[78-L] Earl Fuller

[David Lewis]

Mike Biel wrote:

This IS impressive.  It chases down a lot of rumors I've heard over the
years.   Next we need some research into the San Francisco jazz scene. 
(Can someone update us as to what HAS been researched?)  

>>>

Thank you Mike. Archeophone did Art Hickman in two volumes of late, and I
reviewed that for the ARSC Journal. It's an important collection, but one
thing that it establishes is that Hickman is not a catch-all for developments
in syncopated dance music as he was made out to be by some writers (Leo
Walker, James Lincoln Collier etc.) Hickman is merely one piece of a large
puzzle that is missing many pieces.

>>>

Dr. B:

I wish there was some way for well researched pages like this to be
sequestered out from the usual crap on that site!!!!

>>>

Indeed, I wish that there was some way I could have placed this in the ARSC
Journal or something comparable. And I may still do that with something 
longer where I can be a bit more subjective. Wikipedia has some pretty strict
rules regarding that, and pages get taken down all the time. It's just that
they have so many pages now that it takes them some time to get around to all
of the ones that really do deserve to be deep-sixed.

However, in regard to Earl Fuller, I felt it needed to be done this way as
he has waited far too long for some kind of recognition, no? I mean, decades
too long. There is a point where you work on something and you can add it as
another feather in your personal cap, but then there areas of research for
which there is such a burning need that it's just best to get it out there as
soon as you can, so that you can initiate the conversation, motivate folks
who have resources to reply, etc.

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Dr. B:

So, when's the complete reissue???  Are there alternate takes,
especially on Columbia and Edison?  Even if not, there are plenty of
alternate recordings to get the flavor of improvisation.  I've found a
couple of alternates on Ted Lewis Jazz Band Columbias that are notable
for showing improvisations in what is often discounted by the critics as
a pseudo jazz band like Fuller had been discounted as.  Ted Lewis is the
Rodney Dangerfield of Jazz.

>>>

I have, for myself, assembled three CDs of all of the titles save five that
I cannot locate at present. I do not have any of the Gennetts, nor "Melody 
in F" which appeared on Olympic and Black Swan. Listening to this stuff altogether,
however, establishes some bullet points. First, most of these records are really
quite good; they hold up well. One would think that the constant presence of the
xylo in the Novelty Orchestra would be a deterrent, but actually you get used to
it as a texture within that band and it's not like you're listening to xylo solo
after xylo solo. Secondly, the groups are more flexible in terms of instrumentation
and personnel than anyone I think has bothered to consider. The trombone on the 
Edisons is not Harry Raderman, for example, but I would say is Doc Behrendson; it
is a little less dependent on sliding and novelty effects and it is also more
solid and venturesome rhythmically. As to the xylo in the Novelty Orchestra, some 
of the records are Teddy Brown, as Tim Gracyk recognized, but some are George Hamilton
Green, and you CAN tell the difference.

Thirdly, and most importantly, is the perspective they provide on what Fuller played.
I wrote to my friend the composer David Thomas Roberts that listening to the discs 
is "like being at a public picnic in Columbus, Ohio in 1910." The term "jazz," "jass"
or -- as Fuller seemed to prefer -- "jaz" emerged around 1916-17 and everyone latched 
onto it as a convenience. But not everyone was playing the New Orleans variety of jazz.
I propose that there was a strain of extemporized ragtime that existed in the Midwest
before 1916 that didn't have a name, but bands were playing it. They had nothing to do
with the Creole aspect of the New Orleans sound and the music was similar, but not the
same. It was bright, loose, rhythmic and spunky and related more generally to the public
wind band tradition of the first decade of the 1900s. But it was not "Jazz," per se.

One of the reasons Fuller has fared so badly is that his work is being measured by the
wrong yardstick. The same could be said about Ted Lewis; when I had a lot of his records
one thing I noted was after Brunies joined and the New Orleans strain was more fully
injected into the Ted Lewis Jazz Band that Ted increasingly seems more isolated and
out of place; there was something inherently incompatible about his playing. There
are a couple of instrumental Deccas made in the Swing Era where Ted is placed about
as far from the mike as he can get -- he's wailing away in a distant spot while a 
younger player puts forth his clarinet sound as adapted to the Swing style, closer
to the mike.

Finally, discovering that Fuller managed multiple orchestras and hired them out to
various places really opens a lot of doors. His wife Katherine was the key strategist 
in that respect, and may have developed that business model, employed so successfully by
Ben Selvin, Sam Lanin and Ed Kirkeby somewhat later. I'm pretty sure that the Tuxedo
Syncopaters on Pathe and House's Orchestra on Gennett were Earl Fuller's bands. Who 
knows what else there could be? 

I'll leave with the notation on the back of a postcard Earl Fuller circulated in 1928,
when he was based out of the Cincinnati area. He was still billing his band as his "New
York Orchestra" and the photo shows them in the Lookout House in Covington, KY.

EARL FULLER, "The Daddy of Jazz," and his New York orchestra. The man who introduced
Jazz to Blase Broadway and made the first Jazz Dance Records for the Victor, Columbia,
Edison and Gennett Phonograph Companies. Six years General Musical Director, Rector's,
New York. Now on World Tour. Summer Season 1928 -- Bill Hill's Lookout House, Dixie 
Highway, Covington, Ky. [captialization from original, verbatim.]       

     

Uncle Dave Lewis
uncledavelewis at hotmail.com