Artist: Red Nichols and His Five Pennies
Album: The Jazz Collector Edition
Genre: Early Jazz
Label: LaserLight Digital
Released: 1991
Quality: FLAC (tracks+.cue)
Tracklist:
- At Sundown [3'16] (Donaldson)
- Get Happy [2'25] (Arlen/Koehler)
- Beale Street Blues [3'26] (Handy)
- The Very Thought Of You [3' 11] (Noble)
- Love Is The Sweetest Thing [2'40] (Noble)
- Dardanella [2'51] (Bernard/Black)
- When My Sugar Walks Down The Street [2'15] (Austin/McHugh/Mills)
- Love Me Or Leave Me [2'54] (Donaldson/Kahn)
- Things Ain't What They Used To Be [2'40] (Ellington)
- My Melancholy Baby [З'ЗЗ] (Burnett/Norton)
- Naughty Waltz [3'12]
- Together [3'07] (DeSylva/Henderson/Brown)
- Pennies From Heaven [3'14] (Johnston/Burke)
- Tin Roof Blues [3'41] (New Orleans Rhythm Kings/Melrose)
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- Personnel:
- Red Nichols, cornet
- Earl Sturgis, piano
- Gene Englund, bass
- Heime Beow, clarinet
- Al Peligrine, alto Sax
- Rolley Culver, drums
In the extravagant, colorful history of jazz a few names stand out as GREATS. Red Nichols' is one of them. He was one of the kings of jazz when that music form was in its infancy, and his "Five Pennies" have included, at various times, Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey, Eddie Lang, Vic Burton, Miff Mole, Benny Goodman, Fud Livingston, Joe Venuti, Arthur Schutt, Lennie Hayton and Glenn Miller. Nichols' Beiderbecke-influenced trumpet shot him to the top of the world of jazz before he was twenty-one years old.
Red, whose full name is Ernest Loring Nichols, was a child prodigy; at age three he played his first cornet concert and by seven was a veteran performer. He started in New York with the Jimmy Johnson band, and at 18 was one of the brightest stars in New York jazz. During the 'twenties his group gradually shifted away from the style of the New Orleans school, as top artists from Chicago came to the big city and were absorbed into the Pennies. In addition to his club work he led his own Broadway pit orchestra in such hits as "Strike Up The Band" and "Girl Crazy". He was the most recorded bandleader in that early period of jazz, and his "Ida, Sweet As Apple Cider" sold over a million copies.
During the 'thirties Red was on the road with his big dance band, drawing big crowds wherever he played - top ballrooms, state fairs, plush hotel engagements. One of the highlights of Red Nichols' brilliant career came when in 1959 Paramount Pictures produced "The Five Pennies", a technicolor movie based on Red's life. With Danny Kaye playing the role of Nichols, the film was an exciting cavalcade of jazz woven around the life story of this colorful jazz figure. The cast included Barbara Bel Geddes, Louis Armstrong, Bob Crosby, Tuesday Weld, Ray Anthony, Shelly Manne and Bobby Troup. The film's success helped establish a new enthusiasm for Red's music.
The Red Nichols contribution to the kids who went on to become greats in jazz is, his friends feel, his lasting epitaph. He encouraged and laughed a lot of them out of some bad times. The tracks on this recording may give you a brief glimpse as to why.