“The Hour of Parting”

Music composed by Mischa Spoliansky; arranged by Eddie Sauter.

Recorded by Benny Goodman and His Orchestra for Columbia on April 10, 1940 in Los Angeles.

Benny Goodman, clarinet, directing: Ziggy Elman, first trumpet; Jimmy Maxwell and Irving Goodman, trumpets; Sterling “Red” Ballard, Vernon Brown and Ted Vesely, trombones; Nuncio F. “Toots” Mondello, solo alto saxophone; Les Robinson, first alto saxophone; Jerry Jerome and Clarence “Bus” Bassey, tenor saxophones; Johnny Guarnieri, piano; Charlie Christian, guitar; Arthur Bernstein, bass; Nick Fatool, drums.

The story – part one: the Benny Goodman band in transition-1939-1940:

Benny Goodman and His Orchestra played on their last Camel Caravan radio show on December 30, 1939.(1) It was the end of a three and a half year association that included 182 programs and had much to do with propelling Benny Goodman to superstar swing bandleader status. It had also provided Benny with the ongoing cash-flow to retain in his band many of the excellent musicians he started his rise to fame with, like Gene Krupa, Arthur Rollini, Red Ballard, Jess Stacy, Hymie Shertzer and Teddy Wilson (Gene and Teddy started their own bands in 1938 and 1939 respectively); and to hire new musicians who themselves would go on to successful careers (some as bandleaders), in the swing era. In this group were Lionel Hampton, Ziggy Elman, Chris Griffin, Vido Musso, Harry James, Dave Tough, Bud Freeman, Nick Fatool and Charlie Christian.

Benny Goodman and his band appearing on the Camel Caravan possibly in June of in 1939. The personnel I see are L-R front: Jess Stacy, George Rose, Jerry Jerome, Hymie Shertzer, Toots Mondello, Bus Bassey; middle: Bruce Squires, Vernon Brown, (Red Ballard is behind BG); back: Nick Fatool, Arthur Bernstein, Ziggy Elman, Corky Cornelius, Irving Goodman. BG is in front.

Benny’s primary concern then (and always) was the quality of the music he and his band members produced. His own standard for achieving musical quality was very high, and he expected, indeed demanded, the same from his sidemen. Benny practiced his clarinet almost obsessively, and conducted rigorous rehearsals of his musicians to achieve that objective. He also gradually became more savvy as a producer of the content of his radio shows. Although very much straight-ahead romping big band swing can be found among the many recordings made from BG’s Camel Caravan shows, Benny came to realize the great value of musical variety to keep the content of his radio shows fresh. His inclusion of Teddy Wilson’s piano and Lionel Hampton’s vibraphone playing on those shows (and from the late summer of 1939, Charlie Christian’s electric guitar), almost always within the context of a small group, were most effective contrast to the sound of the BG big band.

Benny Goodman’s saxophone section in June of 1939: L-R: Jerry Jerome, Hymie Shertzer, Toots Mondello, Bus Bassey. Hymie is yawning because Benny was giving all of the first alto parts to Toots. Hymie would soon be leading Tommy Dorsey’s saxophones.

The year 1939 was one of transition for Benny Goodman, but one of continuing success, with Benny’s Camel Caravan radio show as its cornerstone. (The story of what was going on then for BG can be found in the post here at swingandbeyond.com on Benny’s recording of “One Sweet Letter From You,” which can be accessed using the link at endnote (2). But once Benny no longer had the Camel Caravan as a financial and public relations/advertising base, people in the world of swing wondered what BG’s next moves to continue his career as a successful bandleader would be.

Throughout 1939, Benny strengthened the personnel of his band. Among the excellent musicians he hired in that year were: drummer Nick Fatool; trumpeter Jimmy Maxwell; bassist Arthur Bernstein; electric guitarist Charlie Christian; arranger Eddie Sauter; and lead alto saxophonist Nuncio “Toots” Mondello.

The music:

The jazz historian and musician Loren Schoenberg has written an excellent analysis of the music we hear on the recording of “The Hour of Parting.”(3) I will cite to that writing extensively here. I have added a few comments parenthetically to clarify.

“This (recording) is a sea change. For the first time, we encounter a bona fide Eddie Sauter instrumental masterpiece, masterfully interpreted and beautifully recorded. Granted, there had already been many Sauter vocal arrangements recorded (by the Goodman band), but they (do not provide a fair comparison with this work), which should be celebrated for its originality. …When given this large a canvas to work with, Sauter was able to use theme and variations in a way that would have been inappropriate in the prototypical swing band arrangement. It is in this regard that he clearly becomes the only contemporaneous figure that (in early 1940) can be mentioned in the same (breath) as Duke Ellington for his eschewing of cliche’ and harmonic conformity.” (Above right: arranger Eddie Sauter at work – 1939.)

“The hook of this tune is the second measure’s augmented chord, which Sauter exploits for all its ambiguity, creating a whole-tone introduction that leads to (Toots) Mondello, (who plays the alto saxophone solo), backed by the chanting plunger brass. Dynamic gradations were vital to Sauter’s conception, and we hear more changes in volume in the first chorus of this ballad than on any number of other Goodman recordings in totality. (Use of) whole-tone harmony was popularized by Claude Debussy in the years surrounding the turn of the Twentieth Century, and was already old-hat by the time Bix Beiderbecke and the arrangers for dance bands in the 1920s caught up with (that practice). What is remarkable is how Sauter turns this already hoary cliche’ into something fresh every time a transition is called for, first with the dotted brass figures at the end of the first chorus, and then in the unison saxophones going into the last chorus.”

“Bandleaders faced the challenge of fitting longer arrangements into the roughly three minute (and forty seconds) limit of the ten-inch 78 rpm records (that were standard in the marketplace during the swing era). They either sped up (the tempo), or edited (out chunks of the music). The first unissued take of (Goodman’s recording of “The Hour of Parting”) omitted the swashbuckling (solo) dialogue between Vernon Brown on trombone (3) and Ziggy Elman on trumpet, that is one of the piece’s most beautiful passages. It’s restored for this issued version, but to compensate, eight bars of Mondello’s reprise at the end were omitted.”(4)

This photo of Benny Goodman and his band was taken a few of months before the performances presented here. Front, L-R: Jimmy Maxwell, Buff Estes; Fletcher Henderson, BG, Toots Mondello, Vernon Brown, Arnold Covey and Ted Vesely; middle group: Arthur Bernstein and Red Ballard; behind them Nick Fatool, Ziggy Elman Louise Tobin; back: Bus Bassey, Lionel Hampton, Jerry Jerome and Chris Griffin.

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Here as a special treat is a rocking performance of “King Porter Stomp,” with a trumpet solo from Chris Griffin on the introductory solo popularized on the classic Goodman 1935 Victor recording featuring Bunny Berigan. Griffin had left the Goodman band some months before this recording was made, but was helping Benny out for this unusual broadcast. The other solos are by Benny, in inspired form on clarinet (with Nick Fatool encouraging him vocally); Ziggy Elman swaggering his way through his trumpet solo; Vernon Brown on trombone; and perhaps the highlight, a wild jazz foray by Toots Mondello on alto saxophone. Notice also Toots’s dominant lead playing in the saxophone section. Mondello was clearly a musician that Benny Goodman respected.

“King Porter Stomp”

Composed by Jelly Roll Morton; arranged by Fletcher Henderson.

Recorded from an NBC shortwave broadcast to Scandinavia on January 15, 1940 emanating from one of the broadcast studios in the RCA Building in Manhattan, possibly studio 8-G.

Benny Goodman, clarinet, directing: Ziggy Elman, first trumpet; Jimmy Maxwell and Gordon “Chris” Griffin, trumpets; Vernon Brown, Sterling “Red” Ballard and Ted Vesely, trombones; Nuncio F. “Toots” Mondello, first alto saxophone; Buford “Buff” Estes, alto saxophone; Clarence “Bus” Bassey and Jerry Jerome, tenor saxophones; Johnny Guarnieri, piano; Arnold (Covarrubias) Covey, guitar; Arthur Bernstein, bass; Nick Fatool, drums.

P.S. – about Toots Mondello:

Nuncio F. “Toots” Mondello (1911-1992) was an alto saxophone virtuoso who spent his long and successful career as a free-lance musician in Manhattan. Mondello was born in in Boston, where he performed on the alto and soprano saxophones with his father’s band from the age of 8 and joined the musicians’ union when only 14. He studied at the New England Conservatory in 1927. His classes included harmony with William B. Tyler and solfeggio with Clara Ellis. He became a member of Mal Hallett’s Toast of New England band in the same year.

Here is a summary of Toots’s big band career: (Hallett 1927-1929); Irving Aaronson (1930-1931); Joe Haymes (1932-1935); Buddy Rodgers (1934); Benny Goodman (late 1934-early 1935); Ray Noble (1935); free lance work in NYC radio and recording studios (1936-1939); Benny Goodman (June 1939- July 1940).

From the time Mondello left Benny Goodman’s band in mid-1940 until the mid-1970s (with time out to serve in the U.S. Army during World War II), he was a busy NYC freelance. (Above right: Benny and Toots in 1940.)

From late 1934 through the first half of 1935, Mondello was the first alto saxophonist in Benny Goodman’s band for radio and recording gigs in Manhattan. When Benny took the band west for a tour that eventually kept them away from Manhattan for ten months, Mondello elected to stay in New York. Although he worked with Ray Noble’s band in 1935, he was intent on starting a career as a Manhattan studio musician, which he did. Over his four-decade studio career, he played on radio or TV shows for Kate Smith, Ed Sullivan, Jackie Gleason, and Milton Berle, among many others. (Above left: Toots Mondello in the 1980s, with musician/historian Loren Schoenberg in the background.) (5)

Mondello became interested in classical music in the 1930s while studying flute with James Pappoutsakis of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and later studied composition with Paul Creston. His compositions were given numerous performances in the 1970s. In all he composed more than thirty chamber music and orchestral pieces.

Late in his career, Mondello performed with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. He died in 1992. (6)

The recordings presented with this post were digitally remastered by Mike Zirpolo.

Notes and links:

(1) The Camel Caravan was aired over the CBS radio network from the time Benny Goodman began his association with that program in June of 1936 through June of 1939. Then it was aired over the NBC radio network.

(2) Here is a link to the music and story of Benny Goodman’s challenges and successes through the year 1939: https://swingandbeyond.com/2021/08/16/one-sweet-letter-from-you-1939-benny-goodman-with-louise-tobin-and-ziggy-elman/

(3) I will suggest that the trombone soloist on “The Hour of Parting” may have been Ted Vesely, not Vernon Brown. Brown was unquestionably an excellent trombonist, and capable jazz soloist. But Vesely, who was equally capable all-around, seemed to imbue his solos with considerable technical flash, and that is what I hear in his instrumental dialog with trumpeter Ziggy Elman on this recording, including a delightful trill. Also, Brown’s trombone sound often had a characteristic buzz that was absent from Vesely’s sound.

(4) Liner notes that accompany the Mosiac set of CDs Classic Columbia and Okeh Benny Goodman Orchestra Sessions 1939-1958, by Loren Schoenberg (2008), 6.

(5) Here is a link to a marvelous interview of Toots Mondello conducted by jazz musician/historian Loren Schoenberg shortly before Mr. Mondello’s death. The interview demonstrates that Mondello’s enthusiasm for music remained undiminished, even though he was mortally ill with cancer when the interview took place: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VV_v3jfgsVk

(6) Biographical details of Toots Mondello’s life were gleaned from the Wikipedia article on him, and from this link: https://necmusic.edu/on-campus/library/archives-and-special-collections/archival-collections/nuncio-toots-mondello/