One of my great pleasures nowadays is listening to those ‘complete recordings of…’ CD sets. These contain riches undreamt of back in the day when you had to search for LP releases of around sixteen tracks (if you were lucky) of your favorite artists. Indeed I remember the excitement of getting my hands on a 1963 release called Authentic Country Music RCA Camden CDN 5111 which introduced me to The Carter Family, Uncle Dave Macon and Gid Tanner & Riley Puckett on an LP of ten tracks total. Heady stuff indeed! But I now have all the tracks from that record plus hundreds of others in CD sets of these artists.
CD sets of old recordings are usually very reasonably priced, quite often in the ‘budget bin’ category, and I’ve been able to catch up on all sorts of music by clicking on ‘The best of…’ or ‘The complete recordings of…’ on Amazon. One of my favorites is the complete set of King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band 1923-24. Digital remastering technology has worked wonders on these aged recordings, which are particularly notable for featuring the work of the young Louis Armstrong and Johnny Dodds.
It is the infectious rhythm of the King Oliver band that I find most entrancing – and listening to the collection I experienced one of those lightbulb moments. It seemed to me that on the recordings of 15th and 16th October 1923 something had happened to the band, something was missing. Compared with the earlier tracks the rhythm had become less exciting, the sound had somehow changed. Examination of the list of personnel revealed that Johnny Dodds was absent from the lineup on those days, replaced by two different clarinet players, one on each day. Going back over the previous twenty tracks I realised that Johnny Dodds’ clarinet was a vital component of the rhythm, swing, backup, counterpoint, call it what you will. In 1924 both Dodds and Armstrong moved on to other bands, and Johnny Dodds’ clarinet would shortly be playing a vital role in Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five and Hot Seven which went on to make jazz history.
Johnny Dodds’ clarinet playing had a delightful lilt and sensitivity. He was a player who had the technical ability to do what he wanted with his instrument and to give his sound an emotional intensity and expressiveness uniquely his own. And he was a key performer in any ensemble of which he was a member. He seems to me to have been a musician in whose presence the other band members raise their game.
This scenario applies to all forms of band music. In bluegrass the classic ‘key performer’ is Bill Monroe. I’ve heard it said that his influence on his band members was like the fire which heats a pot of water and brings it to the boil. Take the heat away and the water cools down again. But it’s not all down to the band leader. Sometimes a group of musicians happen to get together and a special magic is generated. The combination of Tony Rice, Ricky Skaggs, J. D. Crowe, Jerry Douglas and Bobby Slone was one such band, as witness their classic recording on Rounder 0044, simply entitled J.D. Crowe and the New South. Conversely a different combination of superpickers put together for a studio recording might fail to create anything particularly remarkable in spite of their undoubted experience and technical ability.
It is this unpredictability about music that keeps us listening and playing. You never know when you are going to stumble across something special that takes you by surprise, whether you are listening to a recording, attending a concert or noodling on your instrument. It is truly a continuing journey of discovery for us all. May your Muse be with you!
John Baldry
March 2020
