Joined at the Hip: A History of Jazz in Twin Cities

9: From Swing to Bebop and Beyond

117 9 From Swing to Bebop and Beyond “ Jazz went from the classics to ragtime to Dixieland to swing to bebop to cool jazz, but it’s always jazz. You can put a new dress on her, a new hat, but no matter what kind of clothes you put on her, she’s the same old broad.” —Lionel Hampton, musician While Dixieland held sway in some circles, other jazz filtered into the Twin Cities beginning in the 1930s. Traveling bands, small groups, radio, and records first introduced Twin Cities listeners to “swing”— danceable music performed by big bands like Benny Goodman’s and Count Basie’s. A few years later, they could hear what came to be known as bebop—more frenetic, complex music with extended virtuosic solos. From the late forties and into the fifties and sixties, more modern strains known variously as progressive, cool, avant-­ garde, and free jazz made their appearance. One major Twin Cities musical event of the 1940s was the kickoff­ appearance of the very popular Glenn Miller Orchestra at the opening of Prom Ballroom in St. Paul on University. On a night in 1941, some six thousand revelers met at the Prom, which featured nearly a quarter-­ acre maple dance floor ringed by tables and booths where dancers could rest and socialize. A short time later, the Tommy Dorsey band booked there, prompting DownBeat to report, “Musicians were laying off in droves to attend the dance.” Like the Marigold, its downtown Minneapolis counterpart , the Prom remained a popular gathering place where dancers could 118 Joined at the Hip hear swing bands including Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey—as well as Count Basie, Stan Kenton, Buddy Rich, and many others before it met with the wrecker’s ball in 1987. The music rivalry between swing, Dixieland, and bebop that spread out from New York’s lively Fifty-­ second Street scene did not help jazz music generally. Dave Karr, commenting on bebop saxophonist-­ composer Bob Greunenfelder parodies a bebop trumpeter in a coffin at Mitch’s in Mendota, symbolizing what he, Harry Blons, Hal Runyon, and Eddie Tolck hope is the demise of the new music emanating from New York’s Fifty-­ second Street. Mr. Smooth—Irv Williams—began playing in the Twin Cities with the Wold Chamberlin Navy Band in the 1940s. More than six decades later, he was still drawing crowds of local jazz fans. 119 120 Joined at the Hip Charlie Parker, noted, “A lot of people hated Bird when he started to play. Louis Armstrong did a very bad thing by dissing bebop. He called it ‘Bop-­ Slop,’ and immediately the camps sprang up.” One premier Twin Cities jazz musician who launched his career in the 1940s with swing-­ style music was saxophonist Irv Williams. Later known as “Mr. Smooth,” a moniker bestowed by Bob Protzman in the St. Paul­ Pioneer Press, Williams arrived in the Twin Cities via Cincinnati, Little Rock, and St. Louis. His blossoming career was interrupted by the military, but after three years, he found himself at Wold-­ Chamberlin Naval Air Station playing in the highly regarded black navy band: “I was recruited from Louisville, Kentucky. The band director heard me play and said, ‘We’re going to the Twin Cities.’ I said, ‘I’m not going up there,’ and he said, ‘Yeah, you’re going.’” In the Twin Cities, Irv Williams met Duffy Goodlow, Frank Lewis, and a band full of good musicians who could both read music and improvise. After his discharge in 1945, Williams found that racism and being new in town initially made it hard for him to find work. When the Calhoun Beach Club’s ballroom opened, he got his break and joined Stu Anderson on bass, Bob Dean on alto, and Bill West on trumpet as the nucleus of the Irv Williams and pianist Peter Schimke in the studio recording one of their several CD projects in recent years. From Swing to Bebop and Beyond 121 club band. Over the decades, Williams worked virtually every club, hotel, and restaurant in the Twin Cities area. Williams’s friend Rufus Webster said, “You get to know a player’s strengths and talents when you share a bandstand with them, learn things that elude the average listener. And all of Irv Williams’s contemporaries, going back to the forties, have had the...