Word: ellington
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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What he is trying to do basically is to imitate Duke Ellington. Several years ago, before Barnet bad formed his present band, I heard him play, and even then he was trying to imitate the Duke's ideas. He told me then that he felt that Ellington was the greatest of the living jazz leaders, and that his music was extraordinary by anybody's standards...
...Barnet reformed his band and went into the Famous Door in New York. Fortunately or unfortunately, as the case may be, Count Basic had just been in the Door and had been breaking records right and left. Barnet decided then that in addition to his imitations of the Ellington slow style, he would copy the Basie fast style...
While occasionally on numbers like "Echoes of Harlem," the band begins to sound something like Ellington, the only outstanding thing about the band is Barnet himself. His tenor sax playing on the Lester Young (Count Basie) idea is usually good, although it occasionally sounds a little like a taxi-horn on a foggy night. His alto sax work is much better, and is probably the best imitation around of Ellingtonite Johnny Hodges. All in all, it would seem to me that the slogan. "Swing and sweat with Charlie Barnet" still holds...
...last year were Miss O'Connell, Woody Herman, and Jimmy Dorsey. The first has been getting more publicity than any other singer in the business. Woody is certainly on his way up, and Jimmy has been cracking records all over the East, his latest being at Atlantic City . . . Duke Ellington has a clever military takeoff in "The Sergeant Was Shy" . . . Watch out for some of these new Lionel Hampden records: they're going to have a sax section of Coleman Hawkins, Benny Carter, Ben Webster, and Chu Berry. Three of them are considered the greatest in the world on their...
...other foreign pilgrims have followed him. Latest is a diminutive, 21-year-old Javanese named Harry Lim, editor in chief of the Batavia, Dutch East Indies magazine Swing (Officieel Orgaan van the Batavia Rhythm Club), circulation 800. Critic Lim, whose favorite band leader is Duke Ellington, visited Manhattan, listened reverently in hotspots, bought about 1,500 jazz records to take home with him. Critic Lim did not like jitterbugs. They seemed like irreverent, undignified drunkards. "If," said he, "we in Batavia were ever so lucky as to hear a concert by Duke Ellington or Tommy Dorsey, we would study...