“Angelotto” (1939)

Composed by Bunny Berigan.

Privately recorded on March 16, 1939 in New York.

Bunny Berigan, gelastic (humorous) recitation and trumpet; Joe Bushkin, piano.

The story:

It is not often that I or anyone gets the opportunity to present a world premier of a Bunny Berigan recording. Nevertheless, through a tangled web of happenstance and my ability to stumble forward occasionally, I am able to do so now. Here is the back-story:

More than a dozen years ago, while I was writing Mr. Trumpet …The Trials, Tribulations and Triumph of Bunny Berigan, I thought it advisable to visit Bunny’s home town, Fox Lake, Wisconsin, to see for myself the place that produced him. It was an interesting visit for a number of reasons. The people whom I met in Fox Lake were welcoming, hospitable and helpful to me. I was able to see a number of places in Fox Lake that were, some seven decades after his death, still remarkably like what they were when Bunny lived there. I was also able to do some research in the Fox Lake Public Library that had a sizeable trove of information and other things that pertained to Berigan. What I found in Fox Lake led me to head some sixty miles south, to the capital of Wisconsin, Madison.

Madison is a delightful city that at once is surrounded by and surrounds water. My objective was to visit the Mills Music Library at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, to access the Berigan materials housed there. The people at the Library were very cooperative with me, as I removed and pored-over every single item in the Berigan archive at a large table they set aside for me. This process took me two eight-hour days. It was a voyage of discovery. That was the good news. The bad news was that the materials in the Berigan archive were then, and I presume still, not curated. They were simply there.

I came across literally dozens of photographs amidst the Berigan materials that I had never seen before, despite the fact that I had been a serious student of Berigan’s life and music for decades. I resolved to somehow get as many of those photographs as possible digitized and then out into the world at large so that people would be able to learn more about Bunny Berigan. I am happy to report that this objective has been achieved to a substantial degree. Today, it is relatively easy via the Internet to find and study many more photos of Berigan than I ever saw in the decades before I started to write his biography. But in order to present those photos publicly, it has taken me years in many instances to identify the people in them. Indeed, some of the faces in those eighty, ninety and one hundred year old photos remain unidentified. Nevertheless, many more photos relating to Bunny Berigan and his life and music are more easily accessible today than ever before. (Some of of the photos I found in Fox Lake or at the Berigan Archive at the Mills Music Library appear above.)

In addition to the photos, and written and other materials in the Berigan archive at the University of Wisconsin, many recordings are there. Some of them were clearly professionally made transcriptions of radio broadcasts by the Berigan band from the late 1930s. Others were more mysterious. There are quite a few disks there that have blank labels. Some, I later learned, were recordings of broadcasts made on a home recording unit, possibly one Bunny had in his home. Others had absolutely no labels or anything else to indicate what was on them. Whatever recordings I found, I attempted to identify as completely as possible in my notes.

After I returned home from Wisconsin, I began reaching out to various people who are knowledgeable about the music and musicians of the swing era. My objective was to try to get as many of the breakable shellac disk recordings in the Berigan Archive as possible transferred into digital format, and then to listen to them to determine if it would be feasible to gather enough of them to fill a commercial compact disk.

Then, as a result of serendipity and dumb luck, I came into contact with Alastair Robertson, the man behind the wonderful Hep record label, which is headquartered in Scotland. I was well aware of Alastair and the work he had done over many years in producing vintage recordings on the Hep label from the swing era, usually with very good audio fidelity and well-prepared liner notes and discographies. In my opinion, Alastair was a record producer who did good work. He had integrity. I began to correspond with him by email. We had many spirited exchanges. I made it clear to Alastair that I thought there would be enough Berigan material to fill up a complete 80 minute compact disk. The problem was that I did not know what was on almost all of the acetate disks in Madison, Wisconsin, and what condition the recordings on those disks were in.

Here is where the story becomes remarkable. After Alastair and I went back and forth by email for some time, he suggested that if I could get the proper legal clearance from the University of Wisconsin for him to issue on his Hep label some of the Berigan recordings in the Mills Music Library, he would pay to have the disks shipped from Madison to the audio engineer we both agreed would be best for this project, Doug Pomeroy, who then lived and worked in Brooklyn, New York, and have Doug do the digital transfers. He would then have Doug send me all of the transfers (a set also went to the Mills Music Library as a part of the consideration for them granting permission to Alastair to use the recordings commercially), and then I could listen to the transfers and decide which recordings, if any, would be suitable for commercial release on the Hep label.

After a bit of tooing and froing with the folks at the University of Wisconsin, I did receive the clearance. The disks were shipped from Madison, Wisconsin to Brooklyn, New York. Doug Pomeroy did the digital transfers and sent me copies of all of them. Much to my delight, I was able to put together a list of nineteen recordings (actually a few more, but the nineteen that were eventually chosen filled up a Hep compact disk), many of which had not been previously released in any form.

I shared my selection list with Doug, and then he sent Alastair digital copies of all of the recordings I had chosen so he could listen to them. With a minimum of disagreement, the nineteen selections that now appear on Hep CD 96 entitled: Bunny Berigan …Swingin’ and Jumpin’ …Broadcasts 1937-1939, were green-lighted by Alastair for production and issuance. I then worked with Doug as he remastered the recordings that were to go on the Hep CD. We also get the job done with a minimum of disagreement. The CD was issued in 2013.

I must take this opportunity to once again thank Alastair Robertson for facilitating this project, and working with Doug and me until it came to fruition. Without his wisdom, patience, good-humor (mostly, I sometimes tested his patience) and money, it would not have been undertaken and completed. I must also thank Doug Pomeroy (now living in Hawaii), for his expertise and patience in dealing with me as I kept pushing him to try to wring every bit of sonic information out of those eighty-year-old recordings. People like Alastair and Doug are amazingly idealistic, generous and rare in this world that too often is anything but idealistic or generous.

But what about the recordings described above that did not make it on to Hep CD 96? All of the transfers Doug Pomeroy sent to me are still in my music library. I have not gone back to many of those recordings in a while, but have now resolved to do so. (Some, regrettably are in poor condition.) Still, there are among them some very interesting items. But none are more interesting than “Angelotto,” the recording I am presenting with this post.

The music:

In addition to this being a world premier of a Bunny Berigan recording made in 1939, I can say with confidence, that this is the strangest Berigan recording ever made. The essence of what happened in a Manhattan recording studio on March 16, 1939 was that Bunny was there to perform improvised trumpet solos on familiar tunes with minimal accompaniment. His solos would be recorded, but the recordings were not intended to be issued. They were to be handed to an orchestrator who worked for the Leo Feist Music Publishing Co., and transcribed note for note (with corrections as required), then issued under Bunny’s name as a booklet in the Feist All Star Series of Modern Rhythm Choruses. The producer of the recordings urged the soloist to play with abandon, hoping inspired jazz would result. If any mistakes occurred in the performances (and they did), they would be corrected by the orchestrator. Bunny recorded ten solos that day for the Feist Co. They later appeared as sheet music in a booklet.

It is my informed speculation that Bunny completed the ten recordings he was required to do well within the time allotted in the studio to complete them. He and Lee Wiley, who was also in the studio with him, along with pianist Joe Bushkin (and possibly pianist Joe Lippman(*), then prevailed on the recording engineer to allow them to make a couple of other recordings, strictly as mementos. The results were at least three recordings, “You Leave Me Breathless,” sung by Lee Wiley and accompanied by Bushkin (1), a piano solo by Bushkin (2), and this recording by Bunny and Bushkin.

The acetate disk in the Berigan archive that contains this recording has a blank label. When I first heard this recording, some 75 years after it was made, I was puzzled. What Bunny did vocally was clearly intended to be humorous. What language was he speaking anyway? Had he been studying Esperanto on those long bus trips between one-night stands? Did he pattern this recitation on the zany “monologues” his friend Jerry Colonna had done to warm up audiences for the CBS radio shows they worked on together in the mid 1930s? Bunny did have a sense of humor, and was not averse to clowning. This recording, containing as it does the full dynamic range of his voice from a whisper to a frightening shout, reveals the true quality of his voice in ways that his few recorded singing or speaking examples do not.

The title “Angelotto” (which I have bestowed on this performance) comes from one of the few real or discernable words in Bunny’s recitation after which, quite unexpectedly, he begins to play his trumpet. That was no joke.

The melody Bunny created was remarkably wistful, as so may of his greatest solos are, at least in part. His playing is lovely, balladic, and quintessential in sound, phrasing and gentle swing. But the surprise comes at the end as he dramatically projects a massive, singing high E on his trumpet (concert high D) to conclude this mysterious performance in a musically rewarding fashion.

The recording presented here was digitally remastered by Mike Zirpolo.

Notes and links:

(*) A drummer was also on the recording date, provided by the producer. He departed the studio after the ten Rhythm Choruses recordings were completed.

(1) Here is a link to Lee Wiley’s recording of “You Leave Me Breathless”: https://bunnyberiganmrtrumpet.com/2018/05/26/berigan-as-an-audience-of-one-you-leave-me-breathless-1939-lee-wiley-with-joe-bushkin/

(2) The piano solo by Joe Bushkin that was recorded on March 16, 1939 is apparently an original composition he was working on that has an introduction much like the one on the November 22, 1939 Muggsy Spanier recording of “Relaxing at the Touro,” which Bushkin helped Spanier to write.