The Jazz Aficionado’s Holiday Wish List

Traditionally, this space has been reserved, as the holiday season approaches, for gift recommendations of records or books. As a rule, they are dealt with separately, but this year the proliferation of jazz literature and CDs has made it possible to suggest several matched sets, in which a given artist is well-represented both on record and in a recent addition to the bookshelf.

“The Benny Goodman Yale Archives, Vol. I.” Music Masters CIL 60142Z.

“Benny Goodman and the Swing Era” by James Lincoln Collier (Oxford University Press: $22.95).

Three days before his death in 1986, Benny Goodman donated his memorabilia and many master tapes to the music library archives at Yale. Vol. I is of rare interest, spanning 1955-86 and taking in live sessions (at the Rainbow Grill, Basin Street East and the Brussels World’s Fair) along with several studio groups. Aside from two pieces by Bobby Gutesha, a Yugoslavian composer, these are mostly retreads of material Goodman recorded often before, but the great diversity of personnel provides for constant surprises: next up may be Teddy Wilson or Roland Hanna or Dave McKenna on piano, Flip Phillips or Zoot Sims or Paul Quinichette on tenor, etc. The maestro is in generally impeccable form.

The Goodman biography succeeds, despite the extensive shelf of material already available, in shedding new light. Collier has done his research well. Moreover, he deals very fairly with Goodman’s strange personality and evokes the Zeitgeist of the pre-swing and swing eras. This is far superior to his too often negatively slanted Armstrong and Ellington studies, and may well stand up as the definitive Goodman reference work.

“Mostly Blues.” Lionel Hampton. Music Masters CIJD 60168 K.

“Hamp” by Lionel Hampton with James Haskins (Warner Books: $19.95).

Because Hampton is seldom heard in an intimate setting, the two 1988 quintet dates here are of special interest. The title is misleading; only three of the nine cuts are actually blues, but Hampton’s unflagging energy and inspiration are consistently on display. The rhythm sections are not up to his requirements, despite some generally helpful piano by Bobby Scott.

The problem with ghost-written autobiographies is that the authors seldom seem to read them. Haskins reconstructs Hampton’s childhood in Louisville and Chicago, his early bandleading career and subsequent discovery by Benny Goodman, but his research is badly flawed. He has Hampton saying, “I played vibes on ‘Evil Gal Blues’ and ‘Salty Papa Blues’ ” (with Dinah Washington), when in fact he played nothing on either. Worse, Haskins has Hampton making LPs with his own band in 1944, five years before LPs existed. Still, the story of Hampton’s late wife steering him relentlessly and acquisitively into fame and millions (which he has since multiplied) makes for fascinating reading.

“At the Jazz Band Ball” Eddie Condon/Muggsy Spanier/Bud Freeman. RCA Bluebird 6752-2-RB.

“Crazeology” by Bud Freeman as told to Robert Wolf (University of Illinois Press: $15.95).

Starting with two early, obscure Condon cuts (with Jack Teagarden as vocalist), the traditionalist CD proceeds to the classic 1939 sessions by cornetist Spanier, among them the blues “Relaxin’ at the Touro,” named for the New Orleans hospital where he came close to death in 1938. Even more interesting are the final four cuts by Bud Freeman’s Summa Cum Laude octet, with Pee Wee Russell, Condon and Max Kaminsky. Freeman’s was the only tenor sax sound to achieve, in those days, a sound and style as distinctly personal as Coleman Hawkins’. “The Eel,” his original blues, is a miniature masterpiece.

Freeman’s use of a ghost writer is curious, since he had already written two books without help. With a foreword by Studs Terkel, he tells his story succinctly (only 90 pages of actual text), recalling frankly and incisively everyone from Bix Beiderbecke and Louis Armstrong to Benny Goodman (“Working for Benny was the most miserable experience of my life”). Freeman, the world traveler, now back in his native Chicago, is still playing at 83.

“New Life (Dedicated to Max Gordon)” Thad Jones/Mel Lewis. A & M CD 0810.

“Barney, Bradley and Max” by Whitney Balliett (Oxford University Press: $19.95).

The reissue of an album made in 1976, when the Jones/Lewis band was at its creative zenith (aided on some cuts by a French horn section and tuba), offers a reminder of how valuable Max Gordon was in keeping this ensemble alive through a series of weekly dates at his Village Vanguard. The originals by Jones (also by Jerry Dodgion and Cecil Bridgewater) are peppered with vital solos. The notes on the CD require several magnifying glasses to be legible, but forget it; the music speaks grandiloquently for itself.

Max Gordon is the subject, along with Barney Josephson and Bradley Cunningham, in the title of Whitney Balliett’s latest collection of pieces (all three bonifaces died within a year or so before the book was assembled). Balliett brings them vividly back to life, alongside portraits of Buddy de Franco (previously unpublished), Goodman, Charlie Parker and 10 others. Written between 1971 and 1987, these evocative essays make one regret that the author appears so rarely in the New Yorker these days.

If Balliett is second to none in his field, Gene Lees is second only to Balliett. His “Singers and the Song,” just reissued in paperback (Oxford University Press: $8.95), begins with a wonderfully witty and perceptive chapter on how to write (and how not to write) lyrics, proceeding therefrom to examinations of the artistry of Johnny Mercer, Peggy Lee, Frank Sinatra and others. The final chapter is an intriguing autobiographical account of Lees’ trip to Cologne to record an album with Sarah Vaughan and Lalo Schifrin.

Lees wrote the foreword for Doug Ramsey’s “Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of Its Makers” (University of Arkansas Press: $22.95), a miscellany of generally perceptive pieces on dozens of jazzmen. Some of the older essays from the 1960s have diminished in value, but Ramsey is a sensitive and entertaining writer.