Benny Goodman - Rides Again

I'm here because I heard a bit of this from a 12" 78 rpm record on a video. I was born mid 60's but recognize good music from any time. (I had to ask what it was)

One of the freatest performances of Swing Music.... I koved since i heard it the first time

Timeless!

A tribute to Edd  Sauter (a brilliant arranger) and of course the Benny Goodman expertise.

The collaboration of Eddie Sauter and Benny Goodman elevated American popular music to fine art. It is not easily categorized as jazz, swing, pop or any other sub-genre. It is simply superb music.

Sauter wrote this to celebrate Benny's return to active performing after five months of recuperation from back surgery. From June through November 1940, he was forced to disband his orchestra, and endured a long period of inactivity and recovery. When he was ready to resume playing, touring and recording (and assemble a new band), Goodman asked Eddie to write an "I'm back" composition. This was it.

Mel Powell also had something to do with BG's sound while he was playing with him back in the day. Of course he was not as influential as Eddie Sauter but he certainly did have an important role to play, especially as a soloist and in the small groups.

Sauter was the real genius of the BG band of 1940 through the war years. As an arranger he was absolutely unique. Nobody wrote like him and everything he wrote was about as unorthodox and un-formulaic as you could get. In Benny Goodman terms, that meant about as diametrically opposite of what the earlier BG band of the 30s sounded like, especially in the minds of Benny's biggest fans. The 40s band still had in its books the great, driving, straight-ahead familiar BG arrangements written by Fletcher Henderson, Jimmy Mundy, Edgar Sampson and others, but the new sound of Benny's new 1940-and-later band had at its core Sauter's unorthodox and downright thrilling arrangements at its nucleus. When we think of THAT BG band, it was Sauter who wrote a lion's share of the band book, including almost all of the haunting, mezmirizing vocal arrangements that featured Helen Forrest and later, Peggy Lee. For them, his arrangements were full of pastel colors and moods that appeared out of nowhere and disappeared as easily as they came about only to be replaced by more stunning, equally inventive ideas and hybrid sounds of brass using any assortment of mutes in combination and / or often with low register thickly voiced saxes. Case in point, recorded the same day as this was Sauter's arrangement of The Man I Love (featuring Helen Forrest). When he was left to his own devices as a composer, he was not the least bit afraid to present Benny and the band with an instrumental challenge, for he could deliver and demonstrate for all what he was able to mine from between his ears on to a piece of score paper through the tip of his pencil. For many of the straight ahead jazz influenced musicians in the band some felt Sauter's writing was too complex at first, that it just wouldn't or couldn't swing. That is, until they got used to playing his creations and grew comfortable with the subtleties and musical ironies that permeated Sauter's music. Mr. Eddie Sauter, everyone. To refer to him as one of the top three or four arranging / compositional jazz MASTERS of the entire Swing Era and long beyond, is not an understatement.

If the people making what they call music today ,could get a quarter as good as this,we'd have someting,something close to music.

Thanks!

This was originally issued on a 12 inch "78" {#55001}.

It matters A LOT if you're a dedicated collector. Many musicians recorded certain songs agan and again over the years and the versions were often quite different. Knowing the exact recording date helps you keep everything correctly sorted out.