A Forgotten Chapter of Jazz
Legendary Decca Recordings
Featuring Unparalleled Sound Quality
At Mosaic we think it’s time to re-evaluate the contribution to jazz made by Crosby’s orchestra, with its unique approach to big band music and to his small group, which featured some of the most stunning soloists of the day. Our new set, “Classic Decca Recordings of Bob Crosby and His Orchestra and The Bob Cats (1936-1942)” should help set the record straight. It features 144 cuts on 6-CDs that reveal what made this band — and its members — so special.
Just as startling is the quality of the transfers and restoration we were able to accomplish, exclusively for this release. As is typical of Mosaic projects, we’ve meticulously remastered this music. But this set in particular makes you feel like you are in the room with the band in front of you and not revisiting the music 80 years later.
We can confidently promise you’ve never heard this music with such clarity, dynamism, and power.
Classic Decca Recordings Of Bob Crosby
And His Orchestra & The Bob Cats (1936-1942)
Limited Edition Box Set
(#283 – 6 CDs)
BOB CROSBY WILL EARN YOUR DELIGHT
Throughout his career in jazz, Bob Crosby was used to being dismissed.
He even participated in the self-deprecating humor acknowledging the lopsided comparisons to his older brother Bing: “I’m the one with no hope,” he joked, referring to Bing’s many film collaborations with Bob Hope.
Bob Crosby’s job fronting an orchestra and small band was to look good in a tuxedo, talk to the audience of dancers and diners, joke and tell stories, and sing a bit. He was good at his job. People liked him. The band members liked him. And if you were hearing him in a noisy supper club with a couple of conversations at your table, Bob even sounded like Bing.
Unfortunately, that dismissive point of view has perpetuated today. And it’s a shame, because what is harder to dismiss about the Bob Crosby Orchestra and his small group, Bob Crosby’s Bob Cats, was the excellent music his organization produced.
An unlikely start
Bob Crosby loved leading a band, but the idea didn’t originate from him. The opportunity arose when members of the Ben Pollack Orchestra quit en masse over the orchestra leader’s obsession with a female singer none of them liked. Suddenly they needed a point man. In 1934, Bing was already an international star with the kind of gravity that could magnetize every satellite in his orbit, and the idea of Bob taking the helm was suggested. Bing’s kid brother had no musical training. Couldn’t read music. Had never held a baton in his life. In fact, he struggled at first to remember the tempos. Drummer Ray Bauduc reportedly told him, “Don’t worry about it. You just beat it off your way, and we’ll take it away from you right away.”
Relying on his band mates proved to be a winning formula. The orchestra produced a sound that was unmatched in music, with arrangements that re-cast Dixieland-style energy in a big band framework, bringing excitement and freshness to the genre.
The guys behind him were often singled out for praise by many of the best at the time. Both Mel Torme and Chick Webb were fans of drummer Bauduc. Trumpeter Billy Butterfield received admiring comments from Bobby Hackett, who called Butterfield “the best there is” and from Louis Armstrong himself, who said “he knows how to blow his horn right.”
Clarinetist Irving Fazola was singled out by Glenn Miller: “Benny (Goodman) listened very closely when Faz was playing,” he said.
As for the orchestra as a whole, Ellington called them “a band with an amazing amount of color… a truly gut-bucket band, capable of really getting down there,” and ranked the group among the orchestras of Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, and Paul Whiteman.
Enormously popular
The public agreed. The recordings in this set span the years when Crosby went from success to success. After opening at New York’s Roseland, the band began a tour of one-nighters in the South. That led to radio broadcasts and long engagements in New York, Chicago, Boston, and Los Angeles. The pattern of radio performances (at one point, eleven in one week), long stays at clubs, restaurants, and hotels, occasional film appearances, and popular recordings continued. Their fame grew and grew. In 1940, Down Beat’s poll of swing bands placed only Benny Goodman’s and Glenn Miller’s bands higher.
While the style they favored dated back to the 1920s, there was nothing old fashioned about the Crosby band. Even though a few core members traced their lineage back to the New Orleans style, placing that influence within an expanded ensemble was key to bringing distinction and personality to the band. The swing era is remembered often for the complexity of dense arrangements.
Bob Crosby’s band chose to be more dynamic.
The band’s reliably expert ensemble work was tasteful and tight, while still giving off an air of being relaxed. There was no doubt the cooperative spirit of the band members, who shared ownership, contributed to the fact that this 13-piece band could swing like a combo. Scholar and composer Gunther Schuller summed up what contributed to the band’s success; it was, he said, “a compromise: a blending of the new big-band sound of swing with the freedom and loose-textured spontaneity of small-groups Dixieland.”
The stripped-down Bob Cats ensemble was an especially intuitive unit, able to solo over and around each other without stubbing toes. They are every bit as compelling as any other combo of the 1930s. It’s no wonder that after Crosby’s tenure, members of the ensemble performed for years as The World’s Greatest Jazz Band.
Essential components included Butterfield’s and Yank Lawson’s power, the reliable Dixieland influence of Warren Smith’s trombone, Eddie Miller’s tenor saxophone, Fazola and Matty Matlock’s clarinets, and the highly personal, precise, and uncategorizable styles of pianists Joe Sullivan and Jess Stacy. In many instances, compositions and arrangements were by the band members themselves, writing specifically for the unique talent and configuration of the band.
Masters of Their Craft
The Brilliance of the Individual Artists
By Michael Steinman
Ray Bauduc, whose drumming was both elated and low-down, is a direct outgrowth of Baby Dodds and Zutty Singleton but with its own flavor. He reminds me a great deal of fellow New Orleanian Paul Barbarin backing Louis Armstrong. Mel Torme said that Bauduc “got this funky, chunky, warm, and resonant sound from his snare drum,” and Chick Webb admired his playing. He is not only the rhythmic heartbeat of these records; he is the band’s sonic foundation.
Bob Haggart was a most trustworthy rhythm player, whether slapping the strings a la Wellman Braud or simply walking 4/4 in the best Walter Page manner, years before other white musicians fully incorporated the style. His sound was low and warm, his intonation flawless.
Yank Lawson was truly incendiary. Drummer-scholar Hal Smith says that Yank’s particular rhythmic style, both relaxed and intense, is a phenomenon linked to other trumpeters of the American Southwest, noted for their “wide beat.” Yank’s ferocity was immediately recognizable, as was his use of mutes but what strikes me is his tone and attack. He has something urgent to tell us, he waggles an accusing finger at us. He could lead the charge, and I saw him do it in the Seventies.
If Yank was fire, Billy Butterfield was molten gold. Talking with Dick Sudhalter, Bobby Hackett called Billy “the best there is.” His sound was huge, his agility was marvelous: he sang on the horn. In 1948, Louis Armstrong told George T. Simon, “You know who’s real good? That’s Billy Butterfield. Ever hear what he played on that record
