Salute the Commodore.

SALUTE THE COMMODORE

New York's jazz world, back in the 1930s, was still palpitating happily over Benny Goodman's invasion of Carnegie Hall--with the best of the rhythm world's performers in tow--when it became known that another intrepid adventurer had launched a new record label. Dedicated to what he called the "righteous" jazz, Milt Gabler, whose Commodore Music Shop on 52nd Street had become the mecca of jazz buffs and jazz musicians, had brought together a number of the finest practitioners of what was then called Chicago-style jazz.

The musicians on the Gabler date had been heard the evening before at Carnegie Hall--Jess Stacy, Benny Goodman's piano player, still had a lame wrist from the concert--but played now in a style far more deeply etched in jazz than BG's product. Eddie Condon had brought the group together, as he had so many times over the lean years, and it included the core of what would become the basic Commodore band: Bobby Hackett on cornet; tenor sax Bud Freeman, by appointment the intellectual of jazz; George Brunies, tailgate trombonist; George Wettling, drums, known for being able, on the bandstand, to goose the girl vocalist without missing a beat; Pee Wee Russell, who downrated his fine playing by referring to his "spit clarinet"; and others.

On that date, the band cut a number of notable sides--but outstanding was a 12-incher, unusual for that time, of a slow blues, "Carnegie Drag," with Stacy's barrelhouse, Hackett's Bixian progressions, and Pee Wee, spit and all. Several trio sides--featuring FReeman's honking horn, Stacy, and Wettling--were more than an answer to the Benny Goodman Trio, and produced a bouncing and lilting kind of jazz seldom heard in the bistros and music spas. This was history being made, for seldom had a jazz style been delineated with such artistic bonhomie, such musical relaxation, and such quiet elan in a recording studio. For this, Milt Gabler was responsible.

The Condon Windy City Seven band continued to record, sometimes as Bud Freeman and His Gang, and it gave us a long catalogue of top-drawer jazz. One date in particular merits enthusiastic mention. With Jack Teagarden, whose own swing-time band never made it either musically or at the cash register, the group recorded a superlative "Embraceable You"--as well as "Serenade to a Shylock," a Big T mamo mamo mamo blues number with moving and scintillating solos by Teagarden, Hackett, Stacy, and Russell. Teagarden recorded many such songs, but this was the master product.

The Commodore-Gabler label began to diversify, bringing in other musicians. Count Basie's great sidemen of the time--Lester Young, tenor; Buck Clayton, trumpet; and the Basie rhythm section sans the Count--took over the old Brunswick studios late in 1938 to cut some of the most evocative music done in the Kansas City style. This included the nostalgic "I Want a Little Girl," which the McKinney's Cotton Pickers from K.C. had immortalized, in which Satchmo had made his obeisance to that "goil"--and which now arose as pure jazz bel canto.

Milt Gabler's prescience and ear for the real music gave this writer his one flickering moment of glory. A friend had remarked on the amount of time her younger brother devoted to listening to and recreating the piano music of the old jazz records and asked me to listen to him and tell her if he was wasting his time. I listened and the next day took him down to see Gabler. Result: Mel Powell sat in on piano at the next Commodore date, and then went on to play with Benny Goodman. (I have not seen Powell since, but the Powell recordings in the Gabler catalogue are thank-you enough.) The Commodore catalogue stretched out to include one date at which Benny Goodman hid behind the nom de jazz of Shoeless Joe Jackson and another with Fats Waller somewhat similarly disguised.

Willie "the Lion" smith, that immensely talented braggart, was given an entire session to himself, playing those ragtimey and delicately tinted original compositions with which he had delighted many friends and some audiences for years--and a fascinating concerto for three pianos, with Stacy and Joe Bushkin. The great tenor saxes and the great trumpets were similarly anthologized on the Commodore label. But Gabler went beyond this in his passion to preserve the very best of jazz. The last and most important recordings of that towering genius, Jelly Roll Morton, since his Red Hot Pepper days were bought up from a failing record company and re-issued by Commodore. So were those few great sides made on an equally transient label, Varsity, by Jess Stacy with Irving Fazola, a white New Orleans clarinetist, whose beautiful arabesques were so seldom recorded.

And perhaps Billie Holiday's best record, Fine and Mellow, was made for Commodore. It includes what she had earlier called "Billie's Blues"--with Frankie Newton's quietly sustained obbligato adding a touch to its greatness--and "Strange Fruit," a Popular Front tune about lynching raised to the heighs by billie's plangent voice and a delivery that seemed to invent tempo rubato.

In short, the Commodore recordings were at once a jazz panorama, a jazz history, and an explication de texte of America's greatest contribution to the musical arts. Over the years, with the advent of the long-playing record, some of these sides were reissued, while many were forgotten. But now, as if an archaeologist were able to restore the Ark, Mosaic Records has begun the mammoth and joyous task of reissuing them. The first 23 LPs of this great compendium of jazz have been issued in Volume i.

Only 2,500 sets were made of The Complete commodore Jazz Recordings, Volume i, which means that the 2,501st collector will have to do without. Those who have heard and experienced what Mosaic Records (197 Strawberry Hill Avenue, Stamford, Conn. 06902) gave us in its reissues of the Blue Note Art Hodes and Sidney Bechet will realize how great is our debt of gratitude to that intrepid and dedicated company of jazz aficionados. Were I to be banished to an uninhabited island, this Commodore album would be my first choice of jazz to take with me.