“Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea”
Composed by Harold Arlen; arranged by Bob Haggart.
Recorded by Bob Crosby and His Orchestra for Decca on February 8, 1937 in New York.
Bob Haggart, bass, directing: Agostino “Andy” Ferretti, first trumpet; John H. “Yank” Lawson, trumpet; Ward Silloway and Mark Bennett, trombones; Ernani “Noni” Bernardi, first alto saxophone and clarinet; Julian “Matty” Matlock, clarinet; Deane Kincaide, alto saxophone and clarinet; Eddie Miller, tenor saxophone; Gil Rodin, tenor saxophone; Beguslaw Albert Zukowski (Bob Zurke), piano; Hilton “Nappy” Lamare, guitar; Ray Bauduc, drums. Bob Crosby, present.
The story:
In examining the early career of bassist/arranger/composer Bob Haggart through the late 1920s and early 1930s, we see that the development of the ecosystem that would eventually support the musical and economic viability of the bands that would make up the swing era was well underway then. America was dance-crazy through the 1920s. This craze was stimulated by the rapid development of commercial radio and recordings, and would receive a further boost when sound and music began to be a part of motion pictures. Many ballrooms sprung up across the nation. Night clubs, hotel ballrooms and road houses increasingly presented live music. Businessmen became aware of these developments and began organizing various enterprises that would supply music, musicians, singers and bands to meet the demand that was presenting itself. It was a very good time to be a young and talented musician.
Robert Sherwood Haggart (1914-1998) was one of the best bass players to emerge from the swing era. His ability as a versatile bassist alone would have enabled him to have had a long and successful career in music. But in addition, Haggart was an excellent and creative arranger, and a composer of memorable melodies. He was a natural musician who was able to pick up various instruments and begin to play them well fairly quickly, and with seeming ease. When growing up in Douglaston, (Little Neck, Queens) Long Island, he played banjo, guitar, piano and trumpet. Haggart worked in various local bands in the New York City area while he was in high school. During that time, he studied with guitar master George Van Eps and progressed quickly. He soon was participating in jam sessions with the Van Eps brothers George, Bobby, Freddy and John. Although Haggart first began playing the bass while he was in high school, the instruments he went on gigs with in those years were guitar and trumpet. (Above right: Bob Haggart walks along the Steel Pier in Atlantic City, New Jersey in 1939 while his bandmates from the Bob Crosby band watch. Discernable faces in the background L-R: include Ray Conniff, Billy Butterfield and Eddie Miller.)
Haggart’s parents sent him to the Salisbury School for his last two years of high school. The Wikipedia article on the Salisbury School currently reads as follows: “Salisbury School is an elite all-boys, private college-preparatory school in Salisbury, Connecticut. It was founded in 1901 by the Reverend George E. Quaile, former headmaster of St. Austin’s Military School on Staten Island, New York. Its school newspaper is called The Cupola. Its mascot is the Crimson Knight. In 2015, Business Insider ranked it the most expensive private high school in the United States.” Haggart, as a budding musician of great talent, was more interested in making music than in the curriculum of the Salisbury School. Nevertheless, he, along with a new friend, bassist Harlow Atwood, remained at Salisbury for some time, coming to regard the place as “a snob factory.” But the school band, known as the Salisbury Serenaders, drew Haggart like a magnet. The band played stock arrangements, which Haggart began to “doctor,” often rewriting whole passages, in order to make them reflect more of a jazz orientation. This is how Haggart taught himself to arrange.
Through the time Bob was a student at Salisbury, he continued to work occasionally on the outside with other young musicians in Connecticut. Among these were the Petry brothers, Fred and Vic. Fred, a saxophone player, later worked with Artie Shaw, Jack Teagarden and Alvino Rey. The Petry brothers used Haggart as a sub rather often, as he was able to fill-in quite well on both guitar and trumpet. It was with them that he first heard Frank Trumbauer’s recording of “Singing the Blues,” which featured the cornet playing of Bix Beiderbecke. This stimulated Haggart’s curiosity about jazz. Soon he was listening to Louis Armstrong records, including “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love.” He later recalled: “That one turned my life around. …Louis’s music seemed to have so much more feeling than most of the white jazz I’d been listening to. It swung harder and it led me to go to the Roseland Ballroom and to the Savoy to hear the great black bands of that period (including) Fletcher Henderson, Chick Webb, Claude Hopkins and so on.”
Haggart’s pursuit of jazz inevitably led him to other young musicians who were also in the process of gaining an understanding of the music. One such musician was the drummer Ray McKinley, who in 1930 was working with Milt Shaw’s New Music, a band later called Milt Shaw’s Detroiters. McKinley took Haggart to a gathering of young musicians at the New York apartment of pianist Gladys Mosher, who was then the girlfriend of Artie Shaw. She began to entertain her guests by playing recordings of Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five. Haggart remembered that occasion well: “I had heard plenty of (other) Louis Armstrong recordings, but that first hearing of the Hot Five’s “Heebie Jeebies,” “Georgia Grind” etc. opened up a whole new world for me.”
Haggart gradually became a free-lance professional musician through the years 1933 to 1935, making more contacts among dance band musicians in the New York – Connecticut territory. By this time, he had settled on the bass as his main instrument. Through Ray McKinley, Haggart met Glenn Miller, who in 1934 was working with the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra. Miller heard Haggart play and asked him if he wanted to join the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra. Bob declined that offer because he didn’t think he was ready to play with musicians of that caliber yet. 
But Miller was nevertheless much impressed by Haggart’s bass-playing, and talked about it to other musicians, including his old colleague from the Ben Pollack band, Gil Rodin.
In March of 1935, Rodin was attempting to resurrect the remnants of Ben Pollack’s last band, which had folded in late 1934, as a band with a new leader. Within a few months, Rodin, in close association with booking agent Cork O’Keefe, was able to finesse the movement of the boy vocalist for the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra, Bob Crosby, younger brother of Bing, from the DBO to being the front-man of the old Pollack band. This “new” band would be known as Bob Crosby and His Orchestra. (At right: Ray McKinley.)
Shortly before the first Decca recording session for the Bob Crosby band, which took place on June 1, 1935, Gil Rodin contacted Bob Haggart by phone. Rodin told Haggart that he had been recommended by several musicians, including Glenn Miller and Ray McKinley, and that he wanted him to join the Bob Crosby band. Haggart agreed to audition for Rodin, did so, and was hired immediately. (1)
At the time Bob Haggart joined the Bob Crosby band, most of the arranging for them was being done by Deane Kincaide, a talented and distinctive writer. Also contributing charts to the band’s book was Matty Matlock, who was also a fine arranger. It is unclear whether when Gil Rodin hired Haggart that he knew that Bob could also arrange. Knowing Gil’s propensity for being aware of things, I suspect that he did know of Haggart’s ability as an arranger, and encouraged him to develop his skills in that area. Very soon, new Haggart arrangements began to be played and recorded by the Crosby band. (A partial list of these can be found at endnote 2.)
The Bob Crosby band in 1935 shortly after Bob Haggart joined: front L-R: Matty Matlock, Gil Bowers, Eddie Miller, Frank Tennille (father of Toni), Gil Rodin, Nappy Lamare; back: Joe Harris, Charlie Green, Phil Hart, Eddie Bergman, Yank Lawson, Bob Haggart and Deane Kincaide. Ray Bauduc and Bob Crosby are in the car.
The music:
Bob Haggart’s arrangement of “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea” starts without any introduction. Instead of an introduction, Haggart sets up a recurring snippet of melody, played by two or three clarinets and a tenor saxophone (Eddie Miller) as the background against which the muted and syncopated brass play the main melody (A) for two eight-bar tracts. Clarinetist Matty Matlock plays a melodic paraphrase of the secondary melody (B) against a jaunty background of muted brass. Then the first chorus is completed with an eight-bar repetition of the (A) melody sequence. (Matty Matlock shown at left.)
The second chorus begins with a sixteen-bar open trumpet jazz solo played by Yank Lawson. His first eight bars are played against undulating clarinets, the second eight against clarinets and open trombones. There follows a saxophone section soli on the bridge. Notice how Haggart builds this tract going from the saxophones only, then adding the trombones, finally the trumpets. Tenor saxophonist Eddie Miller finishes the chorus with a bit of improvisation on the main melody. (Yank Lawson is pictured above right.)
A brass-led fanfare sets up Matty Matlock’s second clarinet solo. Here he plays jazz for sixteen bars. Once again, notice the backgrounds Haggart has created for him to play against: the clever blend of saxophones and open brass swathe Matlock’s edgy sound in warmth. An ensemble modulation (one of many in this arrangement) leads to an ensemble round-robin with the open trombones leading the way into a kaleidoscope of brass and reed sounds.
Eddie Miller returns to play jazz supported only by the rhythm section and the rhythmic open brass – a felicitous arranging touch. A cadence leads to the riffing ensemble finale. (Above left: front L-R: Ray Bauduc, Gil Rodin, Eddie Miller; back Bob Haggart, Yank Lawson, Andy Ferretti.)
This brilliant, colorful arrangement by Bob Haggart is evidence that by 1937, he had already taken his place in the first rank of swing arrangers.
“Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea”
Composed by Harold Arlen; arranged by Bob Haggart. Haggart arrangement reconstructed by Billy May.
Recorded by Billy May and the Swing Era Orchestra for Capitol on February 7, 1972 in Hollywood.
Billy May, directing: John Best, first trumpet; Rubin “Zeke” Zarchy, Uan Rasey and George Werth, trumpets; Dick Nash, first trombone; Francis “Joe” Howard and Lew McCreary, trombones; Les Robinson, first alto saxophone; Wilbur Schwartz, alto saxophone; Justin Gordon and Plas Johnson, tenor saxophones; Abe Most, clarinet; Ray Sherman, piano; Jack Marshall, guitar; Morty Corb, bass; Nick Fatool, drums. Solos: Abe Most, clarinet; John Best, trumpet; Justin Gordon, tenor saxophone.
More story:
Billy May greatly enjoyed reconstructing what he considered exceptional music in the swing idiom for the mammoth Swing Era recording project at Capitol Records. That project ran from 1969 to 1972, and eventually produced several hundred new recordings of music created and originally recorded during the swing era. It also allowed a revolving group of Hollywood’s finest musicians to work regularly during that time rehearsing and recording that music. The musicians uniformly enjoyed this work as it allowed them to play music they liked under a conductor they respected. It was a very good gig.
People do not remember that when this project was being produced, interest in the music of the swing era was at a low ebb in the marketplace of retail record stores. Rather than try to navigate that, the producers of the Swing Era recordings bypassed the record stores entirely, and used a marketing model that had already proved successful: promote the recordings heavily in a popular magazine print publication, solicit mail-order sales, and then promptly fulfill the orders. The formula was exceptionally successful. 
As the recordings Billy May made with the Swing Era Orchestra began to reach customers, producers of the original recordings noticed, and began slowly and tentatively to assemble and produce reissues of the those classic performances. The result was that fans of swing music were then able to access music from the swing era that had in many instances been inaccessible in the retail marketplace for decades.
I had the opportunity to discuss this with Bob Haggart once. We were sitting on a bench in Conneaut Lake Park, just west of Meadville, Pennsylvania on a balmy Saturday afternoon in 1986. Bob’s observations were interesting: “I’m always happy when other musicians record my work, especially musicians of the stature of Billy May and the guys he worked with on that project. They did a great job of bringing a lot of the old things I did with the Bob Crosby band back to life. For example, they did “My Inspiration.” Before their recording of it was issued, I was receiving almost no royalties on that. After, well, I was pleasantly surprised. Although I have always received fair to good royalties on “What’s New,” after Billy’s recording of it came out, they jumped also. And that led to the whole Linda Ronstadt/Nelson Riddle production of “What’s New,” which has been like an annuity. Every musician wants his music to be heard, and what Billy did with that project was to get a lot of music that deserved to be heard in front of people. I’m grateful for that.” (Above right: Bob Haggart in the 1980s.)
The recordings presented with this post were digitally remastered by Mike Zirpolo.
Notes and links:
(1) The information about Bob Haggart’s early life and career were derived from Stomp Off, Let’s Go …The Story of Bob Crosby’s Bob Cats and Big Band, by John Chilton (1983), 191-194.
(2) In addition to “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea,” Bob Haggart wrote arrangements on: “South Rampart Street Parade,” “Diga, Diga Do,” “Dogtown Blues,” “At the Jazz Band Ball,” “I’m Prayin’ Humble,” “Chain Gang,” “When the Red, Red Robin Comes Bob, Bob Bobbin’ Along,” “Sugar Foot Strut,” “Come Back Sweet Papa,” “Just Strollin’,” among many others for the Crosby band. His compositions included “My Inspiration,” and “I’m Free,” later to become a standard as “What’s New.” He was also a prime instigator of the unique bass and drums duet, “Big Noise From Winnetka.”
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