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Bird Flight: Tiny Grimes 1944 Part 2 (4/10/2008) Phil Schaap Jazz Collection

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Putting the September of 1944 Savoy session of Tiny Grimes into focus, Phil discusses the composition "I'll Always Love You Just The Same" and Grimes' earlier band, The Cats and the Fiddle.


Preferred Citation:

[Resource Title], Phil Schaap Jazz Collection, Special Collections Library, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN


Date:
broadcast2008-04-10
Type:
Radio programs
Agent:
hostSchaap, Phil
Format:
MP3
Keyword:
Whisper AI text transcript
Subject:
Jazz -- 1941-1950
Parker, Charlie, 1920-1955
Grimes, Tiny, 1916-1989
Duration:
01:19:53
Language:
English
Relation:
is part ofBird Flight (Phil Schaap)
delete Delete Are you sure?
It's exactly 8.20. You're listening to the Sounds of Jazz here on radio station WKCR FM New
York 89.9 on the dial, also online at WKCR.org. It's 20 past 8. I'm Phil Schaap, Bird Flight
commences. We're listening to Bird in 1944. Roughly speaking, we're covering the '43 to
1945 period. In the late summer of 1944 he makes a most momentous record date. It's his
first real record date in two years, two months, and two weeks. It is the first true revelation
of hearing Bird and Bebop fully formed. There are many aspects of musical curiosities to
his appearance on a Tiny Grimes session of that September 15th of 1944. And we're examining
a few of them as a review of the complete Charlie Parker discography handled chronologically.
It's exactly 8.21. Let's hear "I'll Always Love You Just The Same". The first and third
of these three versions of the same song are the ones with Bird from the record date with
Tiny Grimes. The one in the middle is an earlier appearance of the song by The Cats and Fiddle
with Tiny Grimes, representing his ballad in its first known recording. To the best of my
knowledge, these are the only recordings of the work. It's 8.21 this is WKCR, Phil Schaap
with you and Bird Flight. [music begins]
You love me just a little bit I worry, worry, worry all of the time 'til I'm almost insane
don't forget I'll always love you just the same night's I lay awake counting the stars
and the clouds that roll by I can't sleep my heart is a fire it's you I love you're
my desire dear please come back and let's try over again and we'll see who's to blame
forget I'll always love you just the same.
Nights I lay awake counting the stars and the clouds that roll by I can't sleep my
heart is a fire it's you I love you're my desire dear please come back and let's try
over again and we'll see who's to blame don't forget I'll always love you just the same.
You really asked me when I needed you babe and I know why I'm too lame but don't forget
I'll always love you just the same.
You love me just a little bit I worry, worry, worry all of the time 'til I'm almost insane
don't forget I'll always love you just the same night's I lay awake counting the stars
I can't sleep my heart is a fire it's you I love you're my desire dear please come back
and let's try over again and we'll see who's to blame but don't forget I'll always love
you just the same.
Night's I lay awake counting the stars and the clouds that roll by I can't sleep my heart
is a fire it's you I love you're my desire dear please come back and let's try over again
and we'll see who's to blame but don't forget I'll always love you just the same.
You really left me when I needed you babe and I know why I'm too lame but don't forget
I'll always love you just the same.
Once you love me just a little bit I worry, worry, worry all of the time 'til I'm almost
insane don't forget I'll always love you just the same.
Night's I lay awake counting the stars and the clouds that roll by I can't sleep my heart
is a fire it's you I love you're my desire dear please come back and let's try over again
and we'll see who's to blame but don't forget I'll always love you just the same.
Nights I lay awake counting the stars and the clouds that roll by I can't sleep my heart
is a fire it's you I love you're my desire dear please come back and let's try over again
and we'll see who's to blame but don't forget I'll always love you just the same. [music ends]
We just heard three recordings of the very same song, "I'll Always Love You Just the Same".
The first and third of these three listenings were alternate takes. Take two in the master,
take three of a Tiny Grimes quintet recording session of September 15th, 1944 which included
Charlie Parker.
It's a session we're keying in on and examining in a grand range of detail, and the aspect
that's under examination now is that this song which has always been the least favored
of the four tunes done that day.
The instrumentals gained greater cache with the breakthrough of bebop and in fact, "Tiny's
Tempo", a blues from the session and "Red Cross", a Charlie Parker composition that fleshes
out the mop-mop drum lick and keeps it over that "I've Got Rhythm" harmony.
The tune "Red Cross" named for the friend, and in fact, recordist and associate, Bob Redcross.
Those two instrumental tracks were quickly reissued under Charlie Parker's name.
The fun humor and novelty aspect of "Romance Without Finance" once the session was re-examined
in its entirety, four tunes usually made up a record date in those years, made it as well
known, or at least the third best known, of these four tunes, and the one that was skipped
over to the extent that it rarely was heard,
"I'll Always Love You Just The Same".
This fourth favored of four tunes is the particular piece I'm keying in on, and the reason for
it is because it has this history and it was not a new tune and had been recorded well
over three years before on January 20th of 1941, by a prestigious record company, RCA Victor,
by one of its major acts, The Cats and The Fiddle, who had been making records for almost two
years at that time. And it had no fewer than two hits including a blockbuster and "I Miss
You So". These records, The Cats and Fiddle records, came out on the lower priced subsidiary
label Bluebird, and they were big deal records. So, the curiosity in its most straightforward
senses that this was not a new tune and that Tiny Grimes had used it. He was given the composer
credit a full two and a half years, almost three years earlier. And the middle of the
three, "I'll Always Love You Just The Same" was this Cats and Fiddle version initially issued
on Bluebird 8639.
So, it brings up a number of points. The one just stated, the fact that Charlie Parker is
on this record date. And in particular, this song, this least favorite of the four, affords
us are unusual, they're rare actually, an illustration of Charlie Parker working in the Swing song
tradition. One of his inspirations, the great Lester Young, participated in a fair number
of such recordings, the Swing song tradition. In fact, the highlight of the entire concept,
Billy Holiday being the singer and the records of the original years of the Swing era in
the Swing song tradition. And Bird Charlie Parker listened to such records. He undoubtedly
admired them and he gained some concept of how to go about making the music
in the style of music on these records. But he didn't get too many opportunities to let
you know he knew about it. And there's a flurry, if you wish to call it a flurry, there are few
more in this early period of his discography than there would ever be again, and this is
the first of such instances. And it's delicious to have Bird, this way, point one, and to use
it for the contrast it provides to an aspect of his inspiration Lester Young's approach
to making music. So it gives us a lot to examine and to enjoy and that's interesting. And
of course that it was not a new tune adds to the storyline of Tiny Grimes himself and
the piece, and in a sense therefore to the storyline of Bird making music with Tiny Grimes
in the summer of 1944 including this record date. It's in that direction I turn now, here
at 8.35. I'm Phil Schaap, it's Bird Flight the music of Charlie Parker. This is WKCR FM New
York. So who are The Cats and the Fiddle? Who is Tiny Grimes? What is all this data that
I just threw out into your ears at an early time on a Thursday morning, a working morning
for many of you, where concentration is probably not that easy for you to provide? Yet there
might be some interest certainly in the music arouses interest and hearing the music and
knowing more about it expands our enjoyment. So The Cats and the Fiddle, by their name it
illustrates that they're related to a category of music making which is hard to define and
whose labels are if not flexible, interchangeable, and sometimes therefore, without meaning. I
tend to call it Skiffle because the term gained a currency during my childhood years and it
seemed suitable to explaining it to me, and it certainly made people from the United Kingdom
quite clear about what I was speaking of, as they had their skiffle groups as a springboard
to their rock and roll phenomenon across the late 50s and early 60s. Which, in fact, brings
it on back home to the states with the British invasion of some 45 years ago. So what is skiffle?
Skiffle is rhythmic music relatable to the Blues tradition, also our folk song tradition.
Certainly our gospel and hymn tradition with non-religious words. that the musicians whether
they're being paid or begging for pay the musicians are playing or approximating playing
homemade instruments. They get together and they work out some sort of representation of
a style and songs that may be suitable to the style or well known to the style. And the
instruments are recognizable in their amateur homemade senses to what they could be if they
were professional instruments. These are terms that no longer really have much understanding
because the wash tub bass--well, what's a wash tub? We actually know the wash tub, in
a sense, better because of a wash tub bass then the de facto sink for washing, that, turned
upside down, presented a resonating lower pitch--potential resonation--if you had a pole and
a string that you attach to the bottom of the wash tub bass, which, however, is now it's
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