There is a long trumpet solo (0:09-1:28) in "I Cover the Waterfront," but as the
introduction suggests, it is played by Carter himself: at 0:37-0:40 he plays the
same phrase he played on alto saxophone during his solo on "I Can't Get Started"
from the Trianon Ballroom. Carter is also
the soloist on "Frim-Fram Sauce" -- compare the phrasing at 2:35-2:40 with 0:34-0:37
of his "I Cover the Waterfront" solo.
McGhee solos on "Co-Ed" and "Back Bay Boogie." On the former, phrases repeated
in the last A section of his solo will appear in his solos during "Cheers" from
the February 26, 1947 Dial session with
Charlie Parker: take 1 (2:27-2:30) and take 2 (2:22-2:23 and 2:27-2:29). McGhee
ends his solo on "Back Bay Boogie" with a phrase he will use at the beginning of
his solo of "Carvin' the Bird," also from the February 26 Dial session -- compare
"Back Bay Boogie" 2:17-2:20 and "Carvin' the Bird" 1:50-1:52. (A very similar phrase
appears at 1:05-1:07 of "Co-Ed.")
Judging from the phrasing and choice of notes, Davis is the soloist on few of the
other titles. The short solo on "Cuttin' Time" contains phrases from the 16-measure
solo on "Just You, Just Me" from the March 31
Streets of Paris session (compare "Cuttin' Time" 1:18-1:23 and "Just You, Just
Me" 2:37-2:43), and at 1:10-1:13 Davis plays a phrase also used in his aborted introduction
to take 2 of "Thriving from a Riff" from the November
26, 1945 Savoy studio session (0:17-0:21).
The issued version of "Polishin' Brass" is about a half-tone sharp. On Jazz Door
it is listed as "Untitled Original" -- probably because of Whitman's introduction
("...a jump tune for which there is no title"). But Davis is clearly the soloist:
compare the phrasing at 2:14-2:21 with the trumpet solo from take 3 of "Thriving
from a Riff" from November 1945 (especially 0:31-0:34). There are other echoes as
well: at 2:16-2:18 Davis tosses off a phrase used both in the introduction to "Ko
Ko" (0:09-0:10) and in his solo on take 1 of "Thriving from a Riff" (1:47-1:49).
The same phrase appears at 1:09-1:11 of his "Anthropology" solo from a
live Parker date from around this time.
Finally, the phrasing at 2:23-2:25 echoes 1:55-1:58 of take 1 of "Thriving
from a Riff."
There is a lot of uncertainty and confusion about the Benny Carter recordings from
1946. Most of the items usually associated with Miles Davis were Armed Forces Radio
Services (AFRS) "Jubilee" sessions which were transcribed on 16" 33-1/3 rpm LPs and
distributed to radio stations around the world. The four sessions in questions are
numbers 184, 186, 191, and 193. Recording sessions were typically an hour, in front
of live studio audiences. The recordings were later edited and assembled into
30-minute Jubilee sides. In the process, some announcements and introductions
(and tunes) were used more than once, which adds to the confusion. Recordings
for the programs numbered 184 and 186 were made in
early April at NBC Studios in Hollywood; those for programs numbered 191 and 193
were recorded on April 29.
Davis joined the Carter band after a January 1946 engagement at the Riviera Club
in St. Louis, and traveled to Los Angeles in February. Looking back years later,
Carter remarked,
When Miles joined me it was quite clear that he was already thinking along
different lines. But he was a good reader and certainly had no trouble with
the book. (Quoted in Morroe Berger, Ed Berger, and James Patrick,
Benny Carter: A Life in American Music, Vol. 2, p. 123)
In addition to playing with Carter's orchestra and a smaller Carter group, Davis
began sitting in with Charlie Parker at the Finale Club. In March he became a
regular member of the Parker Quintet, and he participated in a Dial session on
March 28. He continued to play regularly
with Carter's bands, as evidenced by a March
31 broadcast from the Streets of Paris. Eventually the musicians' union
caught up with him and he was fined. He chose to leave the Carter group; but
exactly when this happened is not clear. On April 12 Parker brought an
eight-piece band -- Davis, Britt Woodman (tb), Parker, Lucky Thompson (ts), Dodo
Marmarosa (p), Arvin Garrison (g), Red Callendar (b), and Perc White (d) -- to a
concert at UCLA's Royce Hall Auditorium, sponsored by the Carver Club. Also on the bill were Lester Young, the Nat Cole
Trio, Herb Jeffries, and Kay Starr. There is a nice review in the June 1946
issue of Metronome magazine.
A nearly complete discography of the Jubilee series was published by Rainer Lötz
and Ulrich Neuert: The AFRS Jubilee Transcription Programs: An Exploratory Discography,
Vol. 1-2 (1985). Dennis M. Spragg has updated the discography and maintains
it on the Glenn Miller Archive website, http://www.colorado.edu/amrc/glenn-miller-archive/gma-catalogs/jubilee.
I am grateful to Craig Neilson, Jan Lohmann, and Leif Bo Petersen for their help with
these Jubilee sessions, and to Tommaso Urbano for his expertise in identifying the
trumpet soloists. Thanks also to Robert Shoji for pointing me to the UCLA Carver Club photos
and for sharing with me the Metronome review.
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