During the two decades that followed the end of World War II in 1945, independent record labels flourished. Many of these micro labels succeeded by specializing in specific types of music that the more bland-minded giants—RCA, Columbia and Decca—largely ignored. In the process, these small labels wound up establishing beachheads for new music genres and cornering the market for the genres' best musicians and singers.
Tiny specialty labels in the late 1940s, '50s and early '60s included Four Star (country), Sun (rockabilly), King (R&B), Atlantic (gospel-R&B), Vanguard (folk), Motown (soul-pop), Stax (Southern horn-based soul) and Philles (pop-rock). Perhaps the very first of these themed indy labels was Savoy, which gave bebop credibility and momentum starting in 1945.
Savoy was founded by Herman Lubinsky (above) in late 1942, just after the start of the first of two American Federation of Musicians' recording bans. The bans prohibited union musicians from working for record companies, which in 1942 mostly meant the Big Three—RCA, Columbia and Decca. But in 1943, when a nearly bankrupt Decca agreed to pay royalties into a union fund to be used for the hiring of musicians at events, dozens of small labels emerged to take the same deal and carve out niches in the recording market.
At first, Savoy's mission was rather aimless, recording forgettable sides in 1943 by no-name combos such as the Original Kings of Harmony and Teddy Tucker's Band. The following year, Savoy took a bolder step by recording Swing-era and blues stars such as "Hot Lips" Page, Don Byas, Teddy Wilson and Tiny Grimes.
Savoy's big change arrived in early 1945 with the hiring of Teddy Reig (above, in 1948), who had a sterling eye and ear for a new form of jazz emerging in New York clubs. This music scrapped swing-band dance tempos for the inventiveness of individual musicians and small combos.
Named "bebop" in 1946 by the jazz press, the music's tempo was fast, and only those who knew the music's complex rules could improvise with authority and flare. Making up fresh melody and harmony lines at breakneck tempos was akin to French chefs plating meals perfectly on the backs of pickup trucks barreling down a dirt road. Bebop's art rested on the articulation of gutsy ideas, blues sensibility, limber dexterity and a burning desire to stand out with passion and velocity. [Photo above of Dizzy Gillespie]
Much of the bebop recorded by Savoy starting in 1945 relied on the impeccable taste of Reig, who early on identified the circus-like excitement and edge of the new music and artists. Bebop wasn't just melodies played fast. It was an deft articulation, a new way of looking at the world and fitting in based on one's abilities, not one's race. [Photo above of Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray]
Bebop began to formulate in the early 1940s in the hands of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, who arrived at the same musical place separately. By May 1945, bop congealed when Gillespie and Parker began recording together for Savoy. Though other labels had recorded bop by then, including Guild, Musicraft and Continental, Savoy, through Reig, brought something special to the mix. There was sophisticated wit and an intellectual hipness that transcended musical wheel-spinning and flamboyance. You could hear the drive and daring simmering within the grooves of recordings. [Photo above of Howard McGhee]
Now Mosaic Records has assembled all of Savoy's non-Parker bebop sessions in a new box—Classic Savoy Be-Bop Sessions 1945-49, a 10-CD set with a 32-page booklet with photos, liner notes by Bob Porter and Neil Tesser, and detailed discographical information. For too long, Parker has stood large as bebop's godfather, and rightfully so. He was easily the form's most lyrical and most breathtaking practitioner. But in fairness, he wasn't the only one, not by a mile.
The new Savoy box features 216 tracks that have been warmly remastered, providing the listener with several marvelous narratives. There's the reveal of bebop's subtext thriving in Parker's shadow between 1945 and '49. There's the story of the label's shrewd choices in musicians to record. But best of all is the chronological evidence of bebop's evolution from its birth in Harlem's after-hours clubs in the early 1940s to the arrival of cool jazz in 1949 with Capitol's cool-jazz recordings by Lennie Tristano, Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh in March of that year. [Photo above of Kai Winding]
Under the auspices of Reig, Savoy's bop run (sans Parker) began with Dexter Gordon in October 1945 and Kai Winding in December. But if Reig had hoped to turn Savoy into a Parker palace, he was sadly mistaken. When Parker left for Los Angeles at the tail end of 1945 and didn't return until mid-1947. Reig was forced to amp up his search for the bop's brightest lights. The list includes Allen Eager, J.J. Johnson, Stan Getz, Sonny Stitt, Kenny Dorham, Fans Navarro, Gil Fuller, Ray Brown, Eddie Davis, Serge Chaloff, Kenny Hagood, John Lewis, Leo Parker, Tadd Dameron, Howard McGhee, Brew Moore and Kenny Clarke, along with the dozens of sidemen who accompanied these session leaders. [Photo above of Stan Getz]
What you learn by listening to the Savoy bop recordings in chronological order is how loose and inventive the music became over time. What began as rigid ensembles playing bop lines in unison before soloists took flight became much more loose and peppery by 1946. You can hear this in Eddie Davis's Just a Mystery in '46 and Fats Navarro's Eb Pob in '47. The Serge Chaloff Sextette upped the frantic ante while Dameron's sides and Navarro's Nostalgia introduced a cosmopolitan sheen. By 1949, J.J. Johnson's Goof Square and Brew Moore's Mud Bug had the smoothness of an automatic transmission. [Photo above of Tadd Dameron]
The box ends in mid-1949 with Fuller's orchestral session, which sounds over-sized, like a rhinoceros ice-skating. Fuller's material was a miracle to play and hear, but by then, a new jazz revolution was underway, a drier, airier approach that critics would come to call cool jazz. Between 1945 and '49, jazz shifted from collective swing to the remarkable skills of the individual. Mosaic's new Savoy box and notes document this jazz period brilliantly through the catalog of a single label. Most interesting of all, perhaps, is that the music is still Jell-O bouncy and highly electrifying. [Photo above, from left, Dizzy Gillespie and Gil Fuller]
JazzWax tracks: You'll find Mosaic's Classic Savoy Be-Bop Sessions 1945-49, a 10-CD set here. And if you don't have Mosaic's The Complete Dial Modern Jazz Sessions, order it as well (here). Both are important jazz history lessons. You'll cry when the limited editions are gone and you held off.
JazzWax clips: Here's tenor saxophonist Stan Getz in July 1946 playing Running Water with Hank Jones (p) Curly Russell (b) and Max Roach (d)...
Here's bassist Ray Brown with Dizzy Gillespie and Dave Burns (tp), John Brown (as), James Moody (ts), Milt Jackson (vib), Hank Jones (p) and Joe Harris (d), with Gil Fuller (arr), playing Smokey Hollow Jump in September 1946...
Here's tenor saxophonist Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis in December 1946 playing Red Pepper with Fats Navarro (tp) Al Haig (p) Huey Long (g) Gene Ramey (b) and Denzil Best (d)...
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