Jo Jones

Now, he's had some great drummers.

Two of the ones I know, probably the most notable ones, are Sonny Payne and Joe Jones.

Yeah.

How have those guys, I mean, just learning his music, how have those guys shaped your playing?

And it's wonderful, though, and you also get to hear Prez, Lester Young, on clarinet as well as tenor sax, and you get to hear Helen Humes.

Buck Clayton on trumpet, Prez on tenor sax and on clarinet, and the Count Basie All-American Rhythm Section with Freddie Green's guitar, Walter Page bass, Papa Jo Jones on drums, and Basie at the piano.

We heard a riff number that they did.

They, uh, called it "Alley Oop," and then blues with Helen, where Prez gets the solo on clarinet, and Helen really extends it out.

And with the help of Eddie Durham, the masterful arranger and guitarist and trombonist, who, uh, shortly before this left Basie and do other things, but he was brought in to both play guitar and do the arrangements for the Kansas City Six, September 27th, 1938.

On the Commodore label, a small independent label at the time, again run by Milt Gabler out of the Commodore Record Shop.

And the small group included Buck Clayton on trumpet, Prez mostly on clarinet, also on tenor sax, Eddie Durham on solo guitar, Freddie Green doing rhythm guitar, and it's countless, no piano, Walter Page on bass, and Papa Jo Jones on drums.

All singles on the Commodore label, and then been reissued on various packages over the years, not so coherently, but we got them together for you.

Billy Holiday.

Papa Jo Jones.

Yeah.

Yeah, everybody was there.

and now we'll sample some of the records that Benny Green made for other people during the period that he was working with Charlie Ventura's Bop for the People organization.

So first we'll go to May of 1948, and we'll go to the Apollo label, and drummer J.C. Hurd had the chance to lead a session for Apollo, a septet date that had Joe Newman on trumpet, Benny Green on trombone, Tate Houston baritone sax, and these records are well known today for the great work of the late Wardell Gray on tennis sax.

Al Haig at the piano, Al McKibben bass, the leader J.C. Heard on drums.

And this is, again, on the Apollo label, a tune called This Is It.

. . so ¦ ¦ uh ¦ ¦ ¦ Hmm.

Sampling of some of the records that trombonist Benny Green made between 1948 and 1950 during the period when he was touring with Charlie Ventura's Bop for the People organization, but made some impressive marks filling in on records made by some of the other jazz greats of the period.

From the top, we heard drummer J.C. Hurd leading a group for the Apollo label in 1948 and doing a piece called This Is It with Wardell Gray on tenor sax, Tate Houston baritone, Joe Newman trumpet, and Benny Green's trombone, Al Haig, Al McKibben, and J.C. Hurd.

Then we went to the great inimitable bebop vocalist and raconteur Babs Gonzalez and his record date for Capitol in January of 49.