Woody Herman: Bandleader, Family Man, Road Father. From 1939 with his first big hit Woodchopper's Ball up until 1987, Woody Herman was one of the top bandleaders touring and recording albums almost non-stop. This is is his story told through a blog from one of his biggest fans who strives to keep his legacy alive.
Hi again everyone! Today I'm following up on an old post where I continue to explain the best ways to find Woody's music. In the first post I covered his early Decca years leading up to his years at Capitol, so now we'll look at the rest of his recorded output. In the 60s Woody was recording for Columbia again and also doing albums with his "Swingin' Herd" for the Phillips label. The Phillips recordings as previously mentioned are available on the Mosaic label which can be expensive but for those who just need the songs they can be digitally downloaded as "The Phillips Recordings" which is a Verve release. I know you can also get a lot of Woody's 60s albums for Columbia like "Woody's Winners" and "My Kind of Broadway" on CD now. There are a few other compilations I didn't mention last time like one from Proper in the UK called "The Woody Herman Story" which I have and compiles early 30s Decca material through to the more popular 40s Columbia years.
There is also a digital compilation called "The Ultimate Collection" which I have no idea of the source but takes from 60s albums and has some rare tracks like Woody's vocal version of Lee Morgan's "The Sidewinder".
Around 1968 through to the early 70s Woody was recording for Cadet Records and the best of those recordings are easily found on CD here.
After the Cadet years Woody headed to Fantasy Records and that took over most of the 70s recording period for Woody. While there are no compilations from that time all of the Fantasy albums are available on CD except for "The Raven Speaks". For his last years in the 80s Woody joined Concord Jazz and recorded many albums fitting of his final days and there is one compilation that picks some of the best material from that time.
Woody would pass away in 1987 but he left a huge legacy of work that can still be enjoyed today through LPs, CDs, and digital sources. Thanks for reading!
Hey everyone! It's been a long time but I'm back for more posts and videos on my channel. My last post detailed where to find some of Woody's earlier recordings but I never followed up on where to find music from his later years so... while I work on that, today I'm going to talk about one of his later albums called King Cobra from 1976.
From about 1968-1971 Woody was recording for Cadet Records which was an offshoot of Chess Records. On that label he made some very interesting records covering the popular songs of the time such as The Doors' "Light My Fire" and Deep Purple's "Hush" but while Woody was trying to stay current the critics weren't offering up the most favorable reviews. Woody made a label change in 1971 to Fantasy Records which had recorded other jazz greats like Dave Brubeck. His first album for the label entitled "Brand New" was a collaboration with guitarist Mike Bloomfield. Now when people talk about the Fantasy years for Woody "King Cobra" is not always at the top of the list. It seems that most people seem to like albums such as the grammy winning "Giant Steps" or "Thundering Herd" a lot more. I personally feel like Woody's albums for Fantasy are sort of a mixed bag because you get some really interesting songs on albums, but also some songs that seem like they are there only to fill space. Today I'll be posting videos of the entire album which I've recorded straight from my LP and also lifting some quotes on the album taken from William D. Clancy's excellent book "Chronicles Of The Herds".
Recording for this album was done in January 7-9 in 1975. William Clancy notes that Gary Anderson's score of the title track written by Tom Scott features Jim Pugh and Woody playing soprano against a background of pseudo-rock rhythms and Andy La Verne's synthesizer. Here it is.
The next track was written by Stevie Wonder and it's called "Don't Worry Bout A Thing".
William Clancy notes for the next song that Gary Anderson's treatment of Chick Corea's "Spain" features bassoon and flute solos from Gregory Herbert, flugelhorn from Dennis Dotson, and electric piano from La Verne. The video is below.
"Jazzman" is the next song written by Carole King and David Palmer and features Woody's only vocal appearance on the record.
Gary Anderson, who arranged some of the songs for this album is quoted as saying about Woody, "He's not a writer, but he knows what he wants to hear. He is very exacting in wanting to maintain a certain sound from the band. I'm sure I could do a rock thing, a Latin thing, a straight-ahead blues, a jazz piece, anything from Chick Corea to Carole King, and everything in between. He's very open to any idiom, It's just a matter of sound. I guess you would call it the "Woody Herman sound." I don't really know what it is, but I think I've done it to an extent."
The next track is Lake Taco which was arranged by Gary and written by Andy La Verne.
Woody plays some soprano sax and clarinet on this album and in 1976 in an interview for a TV special produced for his 40th anniversary he had this to say on the topic of his solos "I think I have a fairly good judgement of what a solo should be in its perspective in a chart, if it's surrounded by some good plausible thinking. I should be able to come in and play a little bit on occasion, If it doesn't enhance it, I'll cut myself off. I'm not that pleased with any of my playing, I never have been. As long I'm able to get a reasonable sound, I'll go and play."
Next we have Come Rain Or Come Shine, a classic song written by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer. In his book William Clancy notes that Bill Stapleton's lovely score features the lyrical quality of Dennis Dotson's flugelhorn.
The last track is called Toothless Grin and was written and arranged by John LaBarbera.
The last thing to note from William Clancy's book is after the sessions in March tenor player Greg Herbert left Woody's band and was replaced by Sal Spicola. Overall, this is not one of the best albums Woody has done with his band and especially not on Fantasy but there are a few moments with songs like "Spain" and "Lake Taco" that I think are worth a listen. The whole album has a jazz fusion style to it with the electric instruments and synths and maybe that's why it turns some people away. Whatever the case may be, it is part of Woody's history like so many other albums of his that I hope to cover on here eventually. As I close I'll say thanks everyone for taking some time to read about it!
Hello again everyone, Matthew here and today I thought I'd give people some tips as to where to get started on listening to Woody Herman. There are a lot of different compilations out there on CD also digitally and of course Woody recorded for several different labels so like someone such as Louis Armstrong the question is usually, where do I start? Woody made some of his earliest recordings when he was a member of the Isham Jones Orchestra but the first prominent recordings he made as leader of his own band were on the Decca label so the earliest recordings you'd want to seek out would be (in my opinion) the Decca tunes.
There's not really a definitive box set compiling most or all of Woody's output on Decca (some day I hope) but there is a release that can be purchased on CD and also digitally called The Original Decca Recordings.
There have been other sets like The Best of the Decca Years on CD and Woody Herman's Golden Favorites on record but I think this is a good starting point for the Decca recordings. This set gives you the original recording of Woodchoppers Ball and some of my favorite Woody tunes of that era such as Blues in the Night, Fan It, and what was to become Woody's theme song, Blue Flame. Woodys hit recording of the song that he wrote Woodchoppers Ball came out in 1939 and I was lucky enough to find an original 78 of it at a consignment shop some months back.
After passing the 30s and moving on into the 40s Woody was signed by Columbia records and had what was probably his biggest success on a label. There are several compilations both digitally and on CD and through records as well of his Columbia material so for someone who wants to experience his recordings on Columbia it really comes down to if you want just the hits, or if you want the hits and a few of the misses, or if you want nearly everything. I started with a neat little compilation part of the This Is Jazz series on CD which is This Is Jazz Volume 24, but there are much better compilations that give a wider range of songs and one of those might be more useful to you. I still think the best compilation of Woody's Columbia material which never made it to CD is the fantastic vinyl box set The Thundering Herds. There is a compilation on CD with the same title but as far as I can tell it's not the same thing. The Thundering Herds box set is great because there are several records with hours of great material and a large booklet with comments from Woody himself on all of the tracks. I myself have what they call a radio station copy which was given out only to disc jockeys and not meant to be sold in stores. Probably one of the best compilations of the Columbia material without going too expensive is an compilation called Blowing Up A Storm The Columbia Years 45-47.
However if you're looking for a complete set of all of Woody's Columbia output then at a rather expensive price the label Mosaic has The Complete Columbia Recordings.
I already talked a little bit about Woody's output on the Phillips label in the last post which can be found on another set by Mosaic and in a digital release called The Phillips Recordings so we'll move from the 40s to the 50s and talk about his few recordings for Capitol records. I do feel that Woody made some great recordings for Capitol like Lemon Drop and That's Right and there are a few ways to get them. There is a digital release called The Capitol Recordings but I don't know what company released it and I haven't tried to download it. On the other hand Mosaic has come once again to offer one of their rather pricey sets called The Complete Capitol Recordings.
We'll continue with the remaining years of Woody's work on CDs in the next post.
I want to welcome everyone to this blog about one of my favorite bandleaders Woody Herman. Woody Herman was a great clarinet player and also saxophone player and he led many bands through the big-band jazz era of the 30s and 40s and continued playing and recording with young bands up until the 80s. My fascination with Woody Herman started years ago when my uncle sent me a CD, Verve Jazz Masters 54. I'm not really sure because my memory is not that great but I think he sent it to me because I was playing clarinet in my middle school band at the time. I wasn't very good and later switched to percussion but I listened to that CD not thinking much about it and later on something about the name Woody Herman stuck with me enough to go back and listen again. The verve CD is mainly a compilation of the tracks Woody recorded for the Phillips label in the 60s with his Swingin' Herd. All of this Phillips recordings are now distributed by Verve and they have been released in two formats, one is a rather pricey set by Mosaic called "Mosaic Select Woody Herman" and also a digital download on iTunes called "The Phillips Recordings". I chose to download the latter on iTunes and it's definitely my favorite of all the Woody Herman recordings.
My hope with this Blong is to educate more people about Woody Herman and to show how important he was to jazz music. I also run a Woody Herman fan channel on YouTube that has several rare live videos recorded by myself from stuff that I own and I hope that you will check that out as well. I'll be doing more posts in the future reviewing specific albums and talking about all things related to Woody. There is another wonderful blog called "The Wonderful World of Louis Armstrong" and this blog is meant to be for Woody Herman what that blog was to Louis Armstrong. Thanks for reading and I hope you'll continue to read about Woody and his great life and career.
Here is my YouTube channel link: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkhaB93Gczby2L-4NFfbUOw
