From Spirituals To Swing: 1938 & 1939 Carnegie Hall Concerts CD

Principally recorded live at Carnegie Hall, New York, New York in 1938 and 1939. Includes liner notes by Steve Buckingham, John Hammond, John Sebastian, Charles Edward Smith, and Harry "Sweets" Edison.

This two-CD set was, in its time, considered a prime live music document of its period, capturing performances by Benny Goodman and a host of other jazz, blues, and gospel performers at a legendary Carnegie Hall concert (most renowned among blues enthusiasts because concert organizer John Hammond headed south seeking Robert Johnson as a performer, only to learn of his death, and choosing Big Bill Broonzy to play in Johnson's place). The recordings were surprisingly good for their time, and as a musical document this show was about equal in importance to Goodman's own 1938 Carnegie Hall concert. This version is still worth hearing and owning (especially for those living on a budget), although Vanguard has superceded it with a much more extensive (and expensive) box set that assembles tapes found since the original LP release, and identifies tapes that were re-recordings of material done at the concert. ~ Bruce Eder

In 1938, jazz aficionado/promoter/producer John Hammond, Sr. had an idea for a visionary concert. This vision would take fruition as a presentation known as "From Spirituals to Swing," bringing together the connected history of African-American music running from gospel to blues to jazz.

High-brow concerts of what was considered distinctly non-high-brow music were still a relatively new concept. Benny Goodman's landmark debut at Carnegie Hall had been only a few months earlier, and Hammond planned on throwing his shindig in the same confines. But once he put the plan into motion, he met resistance from a number of sources, most of whom objected to the idea of white and black musicians appearing on the same stage. Hammond, ever resourceful, got underwriting from a New York leftist paper and threw the first "From Spirituals to Swing" concert -- complete with the concert-hall debut of the Count Basie Orchestra -- in December 1938. The response was overwhelming, and a second concert was held in the same place a year later.

Knowing that Carnegie Hall also housed recording facilities that Benny Goodman had used to document his stand at the hall, Hammond recorded both concerts on acetate discs. In the 1950s, he had them transferred to magnetic tape, and by the end of that decade he struck a deal with Vanguard Records to release some of the performances as a two-record set. In 1987, this set was issued on compact disc.

Now, some 60 years after the event, comes this sumptuous three-disc box set, From Spirituals to Swing: Carnegie Hall Concerts, 1938-1939 [3-CD Set] For the first time, all the known extant recordings from those concerts (including 23 previously unreleased tracks) have been issued, along with some surprises. Those surprises come in the form of a half-dozen studio performances with members of the Count Basie band and vocalist Helen Humes that were interspersed into the live recordings. To further compound matters, Hammond went into a studio in 1959 and cut new introductions for them, which were sped up to make him sound younger! Audio chicanery aside, these sides are included, as they were a part of the original package and part of Hammond's original vision. But the tracks themselves (now fortified with the rest of the unreleased studio material) are inspired playing and singing, and certainly warrant inclusion, no matter what audio sleight-of-hand brought them there in the first place.

As for the rest of the set, the five-star rating given above really is insufficient in telling the tale of just how cool this box and this music really are. The sound is a marked improvement over even the previous two-CD set, and the addition of the unreleased material pushes this release into the regions of "essential." J

Digitally remastered by Doug Pomeroy.

3 CD-Lester Young,Charlie Christian, Others

Producer: John HammEntertainment Weekly (9/24/99, p.147) - "...the historic 'From Spirtuals to Swing' concerts of 1938 and '39 were high points of U.S. culture. This outstanding 3-CD set of those performances and a related studio date unite...touchstone artists...and a dizzying collection of swing-era giants..." - Rating: A
Mojo (Publisher) (7/00, p.122) - "...The presentation of black musicians...alongside what [producer John Hammond] saw as the contemporary black folk tradition, the popular music of the day, swing....The excitement is there to be heard....If you didn't make it to the shows, this release virtually takes you there."