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.