EDDIE MILLER – New Orleans Tenor Sax – His 50 Finest 1933-1959

RTS 4444

Sleeve notes by Digby Fairweather (Founder, National Jazz Archive)

Compiled by Ray Crick

Audio restoration & remastering by Martin Haskell

You’ll not see much – if anything – about traddie jazz here on JazzViews. And for good reason. It would be very hard to find anyone who now wants to listen back to the original mainly-black two beat traditional black stomp from New Orleans, with everyone playing as they pleased at the same time; or the necrophiliac revival bands of the fifties and sixties that gave us the added joy of skiffle. But I’d argue that Dixieland, the mainly white spin-off from original trad, can still be worth a spin, largely because Dixie jazz built a swing bridge to multi-coloured Mainstream and red-blooded, full-bodied Big Band music.

Some fine musicians came out of that era and they very much didn’t like the Dixieland “D Word” tag. The musical value of good arrangements was increasingly recognised, too. So once in a while, I’d suggest, it is worth a look back and listen to the best of that music and the people who played it. They were mostly romping rather than stomping.

Take Bob Crosby for example. Brother of Bing he could sing but not memorably. He didn’t play any musical instruments. But he was one heck of a bandleader, with his Bobcats and increasingly bigger bands and their decidely four beat feel, rather than neo-military two-step. One of the mainstays of the Crosby bands was the fine tenor sax and clarinet player Eddie Miller (born Edward Raymond Müller, in New Orleans, 1911), remembered here with his fifty finest reordings from 1933 to 1959.

As with all the Restrospective releases (that I have seen) the disco details are extensive and meticulous. The sleeve notes here by always-informative Digby Fairweather tell some nice muso stories about how EM moved from New Orleans through the ranks of Ben Pollack, with colleagues like Glenn Miller, Jack Teagarden and Ray Bauduc, worked with the likes of Louis Prima, Wingy Manone and Ray Conniff (in his trombone years), led Crosby’s band in the WW11 call-up years and then settled on the West Coast at 20th Century Fox for nine years after the war.

While in Hollywood he was regularly featured on film soundtracks, including The Girl He Left Behind, Mister Big, You Were Meant For Me and Panic In The Streets. That says it all with regard to Miller’s musical standing. You don’t get anywhere near a studio unless you are rock solid in all respects.

Miller also worked closely with Johnny Mercer at the legendary Capitol studios, both as a business partner and permanent musical associate.

“Matty, myself and a few others were practically the house band there,” Eddie Miller told John Chilton, the jazz biographer, trumpeter and for many years band leader for one-of-a-kind George Melly. “We accompanied all sorts of singers. One day I’d be the leader and the next day someone else would be the boss, using exactly the same musicians!”.

Miller’s success story had begun with Ben Pollack’s band, which was well-paid but collapsed because of Leader-loves-Songbird problems. The ‘Pollack orphans’, including Eddie Miller, quickly re-grouped into a new band led by Bob Crosby.

“We used Dixieland as more or less a trade label,” Fairweather quotes Miller as saying, “but it wasn’t Dixieland. It was just jazz”.

Critic George Frazier enthused (in Downbeat, August 1937): “Jazz is essentially an affair of improvisation and in its best moments the Crosby band is a thing of sheer magnificence; a large band packing the irresistible thrill of a small jam combination”.

Several tracks here start with a two-beat feel and then quickly relax into easy swing.

In the 1950s Miller appeared in the radio, film and TV series Pete Kelly’s Blues and then worked with The World’s Greatest Jazz Band (led by Yank Lawson and Bob Haggart) as well as touring with Crosby reunions until a stroke in 1988 ended his playing days. He died in 1991.

To my ears, Eddie Miller’s sax sound is on the smoother side of Bud Freeman but not quite Lester Young. He cleverly fitted his sax into the traditional front line of trumpet, trombone and clarinet; much as Jimmy Skidmore and Buce Turner did later with Humphrey Lyttleton at the old 100 Club. It’s worth remembering here that Humph’s later bands owed a lot to arrangers like Kenny Graham and Buck Clayton. The arrangers here are mostly not credited but “Once in While” from a Bob Crosby band was arranged by a young Nelson Riddle. I’m guessing that a lot of writers who later became household names, in the music business at least, were cutting their teeth in these D-bands.

With fifty tracks to choose from it’s hard to pick specials. But The Pete Kelly Big Seven and Rampart Street Paraders tracks have some lovely trumpet from Clyde Hurley and Dick Cathcart, and again remind me of those happy Humph 100 Club days. “Lazy Mood” and “Smiles” have some of that controlled sax that makes a small band sound bigger. Even the more moany tracks like “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen” are beautifully played. Eddie Miller’s own Big Band, underpinned in 1944 by drummer Nick Fatool, does a lush “Hour of Parting”.

The compilation could equally well have been called a “master class of fine trumpet work but players you may well never heard of”; and subtitled “mostly happy jazz which defies piegonholding”. Through it all runs the colourful thread of Eddie Miller’s sax. The Bob Crosby group that plays “ Short’ning Bread” in 1940 inculdes Billy Butterfield. There’s a particularly nice “Monday Date” from the Earl Hines swingbook.

Across the tracks here it’s fascinating to hear Bunny Berigan playing in a 1930s small group with Edgar Sampson on piano before they hit the big time with Benny Goodman. There’s also Ray Conniff (on trombone), Irving Fazola, Gil Rodin and Eddie Miller on tenors, Jess Stacy piano, Ray Bauduc drums and Bob Haggart on bass whistling a riff that later became Big Noise. Eddie Miller sings a bit, quaintly.

The next time someone someone scoffs at Dixieland music as all crude and stompy, try locking them in a room with these CDs and make them listen to tracks like “Stomp, Mr. Henry Lee”, “Everything I Have is Yours” (with Martha Tilton), ”A Ghost of a Chance” and “Lazy Mood” with astonishing trumpet from Clyde Hurley and glorious tenor from Mr. Miller. The fact that the band playing “Ghost” and “Lazy” went out under the misleading name “The Rampart Street Paraders” says it all. Never judge a band by its sleeve title.