Paris Humilié, 1940 1941

All of these sides but one (a pop vocal by Charles Trenet) were made in December 1940, just half a year into the Nazi occupation of Paris. People are still marveling over the fact that Django Reinhardt, a Gypsy who played music closely aligned with Jews and Afro-Americans, was not arrested and put to death by the invasive regime, for these collective jams were and are the antithesis of fascist ideology. It just so happens that this little slice of the chronology contains some of Reinhardt's most interesting material, wonderfully evolved from the earlier Hot Club de France, yet filled with premonitions of how jazz would come to sound ten or even 20 years later. Hubert Rostaing was an inventive clarinetist, sounding something like Marshall Royal, and is featured on most of these sides…

Packed with multiple takes that might scare away the timid, this is volume six in the complete recordings of guitarist Charlie Christian as compiled and released during the '90s by the Masters of Jazz label. It traces his path through various sessions which took place between December 19, 1940 and February 5, 1941, involving the Benny Goodman Sextet (with and without Count Basie), the Metronome All Star Band (see "One O'Clock Jump"), and lastly, Edmond Hall's Celeste Quartet. This little Blue Note band combined the musical personalities of Charlie Christian, clarinetist Edmond Hall, string bassist Israel Crosby, and boogie-woogie master Meade "Lux" Lewis, who knocked the stuffing out of the celeste, a keyboard instrument that mimics a glockenspiel but might sound to some ears like a well-tuned toy piano…

Considering how well he improvised at the piano, Nat King Cole's rise to fame was gruelingly gradual. Volume Two in the Classics Nat King Cole chronology contains all of the recordings he made between July 22, 1940 and March 14, 1941. His trio, a sharp little unit containing guitarist Oscar Moore and string bassist Wesley Prince, spent much of the year 1940 holding down a steady gig in the Radio Room, a small club located at 1539 Vine Street in Hollywood. It was there that they polished their act to perfection, ignored by both the public at large and the major record labels. As King Cole's Swingsters, they did manage to cut a small number of records for the Davis & Schwegler transcription service, a sleazy little fly by night outfit that soon went bankrupt, leaving the recordings unreleased and the musicians unpaid…

Most of the selections on the sixth and final Classics' CD to reissue all of Benny Carter's pre-war recordings as a leader feature the altoist's commercially unsuccessful big band. With such major soloists as the leader, trumpeter Jonah Jones and Sidney DeParis, trombonists Benny Morton and Jimmy Archey and pianist Sonny White, it is surprising that this orchestra did not make it. The October 23, 1940 recording session (which has three vocals by Roy Felton including one in which he is joined by the Mills Brothers) is quite rare while the opening set from eight days earlier is a small group date with Bill Coleman and Benny Morton that features a pair of W.C. Handy blues sung by Big Joe Turner. Excellent swing music overall.

Although Erskine Hawkins' Orchestra was at its best on instrumentals, it did record a fair amount of vocal numbers during the swing era. The fourth Classics CD to chronologically reissue the trumpeter/bandleader's recordings has 13 vocals among the 22 selections, including six by the indifferent Jimmy Mitchelle, but there are also a bunch of swinging instrumentals (often arranged by Sammy Lowe), including "Soft Winds," "Riff Time," "Blackout" and "Shipyard Ramble," that feature tenors Julian Dash and Paul Bascomb along with trumpeters Dud Bascomb and Hawkins.

The New Orleans barrelhouse boogie piano specialist's earliest sides for OKeh, dating from 1940-1941 and in a few cases sporting some fairly groundbreaking electric guitar runs by Jesse Ellery. Dupree rocks the house like it's a decade later on two takes of "Cabbage Greens" and "Dupree Shake Dance," while his drug-oriented "Junker Blues" was later cleaned up a bit by a chubby newcomer named Fats Domino for his debut hit 78 "The Fat Man."