Red Norvo

An unearthed clandestine fragment of Jazz adaptability is this aptly titled The Secret Session. Covertly recorded despite the AFM’S 1942 recording ban, it’s captures how some Swing musicians were stretching the music’s contours even before the post-war Bop revolution. Steps are tentative since these big band defectors are mostly still cossetted in the musical styles of the day. But this mixture of standards and originals offer glimpse of future innovators at the near genesis of their careers.

Leader was Red Norvo (1908-1999), who was known as Mr. Swing during his big band days with Benny Goodman and others. Still playing xylophone  in n1942, he would adapt to modern Jazz and the vibraphone in the 1950s with groups featuring Charles Mingus and Tal Farlow. Probably the most recorded trombonist in Jazz, Eddie Bert later played with Mingus and Thelonious Monk. Trumpeter Shorty Rogers was a progenitor of West Coast Jazz. Drummer Specs Wright was a competent studio player as was bassist Clyde Lombardi. Clarinetist Aaron Sachs however remained wedded to the Goodman style, while Hank Kahout, the probable pianist, maintained a reputation in his Cleveland home town.

Overall the bassist and drummer seem to contribute the same swing rhythms on every tine, while Kahout’s Basie-style fills and sweeps preserved the expositions and served as a counterpoint to those times when Wright goes full Gene Krupa with tom-tom rat tat tats and cowbell ringing. Additionally Sachs adherence to big band shibboleths  especially on tunes like “Speculatin’” often pulls the tunes backwards. Two tracks featuring so-called hot vocals are at best of interest only to specialists. However among the concentrated riffs, shout choruses, chugging horns and rhythm section antiphony there is more memorable fare.

Still seemingly following the Armstrong-Eldridge axis, Rogers maintains a consistent groove, trades fours with the drummer on “Bugle Call Rag” and provides muted emphasis on “Optical Illusion Pt.1.” In constant control even at this early date, Bert contributes reflective portamento suckles and smears on that tune, creates judicious honks elsewhere and adds  hearty and weighty plunger projections on “Rose Room”.

Norvo, who first recorded chamber Jazz in 1933, skips over the themes with a freedom that underlines why he traded in the xylophone for the motorized vibraphone by the end of the decade. With reverberations sprightly and clinking he creates the equivalent of tap dancing with his wooden bar pressure, adding nimble stops and slippery glissandi. He even suggest a modern overlay on “Liza “, with his horizontal slides, ascends and descends interludes on the wooden tuned bars , and expands the narrative by leading Bert to emphasize blasting shakes and rips.

While by no means indispensable The Secret Session in the main offers fine swinging and a rare glimpse into germinating modernism.

–Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. One Note Jive 2. Speculatin’ 3. I May Be Wrong 4. Keep Smilin‘5. Rose Room 6. Russian Lullabye 7. Bugle Call Rag 8. Slender Tender and Tall 9. Optical Illusion Pt.1 10. Liza

Personnel: Shorty Rogers (trumpet); Eddie Bert (trombone); Aaron Sachs (clarinet, alto saxophone); possibly Hank Kahout (piano); Red Norvo (xylophone); Clyde Lombardi (bass) and Specs Powell (drums)