Passage III

HUMANITIES: This passage is adapted from the article “The Quiet Sideman” by Colin Fleming (©2008 by The American Scholar).

Near the end of his eight years as a recording-session musician, tenor saxophonist Leon “Chu” Berry landed a short-lived spot with Count Basie’s orchestra. Standing in for one of the Basie band’s two tenor giants, Berry took a lead solo on “Oh, Lady Be Good,” the 1924 Gershwin song that Basie had played for years. In the 28 seconds that the solo lasted on February 4, 1939, we are treated to no less than the musical personification of mind and body working together in divine tandem. When you hear the recording for the first time, you’re likely to wonder why you’ve never heard of Chu Berry before.

Why you’ve never heard of him is pretty simple: a lot of hard-core jazz buffs don’t know much about him. Berry was a solid session player who turns up on recordings with Basie, Bessie Smith, Fletcher Henderson, and Billie Holiday. But he did not cut many sessions himself as a leader, and when he soloed, he worked within the recording constraints of the era and the swing genre—fast-moving 78s with solos often lasting for a mere 32 beats.

The people who loved Berry were, not surprisingly, other tenor players, a situation leading to the dreaded “musician’s musician” tag. But that’s not nearly praise enough to describe Chu Berry, who, when given opportunity, displayed a musical dexterity’ that would be envied by future generations of horn men.

Berry faced the lot of other horn players: having to grind it out long and hard until something memorable burst through; the prejudices and expectations of the listening public; and the accepted wisdom of what is and isn’t art in a given medium. In this case, swing was fodder for dance parties, not music worthy of study.

Oddly enough, Berry’s geniality might help explain his failure to court history’s favor: it wasn’t in his nature to call attention to himself or his playing. Born in 1908 into the black middle class in Wheeling, West Virginia, the laid-back, affable Berry attended West Virginia State in Charleston, where he switched from alto sax to tenor and exhibited the willingness to fit in that characterized his presence in so many dance bands. He was the rare artist who refused to put his interests above those of the band, even if that meant playing ensemble passages rather than taking a healthy allotment of solo breaks.

College proved a training ground for Berry the bandsman, as he teamed up with a number of amateur outfits. He never played simply to show off. Instead, he tried to bring out the positive attributes in any given situation or setting. Later, when Berry is performing with the Calloway ensemble, we hear some ragged, out-of-tune playing until Berry’s first few solo notes emerge. The other players, no longer languidly blowing through their charts, immediately surge up behind him, all fighting-fit. Once Berry finishes his solo, the shenanigans resume.

After making his way to New York. Berry immediately became a presence and soon was in demand. The great jazz orchestras of the swing era were fronted by musical directors/arrangers—Duke Ellington was pre-eminent—who drew the acclaim. The sidemen were musical traveling salesmen who sold someone else’s wares in the best style they could manage. It was with Fletcher Henderson that Berry began to ditch some of the sideman’s subservient trappings. For starters, Henderson wrote in keys that were rare for the jazz orchestras of the day, and his somber, indigo-inflected voicings were ideal for a player of Berry's introspective approach to his instrument: Berry sounds as it he’s being swallowed by his sax. “Blues in C Sharp Minor," far instance, is odd, haunting, and ultimately relaxing. A Berry solo in it is slightly off mike, making the listener feel as though he’s been playing tor some time before we finally hear him. The effect is unnerving, as if we weren’t paying close attention.

In June 1940, Cab Calloway granted Berry a show-case piece, “A Ghost of a Chance,” the sole recording in Berry’s career to feature him from start to finish. It was his “Body and Soul,” a response to Coleman Hawkins’s famous recording, intended not as a riposte to a rival, but as the other half of a dialogue. Its rubato lines are disembodied from the music meant to accompany it, which is spartan to begin with. This may be Berry’s one and only instance of indulgence on a record, a cathedral of a solo in its flourishes, angles, ornamentations, reflexivity. If sunlight could pass through music, “A Ghost of a Chance” would funnel it out in the broadest spectrum of colors.