Eddie Condon described purchasing a ticket to enter Lincoln Gardens, in 1922 or 1923, and hearing the music of King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band flow through the entryway, “like a muscle flexing regularly, four to the bar.”Footnote ¹ What was the contribution of Bill Johnson, the bass player, to that flexing muscle? Was he playing on beats one and three, in the traditional ragtime two-beat style, or did he play all four beats evenly, with pizzicato and perhaps slapping the strings against the fingerboard? This pleasant three-disc anthology of string bass playing, covering 1925–1941, makes one think about that moment and the stylistic implications that surround it.

Recording in the “acoustic” era routinely required the string bass player and the drummer to put their instruments aside, since the booming low register upset the recording needle. The first recording of a jazz bass, according to Dick Spottswood, who annotated this anthology and produced it along with Steven Lance Ledbetter, dates from 22 June 1925, when Harry Barth played “Milenberg Joys” with the Ted Lewis band. After that first entry, the anthology moves towards bass players from New Orleans, who dominate disc 1, as they should.

There is Steve Brown with the Jean Goldkette Orchestra, John Lindsay with Jelly Roll Morton's Red Hot Peppers, Sidney Brown with Sam Morgan's Jazz Band, “Chink” Martin Abraham with the Halfway House Dance Orchestra, Octave Gaspard with Frenchy's String Band, Wellman Braud with the Ellington orchestra (recording under the name Joe Turner and his Memphis Men), George Pops Foster with Luis Russell and his Orchestra, and Al Morgan with the Jones and Collins Astoria Hot Eight. In a good number of these performances, which date from 1925 to 1930, the bass player shifts into slap pizzicato four-four to back up a “hot” chorus. Very muscular indeed. This usually alternates with bowing and two-beat articulations, though in the Sam Morgan recordings the bass is almost constantly in four (not just in the recordings represented here but in all the 1927 recordings from this group).

Missing from the anthology is Pops Foster with Armstrong performing “Mahogany Hall Stomp” in 1929. (Knowing what it is like to get permission to publish Armstrong, I understand why this performance might have been set aside.) The relaxed tempo and the entrancing groove, due in large part to Foster's slapped four-four, fits right in with the context that disc 1 of How Low Can You Go? provides. Taken in the context of Armstrong's oeuvre, on the other hand, the recording conveys a retrospective, almost idyllic vision of New Orleans. Armstrong was obviously inspired: he plays with economy and charm rather than bravura. Foster claimed that the recording made a big impact in New York. “Then everybody started buying string basses,” he said. “Everybody was trying to play it. All the tuba players would come around to my house and I give 'em lessons.”Footnote ²

There are plenty of fun surprises in this collection. Bass player Thelma Terry is represented with her band, Thelma Terry and her Playboys, from 1928. She is the only woman who plays bass on this anthology, and credit is given to the website of Dr. David Appolloni for uncovering her story. The anthology is not limited to jazz. There are, for example, two washboard bands (one of them, with Washboard Sam in 1936, has a stunning rhythm section, as Spottswood points out), a string band from Dallas, one from northern Louisiana and another from Knoxville, a group from Martinique and another from Hawaii. These are mixed in with better known bands led by Fletcher Henderson, Jack Teagarden, Henry Allen, Bob Wills, and Cab Calloway, all playing nice music that one doesn't hear that often. The vocal quotation of Armstrong's 1927 trumpet solo on “Struttin' With Some Barbecue,” near the beginning of “Dr. Watson and Mr. Holmes,” by The Spirits of Rhythm in 1934—for no other reason, apparently, than the sheer pleasure of it—made me laugh out loud.

There is a lot of good and seldom heard music in this anthology, but I have to admit that it is sometimes difficult to sustain focus on the bass playing. The annotations are interesting though brief; they often do not give much detail about what is, for this anthology, the main event. The principles of selection—aside from diversity—are not always clear. For example, mention is made of a recording featuring Candy Candido titled “The Big Bass Fiddle,” which “could have made it on this anthology.” Why didn't it? If the playing on “Bugle Call Rag,” which represents Candido instead, is superior, this is not explained. Nevertheless, there is some good information in the annotations, and the author is well informed about the period.

Disc 2 ends with a superb air check of the Ellington band in 1941, which gives Jimmy Blanton plenty of space to stretch out with solos. The homemade recording cuts off abruptly, as if to represent Blanton's tragic early death from tuberculosis, barely one year after this performance. Milt Hinton makes a splendid appearance near the end of disc 2 with Cab Calloway in “Pluckin' the Bass.” Little snatches of Bach in his solo—a duet, actually, with lovely work from Cozy Cole—may reach back to his high school days as a classical violinist. The player who had a formative influence on Milt Hinton in Chicago was none other than Bill Johnson, to whom is given over the entirety of disc 3. It is a lovely idea to have all of these obscure recordings brought together on one disc, which moves through ensembles like the Dixie Four and the State Street Ramblers. Armstrong and others admired Johnson's comic ability, and on these recordings, all made in 1928 and 1929, he frequently shouts out, usually as a way of encouraging the other musicians, very much in the mode of his famous “Oh play that thing” on the 1923 “Dipper Mouth Blues.” There could be something to learn from these interjections, though if humor is intended, it does not obviously leap across the decades. But the recordings make one thing crystal clear: Johnson was a vigorous picker of the slap-style four-four, and he surely was as responsible for the success of Oliver's band at Lincoln Gardens as much as anyone else.