Earl Hines: His Unrecorded Band with Parker and Gillespie, by Leif Bo Petersen,1 (+Bonus)

Guest Essay by Leif Bo Petersen

(Paying Subscribers, you’ll find at the bottom a musicians’ magazine from 1943.)

(Leif Bo Petersen is a Danish trumpeter and a researcher, especially on the bebop masters. He is the coauthor with Theo Rehak of the Fats Navarro biography, with musical analysis, and he has compiled a detailed Charlie Parker chronology available here. He has greatly expanded his work on the Hines band that Parker joined, exclusively for our readers, and we thank him for sharing this fine research with us. This is the first of several installments. I have inserted background information here and there using brackets [like this].)

From Leif Bo Petersen:

One of the most legendary unrecorded groups in jazz history is the big band of master pianist Earl Hines from 1942 to 1944. There has been quite a bit of speculation about it. Was it a bop band? What was the repertoire? The point of this series is to collect all available information about that band, so as to give us a better sense of it. (There is no need for us to examine the Hines bands that did record before and after that period.)

During that period, Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker each spent time in the band. The band’s male singer was Billy Eckstine—he had already made popular recordings with Hines in 1940 and ‘41—and he went on to form what many consider to be the first bebop band in June 1944. But if Eckstine’s was the first bop band, what kind of music did the Hines band play? We have private recordings of Bird and Diz jamming with a few friends in 1943, but nothing of the Hines band. Since there are no recordings, what can we know about this important group?

Throughout the 1930s the Earl Hines big band played frequently at the Sunset Cafe, renamed the Grand Terrace Cafe in 1937. But in early 1940 his band broke up. Hines opened his own Studio Club in Chicago, but by the end of 1940 he was back on the road with a big band. As for most Black bands, this meant rows of one-night performances at ballroom dances all over the country. Now and then they had a bit of a break with week-long appearances in vaudeville programs, held in movie theaters. The usual routines were 9 pm to 1 am at the dances, while at the theaters they did four or five hour-long shows, including singers and dancers, from noon to midnight, in between the movie screenings. Supplementary activities were longer engagements at dance restaurants, and occasional commercial recording dates. The latter, apart from providing income from record sales, also served to build audiences for the performances.

Today the repertoires of such bands can be traced by the memories of band members, by their recordings, by surviving radio broadcasts from dance restaurants, and by reviews (mainly of the theater appearances). But in the period March 1942 until October 1944, the Hines Orchestra has left no surviving recorded material. This of course is mainly because of the American Federation of Musicians (AFM, or the musicians’ union) recording ban, a strike to collect payments from the recording companies, that ran from August 1942 until early 1944 for Hines’s recording company, RCA Victor.  (Other labels settled the strike at different times.) The absence of surviving broadcasts from restaurants can be explained by the fact that Hines did not have many such engagements in the period.

However, it is remarkable that there does not exist any AFRS material with Hines. The Armed Forces Radio Service (AFRS) was actively recording programs for soldiers—that was allowed during the strike, and in that way artists were documented that otherwise would not have been. The reason that he did not appear in the AFRS Jubilee and other series can be explained by the fact that those mostly originated in California, where he did not perform in this period. But I really can’t explain why Hines had only one appearance in the Coca Cola Spotlight series, which was national. He participated for 15 minutes, from New London, CT, in the 1942 Christmas program (Coca Cola Victory Parade of Spotlight Bands no. 83, broadcast December 25, 1942). And unfortunately, the only known audio copy of this broadcast was definitely destroyed. That crazy story will be told in Part Two of this series.

This means that the only sources for the repertoire of Hines’s orchestra in this period are the memories of band members and the press reviews. As we shall see, the reviewers don’t always look deeply into the material performed. Their main interest often lies in describing the vocalists and a few of the instrumental soloists. The reviews also document some of the band’s performances, as do newspaper ads. I have compiled a listing of all known engagements of the Hines band during this period, but that is not the purpose of this essay. My purpose here is to focus on sources that tell us the personnel and repertoire of the band.

Let’s begin with Hines’s last recording session before the strike, March 19, 1942. Here is the information:

Victor Studio, New York, NY.  Commercial recordings for Bluebird, an RCA subsidiary label.

Earl Hines and His Orchestra

Pee Wee Jackson, Shorty McConnell, Jesse Miller (tp); George Dixon (tp, bars); George Hunt, Joe McLewis (tb); Gerald Valentine (tb, arr); Leroy Harris, Scoops Carey (as): Willi Randall (ts); Bob Crowder, Albert “Budd” Johnson (ts, arr); Earl Hines (p); Skeeter Best (g); Truck Parham (b); Rudy Taylor (d); Billy  Eckstine, Madeline Greene, The Three Varieties (voc). 

She’ll Always Remember (Madeline Green and The Three Varieties, voc)

Skylark (Billy Eckstine, voc)

Second Balcony Jump (orchestra)

Stormy Monday Blues (Billy Eckstine, voc)

Note: Scoops’ birth name was George Dorman Carry, but his stage name was usually given as “Carey.” (In Hines's 1944 composition, Scoops Carry’s Merry, the correct spelling is used.)

Let’s listen to two of the recordings from March 1942, “Stormy Monday Blues” and “Second Balcony Jump,” because, as we will see, both pieces remained in the band’s repertoire during the next years. So they give us some idea of the sound of the unrecorded band. Here’s “Stormy Monday Blues,” arranged by Bob Crowder, featuring Eckstine’s vocal, and solos by Hines, guitarist Skeeter Best (during the vocal), and an intense, Roy Eldridge-influenced trumpet solo by Shorty McConnell:

And here is “Second Balcony Jump,” with solos by saxophonist Budd Johnson, McConnell, and Hines:

[Lewis notes: “Second Balcony Jump” is not the piece of the same name that was written by Al Cooper and recorded by his Savoy Sultans in 1941. Malcolm X mentioned the piece that Hines played in his autobiography, remembering a night when Lionel Hampton performed at the Apollo Theater in Harlem:  “The people kept shouting for Hamp's ‘Flyin' Home,’ and finally he did it. (I could believe the story I'd heard in Boston about this number—that once in the Apollo, Hamp's ‘Flyin' Home’ had made some reefer-smoking Negro in the second balcony believe he could fly, so he tried—and jumped—and broke his leg, an event later immortalized in song when Earl Hines wrote a hit tune called ‘Second Balcony Jump.’)” Actually it was trombonist Gerald “Jerry” Valentine who wrote this piece, and others, for the Hines band. Still, it’s quite a story, and probably Cooper’s piece was also inspired by it. Now, back to Petersen:]

On Sunday, August 17 the band played a dance at Val-Air, Des Moines, Iowa (Ad in Des Moines Register, October 17, 1942, 10). The local branch of AFM registered the complete band personnel at this event, so here we have firm evidence of who was in the band. The names and local memberships were published in the national musicians’ union magazine: “Local Reports: Local no. 75, Des Moines, IA.,” International Musician, October 1942, 22–23. “Traveling members.”

The members of the Hines band as given here are (instrument indications are mine):

Gail Brockman, Shorty McConnell, Benny Harris, Edward Knox (tp); George Hunt, Benny Green (tb); Gerald Valentine (tb, arr); Leroy Harris, Scoops Carey (as); Bob Crowder, Budd Johnson (ts, arr); Jacinto Chambania (sic; baritone sax; stage name Jerry Blake); Earl Hines (p, dir); Skeeter Best (g); Jesse Simpkins (b); Shadow Wilson (d); Billy  Eckstine (tp, voc). Eckstine is mentioned because he was an instrumentalist besides his main vocal role. Madeline Greene and The Three Varieties (voc) were not listed as they were not AFM members.

On the same pages of that issue of International Musician, similar listings can be found from Local no. 587, Milwaukee WI., and Local no.123, Richmond, VA. So we may assume that the band also performed in those areas around August 1942, but we have no further details.

The first review during the unrecorded period is from the band’s engagement at the Paradise Theatre, Detroit, Michigan. October 23–29, 1942. I will summarize most of the reviews in this manner:

“Says Hines’ Present Outfit His Greatest,” Pittsburgh Courier, November 21, 1942, 21:

Songs mentioned:

He’s My Guy; Five by Five (Madeline Green, voc)

Stormy Monday Blues (Billy Eckstine, voc)

Soloists mentioned: Shorty McConnell; Scoops Carey; Budd Johnson; Shadow Wilson. 

Next we have a list of personnel in the musicians’ union magazine: “Local Reports: Local no. 627, Kansas City, MO.,” International Musician, January 1943, 20. “Traveling members.” Since the magazine tended to run about two months behind, this is probably referring to a Kansas City engagement in November 1942.

The members of the Hines band as given here are:

Gail Brockman, Shorty McConnell, Benny Harris, Edward Knox (tp); George Hunt, Benny Green (tb); Gerald Valentine (tb, arr); Leroy Harris, Scoops Carey (as); Bob Crowder, Budd Johnson (ts, arr); Jacinto Chambania (sic; baritone sax; aka Jerry Blake); Earl Hines (p, dir); Skeeter Best (g); Jesse Simpkins (b); Shadow Wilson (d); Billy  Eckstine, Madeline Greene, The Three Varieties (voc). 

Here is the report from the magazine. You can see the members of the Basie band listed near the bottom, and then the names of Ellington and other bands, without individual members being listed.

(Paying Subscribers, you’ll find at the bottom the complete magazine from 1943.)

This listing requires some explanation: Traveling Members reported by the Locals were AFM members performing in their area during the period in question. The local sent a deputy to the orchestra, and he registered the musicians—although sometimes not completely, because some musicians might have been out when the deputy visited. The reports are of varying quality and do not register all appearances of musicians and orchestras. Sometimes only the orchestra leader was mentioned, regardless of whether all band members came from one Local, or belonged to several Locals. A longer stay in the Local’s area sometimes required that all orchestra members had to temporarily transfer to the Local. That’s why on the excerpt above you can also see ”Transfers issued” and “Transfers withdrawn.”

Notice that after each group of musicians, their union Local number is given—for example, 208 was the Black musicians’ chapter in Chicago. Chicago had segregated musicians’ unions until 1966, as did many other cities. New York City never had separate Black and white musicians’ unions, only Local 802.

About the Hines personnel: Gail Brockman was a man, despite the name. Jacinto Chabania (misspelled in the union magazine as “Chambania”), was the birth name and legal name of Jerry Blake. (Thank you to subscriber Richard Schiavi for this information.) He was a respected musician of Cuban ancestry who had previously worked with Sam Wooding, Fletcher Henderson, and Cab Calloway, among others. Also, “Eckstein” was in fact Billy’s birth name. He didn’t use that spelling professionally, but did use it on legal documents such as union membership.

Notice that already by this time musicians who would be active in bebop are in the Hines band: trumpeter Benny Harris, trombonist Benny Green, and guitarist Skeeter Best. Saxophonist Budd Johnson was the key musician in the band before he left in December 1942, and he may have been responsible for bringing such artists into the group.

[Lew says: Thank you, Leif. In the next part Leif will look at reviews of the band during the months that Bird and Diz were members!

All the best,
Lewis]

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