The Metronome All Stars

"Saint Louis Woman, with all her diamond rings ..." Billy Eckstine sang the familiar words in the easy, distinctive style that has made him the top male jazz vocalist in the country. For the second side, Mr. B gave the same tune a bop treatment, and the combo behind him began cutting loose. A man close to jazz would have recognized some famous people sitting in on this recording session. Roy Eldridge was playing trumpet, Kai Winding trombone, Teddy Wilson was at the piano, with Eddie Safranski on bass.

Saint Louis Blues, recently released on an MGM label, is the latest recording of the Metronome All Stars -- the nation's top jazz men, selected in an annual poll by the readers of Metronome magazine. The All Star contest picks the outstanding jazz musicians of the year, then Metronome brings them together for a single, star-studded recording session.

The first recordings were made the morning of January 12, 1939, in the Victor Studios in New York. The group got together and cut two sides that are real collector's items now, understandably enough, since the session included Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Bunny Berigan, Harry James, Jack Teagarden, Eddie Miller, and Bob Haggart. They recorded Blue Lou and The Blues. Tommy led the boys through the Edgar Sampson piece, with Benny composing and directing the flip side. The session was notable, too, for the pre-rehearsal anxieties about how Tommy and Benny would receive each other. Their personal chilliness towards each other was well known in the trade, and this was the first time they had recorded together in years. The group assembled and, after warming up their instruments for a few minutes, took off on the music. There was quite a bit of trouble with Blue Lou. It was Tommy's side. Benny made suggestions for the saxes, even for choruses and cuts. Tommy accepted many of them, willingly. When they were ready for the first test, Tommy called, "Go ahead, Benny, you kick off."

"Want me to?" Benny asked, surprised.

"Sure," said Tommy, "you're up front -- they can all see you. I'm just a trombone player back here."

And so it went. Little things happened during the session that reminded Dorsey and Goodman of days past. They joked back and forth, their friendliness spread through the rest of the group, and the result was a really enjoyable session and two waxings that rank with the best in jazz history.

One of the most popular records of the series was the Victor pressing of One O'clock Jump and Bugle Call Rag by the 1941 group. But how could it miss? The All Star roll call included Harry James, Ziggy Elman, and Cootie Williams on trumpets; J. C. Higginbotham and Tommy Dorsey on trombones; Tex Beneke, Benny Carter, Toots Mondello, and Coleman Hawkins on saxophones; Benny Goodman on clarinet; Count Basie at the piano; Charlie Christian on guitar; Artie Bernstein on bass; Buddy Rich on drums. The editors of Metronome still remember that session fondly.

So far, only four vocalists have been featured on All Star recordings -- Billy Eckstine on the two most recent sides, and Frank Sinatra, Nat "King" Cole and June Christy on the 1947 Columbia waxings of Sweet Lorraine and Nat Meets June. This disk was the biggest money maker in All Star history. Lorraine is one of the nicest jobs of Sinatra's impressive career; the second side was an accident. Eddie Sauter (now co-leader of the famous Sauter-Finegan band) had been voted the arranger of the year, and was asked to write a special arrangement for the date. Excited about the possibilities of the session, Sauter brought in an original composition so complex and modern in concept that several of the All Stars found it too difficult to read. (Some of the very best jazz musicians are notably poor readers.) Metronome Editor Simon, looking around in despair, spotted June Christy among the spectators. Christy was the top female band vocalist of the year, and she readily agreed to Simon's suggestion for a duet with Nat "King" Cole. The two put their heads together and came up with the lyrics for Nat Meets June, sung against a simple but effective blues background.

In 1948, Metronome recorded the entire Stan Kenton Band, voted the jazz band of the year, with the All Stars featured as soloists. Kenton was doing some exciting things in what he calls "progressive jazz" and the results were rather fabulous.

All the sessions haven't been as much fun as they could have been. In '48 one of the All Stars kept the entire orchestra waiting an hour because he "overslept." The next year the same musician brought a fifth with him to the recording date, passed it among the other players, and a session that should have taken three hours took six. The year after that, the same guy walked out of the studio because he didn't like the number he'd been asked to play. The year after that, he wasn't invited.

The MGM waxing of Saint Louis Blues is the 12th annual All Star session -- they skipped two years during the war. The records from a sort of history of modern American jazz -- from the swing of the thirties, through progressive jazz in the middle forties, to bop.

Half the proceeds from the records go to the New York Musicians Union welfare fund, and half to a worthy charity like the Red Cross. The big name musicians, who make thousands of dollars from their own records, offer their services at the flat union scale (the AFM insists on payment) of $41.25 for a three hour session.

The Stars are selected each year by an accurate count of ballots printed in Metronome and clipped and sent in by the magazine's readers. Because of the prestige connected with winning the poll, Metronome's editors have to constantly watch for attempts at "stuffing the ballot box." Each reader is entitled to just one vote in each division (favorite trumpet player, favorite male vocalist, favorite band, etc.) and signs his name and address to the ballot. One year an unusually large number of votes came in for a clarinetist whose popularity didn't seem to warrant them. Since the ballots had arrived at about the same time, from the same section of the country, the editors called in a handwriting expert. He confirmed their suspicion that all the ballots had been filled out by one person and they were invalidated. Another time a dealer in Boston wired New York for 500 copies of the magazine, when he ordinarily handled only 50. The suspicious editors clipped the ends off all the ballots in the Boston consignment. Sure enough, a few days later the Metronome offices were flooded with votes for one particular jazz combo, and all the ballots had clipped edges. They were properly filed in the wastebasket.

Since its beginning in 1939, the fame of the Metronome All Stars has spread around the world. In voting for the 1954 awards, a ballot arrived from the African Gold Coast. "We are members of the Mary Lou Williams Fan Club," said the letter attached. "We have only one copy of Metronome magazine, but there are 105 of us and we would like to cast 105 votes for Mary Lou." And each of the 105 members had signed his name.

The Count greets the Horn. Basie and James helped record One O'Clock Jump and Bugle Call Rag in the 1941 session.

The second All Star session featured Benny Goodman, Jack Teagarden, Harry James, Jess Stacy, Bob Haggart, Gene Krupa.

Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey were the kings of swing when they led the All stars through their first recordings in '39. Stan Kenton followed in the middle forties with progressive jazz, then came Dizzy Gillespie and bop.

Mister B.

Nat meets June.

The fifties -- Dizzy Gillespie and bop.