“Nothin’ But the Blues” (1935)

Composed by Gene Gifford, Wingy Manone and Joe Bishop; arranged by Gene Gifford.

Recorded by Gene Gifford and His Orchestra for Victor on May 13, 1935 in New York.

Gene Gifford, directing: Bunny Berigan, trumpet; Morey Samel, trombone; Julian “Matty” Matlock, clarinet; Lawrence “Bud” Freeman, tenor saxophone; Claude Thornhill, piano; Dick McDonough, guitar; Pete Peterson, bass; Ray Bauduc, drums; Joseph M. “Wingy” Manone, vocal.

The story:

As the year 1935 dawned, Bunny Berigan was working full-time as a staff musician for the CBS radio network in Manhattan. Although this employment there was often tedious and boring, there were nevertheless aspects of it that were extremely positive and enjoyable. CBS in the mid-1930s, was a haven for some of the most creative people on the entertainment and broadcasting scene at that time. The musical fare at CBS then was so widely varied that it boggles the mind, especially when compared with the generally homogeneous and unimaginative offerings found on radio today. At CBS, one could within one broadcast day, run the gamut from outright concert music (The Ford Sunday Evening Hour), to the light classics, with André Kostelanetz, to Kate Smith to Raymond Scott to The Saturday Night Swing Club (which had a great deal to do with establishing jazz as a part of the American cultural landscape).

In addition, there was a wide variety of what are now called “scripted shows,” from soap operas to dramas to comedies. The Mercury Theater of the Air, under the wildly unconventional leadership of the prodigious Orson Welles, was allowed to appear and thrive on CBS radio. The music for Welles’s radio dramas was provided by CBS staffer Bernard Herrmann, who followed Welles to Hollywood, and composed the music for Welles’s classic film Citizen Kane. Herrmann later went on to a now legendary collaboration with film director Alfred Hitchcock, composing the music for such memorable films as Vertigo, North by Northwest, The Birds, and Psycho.(1)

The mid-1930s also marked the beginnings of the renowned news division at CBS, which ultimately produced the first superstar news person: Edward R. Murrow.(2)

By 1938, CBS was broadcasting, via live relay from WGAR in Cleveland on Sunday afternoons, the first network radio program that was dedicated to Afro-Americans: Wings over Jordan. It came to be recognized as the first radio program of the American civil rights movement.

CBS was not the largest radio network in America (NBC was), but it could certainly claim to be the most creative and inclusive. Bunny Berigan was at CBS in the midst of this heady atmosphere, and he encountered many people there whose creative outlook must have been a healthy antidote for the often grueling and stultifying work he had to do in the music department.

The USA was deeply mired in an economic depression in the mid-1930s. Berigan’s work at CBS, tedious and exhausting as it was, paid very well, and due to his schedule there, he was free most evenings to take outside jobs. Some of these, like the ones with Joe Moss at the Meyer Davis office, were hardly satisfying in the musical sense, but they paid well. Financially speaking, Bunny was (or should have been) doing very well. There were few musicians in New York or anywhere who were making more money in 1934–1935 than he was. His wife reported that he was often earning $500 weekly,(3) and if this amount is multiplied by fifteen, we can approximate the value of those Depression era dollars today. It appears that by 1935, Bunny had his own car, and he and his family resided in the comfortable house at 83-28 Sixty-third Ave. Rego Park, in Queens that he had purchased upon his return to CBS in early 1934.(4) This residence is located near Juniper Valley Park and St. John’s Cemetery, and was not far from the Forest Hills home of Mildred Bailey and Red Norvo.(5)

Nevertheless, ominous signs started to appear in Berigan’s financial life at about this time. His Ford automobile was repossessed.(6) Trumpeter Dave Wade, a colleague of Bunny’s at CBS, recalled:

“Raymond Scott’s group also recorded backing singers Red McKenzie and Midge Williams. My solo on ‘Wanted’ (with Red McKenzie) fooled some people into thinking it was Bunny. I did my best to sound like him, as Ray Scott told me I had to sound like Bunny to get the CBS job. While Bunny was still on staff at CBS I recall that Nat Natoli was in the ‘night band’ at that same time and was a good friend of Bunny’s. Bunny and I were in the so-called ‘morning band.’ Nat and I went out to visit Bunny for some reason, it was mid-winter and cold, and when we arrived we found the house with no heat; the kids were on the floor with their coats on. Nat was so mad!  He wanted to fracture Bunny! While Bunny was still on staff, but before I had joined, I used to do a lot of sub work in his place; he was always so busy.”(7)

If Bunny was irresponsible with money, and he certainly was, Donna was too. Bunny provided large sums of money for Donna to run the Berigan household, and she used that money as she saw fit. He was not one to bother with things like a family budget, and he was not around enough to monitor the family’s finances in any event. It appears that Donna’s overall immaturity extended into the area of family finance. Consequently, there was never enough money to keep things running smoothly at the Berigan home no matter how much Bunny earned. As a result of both Bunny’s and Donna’s spendthrift ways, he and Donna were always short of funds. Although he was clearly the dominant partner in their marriage, he was not domineering or cruel. Donna was undoubtedly aware of the fact that her husband was capable of making a lot of money, and she seemed to defer to him in most, if not all matters. It appears that she was along for the ride, and for a long time, that ride included a lot of laughs, a lot of fun, and a lot of goodies. She seems to have come to the conclusion that whatever Bunny did, and his conduct was becoming more damaging to their marriage, that conduct was necessary for him to continue his very successful career. Donna was using denial to deal with Bunny’s behavior, especially his deepening dependence on alcohol. Her way of dealing with Bunny’s drinking, more and more, involved her having a few with him, whenever he was around, which was less and less. Nevertheless, Donna was by this time also developing her own problem with alcohol.

The repeal of Prohibition was certainly not a factor in Berigan’s advancing alcoholism. He was well on his way in that direction long before repeal. However, repeal was a substantial factor in the economic revival of the dance band business in the mid-1930s.

The long awaited repeal of Prohibition finally became a reality shortly after President Roosevelt took office. Light wines and beer were made legal first, with hard liquor available on a legal basis early in 1934. The former speakeasies now became respectable nightclubs. Hotels, which had previously experienced difficulty in underwriting top talent, suddenly had a profitable revenue source, which permitted them to do so. Every phase of the entertainment business was given a healthy shot in the arm and the band business was the first to benefit since it was the backbone around which every show was built.(8) 

One of many remarkable things about Bunny Berigan was his ability to bounce back from the most humiliating, ego-crushing experiences, like falling off the bandstand at the Let’s Dance radio broadcast in a drunken stupor, and then somehow pulling himself together and playing well (sometimes magnificently) within a short time thereafter. There is no doubt that after that sad incident with Benny Goodman (which occurred around New Years 1935), Bunny returned to CBS (probably the next day) to once again resume his demanding and exacting duties, which likely included playing in the band on the Kate Smith show, appearing with the Instrumentalists, a forerunner of the Raymond Scott Quintet, and working with various bands under the direction of Mark Warnow.

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The music:

On May 13, 1935, Bunny Berigan participated in a commercial recording session with kindred spirits. The musicians who took part in this session with him were: Bud Freeman, tenor saxophone; Matty Matlock, clarinet; Morey Samel, trombone; Claude Thornhill, piano; Dick McDonough, guitar; Pete Peterson, bass; Ray Bauduc, drums. The band was led by Gene Gifford, the first great arranger to work with the Casa Loma band. The trumpeter/vocalist Wingy Manone (9) was also present, wisely confining his contributions to singing on three of the four titles recorded that day. Gifford arranged all four tunes. The first title cut was “Nothin’ but the Blues,” an original twelve-bar blues that was co-composed by Gifford, Manone, and Joe Bishop, an arranger/composer who was then working in the Isham Jones band that included a very young Woody Herman.

Berigan’s passionate first blues chorus before the vocal is a perfect miniature jazz statement, stamped indelibly with Bunny’s musical personality. After Manone’s whiskeyfied singing, he returns to play two more moving choruses, above the accompaniment of the other musicians, delivered with the utmost authority.

The jazz trumpeter and writer Richard M. Sudhalter was a most perceptive auditor of Berigan’s work. Here is how he described what he heard on this recording: “Berigan opens the number with an eight-bar announcement of mood and tone, the sound of his horn glowing rich. With the band playing chordal offbeats behind him, he glides majestically down two octaves from high G above the staff to G at the bottom of his horn.” (10)

After Matty Matlock plays a delicate clarinet solo, Bunny returns to play a chorus of the blues that is passionate and moving. “A full band chord, with Berigan holding a D on top, begins a trumpet chorus whose resounding beauty has been admired by many but seldom equaled. His first two bars are built around that sustained D. He drops to C, then B, then B-flat, returning each time to the D in a rhythm patters whose irregularity and intensity that had been found by few trumpet players except for Louis Armstrong up to that time. Berigan leaps then to his clarion upper register for a proclamation that moves him ahead over shifting chords to a long phrase full of felicities: well-chosen notes, a variety of rhythms, sensitive dynamics – all portraying emotions on a grand scale. Notice the eloquent Armstrong-inspired touch of the major seventh in bar five and the hush at the end of bar six…”

Here are the rest of Mr. Sudhalter’s observations about this classic recording: “Manone takes the vocal in a voice like a room full of cigarette smoke, backed at first by Freeman’s elegant, vigorous (tenor saxophone) accompaniment, and then by trombonist Morey Samel and (guitarist) Dick McDonough.”

“Berigan returns with a more contemplative but no less emotionally-charged chorus, over the same sort of marching background given (by arranger Gifford) to Matlock earlier. Bunny is especially compelling in a repeated sequence of E, B-flat and G, played in descending order and constantly shifting variation, that occupies bars four through six. He ‘squeezes’ an F-sharp in bar seven to impart a special singing quality to this chorus, then ends on a series of bold octave-jumps. His long, annunciatory, top-of-the-staff G leads the ensemble into one final ad lib chorus nearly as intense as (his) trumpet solos. With Freeman’s tenor wailing and Bauduc bashing cymbal backbeats, Berigan stamps out a high E to unleash a passionate double-time run, then winds up with a broad, rhapsodic outburst of bel canto Armstrong to carry him into a reprise of the introduction. Even after all of this strenuous playing, his control, broad tone, and faultless execution are as they were at the outset. His only variation is a single, playful octave jump, G to G, to show that he is not ready to quit, even as the band winds down to a single, final Bauduc cymbal crash.”(10)

The recording presented with this post was digitally remastered by Mike Zirpolo.

Notes and links:

(1) A vivid summary of so-called serious music at CBS in the 1930s is to be found in A Heart at Fire’s Center, The Life and Music of Bernard Herrmann, by Steven C. Smith, University of California Press (1991).

(2) Edward R. Murrow gathered around him at CBS a great number of exceptional broadcast journalists including: Eric Sevareid, Charles Collingwood, Howard K. Smith, and Daniel Schorr. Mr. Schorr was the last survivor of that illustrious group, working as a senior news analyst on National Public Radio until his death in 2010.

(3) Bunny Berigan …Elusive Legend of Jazz by Robert Dupuis (1993), 127.

(4) White materials: April 20, 1935. One recollection has the Berigan family living in a house. Another has them living in an apartment. Currently, 83-28 Sixty-third Avenue, Rego Park, Queens is in a residential neighborhood block that contains spacious brick homes that are contiguous, so I guess both characterizations are correct.

(5) Kenneth Norville was born on March 31, 1908, in Beardstown, Illinois. As Red Norvo, he was a part of Paul Whiteman’s orchestra in the late 1920s, where he met Mildred Bailey. In the early years of his career, Norvo played the xylophone, and also piano. His approach to jazz from the beginning was harmonically rich and rhythmically supple, making him a pioneer in many respects, albeit a largely unappreciated one. He began to record in the early 1930s, and began leading his own band in the mid-1930s. Though Norvo tried again and again to make it commercially acceptable, his big band was a failure. By the mid-1940s, he was playing the vibraphone and appearing as a featured artist with the Benny Goodman and Woody Herman bands. Late in the 1940s, he began to lead a series of small jazz groups, all of which were musically inventive. He achieved some success in these ventures, appearing with them in a number of films during the 1950s. Norvo continued to work well into his later years. He died in Santa Monica, California, on April 6, 1999.

(6) White materials: December 4, 1935.

(7) White materials: February 20, 1937. The incident referred to by Dave Wade probably took place in late 1936 or early 1937. By then, baby Joyce would have been able to crawl.

(8) The Wonderful Era of the Great Dance Bands, by Leo Walker, Da Capo Press, Inc. (original copyright 1964), 62.

(9) Joseph Matthews Manone (1900-1982), was born in New Orleans. He lost his right arm as the result of a streetcar accident when he was ten years old, which resulted in the nickname “Wingy”. He used a prosthesis so naturally and unnoticeably that his disability was not apparent to the public, though he wore a glove on the hand of the prosthesis. He mastered the trumpet in his early teens and served a lengthy apprenticeship as an itinerant musician and vocalist throughout the south and southwest in the 1920s. He took up residence in New York in 1934, and that city served as his base of operations through the rest of the 1930s, though he continued touring on a limited basis. He had a substantial recording career in the 1930s, including a hit on the tune, “The Isle of Capri,” in 1935. He moved to Los Angeles in 1940 to appear in the film Rhythm on the River with Bing Crosby. Through the 1940s, he appeared frequently on Crosby’s radio show as a sort of court jester. Moved to Las Vegas in 1954, and continued to work and live there until his death. Although principally a comedy performer, he was also a capable trumpeter who played in an Armstrong-inspired style.

(10) Giants of Jazz …Bunny Berigan (1982), notes on the music by Richard M. Sudhalter, 32.