Talk:Casa Loma Orchestra

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History

Based on McCarthy's book, The Casa Loma Orchestra disbanded in 1950. (Garrod & Korst disagree -- according to them the banded disbanded on December 17, 1947, but with some occasional sightings and recordings after that.)

At that time, it was known as 'Glen Gray and the Casa Loma Orchestra', a name change that took place in 1937, when Glen Gray exchanged his alto sax chair for the band leader's baton, (It might be worth mentioning that Glen Gray's duties as elected director of the company 'Casa Loma Orchestra' often are confused with his later duties as band leader. Mel Jenssen, violin, was band leader before Glen Gray, and as Jenssen appears already on the early 1929 recordings, Biagnini is likely to have been only a very early leader, if at all.)

(Added: The Time-Life account in The Swing Era 1937-38 suggests that Gray first switched to tenor sax, before fronting the band.)

After the disbanding, the band name remained the property of Glen Gray, who used it for a series of recordings (most/all for Capitol) with studio musicians, between 1958 and 1963. (In a few of the 1963 records that list Glen Gray, he was not actually involved, probably for health reasons.) But it really should be acknowledged that the original band, who was indeed billed as one of the top sweet bands, is not the outfit that made those late recordings -- there is a dicontinuity at least as far as personnell is concerned, and probably also as to book/arrangements.

Also according to McCarthy, the band didn't make any 'eight-month engagement at Casa Loma Hotel in Toronto': it was booked, but failed to materialize. (McCarthy also states that the incorporation took place in 1929, not 1930.) (Added: Simon seems to agree, while Time-Life does agree about the 8 months.)

Finally, based on Garrod & Korst, the band appears on some early recordings under different names. They mention 'Carolina Club Orchestra', 'Palais de Dance Orchestra', 'Ariel Dance orchestra', 'Hal Laska and his Orchestra', 'O.K. Rhythm Kings', 'Louis Harlem Stompers', 'Roy Carroll and his Sands Point Orchestra', 'Roxy Club Orchestra', 'Gene's Merrymakers', 'Louisiana Rhythmakers', and 'Adrian Rollini and his Orchestra' up to August, 1933. However, as they don't provide source information, and as some of their later material is demonstrably faulty, this should probably be taken with a small grain of salt. Some of these band names are associated with recordings that Garrod and Korst do not list.

My sources are McCarthy: Big Band Jazz (1974), p. 189--193, and Garrod & Korst: Glen Gray and the Casa Loma Orchestra (1987), a somewhat uneven attempt a discography (at least that's what I take it to be). (also The Swing Era 1937-1938, Time-Life Records, 1971, p. 40--47.)

Athulin (talk) 07:34, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Recordings: ...out-and-out jazz (albeit very rehearsed)"

I take certain issue with the statement "...many of the Brunswick's were out-and-out jazz (albeit very rehearsed)".

First off let me start by saying I don't disagree entirely with the statement. It's also a cliche written time and time again about the Casa Loma, to the point that maybe it would mean acknowledging copy and paste talent as opposed to research and taking a fresh look at something objectively. I get what's being said having listened to and been transcribing jazz and big band music for 30+ years, which includes a lot of Casa Loma (at least from the listening angle). Casa Loma definitely did have a "stiff" (perhaps "overly-rehearsed" sound; even George Simon, the premier historian of the entire era, said that even Gray's 1957-1963 "recreations" (of other bands' repertoire...) "still had a stiffness to them" that in Simon's words were "a part of all of Gray's bands". But, for the record, it should be noted that in 1930 the whole big band concept as we know it hadn't been around very long, and especially how the whole large band concept could be made to "work" in a jazz context. Large ensembles, like Whiteman's had been around but were still playing more light classics and Tin Pan Alley pops for radio audiences than out and out jazz, a la Armstrong, Bix and Tram, ODJB, NO Rhythm Kings, etc., which were diehard jazz musicians / bands generally fewer than 8 musicians jamming more than anything else, whether it was in Harlem, the Barbary Coast or anywhere on the Mississippi or in Chicago. Goodman said in his bio in 1939 ("The Kingdom of Swing") that "once a band got to about 9 or 10 pieces, you HAD to have arrangements"... those words coming from someone who had played in small pick-up groups on over 700 records before he ever led a band of his own. What is totally missed in the consciousness of where Casa Loma stands in regards to history is that THEY were the band who brought a sense of ensemble precision to what a large jazz band could / should perhaps be, which was before that time, pretty much completely absent. Remember, we're talking 1930-32; the deepest years of the depression that saw most indie record labels go bankrupt and record sales drop by 90%, at least three to four years before Goodman came along making the big band-that-plays-jazz concept popular on a wide scale at the end of 1935. In an era that the common understanding of the word jazz was synonymous with what went on in New Orleans brothels, upper levels of white and black society looked down upon it and its practitioners, and as a result it was absolutely foreign to much of the largely white society in America, that itself had plenty of Euro-ethnic rivalries and WASP vs. Catholic suspicion (if not hatred) within it, before even the age-old matter of race got added into the mix. The Casa Loma? they did what they did, always appearing not in tuxedos, but rather, in tails, and demonstrated an air of sophistication yet could turn on the "hot" music they played like flipping a switch. So if you were a college student around New York in 1932 perhaps not quite willing to venture across the tracks into Harlem, but happened to catch the Casa Loma at one of the nearby suburban ballrooms such as Playland or Larchmont or Glen Island, what you saw and heard was something that existed nowhere else in white society and few places, if anywhere, in any part of society. In 1930, Ellington was only using 11-12 pieces and very few if any others on the scene other than maybe Earl Hines and Lombardo were anywhere near that large a band, especially if their thrust was jazz and not "gushified" pop music from Tin Pan Alley. What I'm getting at is that the proficiency of Casa Loma, due to its precision and "slickness", made them awe inspiring to other jazz musicians, because Casa Loma was playing "hot" like perhaps only Goldkette and Henderson and Hines were doing in the late 20s and taking it to the next level, at least as far as the tutti ensemble playing portion was concerned, (solos being another matter). It was rebellious music for the younger middle class whites (i.e. those few college students who came from families of some degree of financial security during the darkest years of the depression) who could afford to go see and dance to the Casa Loma who brought a sense of "heat" by way of precision ensemble playing and "jazz" that few, if anyone, had ever achieved. All anyone needs to do is listen to just about any record by any jazz-oriented big band other than Casa Loma that is also pre-1935 Goodman and one thing comes to mind: sloppy ensemble work. So contrast what just about any band was doing at the time with something like Casa Loma Stomp in 1932. Casa Loma's sense of precision discipline became an integral part what big band playing meant whether it was jazz or not, and by 1937, if a band wasn't rehearsed or playing "tight" it didn't get anywhere. By 1936, the reviews of bands and records in Metronome and Downbeat were very critical of how "well" bands played, not only picking apart bad intonation, but also to the point of not only how or whether notes and phrases were being attacked together, but how long the long notes were being held out together and whether or not the longer notes were being released on time together as well. So let's get real, ever since the Casa Loma appeared, rehearsing became a major component of how good any band sounds, and that's the light bulb Casa Loma turned on, and for all practical purposes invented and every up and coming band had to reckon with in the immediate aftermath of the mid 1930s that became the Swing Era. And some things never change. I can only think of two bands in the last 85 years that elevated the ability to play so loose that it might be considered sloppy to an art, and that was Ellington and Sun Ra. But even that had to do with everyone in those bands knowing EXACTLY where everyone else in them was at at all times more than anything else; and just about any other band would have been... sloppy. Not to mention that Ellington and Sun Ra, being composers, wanted their music played their way to their standards and wants as much as any composers. Which brings us back to any leader's concepts and Gray's imposition of "stiffness" on the Casa Loma... even as late as the 1960's (which was by then just an LA studio band of mostly swing era veterans who were employed full-time in the Hollywood recording studios)! The bottom line is that after the Casa Loma put it out there on display, during the darkest years of the early 1930's, when surviving record labels were hesitant to record anything that was not a surefire popular hit record, and when younger white society was re-awakening to jazz to some extent, Casa Loma filled that huge void and made it loud and clear that any up and coming band that wanted to get anywhere would ultimately have to be a well rehearsed band whether it played jazz or not. Even Henderson's returns to fronting bands after Goodman's rise, when he would take periodic sabbaticals from writing for Goodman, assemble bands and play the same scores he had written for Goodman, have some great solos but the ensemble work is largely lacking in the precision that is integral to Henderson's writing: collective wholes equaling much less than the sums of their parts. And why? Well, the laxness of Henderson imposing no discipline whatsoever on his ensembles is legendary. And as for the current state of affairs, all anyone has to do is click on most of the contemporary big band videos posted on websites such as youtube played by today's musicians to hear music that's terrible because it's just so unrehearsed and as a result, directionless and horrendously awful. And the answer as to "why" is a no-brainer: they are either rudderless ships devoid of a tyrant with a vision out front beating a band into submission to play together as was commonplace by 1939, or else they are so pathetically unrehearsed because so many so-called "bandleaders" today have no concept of how to study a score, rehearse a band or have ZERO clue about how to get one to sound minimally presentable in the first place. So much for everyone getting a "participation" trophy. The results speak for themselves. All anyone has to do is close their eyes and use their ears. Thank you, Casa Loma; you let it be known how tight it could get and be blazing hot too (especially for 1932), and you set a standard that few have approached in decades. Bblegacy (talk) 04:47, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

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