`A Combined Chaucer and Shakespeare of Jazz'

On July 17, 1976, Philip Larkin was the guest on “Desert Island Discs,” a program on BBC Radio 4 that was first broadcast in 1942 and that remains on the air 65 years later, making it the longest-running show in radio history. The format has remained consistent: Guests are asked to imagine themselves marooned Crusoe-like on an island with eight records to keep them company. Larkin, of course, was a first-rate albeit idiosyncratic jazz critic who scorned much of the music after 1940 – this is, bop and its descendents. His first choice was “Dallas Blues,” recorded by Louis Armstrong and His Orchestra, on Dec. 10, 1929, in New York City, for Okeh. Thanks to the invaluable Red Hot Jazz Archive we can listen to “Dallas Blues” here. And thanks to The Louis Armstrong Discography, here is the lineup on the record, including the great Red Allen:

Armstrong, Louis (Trumpet, Vocal)
Johnson, Otis (Trumpet)
Allen, Henry Red (Trumpet)
Higginbotham, J.C. (Trombone)
Nicholas, Albert (Clarinet, Alto Saxophone)
Holmes, Charlie (Clarinet, Alto Saxophone)
Hill, Teddy (Clarinet, Tenor Saxophone)
Russell, Luis (Piano)
Johnson, Will (Guitar)
Foster, Pops (Bass)
Barbarin, Paul (Drums)

Larkin gave the show’s host, Roy Plomley, this explanation for his choice (published in Further Requirements):

“I suppose any jazz lover has to decide which Louis Armstrong record he is taking, because there are so many and Louis is such a combined Chaucer and Shakespeare of jazz. I’ve chosen `Dallas Blues’ from 1929 because I’ve been playing it for about forty years and never got tired of it. It is a blues, and Armstrong plays it in a beautiful warm and relaxed way that he doesn’t always achieve on his later more showmanship sides.”

Larkin, born in 1922, remained faithful to the music of his youth, and famously dismissed Charlie Parker as one of the three P’s of modernism, the others being Pound and Picasso. But his reviews, collected in All What Jazz, reveal a more nuanced and sympathetic understanding than his reputation implies. Here’s the rest of his play list, which is more varied than one might expect:

“Dollia,” sung by Louis Killen.
“Forty-Part Motet – Spem in alium,” composed by Thomas Tallis, performed by the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge.
“I’m Down in the Dumps,” sung by Bessie Smith.
“The Coventry Carol,” performed by St George’s Canzona.
“Symphony No. 1, in A flat,” third movement, composed by Edward Elgar, performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Sir Adrian Boult.
“These Foolish Things,” sung by Billie Holiday.

Of the final selection, Larkin says:

“I have always thought that the words were a little pseudo-poetic but Billie here sings them with such a passionate conviction that I think they really become poetry. It also demonstrates a theory of mine that you can’t have a great jazz vocal without a great jazz accompaniment, and here you have Duke Ellington’s marvellous altoist Johnny Hodges, and the pianist Teddy Wilson, making up a wonderful trio.”

I’m touched by the way Larkin casually refers to “Louis” and “Billie,” the way a rock fan of my generation might say “John” and “Paul,” and his mention of Hodges and Wilson is deserved. In fact, I play the song to hear them, not Holiday, whose voice and deportment I’ve always found stilted and unconvincing. Read the entire interview, but Larkin’s reasons for choosing the Tallis composition are especially interesting coming from the author of “Church Going” and “Aubade”:

“Well, I should want something for Sundays which suggests Church music. There’s an enormous amount to choose from, and I think oddly enough Church music is a kind of music I like very much in the same way as jazz. I don’t know why this should be so, unless agnostics are naturally romantic about religion, but I could pick any one of ten or twenty records….”

Also of interest is Larkin’s response to Plomley’s question about not being a “difficult” or “abstruse” poet:

“I think that a poem should be understood at first reading line by line, but I don’t think it should be exhausted at that first reading. I hope that what I write gives the reader something when they read it first, enough in fact to make them read it again and so on ad infinitum.”