RED NORVO AND HIS ORCHESTRA – 1937-1938 | The Classics Chronological Series – 1157 (2000) FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

In this segment of the Red Norvo story, the xylophonist's collaborations with his wife, Mildred Bailey, predominate. This was a fine jazz orchestra with excellent soloists. One great and glowing jewel in the band was clarinetist Hank D'Amico, and Norvo's sparkling percussive passages are always a delight. Each of the five instrumental tracks resound with that fascinating combination of xylophone and big band, tidy brass over solidly arranged reeds, and -- beginning in January of 1938 -- precision drumming by George Wettling, that mainstay of Eddie Condon and his Commodore jam bands. With 16 out of 24 tracks serving as features for Bailey's pleasant vocals, this package will satisfy anyone who has a taste for her style and personality. As always, most of her material deals with romance or heartbreak. She sounds quite pleasant during a handsome treatment of George Gershwin's "Love Is Here to Stay," but if you scratch beneath the surface of Tin Pan Alley, things don't always look so rosy. Johnny Mercer's catchy "Weekend of a Private Secretary" seems at first like a cute description of a naughty vacation, but the lyrics, penned by Nebraska native Bernie Hanighen, reveal the mottled underbelly of old-fashioned North American bigotry. As Bailey shrewdly pronounces the phrase "Cuban gent," the song quickly evolves into a flippant essay on Caucasian infatuation with The Exotic Other. Ultimately, she presents a crude list of social stereotypes that a working girl would be likely to encounter while seeking out male companionship. These include a slicker, a hick, a Reuben -- this was originally a carnival or circus term for a rustic rube -- and even that time-honored American racial epithet, "darky." The band is tight, maracas and all, and Norvo's xylophone sounds great surrounded by Caribbean rhythm effects, but rancid social undercurrents leave an odd taste in the mouth. Further ethical/ethnic discomfiture may be experienced while listening to "There's a Boy in Harlem," which must be the most racist opus ever contrived by the otherwise admirable songwriting team of Rodgers & Hart. While accurately admitting that "all the writers copy" an unidentified Afro-American composer, lyricist Larry Hart describes the "boy" as sloppily dressed (!) and even paraphrases a nasty figure of speech by referring to him as "this person in the woodpile." The fact that "Mr. and Mrs. Swing" elected to record these vulgar songs speaks volumes about the prevailing social climate during the 1930s and momentarily sheds an unseemly light on their respective careers. arwulf arwulf  
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RED NORVO AND HIS ORCHESTRA – 1938-1939 | The Classics Chronological Series – 1192 (2001) FLAC (tracks), lossless

This is the fourth volume in the chronologically reissued recordings of Red Norvo on Classics. Norvo was married to Mildred Bailey from 1933-1939, and they made a lot of records together. Every side that appeared under her own name has been brought out in a parallel series, while all those originally issued under the heading of the Red Norvo Orchestra are woven into the Norvo chronology. That is why there are several volumes in the Red Norvo story that feel a lot like chapters in the life and times of Mildred Bailey. This feisty little woman was at her best when singing wistful songs of love and longing in her rather small, warmly pleasant voice. She would also dig right into a hot swing number and could occasionally be heard encouraging the band with little energetic exclamations, slightly off-mike. With one exception, all of her performances on this disc have merit. Unable to shake an apparent penchant for topical inanities caricaturing ethnic minorities, Norvo and Bailey opted for something called "Wigwammin'." Recorded in June 1938, this trite piece of rubbish trivializes life on an Indian reservation with stupid lyrics and periodic choruses of Hollywood-style "Indian" war whoops from the band. Bailey sings on 11 out of 23 tracks, and thankfully the rest of her thematic choices were more dignified. "Put Your Heart in a Song" and "The Sunny Side of Things" constitute a pair of optimistic essays brimming with good advice. "Jump Jump's Here" is a smart strut, sounding like one of Lil Hardin Armstrong's enthusiastic routines. "Cuckoo in the Clock" and "A-Tisket, A-Tasket" typify Bailey's approach to the silly novelty genre. Fats Waller's version of Ella Fitzgerald's "Tasket" tune, recorded in London exactly one month to the day after Mildred's, would out-swing everybody else's renditions, including Ella's original. Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer's "You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby," introduced in the 1938 motion picture Jezebel, comes across like a charmingly antiquated piece of vaudeville, maybe even a throwback to the Paul Whiteman orchestra where Norvo and Bailey first met. This apparently deliberate spoof of older-styled entertainment features a rather funny, stilted vocal by "the Three Ickkies" -- Norvo, Bailey, and a guy by the name of Terry Allen. An ickkey, of course, was the official hep-talk tag for an un-hip individual. Speaking of ickkies, Norvo chose to sacrifice six entire tunes to Terry Allen, a morbidly tepid vocalist when left to his own designs. Only the band and the leader's xylophone solos redeem those ill-starred selections. Each of the five instrumental tracks are solidly swung, with the two Charlie Shavers compositions -- "Undecided" and "Rehearsin' for a Nervous Breakdown" -- sounding exceptionally fine. [Note that the enclosed discography contains a factual error, something relatively uncommon for the Classics label. Although personnel on the session dated September 29, 1938, lists essentially the John Kirby Sextet plus Red Norvo, this cannot be the case, as the Norvo big band is clearly audible, trombones and all.] The Norvo orchestra's personnel began to change, and irreversible damage was sustained when clarinetist Hank D'Amico left during the spring of 1939 to join Richard Himber. By June of that year, Norvo's orchestra would dissolve, paving the way for an entirely new phase of his career. arwulf arwulf  
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RED NORVO AND HIS ORCHESTRA – 1939-1943 | The Classics Chronological Series – 1232 (2002) FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

The first ten tracks of this fifth volume of Red Norvo's complete recordings document the gradual demise of Norvo's big band, a unit he'd fronted since January of 1936. Only one of these -- a jumpin' arrangement of "Some Like It Hot" -- is instrumental. Seven tracks are burdened with the vapid vocalizing of Terry Allen. Mildred Bailey sings "There'll Never Be Another You," not to be confused with the more famous song with a similar title, introduced in 1942 by Harry Warren and Mack Gordon. She also performs the weirdly infantile "Three Little Fishes," a goofy number that gooses her into sounding almost as silly as Mae Questal. Norvo disbanded the group in June of 1939, and briefly reassembled a different 15-piece ensemble to record four sides for Columbia in March of 1942. Mildred Bailey, who had recorded with Harry Sosnik's orchestra one month earlier, sat in to sing on what would number among the last records she would ever make with her ex-husband Red Norvo. "I'll Be Around" is gorgeous, not as stylized as Cab Calloway's marvelously polished version, but beautifully rendered with dramatic tenderness. The lively, humorous "Arthur Murray Taught Me Dancing in a Hurry" is one of her very best performances on record, fortified with a snappy infusion of rhumba rhythm and full-blown big-band swing. The next leg of Norvo's journey involved concentrated work for the war effort. He was one of the first to make lightweight 12" 78-rpm records for V-Disc, providing musical entertainment for armed forces personnel during the Second World War. As usual, spoken introductions were grafted onto some of the selections, first by vocalist Carol Bruce and even Norvo himself, who greets the troops before launching into what is apparently the first recording ever made of "1-2-3-4 Jump." This kickin' jam tune, which would serve him well in the years to come, is followed by three similarly exciting instrumentals, including an expanded five-minute treatment of Duke Ellington's "In a Mellow Tone." With these magnificent performances, Red Norvo attained artistic maturity as he prepared to accelerate his own stylistic evolution in a manner commensurate with the progressive jazz scene of the 1940s. arwulf arwulf    Tracklist + Credits :