[78-L] Earl Fuller

[Michael Biel]

You're right, I did pick up the Hickman set last last year and haven't
listened yet but was impressed with the liner notes.  I knew I had read
something recently that brought up the coast and claims of it being
parallel to New Orleans and not derivative.  And I'll be looking forward
to a Fuller set -- certainly THIS group can come up with those five
sides you're missing!

Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com 

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [78-L] Earl Fuller
From: David Lewis <uncledavelewis at hotmail.com>
Date: Sat, March 30, 2013 10:46 am
To: 78-l <78-l at 78online.com>

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.

>>>

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