'Toscanini's Hep Cats' - The New Friends of Rhythm, Plus Maxine Sullivan

The New Friends of Rhythm, 1938: Sylvan Shulman, Harry Patent, Zelly Smirnoff, Laura Newell, Tony Colucci, Alan Shulman, Louis Kievman

They were known as "Toscanini's hep cats," at least to the Victor publicists, because most of them played in the Maestro's NBC Symphony in its heyday. Their "formal" name, however, was the New Friends of Rhythm, a takeoff on the New Friends of Music, a New York concert society.

Today's post is devoted to these friendly hep cats and the complete set of their 16 1939-40 Victor recordings. Plus there is a bonus six-song album the group recorded with vocalist Maxine Sullivan in 1947.

About the New Friends

The New Friends specialized in a sort of genteel swing, usually involving riffs on classical pieces. At its base it consisted of the Stuyvesant String Quartet (originally Sylvan Shulman and Zelly Smirnoff, violins, Louis Kievman, viola, and Alan Shulman, cello) and harpist Laura Newell. The Shulmans, Kievman and Newell were members of the NBC Symphony. The NBC studio orchestra supplied Smirnoff, guitarist Tony Colucci and bassist Harry Patent. In 1940, Harry Glickman succeeded Smirnoff in the second violin chair.

Alan Shulman was the guiding force behind the group. His arrangements were to become highly influential; he taught Nelson Riddle, perhaps the most famous pop arranger of the 20th century. Riddle's biographer Peter Levinson acknowledges the influence in his book September in the Rain, while noting that Shulman himself acknowledged being shaped by the work of Robert Russell Bennett. 

These Shulman arrangements emphasize lightly swinging textures, but Shulman also had a romantic bent, which can be heard in a 1946 Risë Stevens collection of love songs, which I uploaded a few years ago. Sylvan Shulman conducted that set. Alan was also a fine composer whose work was often heard on concert programs of the day.

Sylvan Shulman, Laura Newell and Alan Shulman

The group both literally (see photo above) and figuratively revolved around harpist Laura Newell. The download includes an article on her and the group by Alan's son Jay from the American Harp Journal. It provides a detailed background on the New Friends, starting with the story that the Shulmans gifted Toscanini with their records as a Christmas present. (This, too, sounds like a publicist's confection.)

Laura Newell has appeared on the blog in Debussy's Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp with Julius Baker and Lilian Fuchs.

My friend Bryan featured the Stuyvesant Quartet several times on his blog, The Shellackophile, now regrettably dormant. His posts include music of Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Bloch, reflecting the group's commitment to contemporary music. Also there are another recording of the Debussy sonata with Laura Newell, and her recording of the Ravel Introduction and Allegro with the Stuyvesants and others. Bryan even has a disc by the Kreiner String Quartet, which the Shulmans played in while enrolled at Juilliard. The links remain active.

The Complete Victor Recordings

The New Friends owed their Victor recording contract to NBC's Frank Black, who had heard them play and put them on NBC's "Magic Key" program, sponsored by RCA. Enzo Archetti of the American Music Lover praised the performance. He inaccurately claimed that the group was "a combination of Raymond Scott, the Hot Club of Paris and a jam session, and yet original enough to be quite fascinating." Actually, the Friends had nothing to do with Django and certainly their written-out parts were hardly the makings of a jam session. The only connection with Scott's music was its tightly arranged numbers and its offbeat titles, which usually gave a clue to the music's origins (which in any case were decoded on the labels of the crew's Victor 78s).

Hubert shoots the Schubert

Most of the numbers are classical takeoffs, and Shulman manages to keep them from the cheesy quality that afflicted the swing bands' usual classical adaptations, and avoids the parody element that Spike Jones among others brought to the music. There also were a few of Alan's originals and some miscellaneous arrangements.

The group's first session was in late March 1939, and encompassed Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Paganini and "When Johnny Comes Marching Home." They were back in the studio in late June for Back, Raff, more Tchaikovsky and the "Londonderry Air."

In November, they took on Brahms, Stephen Foster, Shulman's "High Voltage," and Schubert. The latter bore the title, "Shoot the Schubert to Me Hubert." This was undoubtedly related to Tommy Dorsey's record of "Shoot the Sherbet to Me Herbert" of a few months earlier.

The Friends' final Victor session was in May 1940, and devoted to Dinicu, Paganini, "Sweet Sue" and Shulman's "Mood in Question."

Buster Bailey

The Friends' Victor recordings did garner some good reviews (several are in the download) and had sold some 20,000 copies by June 1940, per a Time magazine article that surely was relying on a group's publicist. That seems like a lot, but didn't represent hit status even back then, which may be why the Victor output ceased after the May 1940 session.

The final session, which apparently wasn't released until 1943, featured the welcome addition of Buster Bailey, one of the most gifted and fluent of all jazz clarinetists. In its review, the jazz magazine Downbeat opined. "This disc is a direct slap at all those who claim strings impede swing. Here the strings themselves sensibly don't try for any solos. They aren't jazz men and they don't claim to be able to do that sort of thing - but their background is rich and colorful, and gives Bailey a terrific basis on which to swing." 

The 1947 Session with Maxine Sullivan

Maxine Sullivan in 1947

The New Friends of Rhythm returned to recording after the war with two 1947 sessions for the small International label: one on their own, the other with the superb singer Maxine Sullivan. I don't have the former set, but the latter makes up the second part of our program.

Sullivan had come to prominence with her 1937 recording of the Scottish tune "Loch Lomond," made with a small group led by Claude Thornhill. It was a huge hit, and led to her featuring such traditional fare throughout her career.

The six-song International album is split between three of these swinging-the-old-tunes numbers and three standards. A remake of "Loch Lomond" leads off the proceedings, which also include "If I Had a Ribbon Bow" and "Jackie Boy," both of which she had recorded before. The pop songs were Noel Coward's "Mad About the Boy," the Vernon Duke -Ira Gershwin "I Can't Get Started" and the Dorothy Fields-Jimmy McHugh "I Must Have That Man." 

It's always a pleasure to hear a singer as accurate and clear as Sullivan. Her ability to swing most any kind of material is welcome, as well. Swinging was really not the forte of the New Friends, although harpist Laura Newell and guitarist Tony Colucci were helpful in that regard. They are augmented on this date by Hank D'Amico, a good jazz clarinetist who nevertheless was not the equal of Buster Bailey, who appeared on some of the Victors. For the 1947 sessions, the string quartet had a new second violinist, Bernard Robbins, and a new violist, Ralph Hersh.

International called the set Sullivan's "Anniversary Album," explaining in the notes that it marked her 10 years in show business. Actually she had been singing since 1934, but only started making records in 1937. The selections were supposedly chosen by six well-known DJs and writers, whose mugs appeared on the cover. This transparent publicity ploy was common back then. Among the collaborators are Metronome magazine editor George Simon and deejay Dave Garroway. The latter was an important figure, first in radio and then on television. His relaxed, conversational approach become influential during his tenure as the first host of NBC's Today show. Garroway even lent his name to a few albums for RCA Victor, although he actually only appears on one of them.

Alan Shulman's arrangements for Sullivan are facile, and particularly show his influence on Riddle in his backing for "Mad About the Boy," which is something of a pre-echo of Riddle's Close to You arrangements for Sinatra. For those, Riddle utilized the Hollywood String Quartet along with harp, clarinet and several other instruments.

The sound on this album is more than adequate; the Victor singles are uniformly excellent. All were remastered from lossless needle drops on Internet Archive.

We Celebrate 1,000 Posts with 19 Busters

My namesake above appears unenthusiastic, but I am pleased to be marking an even (or uneven) 1,000 posts on this blog, spread out over the last 12 years. To celebrate, I've put together a post consisting of 19 tracks either involving artists named Buster or songs with Buster in the title.

So we have Busters Moten, Harding, Bailey, Dees, Benson, Ferguson, Brown, Larsen, Falkenberry and Bennett among the artists, plus songs titled "Button Buster," "Finger Buster," "Atom Buster," "Skull Buster," "Banjo Buster" and "Buster Astor." There are jazz, country, blues and pop records, but no classical items by Buster Heifetz or Buster Toscanini.

My thanks go out to my great pal Ernie Haynes, who has been encouraging me since the beginning - and who actually came up with the concept of this post. And of course thanks to all of you who have followed this blog through the years, especially those who comment. Your contributions make the comment sections just as lively than the posts themselves, if not more so.

Here is some commentary on today's selections, as usual presented in chronological order.

The first selection is "Button Buster" from 1922, a version of the laughing record that was inexplicably popular back then. No artist is listed on this cheapo Grey Gull pressing, but it is thought that the original was recorded in Berlin in 1920 for the Beka label. By the way, I think the record is called "Button Buster" not because you bust your buttons from laughing but you bust the buttons on your player in your frenzy to shut the darn thing off.

Our next item, "Just You, Just Me," comes from 1929 and the almost certainly pseudonymous Buster Benson and His Band, on the Jewel label. The name "Buster Benson" appears on just this one record, and is possibly the better known and wildly prolific recording artist Adrian Schubert under another name. I did need to make a small edit to this transfer to eliminate noise.

Also from 1929 is the Gus Arnheim band on Victor with "One Sweet Kiss," vocal by Buster Dees. The singer did not record much, but managed to make 10 records in 1929 with Arnheim, Henry Halsted and Jackie Taylor.

Buster Moten

From 1932 comes the superb and important Bennie Moten band from Kansas City, featuring Count Basie, Lips Page, Walter Page and Eddie Durham. The song "Toby" was written by Bennie's brother Buster Moten and arranger Eddie Barefield.

Moving on to 1937, we have the wonderfully vulgar Western swing anthem "Ain't Nobody Truck Like You" by the Texas band Ocie Stockard and the Wanderers, with a vocal by Buster Ferguson. Despite the title, Buster repeatedly insists that "ain't nobody truck like me" in the lyrics.

The Tune Wranglers, with Buster Coward to the right of the microphone

Another excellent Western band with a fellow named Buster as singer was the fecund Tune Wranglers, also from Texas, who present "Honey, Smile for Me" with Buster Coward on vocals. This, too, was from 1937.

Buster Bailey

Switching styles, we hear from clarinetist Buster Bailey and His Rhythm Busters in "Chained to a Dream," from 1938. I could have made a post of Bailey' records alone - he worked with everyone from W.C. Handy to King Oliver, Fletcher Henderson and John Kirby, among others.

Another key artist was the famous New Orleans pianist Jelly Roll Morton, heard here on "Finger Buster" from 1938, a few years before his early death. I've corrected the pitch on this one.

Our next selection comes from 1940 and returns us to the sound of Kansas City jazz. This record involves two Busters. One is again Buster Moten, who composed "Moten's Swing" with his brother Bennie. As "Moten Swing," this became a standard both in Bennie's own recording and in the Count Basie version of 1940. Our record is a rendition by a studio group led by guitarist Eddie Durham with solos by the brilliant alto saxophonist Buster Smith.

Buster Harding

Our next Buster is Buster Harding, an influential arranger and composer. Here is his composition "Bedford Drive," which he arranged in 1945 for Artie Shaw's band.

Buster Bennett

A much different sound from Shaw's suave tones is provided by the singer and altoist Buster Bennett, who tells us about his "Reefer Head Woman" in this 1945 Columbia recording of his own blues concoction.

Atomic bombs were on everyone's mind in the postwar era, and any number of songs at that time made use of the theme. This 1946 record not only includes it in the title, "Atom Buster," it came out on the Atomic label. The composition, which sounds like it is based on "I Got Rhythm," is by guitarist Barney Kessel, who leads an excellent ensemble in this swinging outing.

I couldn't resist adding another Buster Bennett opus to the mix. This is his entertaining double-entendre blues "Fishin' Pole" (in which he brags about his "very long pole," of course). This came out under the name of tenor saxophonist Tom Archia in a 1947 issue on the Aristocrat label. I faded this one in after a few moments because of groove damage at the record's edge.

Also from 1947 is "Silver and Gold," a pleasant country tune from the obscure Bob Pressley and His Sagebrush Serenaders, with whistling by the even-more-obscure Buster Falkenberry. Pressley cut a total of six sides for Decca at about this time.

Larry Vincent

The Pearl label was mainly if not exclusively a vehicle for the Pearl Boys, who were mainly if not exclusively a vehicle for label owner Larry Vincent and his mildly risque party-record compositions. "Buster Astor" from 1949 is a typical example of his inspirations.

"Skull Buster" from 1949 came out under the name of bop pianist Al Haig, but is mostly a showcase for the superb tenor saxophonist Stan Getz, who was making a name for himself at about this time as a member of Woody Herman's "Four Brothers" band.

Smilin' Ed O'Connell and Froggy the Gremlin

The "Witch-a-Ma-Jig Song" comes to us courtesy of the great Smilin' Ed McConnell and His Buster Brown Gang, who had a well-remembered children's show on both radio and television. The Buster Brown Gang, named after the sponsor, Buster Brown Shoes, featured the inimitable gravel-voiced Froggy the Gremlin, who became one of my favorite impersonations as a annoying teenager ("Hiya, kids! Hiya, hiya!"). I also wore the shoes (see below), although not as an adolescent.

Buster Brown's stylish selections

Quick aside - Buster Brown Shoes were one of the leading examples of a commercial image well outliving its inspiration. Buster Brown was a cartoon character (supposedly inspired by the young Buster Keaton) who had disappeared by the mid-1920s, but he, his pageboy haircut, enormous chapeau and floppy cravat were still selling shoes well into the 50s. Notable recent examples of this atavistic phenomenon are Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben, minstrel show stereotypes who are still hawking packaged food today - although not for long.

Arthur Smith and His Cracker-Jacks

Arthur Smith was known as a many-noted guitar player (he is dubbed "Arthur (Guitar Boogie) Smith" on the label of this tune), but on "Banjo Buster" from 1950 he became a many-noted banjo player. As sometimes happened with these knock-'em-out virtuoso exercises, the record company sped up the master to make the playing more impressive, but I've tamed the pitch. Billboard called this selection a "sparkling hunk of hominy," which is saying a lot. The flip side was "Mr. Stalin, You're Eating Too High on the Hog." (Mr. Stalin and his hog are not included here.)

Buster Larsen

Our final Buster is Buster Larsen, a Danish stage, film and TV actor of the time. His selection is titled "På Bustur Med Buster" ("On a Bus Trip with Buster"). Could you imagine something like this today - "On a Bus Trip with Lady Gaga." "På Bustur" comes from 1957.

Thanks, everyone, for taking this bus trip through my record collection for the past 12 years! Hope you have enjoyed yourselves.

In closing, let me mention some frequent commenters and contributors, knowing that I am sure to forget some people - in no particular order, Charlot, centuri, David Federman, Bryan Cooper, 8HHaggis, JAC, Ernie, A N Other, Scoredaddy, Eric, Grover Gardner, Andy Propst, jserraglio, coppinsuk, Sky Raven, gpdlt2000, Phillip, alfred venison, Boursin, Lennonka, Your Pal Doug, Rich, Addison, rev.b, styles, Jim, StealthMan, Rich, Rootie, SwingKing, Morris, RonH, monkeeboy, RecordHunter, hkitt42, iracema1, Jim in Seattle, flurb, TupeloBrian, Badgercat, kiken, 78heretic, dave_bruce, Geoconno, Nigel, Nick, Randy, Lee Hartsfeld, Ronnie, Alan Eichler, Kevin WOlf, luckymike, boppinbob, bhowani, jeronimo, barba, thedentist, Kwork, BobSanders, Muff Diver, Ravel, flyingfinger, woolfnotes, Moahaha, Wortley Clutterbuck, Andrew, dgrb, MOQChoir, tony, DonHo57, Richard Bock, Rio Veneno and Unknown. Thanks to them and everyone else who has been part of this wonderful community!