“Flo-Flo” Sam Donahue/Ralph Burns (1941)

“Flo-Flo”

Composed and arranged by Ralph Burns.

Recorded by Sam Donahue and His Orchestra for Bluebird on November 12, 1941 in New York.

Sam Donahue, tenor saxophone, directing: Harry Gozzard, Peter Abramo and Andy Blaine, trumpets; Kenny Meisel, Vahey “Tak” Takvorian and Dick La Fave, trombones; Bill Nichol and Harry Peterson, alto saxophones; Max Kriseman and Paul Petrilla, tenor saxophones; Wayne Herdell, piano; John Jordan, guitar; Nick Manley, bass; Harold Hahn, drums.

The story:

Sam Donahue (1918-1974) was a tenor saxophone virtuoso, and one of the first to extend the range of that horn well into its upper register and beyond. He came on the name-band scene in the summer of 1938, replacing Vido Musso in Gene Krupa’s new band. Donahue remained with Krupa until the summer of 1939, when he joined (or returned to) arranger Sonny Burke’s band briefly. (He continued an intermittent relationship with Burke into the autumn of 1940.) He returned to Krupa in the autumn of 1939, and remained until he joined Harry James in mid-July 1940. By the autumn of 1940, Donahue was leading his own band, which actually was the remnants of Sonny Burke’s band.(1)

The Donahue band, like so many during the swing era, was very good musically, as Donahue was an excellent, inspiring leader in addition to being an exciting performer on tenor saxophone. But they never really found much success. The Donahue band debuted on disk with an Okeh recording session on December 26, 1940, with Count Basie guesting on piano, no less. After that, they worked fairly regularly, and had three Bluebird recording sessions in 1941, including the one that captured “Flo-Flo” for posterity, on November 12. Through 1942, the band continued to work, but saw their Bluebird recording contract not renewed. They made one session of recordings for the obscure Hit label on July 10, 1942.

By the autumn, Donahue had been enticed into enlisting in the Navy by Artie Shaw, who in late 1942 was organizing a top-notch band that would through much of 1943 play for U.S. Navy personnel in Hawaii, then throughout various battle zones in the Pacific.(2) The Shaw band completed its service in the Pacific Theater with concerts in Australia and New Zealand in the fall of 1943. The band was then transported back to San Francisco, where Shaw and some of the other members were discharged for medical reasons. After a brief period of rest and rehabilitation, the band, under Donahue’s leadership and with a few new members, was shipped to London.

But in the autumn of 1941, Sam Donahue was very busy trying to move his band up the music business food chain. Leading a band on the road was always a high-risk activity. There were many risks that were known to bandleaders and their musicians, like traveling constantly, often several hundreds of miles a day in pre-World War II cars and busses over pre-freeway roads, to make the next gig on time. Additionally, there were surprises, which were mostly bad news. If a band like Donahue’s was booked into a ballroom for a night, and unbeknownst to the leader a more famous band was booked the same night at a ballroom nearby, Donahue would find the ballroom he was playing in to be half-full. Or, his booking agency would sometimes pull a last-minute switch, and send the Donahue band to say Cleveland, Ohio, from Lexington, Kentucky, instead of to Cincinnati, adding 250 miles to the overnight jump. Or a sideman would get the flu and be unable to play for a week when the band was in the middle of a string of one-nighters in Virginia and North Carolina. And so on.

But a major compensation for any serious bandleader came in the joy he and his band took from creating their own new music, most often literally from scratch. Building a book of arrangements and original tunes that reflected the leader’s musical orientation and the band’s musical personality was especially satisfying for the man who had all of the responsibilities of running a band. Indeed, the creation of new music for bands, which was a defining characteristic of the bands of the swing era, is something that does not happen very often today. (Above left: Sam Donahue in the 1940s.)

Bandleaders were always on the lookout for young, unknown musicians who could write arrangements and/or original tunes. In the world of swing, bands, even those that were not that successful, devoured music. There was constant pressure on bandleaders to present new music to audiences. Sometimes, a bandleader discovered a gifted arranger by accident. Bunny Berigan hired Ray Conniff because he was an excellent trombonist who could play convincing jazz. Some six months after Conniff was hired by Berigan, they happened to be discussing arrangements that might reflect a Count Basie influence. When Conniff told Berigan he could produce such arrangements, Bunny was surprised and skeptical: “You can write, kid?”  He told Conniff to go ahead and write a few arrangements so he could see how good they might be. In short order, Conniff arrived at rehearsal with a couple of new arrangements, one on a Basie specialty (“Moten Swing”), and an original (“Gangbusters’ Holiday”). The Berigan band liked these arrangements, Bunny liked them, and most importantly, audiences liked them. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me about this sooner!” …was Bunny’s reaction to all of this. When Glenn Miller, himself a skilled arranger, was just beginning to sense that his band was becoming successful, he happened to be talking with Tommy Dorsey, who suggested that Glenn give a young arranger called Bill Finegan a chance. Glenn did that, and in short order, Finegan and Miller were working successfully together, and would continue doing so for the next three and a half years. The Miller band’s book of arrangements was greatly enriched by the contributions of Bill Finegan.

There is scant historical evidence (known to me) that might explain how in 1941 bandleader Sam Donahue came to meet the gifted 19 year-old pianist/arranger Ralph Burns (1922-2001), who in the mid-1940s would achieve major success with Woody Herman, and then go on to a distinguished career in music covering the next 50 years. But there are clues.

Burns was born in Newton, Massachusetts on June 29, 1922. He attended Newton High School, where he met another young man who would cross paths with him repeatedly in coming years: Serge Chaloff, who played baritone saxophone. Chaloff’s mother, Margaret, was a music teacher. Burns, a pianist, studied with her, and also attended the New England Conservatory in Boston. He was serious about learning as much as he could as quickly as he could about music. Eager to begin working as a performer, he joined a six piece band led by another Boston-area youth who called himself Nick Jerrett. His real name was Nicola Bertocci. His sister, Chiarina Francesca (who soon adopted the stage name Frances Claire, and a bit later Frances Wayne), sang with that group. Soon, Burns was living in the home of the Bertocci family in Somerville. The small Jerrett band worked at various locations in Boston including the Mayfair nightclub, a musical hot-spot in pre-war Boston. (Above right: Ralph Burns at the piano.)

Nick Jerrett’s sextet managed to get an audition to work as the relief band at Kelly’s Stables on West 52nd Street In Manhattan, the fabled street of jazz. They got that gig, but it was only intermittent. The band members didn’t care: they were in New York at the epicenter of jazz, and they were working there, sometimes. Burns himself filled in the details many years later: “We were there off-and-on for at least a year. (The band) was patterned after the John Kirby (Sextet) style, but a bit more modern, I think. I started writing for that band. What a thing to be thrown in with! It was great! Art Tatum and his trio; Coleman Hawkins and his group and Thelma Carpenter. Wow! I just used to wait to get through work so I could sit and listen.” (3)

When the Jarrett band wasn’t working at Kelly’s Stables, they hustled other work. One side job for Chiarina Bertocci (as Frances Claire) was to make a recording session with Sam Donahue’s band on April 11, 1941, where she sang on three sides. It does not take a large leap of deduction to speculate that Sam Donahue became aware of Ms. Bertocci/Claire by hearing her sing with the Jerrett band at Kelly’s Stables. And of course, he would also have heard Ralph Burns, their pianist, and likely asked who was writing the band’s arrangements. (Above left: Ralph Burns looks over his shoulder – early 1940s.)

The music:

I suspect that “Flo-Flo” may have been an original tune composed by Ralph Burns for Nick Jerrett’s six-piece band while they were playing at Kelly’s Stables in 1941. It is also possible that Sam Donahue heard the tune at Kelly’s Stables, and asked Burns to expand it to accommodate the instrumentation of the Donahue big band. However the tune got into the repertoire of the Donahue band, it is clear that the composition and arrangement by Burns, and the performance by Sam Donahue and his band, are absolutely first-rate.

So much happens so fast in this performance that I consulted my music guru and friend Dennis Roden, who is a guitarist, teacher and prince of a fellow, to listen and comment. Dennis’s insightful observations about “Flo-Flo,” which reflect a deeper musical awareness than mine, are in italics.

The performance begins with a clever introduction that presages bebop: successive bursts from piano (played by Wayne Herdell), alto saxophone, open trumpets and the saxophone section. It continues with ascending piano chords.

The first chorus contains a sixteen-bar exposition of the quirky melody (two repeated eight-bar “A” sections), carried by the cup-muted brass with robust saxophone section pedal tones below. (Melody in harmonied trumpets. Saxophone unison under last four bars.) The tune’s secondary (bridge) melody …(Repeated saxophone figure, trombones underneath. Extra eight bars! Trumpets echo trombone rhythm in second eight bars.) …has an upward-moving feel provided by the three open trombones played against a repeated saxophone section fragment. This eight-bar bridge scheme is then repeated but with a difference – higher register in the saxophone voicing – and the addition of the muted trumpets to the sonic mix. The music then returns to the main melody for eight bars to end chorus one. Per Dennis, the tune’s form is AABBA, with an extra eight bars in the bridge section.

The transition to chorus two is also clever: muted trumpets, undulating saxophones and a burst of open trombones. (Diminished arpeggios.) They catapult Donahue into a characteristic improvised solo. (Ensemble chords behind second half.) He had plenty of chops which enabled him to cover a wide range on his tenor saxophone with complete authority. His playing also had a flowing, legato quality that made his solos soar over whatever backgrounds he played against. In this case, that background consists of a solid rhythm section, led by Harold Hahn’s swinging playing on his drums and especially his steady 4/4 on his China cymbal, and tart open trumpet bursts placed strategically by arranger Burns. The next solo was probably played by Tak Takvorian on his open trombone. It has a swashbuckling feel to it as it, as does the open trumpet solo that follows, probably played by Harry Gozzard, both of which ride on the crest of the ascending saxophones and syncopated open brass behind them.

Another tart transition, this time played by trumpeter Gozzard (eight bar solo break) into a swiftly descending tenor saxophone figure played by Donahue, leads into the next chorus. (I use A melody  loosely here – it is 8 bars where the A section is expected, but much freedom in the form, mostly an extended turnaround, with saxophone solo.) Donahue reappears, swinging hard and ascending into his register with the band then engulfing his sound for a romping climax. (Extra ten measures in this sequence.)

The music then returns to the main melody. (Melody returns. A section repeated softer. When we expect B section, A section is repeated, even softer.) The two tenor saxophone high notes you hear in this sequence are reminders by Donahue that he was a master of playing in the upper register and beyond, indeed off the horn. 

Both Dennis and I also heard something in “Flo-Flo” that suggested Billy Strayhorn’s “Take the ‘A’ Train,” which was much in the air in 1941 in the world of swing. Ralph Burns himself often spoke of his admiration for Strayhorn’s work.

This is an excellent example of an inspired and creative use of music in the swing idiom.

The recording presented with this post was digitally remastered by Mike Zirpolo.

Notes and links:

(1) Some sources have stated that the Sonny Burke band was actually the band Sam Donahue had been leading before he joined Gene Krupa in 1938.

(2) Donahue was held in high regard by the sidemen in his band. So much so that several of them followed him into Artie Shaw’s Navy band, including at first Tak Takvorian, Dick LeFave, and then later, Bill Nichol.

(3) Woody Herman … The Leader of the Band, (1995) by Gene Lees (91-92).