The Storyville Jazz Portraits by Johannes Vennekamp

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Billie Holiday, Voice, Johannes Vennekamp

The Marr Sound Archives handed me an uncatalogued box set containing 12 CD’s from the Norman Saks Collection. Each disc contains a compilation of works featuring a single jazz musician in an ensemble. I opened the linen-covered box to find not only the 12 CD’s inside but also a linen folder with 12 mind-blowing art prints by artist Johannes Vennekamp.

Vennekamp depicts the face of each of the twelve artists in pen and ink sketches with some additional coloration. Upon closer observation, the staffs, notes, clef signs, geometrical lines, and instruments depicted around and across these faces all indicate the mental processes associated with a musician’s performance style. Performers must adjust their pitch, dynamic level, and rhythm to blend and balance with the rest of the ensemble while simultaneously playing or singing the correct notes in the correct key and time signatures.

Then add to this process what the mind of a jazz performer must use in order to accomplish the additional tasks required of improvisation. These additional tasks require the musician to not only be in the current performance moment, but to also be thinking ahead to how he or she is going to serve up their variation of the melody in solo form. Their mind is now split between the current moment and a future moment in which notes should be bent, melodic phrases should be played louder or softer, a jazz scale of that key should allow an attractive solo within the melodic line, and rhythmic changes should be accomplished without losing the rest of the accompanying ensemble members.

How does one depict this mental process in artistic form?

Take the Sidney Bechet print as an example: The music staffs and notes are above, across, and below his face. The music rising from his saxophone ascends, bends and twists together like smoke rising from a familiar cigar. Or maybe the music descends from the white light of music above his head in a waterfall of splashing tones and rhythm. The music is so imbedded in his soul that it even comes out as wrinkles in his forehead.

Sidney Bechet, Sax, by Johannes Vennekamp.

Sidney Bechet, Sax, by Johannes Vennekamp.

The next example is the pianist Art Tatum’s print: Art’s mind is divided precisely by geometrical arrows of rhythm and yet the lines of music around his head are bent. The collar of his suit jacket is a treble clef staff. The picture ends with a whimsical man whose body is yet another staff. The words in German across the bottom state, “So it is.” So it is that the music will be bent and whimsical while following the rules of time and key signature.

Art Tatum, piano, by Johannes Vennekamp

Art Tatum, piano, by Johannes Vennekamp

Coleman Hawkins’ portrait depicts him taking a break from playing, with a sideways glance back to the ensemble. The bent lines around his cheeks and ears not only demonstrate that he’s listening, but that he’s pleased with what he hears. To me, the word “Zeit” (“time” in English) and the “f-hole” of the bass with the bent arrow beside it denotes that he’s listening to the drummer and bass player set him for his solo.

    Coleman Hawkins, sax, by Johannes Vennekamp

Coleman Hawkins, sax, by Johannes Vennekamp

 

We’ll end with Ben Webster’s portrait. With each bent staff around him there are the words “fire, air, water, earth.” It’s as if Ben is calling forth all of the elements of the universe to accomplish his statement made through his improvised solo.

Ben Webster, sax, by Johannes Vennekamp

Ben Webster, sax, by Johannes Vennekamp

I don’t know if all of the details of these portraits can ever be absorbed, but isn’t that just like trying to improvise a melodic line? It’s always new, never predictable, in the moment yet beyond the moment. These portraits depict jazz precisely.

To see all of the portraits, feel free to come by The Marr Sound Archives and ask for “Masters of Jazz, vol. 1-12” on Storyville Records. Listen to the music as you study the portraits. You won’t regret it.

Vicki Kirby catalogs special formats metadata for UMKC Libraries.

Melba Liston: Trombone!

Photo Courtesy:  The Girls in the Band.

Photo Courtesy: The Girls in the Band.

I was quietly cataloging LP’s for Marr Archives from the Norman Saks Collection, when a local Kansas City artist caught my attention. IT WAS A WOMAN! It was a female jazz musician from Kansas City and it was not Mary Lou Williams or Julia Lee. As most women in jazz are known for singing or piano, I was doubly surprised to find that this female jazz artist was a TROMBONE player.

Melba Liston, the jazz trombonist, was born in Kansas City on January 13, 1926. She played with all of the great bands: Gerald Wilson, Dexter Gordon, Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, and Quincy Jones.

She endured the abuse that many female jazz performers endured during that time and was outspoken about that mistreatment. This exploitation caused her to leave music for a while. She spent most of her years in California, but finally came back to music and music education in the 70’s. This brought her back to Kansas City for the Kansas City Women’s Jazz Festival with her band “Melba Liston Company”.

Even after a stroke, Melba continued to write and arrange music that melded African Rhythms with American Jazz.

The Marr Sound Archives carries many recordings featuring Melba Liston, but one of my favorite songs is “Pow” from the Melba and Her Bones LP on MGM’s Metro Jazz label.

Walter Page, Charlie Persip, Buck Clayton, Melba Liston, and an unidentified musician performing on stage. Photo Courtesy: The Buck Clayton Collection, LaBudde Special Collections.

Walter Page, Charlie Persip, Buck Clayton, Melba Liston, and an unidentified musician performing on stage. Photo Courtesy: The Buck Clayton Collection, LaBudde Special Collections.

Melba Liston performs with Dizzy Gillespie's Big Band. Photo Courtesy: The Charlie Menees Collection, LaBudde Special Collections.

Melba Liston performs with Dizzy Gillespie’s Big Band. Photo Courtesy: The Charlie Menees Collection, LaBudde Special Collections.

Photo courtesy The Jimmy and Jeannie Cheatham Collection, LaBudde Special Collections.

Photo courtesy: The Jimmy and Jeannie Cheatham Collection, LaBudde Special Collections.

Contributed by Vicki Kirby, Library Information Specialist II and Special Formats Cataloger

Glenn Miller and the American Band of the Allied Expeditionary Forces’ Propaganda Broadcasts

gmiller1The Marr Sound Archives holds two albums from the uncommon broadcast recordings of Major Glenn Miller and the American Band of the Allied Expeditionary Forces. These two albums are compilations of recordings over the American Broadcasting Station in Europe, EMI Studio, St. John’s Wood, Abbey Road, London England and are simply titled “Major Glenn Miller and the A.E.F. Orchestra.”

Miller was fulfilling a request by the Office of War Information to broadcast the orchestra’s performance under his direction to the German military and German prisoners of war. The propaganda broadcasts were intended to show Germans that the Allies wanted inclusion of all countries in the quest for peace and that American music and life among the Allies was lively, lovely, and upbeat.

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Glenn Miller and “Ilse Weinberger” at an ABSIE microphone, London, England, 30 October, 1944. Photo courtesy: The Glenn Miller Army Air Force Band: I Sustain the Wings: Volumes 1 and 2 by Edward F. Polic.

German “Ilse Weinberger” serves as announcer with Glenn Miller, at times, answering her in pretty bad German, but mostly speaking in English between the performances of 13 works. It is also significant that the A.E.F. Orchestra performs the “Song of the Volga Boatmen” in order to drive home the point that the Russians are now allied with America and Europe against the Germans.

According to Glenn Miller experts, these two LP’s were bootlegged by Joseph Krug of the Colony Record Shop in New York City when doing business as the A.F.N. Record Company around 1949. His efforts were quickly shut down by the Miller estate. The details of the case can be found here.

The A.F.N. was intentionally meant to confuse the patron into thinking that the Air Force Network had published these. Even though few of these albums exist, Marr has had one copy of each of the two volumes gifted to their collection.

These recordings of Glenn Miller’s cooperation with the propaganda offices of Allied Forces during WWII are hard to come by but worth the listen. Unfortunately, Glenn Miller died 39 days after the recording of these broadcasts and therefore makes them precious items.

These particular broadcasts were recorded October 30th and November 6th, 1944 and aired November 8th and November 15th respectively. There isn’t much remarked on the containers about the band except that Sergeant Johnny Desmond and Sergeant Ray McKinley sing solos on “Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby” (McKinley) and “Now I Know” and “My Heart Tells Me” (Desmond).

Although the band members are not listed on the albums’ containers, a resource in the Marr Sound Archives entitled “The Glenn Miller Army Air Force Band: I Sustain the Wings: Volumes 1 and 2” by Edward F. Polic clearly lays out who played in the orchestra at the time of these broadcasts. These reference resource books are exciting because of their details of discographies, scripts, personnel, and Glenn Miller’s life.

Contributed by Vicki Kirby, Library Information Specialist II and Special Formats Cataloger