The Battle at the Savoy
Joe Block plays the album he released on Friday at Dizzy's Club tonight, on Jazz at Lincoln Center's own Blue Engine label, in the season the house builds around Wynton Marsalis, who WRTI reported in January will step down as artistic director in July 2027. Today's record is "Stompin' at the Savoy," cut by Benny Goodman's band in Chicago in 1936 with Chick Webb one of three credited composers, and then Sekou takes us to Harlem on a Tuesday night in May 1937.
LioraA pianist plays his new record tonight at Dizzy's Club, in the founder's last season. Today's record has three names on the credit, one of them Chick Webb's. And later, a battle at the Savoy. It's Monday. Let's go.
LioraIt's Monday, September 28th. This is The Daily Quintet. I'm Liora. Five stories from the world of jazz, in about ten minutes. Here we go.
One. The Lead: Jazz at Lincoln Center bills two sets tonight at Dizzy's Club for "Joe Block Quintet:
LioraTonight at Dizzy's Club, a pianist plays the record he put out on Friday.
Jazz at Lincoln Center bills it "Joe Block Quintet: There is Always Hope Album Release Show." Two sets, seven and nine. The album came out Friday on Blue Engine Records, which is Jazz at Lincoln Center's own label.
The band, off the house's page. Joe Block, piano. Noah Halpern, trumpet. Dylan Band and Morgan Guerin, both on tenor saxophone. Sam Harris, bass. Miguel Russell, drums. Fifty five dollars the cover, thirty for a student with an ID.
Here is why a Monday club date leads the show.
The season page frames the year around one man: ninety performances at the House of Swing, celebrating the music, vision and lasting influence of Wynton Marsalis, its founding artistic director.
LioraWhat that page does not say, the reporting does. Nate Chinen at WRTI reported in January that Marsalis steps down as artistic director after this season, effective July 2027, closing out nearly forty years. Marsalis, quoted there: it is time for new leadership to take the institution to even higher ground.
And Block's own site says he writes for the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and the Wynton Marsalis Septet.
Two. Listen to This: "Stompin' at the Savoy," cut by the Benny Goodman Orchestra in Chicago on January 24
LioraToday's record is a tune with three names on the credit and a ballroom in the title.
"Stompin' at the Savoy." The Benny Goodman Orchestra cut it in Chicago on January 24th, 1936. It went out on Victor 25247. The credit, off the disc label and the copyright files, reads three ways: Edgar Sampson, Benny Goodman, and Chick Webb.
Here is the tip. Play that, then go find Webb leading his own band. The archive at UC Santa Barbara has Chick Webb's Savoy Orchestra on "On the Sunny Side of the Street," cut for Columbia in December 1933, and it will play that one for you off the page.
LioraThe release desk. Friday brought Joe Block's "There Is Always Hope" on Blue Engine. Ten days back, Branford Marsalis and Dianne Reeves, "Dedicated to You," six standards from the 1963 Coltrane and Hartman album. Reeves, in the label's own post: she learned singers stood in the band, not in front of the band.
Later, on The Bridge: Harlem, 1937. Chick Webb's band takes on Benny Goodman's at the Savoy, the riot squad comes out, and Webb's band plays Goodman's own hit right back at him. Sekou has the story.
Three. The Bridge: Harlem, 1937. Chick Webb's band takes on Benny Goodman's at the Savoy
LioraOne true story from this music's history, every day. Sekou tells it, I ask the questions. Sekou, where are we?
SekouHarlem. Tuesday night, May 11th, 1937. The Savoy Ballroom, upstairs over a row of shops on Lenox Avenue. The house band is Chick Webb's. He's a drummer, and one writer calls him "the undisputed king of the Savoy."
Battles of bands are common in Black venues in these years. Webb doesn't win them all. By one account, Duke Ellington's band trounced him two months ago.
Tonight the visitor is Benny Goodman, the King of Swing. A promoter named Helen Oakley set it up. Keep her in mind.
By one report, the betting is two to one on Goodman. About 4,000 people get inside. About 5,000 more can't get in. One reporter said ten thousand. Out come the riot squad, the fire department, and the mounted police.
LioraMounted police. For a dance.
SekouFor a dance. John Hammond, a critic, wrote in Down Beat that four or five cops stood on Goodman's bandstand. By his account, Webb sets himself and his drums right in front of his band. Goodman's drummer, Gene Krupa, is "buried in a back row, invisible to the audience because of the formidable cops who stood up in front of him."
Goodman goes first, with a Harry James arrangement of "Peckin'," to big applause. Then, Down Beat reported, "when Chick gave them that first beat on the bass drum, the crowds went absolutely mad."
Webb has a singer, too. Ella Fitzgerald, 20 years old. When she steps up, Down Beat says, "the hundreds of people linked arms and swayed back and forth in rhythm with the music."
LioraSo who's winning?
SekouTwo reporters single out the same tune. "Jam Session." It's Goodman's own hit, and his band blasts it out. Then Webb's band plays it right back at him. Down Beat says Webb "blew the roof off the house with it." Metronome says the Men of Webb "literally blew the roof off the Savoy."
Metronome's George Simon goes on. "The crowd screamed, yelled, whistled with delirium. On the stand Chick grinned. He grinned because he felt victory."
SekouThe reporters of the day called it for Webb. Down Beat: "Webb Wins Title Of Swing King." Metronome wrote it up like a prize fight. "Chick Webb Defeats Ben Goodman. Takes Decision of 4,000 In Hometown Battle." Hammond wrote that Webb "actually walked off with the honors."
LioraDecided how, though? Were there judges?
SekouThe three magazine reports mention no judges and no vote. They describe a crowd and give opinions. Webb's biographer, Stephanie Stein Crease, thinks it went by applause, and she says it was "kind of a marketing ploy."
Which brings us back to Helen Oakley. Her aim, as Stein Crease tells it: a battle with Goodman's band, "then the most popular white band in the country, would get plenty of attention." The fullest report of the night, Down Beat's front-page story, is hers. The battle's own promoter wrote it up. Hammond had helped build Goodman's band. He talked Goodman into hiring Krupa. Both of them called it for Webb.
Two years later, Chick Webb died in Baltimore, where he was born. In 1946, Ebony still listed that night first among the Savoy's greatest nights.
Krupa later said, "I was never cut by a better man."
LioraThe promoter wrote the front-page story. The line people still quote came from Goodman's own drummer.
That's The Bridge. Back to today, right after this.
Four. On the Road: The Village Vanguard runs the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra at eight and ten
LioraTonight, coast to coast.
Tonight's ticket comes with an asterisk, and the club put it there itself.
The Village Vanguard runs the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra every Monday night, and counts more than 2,700 of them, back to 1966. Sixteen names, Ted Nash leading the saxophones. Eight and ten. The asterisk: the club prints no dated page for tonight, only the standing line.
Now the sweep.
In Nashville, Rudy's has the Nashville Trio with Eddie Barbash, Jeff Picker and Mark Raudabaugh from six, then Giovanni Rodriguez and 12 Manos from nine.
In New Orleans, Preservation Hall gives Preservation Brass three times, five, six fifteen and seven thirty. Forty five minutes each.
In Oakland, Yoshi's has Fred Wesley's New JBs with Martha High's Funky Divas at seven thirty.
LioraAnd Jazz Alley in Seattle is full: a benefit at seven thirty for Seattle Children's Hospital and the Cancer Vaccine Institute at UW Medicine. There is a standby line.
Three rooms are out: the Jazz Gallery until Wednesday, Jazz St. Louis until November, and the Regattabar, which keeps no schedule on its own site.
Five. One More Note: Miles Davis died thirty five years ago today, September 28, 1991
LioraSeptember 28th, 1991. Miles Davis dies, thirty five years ago today, in his centennial year.
The National Endowment for the Arts made him a Jazz Master in 1984, and its own page says it plainly: arguably the most influential jazz musician in the post World War Two period.
The Library of Congress files him under biography and keeps one alternate identity on the record: Cleo Henry. And "Kind of Blue" went into the National Recording Registry in 2002, its first year.
Outro
LioraThat's the Quintet. If today's show earned it, follow The Daily Quintet wherever you listen.
The Daily Quintet is an AI-crafted production, researched and checked by humans. Every listing you heard came from the venue or the festival's own organizer.
That's your Monday. I'm Liora. See you tomorrow.