Lennie Tristano, Lee Konitz, and Jimmy Raney: A Discovery!

I explained in a previous essay how it is that recordings of legendary jazz figures continue to turn up. The quick version is that even before tape-recording was widely available in the late 40s, a relatively small number of people had disc recorders. This one is different because it was recorded by a professional, Phil Featheringill, who owned the Session record label and record shop in Chicago, and left behind a number of unreleased items including this one. In May 1946, he recorded a short performance of “Yesterdays” by Lennie Tristano, Lee Konitz, and guitarist Jimmy Raney. There is also an unknown bassist, and a barely audible drummer using brushes. Konrad Nowakowski, a jazz researcher in Vienna, was kind enough to share this unique recording with us. A number of bassists and drummers who worked with Tristano are mentioned in the jazz magazines of that time. Nowakowski studied the possible artists, of those that are known, and he believes that on this recording it might be Gary Miller on bass and Wesley Landers on drums, mostly because they were then working with both Konitz and Raney in the local Jimmy Dale big band. Landers was an accomplished Black drummer who went on to perform and record with Gene Ammons, Sonny Clark and others.

Konitz and Tristano were born in Chicago. Raney was born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1927, and he is usually listed as making his first recordings in New York City in Jerry Wald’s band in February 1945 (and possibly 1944). But he wrote that he went to Chicago before he went to NYC, and in any case, on those Wald disks the guitar is only heard in the background. So this is his first recorded solo, at least. Featheringill became the Chicago jazz news correspondent for Metronome magazine in December 1943, and here’s his first mention of Raney, in November 1945:

Raney’s “local card” was his membership in the Chicago local of the musicians’ union, which would open up more gigs for him. Each local had a residency requirement—typically six months—that had to be satisfied before transferring from another city. (We talked about temporary transfers for touring bands, which were different, in an Earl Hines essay.)

Also in November 1945, Billboard magazine reported that Raney was a member of pianist Max Miller’s quartet, a job that didn’t require union membership:

To give you an idea of Miller’s style, which was largely dissonant chords, here is an original composition in two parts. This was recorded in 1950, but Miller made a recording of this in 1946 that was never released, so it’s likely something that Raney played with him. Starting in July 1946, after getting his local union card, Raney moved on to play in various big bands and small groups, and he stayed in Chicago until January 1948, when he began touring nationally with Woody Herman.

Raney’s memories of Miller and Tristano were not flattering. Here’s what he wrote in 1993):

The leader of the trio was a man named Max Miller…He was an accomplished vibraphonist but preferred to play the piano, on which his technique was quite limited. He had created a repertoire of originals and had quite a following…There was another style going at the time in Chicago. This was the Lenny (sic) Tristano style. We beboppers didn’t think much of Lenny, and vice versa. As far as I could figure out, nobody liked Lenny’s music except Lee Konitz and his mother. (Lenny’s mother, not Lee’s.) He hated our music and we hated his, and everyone else hated all of us.

Pretty intense, yes? It’s no wonder that Raney and Tristano never recorded together after this. Raney and Konitz did play gigs together, but rarely. (Raney’s whole essay is here—thank you to subscriber Nikolaus Schweizer for the link.)

On his Session label, Featheringill initially focused on reissues, and then, from late 1943 on he recorded boogie-woogie pianists such as Jimmy Yancey. But soon he became interested in Tristano’s music. In fact, he was the biggest early supporter of Tristano (before Barry Ulanov), and mentioned him favorably almost every month in Metronome starting in February 1944. (See the excellent Tristano biography by Eunmi Shim.) Also, Tristano’s first recording session in June 1945, as part of the sextet of saxophonist Emmett Carls, and his first solo piano works in the summer of 1946, were both produced by Featheringill, although they were not released until 1982.

Here is a close-up of the glass center of the disc, with Featheringill’s handwriting:

You can read “L. Tristano Jam” across the top, and also May 1946, CHGO (for Chicago), J. Rainey (sic), and you can barely see at the bottom right the name “Lee" and “itz” from “Konitz.” (The full name is readable in person.) In the center, “Yes.” means “Yesterdays,” and “Trist.” for “Tristano,” and again “jam.” Finally, “3-2” was some kind of catalog number.

During World War II, aluminum was in demand for the war effort, so some discs were made of glass during this era. As you can imagine, these were particularly fragile. Konrad lives in Vienna, so he had someone record the disc in San Francisco, where it turned up, before it was sent to him. The grooves near the center wouldn’t play properly and started skipping and repeating, so the music is incomplete. Unfortunately, the disc broke into two pieces during shipping to Vienna, so there will not be another chance to get those final seconds to play. However, the digital file was nicely restored by Hubert Stowitschek, known for his fine work for private collections and for several Document Records releases. Let’s listen:

Tristano is his typically brilliant self, full of ideas that spin out rapidly. Raney is a bit cautious. He plays long notes, but well-chosen ones. When Konitz starts to play, the rhythm section goes into double-time behind him. But at 2:40 it becomes clear that they are not all in the same place in the chord progression, so Lee drops out and lets Tristano take the lead, and the disc ends. It’s only during those last seconds that one hears the percussive accents of a drummer.

All the best,
Lewis