Bunny Berigan - Complete Brunswick, Parlophone and Vocalion Bunny Berigan Sessions

All Music Guide

"This bum could play the trumpet." That was Eddie Condon's gruff but appropriate epitaph for Roland Bernard "Bunny" Berigan, a brilliant improviser and hard-working session man who succumbed to pernicious alcoholism in 1942 at the age of 33. With the release of this massive Mosaic Berigan box, anyone desiring a meticulous examination of Bunny's phonographic output dating from 1931 through 1937 may opt for the following procedure. Liquidate enough assets to be able to afford the recordings, check into a hotel room under an assumed name, and hole up for a week in order to digest the dizzying tide of pop vocals mingled with some honest jazz. Here lie 151 musical selections spread across seven compact discs. Only 37 of these performances are instrumental. If those instrumentals were played back to back, the listener would witness a gradual evolution from sleepy Depression-era studio orchestras to full-potency swing bands. The best of these bear repeated listening. Red Norvo's Swing Octet (...with Chu Berry, Teddy Wilson and Gene Krupa). Bud Freeman and his Windy City Five. Guitarist Dick McDonough leading a swell nine piece outfit featuring the vibraphone and bass saxophone of Adrian Rollini. And of course Bunny Berigan's Blue Boys. The vocalists range from ridiculous to sublime. Billie Holiday's two sessions from 1936 (9 titles altogether) are substantial, movingly sincere jazz at its best. Artie Shaw positively glows during the session of July 10, 1936. The combination of Artie, Bunny and Billie is invigorating and leaves you wishing for more. Fortunately, Shaw sat in on several other dates, always providing cohesion and depth. Apparently, Berigan fell in love with "I Can't Get Started" the first time he played it through. The version included here is lovelier and more personal than the later big band hit. He sings gently, almost bashfully, with a quaint vibrato. His trumpet work on this number recalls the magic of Bix Beiderbecke. Economic disaster does strange things to popular culture, and even stranger things to the arts. By 1925, jazz had become a fashionable flavoring used to spice up otherwise tepid material. With each passing year, hot records became increasingly profitable for recording companies if not for the musicians themselves. There is a frantic and almost manic quality emanating from the hottest jazz records of 1929. After the proverbial bubble burst, the aesthetic decisions made by music business executives between 1930 and 1934 seem to have been based in fiscal desperation. While hot jazz did find its way onto phonograph records during those lean years, most dance band arrangements became sleepy, sentimental or almost alarmingly slaphappy. Vocalists whined, droned and sniveled their way through often horrifyingly stupid tunes with inane, preposterous lyrics. Jazz musicians earned a living by fitting into this working environment to the best of their abilities. Read more Less