Dameronia: The Life and Music of Tadd Dameron

7. 1949—International Fame

95 7 1949—International Fame Paris In the summer of 1948 Nicole Barclay, Charles Delaunay, and others were already involved in planning the 1949 Paris Jazz Festival. Nicole Barclay and Kenny Clarke had become good friends by this time, no doubt because of her interest in promoting jazz in Paris and because her husband, Eddie, a pianist and bandleader and owner of Barclay Records, was interested in recording the music for distribution in Europe. Nicole promised Kenny, who had stayed on in Paris after the 1948 Gillespie tour, that he would have an important role in the festival. She made good on that promise when she came to New York in the spring of 1949 to book the artists for the festival. According to Clarke, Nicole gave him the final word on those musicians to be engaged.1 The festival ran for eight days starting Sunday, May 8, 1949, with a series of concerts presenting American as well as European musicians, playing in both the new and the older styles. The Americans included the older musicians Sidney Bechet, Bill Coleman, Jimmy McPartland, “Big Chief ” Russell Moore, and Hot Lips Page. The modern school was represented by Don Byas and two bands: Charlie Parker’s working quintet, with Kenny Dorham, Al Haig, Tommy Potter, and Max Roach; and the Miles Davis/Tadd Dameron Quintet , which included Kenny Clarke, as well as James Moody and bassist Barney Spieler, who were already in Europe. The Europeans were represented by the Kentonesque band of Vic Lewis;2 Carlo Krammer’s Chicagoans; the Swedish All-Stars; Pierre Braslavsky’s band, which backed up Sidney Bechet; and some freelancers such as pianist Bernard Peiffer and guitarist Toots Thielemans. 96 DaMeroNIa It seems there had also been some earlier contacts between Delaunay (and possibly the Barclays) and Tadd Dameron about a visit the year before the Paris Jazz Festival. In the December 17, 1947, issue of Down Beat the following item appeared: taDD to FraNCe New York—Tadd Dameron, pianist and arranger, has signed as musical director for Charles Delaunay’s Blue Star record company in Paris, France, starting March 3. He will also be staff arranger for Tony Proteau’s orchestra. Tadd will leave for Paris about mid-February.3 Despite the article’s claim, Tadd Dameron did not go to France in March of 1948. We do not know why these plans were abandoned, assuming the initial claim was correct. Still, it seems clear that there had been communications between the festival organizers and Dameron as early as the fall of 1947 and, indeed , Dameron wrote for Proteau, probably later on, while in Paris.4 Even though Dameron did not get to go to Europe in 1948, Europeans did hear some of his music during the Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra’s tour that year. Performances of “Our Delight” and “Good Bait” are documented in recordings made at the Vinterpalastset in Stockholm and at Salle Pleyel in Paris. No doubt the band played others of their Dameron charts, as well. On Friday, May 6, the American contingent—those not already on the continent—flew into Paris. This was a day earlier than had been planned by the festival organizers,but that did not seem to botherTadd and his friends.English musician and commentator Steve Race reported that“Dameron, Kenny Clarke and Co. have been sitting in various night clubs to kill the time. You can’t keep a good musician away from his instrument.”5 Unfortunately, despite their extracurricular playing,it seems that they were not able to rehearse adequately before the first night’s performance. Race goes on to report the inconsistent quality of the Davis/Dameron quintet’s playing, some of it good but much of it tentative and sloppy. However, the band would have five more sets in the coming days of the festival, and, as André Hodier reported, they improved night by night.6 The recordings from the festival seem to bear witness to this, although the tracks are not identified by dates. The ones with better sound present uncharacteristically poor performances by Miles Davis and presumably come from the first night. The ones with poor sound have better performances from Davis, but it is very hard to hear the rhythm section. The band introduces no new tunes, and the arrangements are the same as they would have been at the Royal Roost. Still, 1949—International Fame 97 these are historically...