Composed and arranged by Jimmy Mundy. (3)
Recorded by Benny Goodman and His Orchestra for Victor on September 27, 1935 in Los Angeles.
Benny Goodman, clarinet, directing: Bunny Berigan, first and solo trumpet; Ralph Muzzillo and Nate Kazebier, trumpets; Jack Lacey and Sterling “Red” Ballard, trombones; Hymie Shertzer, first alto saxophone; Bill DePew, alto saxophone; Arthur Rollini and Dick Clark, tenor saxophones; Jess Stacy, piano; Allan Reuss, guitar; Harry Goodman, bass; Gene Krupa, drums.
The story:
Possibilities. One of the great benefits of being young, talented, and in the right place at the right time with the right people is that possibilities seem endless. Such was the case in the summer of 1935 for Bunny Berigan. Although he was only 26 years old then, he was already very successful as a professional musician. He could and did earn a lot of money playing his trumpet in a wide variety of situations in Manhattan, mainly as a staff performer at CBS radio, and by playing on as many recording dates as he could fit in in addition to his full-time CBS gig. Berigan’s talents were such that he would simply show up at whatever gig he had, sit down and look over whatever music he was going to play, and then play it perfectly, with no or minimal rehearsal. These talents alone placed him in a very exclusive group of musicians who basically had as much work as they could handle each week by simply showing up on time and playing the music as written.
But Berigan also had something else that almost no other musician in the world of music the Manhattan radio and recording studios had then, the ability to improvise in just about any situation, and create memorable, often compelling music on the spot. When he was called on to do this, which was far too seldom in his opinion, he would do so with a heraldic, ringing trumpet sound in all registers of the horn, and with irresistible swing. In many respects, Berigan was unique among New York studio musicians. The few other musicians who had this ability then, in varying degrees, were also young, and they all had ambitions to form their own bands, in which they could play the music they wanted to play at least a bit more than the could in the studios. These musicians included Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, Art Shaw, and Benny Goodman. All of these men were excellent musicians. Some were virtuoso performers on their chosen instrument.
Starting and successfully operating a big band during the Depression of the 1930s was a very high-risk business, regardless of the band’s musical excellence. In fact, a good many musically excellent bands would appear appear and disappear through the mid and late 1930s and through the 1940s, all for the same reason: lack of good management. “Management” encompassed many different things. First, a musician who wanted to start a band had to have a personal manager, who would work with him to build his name before the public, and interact in a positive and constructive way with a booking agency. The agency’s job was to secure employment for bands. Agencies cared little for the kind of work they secured for their clients because the agency was paid its commission weather the work was good, bad, or indifferent. The bandleader’s manager had to advocate on behalf of his client to get the best work possible from the booking agency. This was a constant challenge, especially if the band was just starting and not well-known to the public. Of the hundreds of big bands that operated during the swing era, only a very few ever were able to work their way up the economic food-chain successfully to a place of great success.
One such band was Benny Goodman’s. Benny, in addition to being a superb musician who shared many of the musical attributes that made Bunny Berigan a unique performer on his instrument, also had many personality traits that enabled him to grind out the hard work and endure the frustrations and exhaustions that were a part of building a successful band. His great confidence as a performer and bandleader, coupled with his iron will to succeed, also stood him in good stead.
In addition, Benny had a secret weapon (to the public, but well-known within the world of swing) – his older brother Harry. Harry was a journeyman bass player who had spent many years working as a sideman, principally in the band of drummer Ben Pollack, where he was a most receptive student in the academy known as the band business. Pollack benefitted greatly by having another journeyman musician in his band, saxophonist Gil Rodin. As an instrumentalist, Rodin was professional, but nothing more. As a businessman however, he dwarfed everyone who ever passed through the Pollack band, except for two others; one a trombone player – Glenn Miller, and the other, Harry Goodman. Rodin, Miller and Harry Goodman graduated from the Pollack band business academy summa cum laude. All three would go on and be involved in operating successful bands during the swing era. Rodin was the key man in the success of the Bob Crosby band. Harry Goodman was very involved in building the success of his younger brother Benny’s band. Glenn Miller, of course, would become the leader of one of the most successful bands of the swing era. (Above left: Harry Goodman backstage in Carnegie Hall – 1938 as a member of his brother’s band. Harry did a lot more than play bass and smoke cigars: He greatly assisted Benny in building his career as a successful bandleader.)
However much Harry Goodman was involved in the business side of the Goodman band, he had nothing to do with Benny’s desire to get Bunny Berigan into his band. Benny had worked with Bunny in the New York radio and recording studios, and he was well aware of Bunny’s capabilities long before he became a bandleader. After Benny formed his band in 1934, he wanted Berigan to play in his band whenever he had time, but Bunny was usually overworked between his full-time CBS gig, and many other outside gigs, so he just didn’t the have time. In addition, Goodman could not afford to pay Bunny anything like what he was making doing his other work. Still, Bunny was aware of what Goodman was trying to do musically by trying to create and keep going a band that could swing, and he was most interested to see how successful Benny would be at doing that.
Radio money is what changed that situation, at least for a time. After Benny Goodman began being featured on the NBC radio network show Let’s Dance, which started in late 1934, he had the money to pay Berigan. So Bunny began appearing with the Goodman band, playing lead and solo trumpet, in addition to continuing to do his other work. This continued into early 1935, but then stopped because Berigan stepped-up his work outside of CBS in the recording studios, and because his drinking was beginning to affect his reliability on occasion. Benny, being fully aware that the Let’s Dance show was a golden opportunity for him to advance his career as a bandleader, soldiered on through the winter and spring of 1935, using another very talented trumpet player, George “Pee Wee” Erwin, in place of Berigan. Nevertheless, Erwin, despite some excellent lead and jazz playing on his part, was not able to consistently fire-up the Goodman band as Berigan had done.
Benny and Harry Goodman continued working on the Let’s Dance radio show until May 25, 1935, when the show’s run ended. They had, with the assistance of their new booking agency, Music Corporation of America (MCA), landed a contract to make records for Victor in the spring of 1935. They also saved whatever money they could so that they could keep the Goodman band going after the Let’s Dance show ended. After that happened, they were underwhelmed by a lack of offers for the band to work, despite the fact that by that time, the band was a very good one.
Fortunately, a new radio transcription service came into existence in the spring of 1935, Thesaurus. And in order to jump-start their inventory of recordings, a session was scheduled on June 6, 1935 with the Benny Goodman band. An incredible 51 tunes were recorded that day, each using one take only. The session ran from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m, with an hour off for lunch beginning at 1:15 p.m.(1) Most of first trumpet parts were played by Pee Wee Erwin, and he also took most if not all of the trumpet solos. The performances by the Goodman band on these recordings are generally good, but rarely inspired. That is certainly understandable given the circumstances.
By mid-June 1935, the Goodman brothers, again through MCA, had booked a tour for the Goodman band that would start in mid-July and last through an engagement at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles, which was to start on August 21. It was expected by all concerned that the tour would end after Labor Day, and the Goodman band would go on to whatever other work MCA could secure for them after that. There was a very real possibility that the band would break up for lack of work after the tour concluded.
But before the band left New York, Benny wanted to make some records for Victor. The ones he had made for that label at two recording sessions in April revealed a good dance band and singer (Helen Ward), and an excellent clarinet soloist, Benny Goodman. But the band, good as it was, was nothing special, particularly in terms of swing. (2) Two recording sessions were scheduled In Victor’s Twenty-Fourth Street studio, one on June 25 and one on July 1. Benny knew that he had to do something to jolt his band members musically for those sessions. The jolt would come in the person of Bunny Berigan.
It is not hyperbole to say that the recordings made by the Goodman band on June 25 and July 1, 1935 are among the best Benny ever made. The entire band bristled rhythmically. Everyone seems inspired. And the reason for this, in large measure, was that Bunny Berigan was sitting in the first trumpet chair driving the ensembles. In addition, he played solos that nearly nine decades later are still regarded as models of excellence in the swing idiom. Last, but certainly not least, the Goodman brothers had persuaded Berigan to work with their band on the upcoming tour, and good karma ensued. Musical possibilities abounded.
The music:
“Madhouse” was composed and arranged by tenor saxophonist/arranger Jimmy Mundy for the Earl Hines band, of which he was a member, and recorded by that ensemble on March 26, 1934 for Vocalion. (3) The arrangement Hines used on his recording is the one Benny Goodman used for the recording presented with this post, which was made eighteen months later.
It is significant that “Madhouse” was the first Jimmy Mundy arrangement played by Benny Goodman’s band. Historians and other commentators have rightly pointed out how important the arrangements of Fletcher Henderson were to the musical and commercial development of Benny Goodman’s new band in 1935. But they have underappreciated how important the arrangements of Jimmy Mundy to the ever-increasing success of the early Goodman band in the years 1936 and 1937, when he was working full-time writing arrangements for the BG band.
The way for Mundy was cleared when Fletcher Henderson, who had disbanded his orchestra in the late summer of 1934 for financial reasons, decided to reorganize a band in the spring of 1935 in New York. The new Henderson band was not very successful. By early 1936, Henderson was in Chicago with yet another new band, but this one was moderately successful through the years 1936-1938. By 1939, Fletcher was once again without a band, and he resumed writing arrangements for Benny Goodman. Benny even hired him, ill-advisedly, as a pianist after Jess Stacy left the Goodman band in July of 1939. (4)
Jimmy Mundy later revealed where the title “Madhouse” originated: “I wrote ‘Madhouse’ when I was with the Hines band at the Grand Terrace in Chicago. The Terrace was in the Trenier Hotel, and everything happened there – never a dull moment. We used to call the hotel the madhouse.” (5)
Benny Goodman’s recording of “Madhouse” comes on like a steam locomotive chugging down the track with Bunny Berigan on straight-muted trumpet providing the rhythmic impetus. After a doo-wacka-doo ensemble increases the rhythmic excitement, Bunny finishes the introduction.
The first chorus presents the immaculate Goodman saxophone quartet, led with supple swing by Hymie Shertzer through the first sixteen bars. There follows a brief trombone solo by Jack Lacey and a few bright clarinet notes by BG, and then an explosion of brass, with Berigan’s ringing open trumpet on top. The next tract has the syncopated saxophones playing hide-and-seek with the syncopated open brass.
An ascending saxophone interlude and another brass eruption springs Benny into a full chorus jazz solo. By this time, his rhythm section of Gene Krupa on drums, Allan Reuss on guitar, Harry Goodman on bass, and pianist Jess Stacy was functioning like a well-oiled swing machine. Stacy follows BG with his own chorus, a rarity in the years he was with Benny, and pays homage to one of his most influential his musical fathers, Earl Hines.
Then the band comes back in, riffing their way to a Berigan-led climax and denouement.
This recording was made at the end of the Goodman band’s successful and extended stand at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles. Berigan and trombonist Jack Lacey left the band right after this recording date to return to their employment in the New York radio and recording studios. The Goodman band moved on through a series of somewhat successful engagements for the next five weeks, finally arriving at the Congress Hotel in Chicago for what would be a six-month residency. They emerged from that as one of the most exciting swing bands of 1936, with major success lying just ahead.
The recording presented with this post was digitally remastered by Mike Zirpolo.
Notes and links:
(1) Let’s Dance Benny Goodman …The Record of a Legend (1984), by D. Russell Connor, 63.
(2) The fact that the Benny Goodman band did not turn in especially inspired performances on their Thesaurus recordings made on June 6, 1935 is yet another reason why Benny knew that he had to do something to jolt his band members musically at their upcoming Victor recording sessions.
(3) Earl Hines is listed as a co-composer of “Madhouse,” but it is unclear what role, if any, he played in composing the tune. It was an accepted practice during the swing era for bandleaders to claim one-half of the composer royalty for a tune that had been actually composed by one of his sidemen as consideration for him recording and promoting the tune. The initial Victor release of “Madhouse” had only Jimmy Mundy’s name on it as composer. Presumably after Earl Hines’s lawyer contacted Victor, Hines’s name appeared with Mundy’s on all future releases.
(4) I use the words “ill-advisedly” because despite his great ability as an arranger, Fletcher Henderson was not a great pianist. His predecessor in the Goodman band, Jess Stacy, and his successor, Johnny Guarnieri, could both play rings around him. But Benny’s regard for Fletcher was so great that overlooked his shortcomings as a pianist basically because he liked him as a person, and wanted to help him get past a dry spell as the leader of his own band.
(5) The Swing Era 1930-1936 (1971), notes on the music by Joseph Kastner, 61.
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