Harlem Was the Place 1929-1952

Originally a Dutch settlement, the portion of Manhattan known as Harlem was a pleasant, ethnically diverse district when Thomas "Fats" Waller was born there in 1904. During the 1920s, '30s, and '40s Harlem became the East Coast focal point for the Afro-American aspect of the U.S. entertainment industry and the prime stomping-and-proving-ground for jazz musicians in particular. Compilations focusing upon the history of Harlem's music scene have been popping up periodically ever since the first big wave of LP jazz collections appeared during the '60s. Released during the summer of 2007, Fremeaux's double-disc anthology titled Harlem Was the Place takes on a stated time line of 1929-1952, then carelessly exceeds its own temporal parameters by including material from as late as 1954. Thirty-eight examples focus primarily upon big band and small group swing, beginning with Harlem stride piano masters James P. Johnson, Fats Waller, and Willie "The Lion" Smith, then compulsively latching onto titles that refer either to Harlem itself or its most famous gathering spots: the Cotton Club, the Savoy Ballroom, and the Apollo Theater. The selection is by and large quite good although chronologically scrambled, as if to prevent the listener from cultivating too strong of a sense of historical progression. Furthermore, the inclusion of acts like Chicago-based bluesmen Little Walter and B.B. King, while dovetailing with the jump blues of Louis Jordan and the boogie-woogie of Pete Johnson and Albert Ammons, diffuses the East Coast focus even while signifying the importance of the blues as performed live at the Apollo Theater. (King's "Blind Love" was recorded either in Texas or Los Angeles -- thousands of miles to the west of 125th Street and Lenox Avenue.)

This sort of genre mixing lends a free-form radio aspect to the compilation, and will probably sit well with casual listeners. One amazing rarity is a six-minute performance by Erskine Hawkins and his Orchestra of their big hit "Tuxedo Junction" recorded live at the Apollo on April 24, 1944. This revealing audio-document preserves for posterity the sounds of a rowdy and appreciative Apollo Theater audience; it also demonstrates how merciless that crowd could be as amateur vocalist Marjorie Cooper tries to sing "Sweet Slumber" in a slow and old-fashioned manner (à la Lucille Hegamin) and lasts only 40 seconds before being booed offstage! The enclosed booklet contains 12 historic photographs, lots of concise discographic information, and a set of liner notes in both French and English that seem informative yet turn out to be occasionally flawed by terminology that might have suffered in translation. Specifically, the advent of bop during the '40s is said to have discouraged dancers because "...it was impossible to dance to bebop..." (wrong!) "...whose exponents were only concerned with swing, to such an extent that dancefloors were even removed from some clubs." This is both confused and confusing; "swing" was a word that was publicly applied to ragtime by Scott Joplin in 1908, and then commonly used during the '30s to describe music that was irresistibly danceable. Despite this potentially misleading abuse of period terminology, Harlem Was the Place is a good listen and contains more than a few rare tidbits that are well worth experiencing. ~ arwulf arwulf, All Music Guide

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