an example where you need to dig deeper) be too "progressive" for you? Another one (though not quite as "progressive") would be Bobby Sherwood.

Limiting myself at this time to "post-war" in the stricter sense, i.e starting right from 1945 onwards ("early post-war", therefore) and with working bands, how about - in a first step - exploring the 40s recordings by the Georgie Auld big band?

One of my firm favorites of early post-war big band swing is anything by SAM DONAHUE. Both his transcriptions/airshots (released on Hep) and his commercial recordings for Capitol.

Or TONY PASTOR (a personal quirk of mine, admittedly ... )

Or how about the modernized Benny Goodman band of about 1948 that has its bop influences?
Or the Charlie Barnet Orchestra of 1946/47 on Apollo?
Or how about trying the later 40s and 50s Les Brown orchestra whenever they were not infested by Doris Day vocals? 😁 (Butch Stone's zany vocals were more fun ...)

Among post-war Black big bands, how about Gerald Wilson?
Or the early post-war (mostly pre-R&B) big band of Johnny Otis? There are two nice LPs covering this period on Jukebox Lil, and (depending on how much of an R&B dose you'd accept), two 2-LP sets on Savoy that extend farther into the 50s.

Same for Buddy Johnson and the 1951 big band recordings by Louis Jordan (yes, the one!).

Other larger Black bands that kept going after 1945 such as Lucky Millinder or Tiny Bradshaw leaned much more overtly towards R&B. So it depends how much of that you'd be open-minded enough to file under "jazz".

There are many more, particularly if you go on throughout the 50s but it is very hard for me to draw a line with regard to modernism and minimum size of the band. I am not sure what you are exactly looking for. Your "really great post-war swing records of the pre-war type" statement troubles me. Things and sounds DID evolve, and even tribute LPs to the old masters (such as those paying tribute to Jimmie Lunceford or Andy Kirk) were no carbon copy reenactments.
If those 50s Georgie Auld items are THE overriding yardstick for you I'd almost have to point you towards 50s bands such as Ray Anthony, Ralph Flanagan, Jerry Fielding, Buddy Morrow or Ralph Marterie (which all have their swing highlights, but as for their total output ...?)

Anyway ... the music is there, so yer makes yer choices and yer takes yer chances ...

[BillF]

"Lady, if you has to ask, you ain't got it!" (Fats Waller)

 

 

[Rabshakeh]

@Big Beat Steve, thank you as always for a wonderful, thought through answer. 

Basically, what I am looking for is to patch a hole in my own knowledge.  I tend to concentrate on LPs (which is the way that I overwhelmingly like to listen to music, rather than box sets of singles, although historic singles collections are fine tok). 

The Georgie Auld record to which I am referring is swing in a brassy, confident idiom (which I associate with c.1939) but with some (welcome) bop and R&B in the sound, and fresh and of their time arrangements. It is noticeably different to the mainstream jam concept, or to what the more famous big bands like Basie or Ellington had moved to. I really liked it, not because it preserved an historical style (it doesn't, as you say) but because it had a lot of guts, an awareness of what else was happening, and great tunes. 

Getting record recommendations for this sort of music is hard. It is unfashionable music that is not discussed in the histories of jazz and LP covers are certainly not getting flashed around on social media. It is reasonably easy to identify what the go-to classic records are with which to start for postwar Basie and Ellington, for the bop era big bands like Kenton and Herman, for mainstream swing, or for the later progressive big bands like Ellis, Ferguson, Jones/Lewis or Wilson. In contrast, Georgie Auld was just a name to me until yesterday.

I recognise many of the names that you mention, but, other than Gerald Wilson and Boyd Raeburn (both of whose records I know to some extent), I would not really know where to start. Any direction would be hugely appreciated. "Personal quirks" and "firm favourites" in particular (that's what this forum is for!).

As mentioned above, if the groups released any of particularly recommended LPs, I would love to know.

[JSngry]

I can tell you that Harry James consistently led excellent bands up until the end, but I couldn't point you to any specific records. 

 

[Teasing the Korean]

I have a lot of postwar big band stuff, but is more futurist/jazz leaning than swing era, so probably none of it will meet the criteria for the thread.  

[JSngry]

Oh yeah, get this one. A GREAT record.

[Rabshakeh]

10 minutes ago, Teasing the Korean said:

I have a lot of postwar big band stuff, but is more futurist/jazz leaning than swing era, so probably none of it will meet the criteria for the thread.  

What is futurist / jazz leaning big band? I'm pretty intrigued. Do I need to start another thread?

6 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Oh yeah, get this one. A GREAT record.

Thanks!

[mjazzg]

21 minutes ago, Teasing the Korean said:

I have a lot of postwar big band stuff, but is more futurist/jazz leaning than swing era, so probably none of it will meet the criteria for the thread.  

I still want to hear about it though.

Does the Appleyard Percussive Jazz album fit into that criteria? I bought it recently partly reassured by your enthusiasm for it in historical posts here

[Big Beat Steve]

56 minutes ago, Rabshakeh said:

Any direction would be hugely appreciated. "Personal quirks" and "firm favourites" in particular (that's what this forum is for!).

As mentioned above, if the groups released any of particularly recommended LPs, I would love to know.

I will try to prepare a list but this will take some time and may in the meantime be partially superseded by others' recommendations (though, as you say, this era and style of jazz is in the shadow of the usual "first go-to accepted wisdom" within the jazz fraternity).

BTW, I second JSangrey's plug for Harry James. There are few nice LPs of his post-war band that in part had a surprisingly modern book (e.g. his 1948-50 band featuring some arrangements by Johnny Richards and Neal Hefti).

Edited August 22, 2023 by Big Beat Steve

[mjazzg]

13 minutes ago, Rabshakeh said:

What is futurist / jazz leaning big band? I'm pretty intrigued. Do I need to start another thread?

It would appear so

[Big Beat Steve]

24 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Oh yeah, get this one. A GREAT record.

Seconded.

And in a similar vein, this one:

https://www.discogs.com/master/330274-Cootie-Rex-Cootie-Rex-In-The-Big-Challenge

Not quite a big band, but a tentet anyway.

 

[Teasing the Korean]

15 minutes ago, Rabshakeh said:

What is futurist / jazz leaning big band? I'm pretty intrigued. Do I need to start another thread?

Well, speaking generally, it can range from 1950s studio projects like Sauter/Finegan or Pete Rugolo, to Quincy Jones, to Stan Kenton, to bands/arrangers working in the 1960s such as Oliver Nelson or Gerald Wilson.  For starters.  

I'm talking more or less classic big band lineups with rhythm, at least 8 brass, and 5 reeds.  These are the same as or similar to classic big band lineups, but the music had moved beyond swing to something more modernist.

And then there are extended big bands that added French horns, woodwinds, and/or mellophones.  

[Stompin at the Savoy]

You might like the Terry Gibbs Dream Band.  Not exactly swing per se (though pretty close).  A predecessor of the Jones/Lewis big  band.  Also the Bill Holman Big Band that preceded the Dream Band.

Edited August 22, 2023 by Stompin at the Savoy

[Big Beat Steve]

@TTK: Which means Boyd Raeburn and Claude Thornhill would be on the edge between the big bands evolving from the swing era (as discussed in this thread) and an additional thread focusing on the decidedly more modernist ones you mentioned.

[Rabshakeh]

13 minutes ago, Stompin at the Savoy said:

You might like the Terry Gibbs Dream Band.  Not exactly swing per se.  A predecessor of the Jones/Lewis big  band.  Also the Bill Holman Big Band that preceded the Dream Band.

Terry Gibbs I know. Great example of this sort of music. For some reason Gibbs is more in favour than other contemporaries, and I've seen his records posted here and elsewhere with reasonable frequency. 

28 minutes ago, Big Beat Steve said:

I will try to prepare a list but this will take some time and may in the meantime be partially superseded by others' recommendations (though, as you say, this era and style of jazz is in the shadow of the usual "first go-to accepted wisdom" within the jazz fraternity).

In a way it's a pity ... Among the stuff that a local used record shop got in not long ago (and where I scored the "Complete Keynote Collection" box set - see the "Great Finds" thread) there were quite a few of the LPs that are likely to figure on my list of recomendations, and almost all of them in the 2.50 to 5 EUR apiece price bracket. Of course I passed them up because I already own these. (I can assure you it is an eereily strange feeling if you dig through a collection like this and see artist after artist of whom  the owner of that collection bought almost the same records that you did yourself!)
No idea, though, how many of them are stil in stock and/or where they are to be located in the shop (which in part is a bit chaotic due to stock overflow). It took me 6 or 7 visits to the shop to dig my way through this collection (immediately after they had put a price on each LP) to make the rounds (several times over, to course), and in the end i was thoroguhly exhausted and glad that was over ...  Anyway,  we'll see ...

This is stuff I see in the bins all the time, next to the equally unloved but slightly more navigable jazz vocal records.

Thank you, as always.

[JSngry]

Harry James settled into Las Vegas with a book mostly by Ernie Wilkins. But as time went by, he used Neal Hefty as well. Others too 

I think the band made some records for MGM in the 1960s, but they haven't made it to digital? 

[Rabshakeh]

23 minutes ago, Teasing the Korean said:

Well, speaking generally, it can range from 1950s studio projects like Sauter/Finegan or Pete Rugolo, to Quincy Jones, to Stan Kenton, to bands/arrangers working in the 1960s such as Oliver Nelson or Gerald Wilson.  For starters.  

I'm talking more or less classic big band lineups with rhythm, at least 8 brass, and 5 reeds.  These are the same as or similar to classic big band lineups, but the music had moved beyond swing to something more modernist.

And then there are extended big bands that added French horns, woodwinds, and/or mellophones.  

What's Sauter / Finegan? The others I know. Probably more in the modernist camp, and more frequently discussed (especially Quincy!)

25 minutes ago, Big Beat Steve said:

Seconded.

And in a similar vein, this one:

https://www.discogs.com/master/330274-Cootie-Rex-Cootie-Rex-In-The-Big-Challenge

Not quite a big band, but a tentet anyway.

 

Thank you!

[Stompin at the Savoy]

 

[Teasing the Korean]

5 minutes ago, Rabshakeh said:

What's Sauter / Finegan? The others I know. Probably more in the modernist camp, and more frequently discussed (especially Quincy!)

Thank you!

Sauter/Finegan were a real mixed bag.  Sauter wrote for Goodman and Finegan wrote for Miller.  The two teamed up in the early 1950s and created a studio band that recorded for RCA, and later UA. They did a lot of corny throwback swing stuff, but interspersed with modernist stuff.  There has never been a good compilation of theirs.  I would love to compile one for Sony/BMG, depending on how much the job pays, but I'm sure Sauter/Finegan are not high on their priority list, if anyone there even remembers them at all.

[Big Beat Steve]

14 minutes ago, Rabshakeh said:

What's Sauter / Finegan?

See here! 😁

Re- TTK's statement that there never was a good compilation of Sauter-Finegan, I'd stil recommend this LP as a starter/teaser (whatever ...):

https://www.discogs.com/master/757317-Sauter-Finegan-Orchestra-Directions-In-Music

In conjunction with Sauter-Finegan, I'd also recommend the recordings Eddie Sauter made for German radio in the later 50s. The record below AFAIK is the best compilation:

https://www.discogs.com/release/10738993-Eddie-Sauter-In-Germany

Edited August 22, 2023 by Big Beat Steve

[Rabshakeh]

16 minutes ago, Big Beat Steve said:

See here! 😁

 

Just read all of that. I feel vaguely dizzy.

[Stompin at the Savoy]

Some Shorty Rogers stuff might qualify.  Also Buck Clayton Jam Sessions.

Edited August 22, 2023 by Stompin at the Savoy

[Teasing the Korean]

Dick Grove - Little Bird Suite (Pacific Jazz, 1963)

[jlhoots]

1 hour ago, Big Beat Steve said:

Seconded.

And in a similar vein, this one:

https://www.discogs.com/master/330274-Cootie-Rex-Cootie-Rex-In-The-Big-Challenge

Not quite a big band, but a tentet anyway.

 

+1 for both of those!!