Jimmie Blanton: Recordings BEFORE Ellington! Guest Post by Matthias Heyman, 2 of 2 (+Bonus Recordings)

(Paying Subscribers, at the bottom you’ll find all four recordings by the Jeter-Pillars band with Blanton! Remember, a paid subscription unlocks all bonus items, about 75 to date.)

In part one we established that, contrary to popular belief, the bassist on the four tracks that the Jeter-Pillars band recorded on 25 and 26 August 1937, was not Vernon King but Jimmie Blanton. As evidence, I pointed to there being four period witnesses, all members of the Jeter-Pillars “Club Plantation Orchestra” (named for the nightclub where they appeared), and I observed that later recordings of King don’t resemble the bass work on those 1937 records. In this post, we’re going to take a deep dive into this music and see whether particular aspects stand out that could help us confirm that it is indeed Blanton we’re hearing.

Three songs of this recording session, “Make Believe,” “I’ll Always Be in Love with You,” and “Lazy Rhythm,” have relatively run-of-the-mill accompaniments, in fact so much so that any competent bass player of the 1930s could have played those. It is, however, the bass part on “I Like Pie, I Like Cake (But I Like You Best of All),” composed in 1925 by George A. Little, Larry Shay and Arthur Sizemore, and arranged for this session by the band’s house arranger, LaVelle “Buggs” Roberts, that has some telling moments that point to Blanton:

Mind you, this isn’t the mature Blanton we hear on the later Ellington records. Instead, we hear newbie Blanton making his debut as a recording artist, mere weeks upon embarking upon his first steps as a professional. Revealing moments include a richly embellished walking bass line and a short solo, both discussed further below, and a short melodic statement, first alone, then together with guitarist Floyd Smith. Let’s hear that melodic statement now:

Although his style had not yet fully evolved, some of the key characteristics can already be detected. Many of Blanton’s lines, both solo and accompanying, are built from basic diatonic scales and arpeggios. Over time, he increasingly used more chromatic passing notes, as demonstrated in such 1940 records as “Jack the Bear” and “Harlem Airshaft,” but diatonicism would always lie at the heart of his playing. In “I Like Pie,” his bass line is constructed rather straightforwardly, but he does add a few chromatic passing notes to ensure smooth harmonic transition. For example in every A-section’s second measure he plays C7 along with the pianist when moving into F7. You can hear that in this passage:

Also, Blanton infuses his lines with rhythmical embellishments, mainly underneath the group vocal, using drops to create forward momentum. This develops into a very active bass line which acts, at the end of this excerpt, as an improvised counterpoint to Smith’s guitar solo:

This near-duet—a few piano chords are also heard—foreshadows how Blanton would develop heavily embellished accompaniments throughout his tenure with Ellington, reaching a point where he nearly obliterates the distinction between accompanying and soloing. A case in point is his marvelous playing during this tutti (full band) chorus towards the end of “Bli-Blip,” recorded with Ellington on 26 September 1941:

Or consider this rendition of Billy Strayhorn’s “Take the ‘A’ Train” from an Ellington broadcast of Kraft Music Hall on 9 October 1941, the final time Blanton was caught on record:

Playing such busy bass lines wasn’t standard practice in this era, some notable exceptions being John Kirby, Artie Bernstein, and Walter Page—the focus of one of Lewis Porter’s earlier posts in this series—all of whom would grace some of Billie Holiday’s 1930s sessions with such interactive lines.

Back to “I Like Pie,” Blanton gets a two-bar solo break which is simple but effective. While the harmonic material is basic, he uses a variety of rhythms while giving his line an arch-like shape—a characteristic that many of his later lines exhibit—creating a climax on the C3:

Another key element of his style already found here is the triplet, a figure that strongly dominates many of his lines with Ellington—most notably on the 1939 duet “Blues” and the 1940 orchestral feature “Sepia Panorama.” In the final eight bars of “I Like Pie,” Blanton adds another type of variation to his accompaniment by mirroring the anticipated rhythm of the vocals:

Overall, the bass playing on this recording session (of which all four titles are complete, below, for Paying Subscribers) exhibits few of the innovations that would later distinguish Blanton from many of his peers, but it does reveal a kernel of his future style, hinting at his potential in the years to come. And the tone and execution sound like Blanton. Overall, there is certainly enough audible evidence, combined with the witnesses cited before, to say that it is indeed Blanton. Furthermore, it is likely that the recordings do not show his capacities to the fullest. As noted, this session took place mere weeks after his joining the Jeter-Pillars band, and Blanton might not have yet been fully integrated into this long-standing group, with most of its other members having being tenured for several years. Furthermore, this was Blanton’s recording debut, the studio being a new and very different environment from the dance halls, clubs, school cafeterias, and sports fields where he was accustomed to perform.

Recollections by those who heard Blanton in St. Louis suggest that in live situations, he reached out far more than these records reveal. Bassist John Simmons caught a performance of the Jeter-Pillars organization while on a stop-over in St. Louis, on his way back East after his first recording sessions, which were held in Los Angeles. Upon hearing his fellow bass player, he was so dumbfounded that he felt like he “ran into the monster,” and was particularly taken by the interplay between Blanton and Floyd Smith, the guitarist, some of which can be heard on “I Like Pie, I Like Cake” (Simmons in his oral history, p. 45). It seemed that Jimmie’s playing was considered so progressive, at least by St. Louis norms, that it was frowned upon by many local musicians. Bassist Wendell Marshall, Blanton’s first cousin, recalls that “when [Blanton] first came here, a lot of people didn’t like what he was playing, they didn’t understand it because he was playing more than they had ever heard… [S]o when he began to play things with the ensemble or [in] counterpoint … a lot of them said: ‘What is he trying to do?’” (Marshall, radio interview by Phil Schaap, WKCR, 24 October 2000, courtesy of Ken Steiner.) He adds that his cousin “would play with the band, against the band, in front of the band, he would pull them and push them. And nobody had ever heard anything like that.” (Marshall, radio interview by T. Sharif Abdul-Hakim, KJLU, 29 April 1998, courtesy of Lewis Porter.) Unfortunately, none of this has been properly documented on this first session, but it suggests that Blanton was already pushing the envelope prior to his joining Ellington.

Naturally, he was not the only forward-thinking bass player in the mid-1930s. On a national scale, a number of others, many older but some about the same age as Blanton, were expanding the limits of jazz bass playing, and only a handful were caught on record doing so. Take for example Israel Crosby (1919–1962), who in 1935, at the tender age of sixteen, recorded “Blues of Israel,” or the four-years older Leroy ‘Slam’ Stewart (1914–1987), who starting February 1938, waxed a whole series of bowed solos as part of the novelty duo Slim and Slam. These men and their innovative bass lines were more exception than rule, but it hints at the fact that Blanton was not alone in trying to further the functional, technical, and creative boundaries of the string bass, contrary to what many claim.

Blanton remained a sideman of the Jeter-Pillars Club Plantation Orchestra for one year. During this time, he not only gained his first experience recording, he also learned much about the demanding routine of playing at night clubs and dance halls. As Singleton Palmer, a fellow bassist working with Eddie Johnson’s Crackerjacks, remembers, the Club Plantation “was a good place to work. It just had long hours… Nine-thirty to 4 in the morning… And then you had to play three shows a night for the chorus girls… and play for different acts that would come in.” This would allow Blanton to gain stamina and help him become a versatile performer, not just playing dance music but also accompanying vocalists, comedy acts, and all sorts of novelty routines. Additionally, Marshall’s earlier comments suggest that Jeter and Pillars gave their bassist some artistic license to fully explore the technical and creative capacities of his instrument. All these experiences would prove extremely valuable for his future tenure with Ellington. In the summer of 1938, Blanton left the Jeter-Pillars organization for unknown reasons and became a freelancer on the vibrant St. Louis jazz scene, hiring out his services to leaders such as Fate Marable (whom he joined on riverboat cruises during the summers), Eddie Randle, Eddie Johnson, and Dewey Jackson.

And in November 1939, he was engaged by Ellington, and from then on, his short but groundbreaking career is well documented.

[Thank you Matthias for this great work! David Palmquist has nicely summarized the details of Blanton’s time with Duke here. Dr. Heyman’s research has greatly expanded what we know of Blanton’s life and career.

All the best,
Lewis