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THE CONNOISSEUR’S FRANKIE NEWTON, HIS 25 FINEST 1937-39 |
RETROSPECTIVE RTR 4391 [79:59]
Frankie Newton and his Uptown Serenaders
Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone
You Showed Me The Way – with Clarence Palmer
Who’s Sorry Now?
I’ve Found a New Baby
There’s no Two Ways About It – with Slim Gaillard
The Brittwood Stomp
‘Cause My Baby Says It’s So – with Slim Gaillard
Easy Living – with Leon La Fell
Frankie Newton and his Orchestra
Rosetta
Minor Jive
The World is Waiting for the Sunrise
Who?
The Blues My Baby Gave to Me
Rompin’
Frankie Newton and his Quintet
Daybreak Blues
The Port of Harlem Jazzmen
Rockin’ the Blues
Port of Harlem Blues
Frankie Newton and his Café Society Orchestra
The Jitters
Tab’s Blues
Frankie’s Jump
Frankie Newton and his Quintet
After Hour Blues
Frankie Newton and his Café Society Orchestra
Jam Fever
The Port of Harlem Seven
Blues for Tommy Ladnier
Frankie Newton and his Café Society Orchestra
Vamp
The Port of Harlem Seven
Pounding Heart Blues
Why the ‘Connoisseur’s’ in the title? It’s really because Frankie Newton’s two-decade recording career has no obvious and definable focus, and his studio recordings are spread across a wide variety of contexts, from Big Bands thorough accompaniments to singers to many small New York bands. I sense the focus here has been to strip away some of these elements and fix on his own small bands, variously his Uptown Serenaders and his Café Society Orchestra, augmented by those sides he made for The Port of Harlem Jazzmen (or Seven). The results are invariably illuminating, for his tonal beauty, his inventive lead, predilection for the blues, and his object-lesson use of the sudden flurry, like a racehorse flaring its nostrils.
Retrospective focuses on the tight three-year period 1937-39. This allows the label to start with a seven-track introduction from his Uptown Serenaders, a band that included Edmond Hall, Pete Brown, Russell Procope and Cecil Scott in the reeds – no other brass, note – and motored by the great Cozy Cole. These are some of his most sublime and authoritative records, his lead infectiously lyric, refined and unexpected. Edmond Hall plays with his characteristic control but it’s Pete Brown, huffing and puffing on alto who really drives things, rhythmically pushing at the beat like a mastiff on a leash, effervescent and alive. Newton really unveils his dextrous playing when soloing on I Found a New Baby, a coloratura example of his precisely placed genius. This soloistic verve never gets out of hand – Newton had far too much taste – unlike the occasional grandstanding of Roy Eldridge or Charlie Shavers. A couple of these sides have hipper-than-hip wit from vocalist Slim Gaillard.
The grandly titled Frankie Newton and his Orchestra was simply another small band with Mezz Mezzrow, Pete Brown again, James P Johnson adding serious ballast at the piano stool, guitarist Al Casey, bassist John Kirby and Cole once more. They play six pieces at a single session made on 13 January 1939. Newton is superb as ever here but it’s Pete Brown, and especially on The World is Waiting for the Sunrise, who takes off with irrepressible and indestructible swing. James P Johnson too shows his chops in the fast Stride he unveils on The Blues My Baby Gave to Me where Newton shows just what an articulate player he is with the mute - for which he had a penchant – whilst Casey takes a fine guitar solo. Mezzrow, for the most part (thankfully) is quiet.
On the same day that he made a number of recordings with the Port of Harlem Jazzmen – 7 April 1939 – he recorded Daybreak Blues with just the band’s rhythm section and it perhaps inevitably shares a mood with the later session material, notably Port of Harlem Blues where one finds the great trombonist J.C. Higginbotham added to the mix. Blues for Tommy Ladnier, the trumpeter who had just died, is of major interest both for Newton’s playing as well as that of Sidney Bechet. I happen to love the Port of Harlem sessions but they were very erratically recorded and some sides were downright poor so I suppose a compilation has to tread carefully. Blue Note reissued the complete sides nearly 30 years ago and Newton plays on six of the ten tracks, the remainder of that CD being bulked out with Sidney Bechet’s Blue Note Quartet and five sides by guitarist Teddy Bunn.
The Café Society Orchestra included Tab Smith and pianist Kenny Kersey amongst its personnel and supported Newton well. The saxes play with verve on The Jitters, Tab Smith’s composition, and it’s this title and its material that encourage Newton to play with an such unaccustomed but sparklingly histrionic intensity. A later iteration of the ensemble saw the appearance of trombonist Dicky Wells; the selected example here is Vamp. The inclusion of Wells points to previous exclusions of trombonists in some other sessions, so maybe Newton thought ensemble was better uncluttered by another brass player. Soon after the last Quintet session with what was the Port of Harlem rhythm section Newton returned to the theme with After Hours Blues, this time with another Boogie pianist on board, Meade Lux Lewis, who replaced Albert Ammons. They’re very much cut from the same cloth.
Newton died in 1954 at the early age of 48. He was a major talent and a man of wide interests, reading and political and social convictions. These are his finest recordings, made under his own name with hand-picked colleagues. There are some fine ensembles to be heard, in good sound, some flights of soloistic brilliance from a number of players and through it all, the assurance and inventiveness of Newton himself. Digby Fairweather’s booklet notes offer their own classy panorama of the life and legacy of William Frank Newton, from Emory, Virginia.
Jonathan Woolf