The All-America Swing Band Selected by Paul Whiteman
September 10, 1938, of Collier’s, includes an article by Paul Whiteman where he discusses his choice of musicians for the “All-America Swing Band.”
Whiteman writes:
I am going to pick the All-America supercolossal swing band of our time… One more thing before we go into our dance: A good swingman is a good musician. I have nothing but contempt for the so-called highbrow music lovers who look at swing with contempt… Every man I’m picking on my All-America team, except one, is a fine reader of music… I am not only presenting the greatest swing band in the country; I am presenting a group of the best musicians in the country. I said that one of my selections [Art Tatum who was blind] can’t read music. I’ll explain that when I come to it.
Here they are folks:
- Guitar Carl Kress **
- Alto Sax Jimmy Dorsey **
- Alto Sax Benny Carter
- Tenor Sax Ed Miller **
- C melody Sax Frankie Trumbauer **
- Trumpet Manny Klein
- Trumpet Charlie Teagarden **
- Trumpet Roy Elridge
- Trumpet Louis Armstrong
- Trombone Tommy Dorsey **
- Trombone Jackson Teagarden **
- Trombone Jack Jenney
- Piano Art Tatum
- Piano Bob Zurke
- Accordion Tito
- Violin Joe Venuti **
- Violin Al Duffy
- Violin Matty Malneck **
- Violin Eddie South
- Bass Violin Bobby Haggart
- Clarinet Benny Goodman **
- Clarinet Artie Shaw **
- Vibraharp Adrian Rollini **
- Drums Gene Krupa **
- Drums Ray Bauduc **
The stars following the name identify the musicians who recorded and/or played with Bix (slightly more than half of the musicians chosen by Whiteman). Of course, Bix (also Eddie Lang) is not on the list; only living musicians were included.
Whiteman commented on every one of the choices he made. I copy here a few selected ones directly relevant to the subject of Bixology:
- Frankie Trumbauer is going to play the C melody sax on my team and you know that there is no one in the country within a mile of Frankie. Did you ever hear him play “Singin’ the Blues” as a solo? Man, you ain’t heard nothing if you ain’t heard Frankie give that one out.
- Now we come to the trumpet, and when you mention the word trumpet you think of Bix Beiderbecke. Bix was the “Beau Geste” of the trumpet; he was supreme at his style. I have seen swing fans shake their heads in admirationafter hearing a trumpet play a chorus and have heard them say, “That guy is so great that he never plays a chorus twice the same way.” That’s another fallacy about swing I would like to nail. Any time Bix played a chorus it was almost a complete composition in itself. And when he got it right he kept it in unless he could improve it.
- Once I heard Bix shake his head sadly after hearing a trumpet player say, “He plays so many notes and they mean so little.” Bix was a noted miser. He never played an unnecessary note or an accidental one. The sheer beauty of some of his passages rings in my ear as I write this. It’s too bad that Bix had to go.
- Manny Klein is my first selection on the trumpet. I will say without qualification that Manny Klein is the greatest all-around trumpet player alive today. That takes in a lot of territory but not too much for Manny to cover.
- I know that Rex Stewart of Duke Ellington’s band is terrific and I know some think Bunny Berigan could chase them all out of town, but right now I come to picking a trumpet player about whom there will be no argument. If anyone objects to my putting Louis Armstrong on our All-America band, I will swing a viola around his neck.
Louis started the present style of swinging a trumpet and he has popularized it and thousands are now copying Ol’ Satchmo’ Armstrong. If I ever took an All-America swing band to Europe without Armstrong, those British swing fans would tosss me right out. Satchmo’ can do a great many things. You haven’t lived until you have heard him sing “Jonah in the Belly of the Whale;” and you haven’t heard real swing if you haven’t heard Armstrong on hat trumpet. Now if Armstrong couldn’t play a note, I’d still want him around. He is the greatest ad-lib. entertainer I know, a cheerful, happy-go-lucky son of a gun.
Some rather provocative comments, in particular Whiteman’s assertion about the “myth” of Bix never playing a chorus the same way twice.
I am grateful to an anonymous Bixophile and to Rich Johnson for calling my attention to this article on 4/11/03.