Edmond Hall & His Celeste Quartet
1. Edmond Hall Blues
2. Jammin’ in Four
3. Profoundly Blue
Billy Holiday Orchestra
4. Me Myself & I
Lionel Hampton Orchestra
5. My Buddy
Red Allen Orchestra
6. Down in Jungle Town
7. Canal St. Blues
Zutty Singleton Orchestra
8. King Porter Stomp
9. Shim-Me-Sha-Wabble
Edmond Hall and his Blue Note Jazz Men
10. High Society
11. Night Shift Blues
Coleman Hawkins with The Leonard Feather All Stars
12. Esquire Blues
Edmond Hall Sextet
13. The Man I Love
14. Downtown Café Boogie
Edmond Hall & his All Star Quintet
15. Rompin’ in 44
16. Smooth Sailin’
Edmond Hall Swingtet
17. It’s Been So Long
18. Big City Blues
Edmond Hall & his Quartet with Teddy Wilson
19. Sleepy Time Girl
20. It Had to be you
21. Caravan
22. Showpiece
The selection here focuses on the years between 1937 and 1944, thus avoiding those ubiquitous post-war carve-ups when Edmond Hall joined forces with Eddie
Condon. Instead we get the classic 1941 Celeste Quartet recordings, the excellent collaboration with Red Allen, the Blue Note sides and Commodores. That’s
the bare bones of a selection devoted to the wonderfully articulate clarinetist Edmond Hall.
The Celeste Quartet features two young guns in the shape of Charlie Christian, playing acoustic guitar, and Israel Crosby, with his big bass tone. Jammim’ in Four – all three compositions here are credited to Meade Lux Lewis – is a St Louis Blues type affair but brings out the best
in all four men. There’s a single track where Hall is in a group accompanying Billie Holiday, the lovely Me, Myself and I and where the pianist is
little-recalled James Sherman. A small band led by Lionel Hampton features the stellar talents of Coleman Hawkins, Benny Carter, Joe Sullivan, Freddie
Green, Artie Bernstein and Zutty Singleton but a meatier proposition emerges when Hall teams with his fellow Louisianan, Red Allen for a sequence of sides
on 28 May 1940. These are rather Old School tunes, but played with energy and verve – and it’s especially exciting to hear master drummer Singleton’s solo
on King Porter Stomp.
You couldn’t get much more of an all-star band than that formed for the Commodore session on 4 December 1943 –the band included none other than Cootie
Williams, Hawkins and Art Tatum under the aegis of Leonard Feather. It’s also interesting to hear pianist Eddie Heywood’s baroque stylings in the
recordings he made with Hall later that month – his boogie syntax is quite individualistic too. Rather subtler explorations of chamber jazz come in the
session made by Hall’s All Star Quintet – Red Norvo, Teddy Wilson, Carl Kress and Johnny Williams at the drums. These fluent sides don’t omit some bite in
Hall’s tone, that grit-in-the-oyster element that was so much a part of his musical armoury in addition to the kind of runs that Benny Goodman so
venerated. It’s also a fine selection to have included the Quartet sides with Wilson, Billy Taylor and Art Trappier which build up a virtuosic head of
steam when necessary.
Hall was a perfect fit for swing era small bands, and swung hard on whatever, whenever. This is a fine selection though I should warn prospective
purchasers that it’s a clone of ASV Mono Living Era CD AJA 5410 issued a number of years ago.
Jonathan Woolf
CD Reviews
RETROSPECTIVE RTR 4286
