Bethlehem Records

The story of Gus Wildi’s bebopping jazz baby

Thursday, December 17, 1953. American TV companies were gearing up for
the first programmes in colour, Playboy was cock-a-hoop about featuring
Marilyn Monroe on the cover and in the centrefold of its first issue…….and
in a New York studio, trumpeter and vocalist Jim Bright, together with
vocalist Beaulah Swan and a band headed by  ex-Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy
Lunceford arranger Sy Oliver, was cutting a single at Bethlehem Record’s
first recording session.

Also due in that day was Chris Connor, making her debut solo sides for the
jazz label that was due to greet its public in the new year. Chris had left the
Stan Kenton band during July and had been acquiring a considerable
reputation as a solo act on the night-club circuit.
Similar in style to June Christy, whom she’d replaced as Kenton’s lead singer,
Chris possessed a flat, slightly hoarse vocal approach that many found
endearing. Bethlehem perceived her as an ideal launching pad for their
wares. A photogenic blonde, ultra-cool and already something of a jazz icon,
she also seemed capable of making records that would achieve that all-
important cross-over into the pop market. Accordingly, nothing was spared
on her debut session. Sy Oliver, who’d been signed as the company’s Musical
Director, pieced together a stellar big band for the date. the line-up
including such name musicians as Jimmy Nottingham (trumpet), Kai
Winding, Ward Silloway (trombones). Boomie Richmond, Say Taylor, Dave
McRae (saxes), Sid Block (bass) and Jimmy Crawford (drums), all of whom
boasted considerable CV’s. Four sides were cut, two of which, Blue Silhouette
and Miser’s Serenade, formed the 78 rpm disc that became Bethlehem’s debut
single.

New York City based, Bethlehem was formed by Gus Wildi, a guy who’d been
around the music industry but boasted a less-than-impressive track record,
having only been involved in releasing a few pop singles of little
consequence. Even so, the time seemed right for the launch of Wildi’s jazz
baby. The arrival of the long-playing record during 1948, augured well for
the genre, allowing jazz musicians to stretch out in a manner that had
previously been only heard in clubs and at concerts. By 1954, the number of
jazz record buyers into microgroove had increased tremendously. Any
company providing a strong line in new and hip sounds was likely to find a
market of eager record buyers.

The company’s initial album venture took place during December, 1953,
when altoist Charlie Mariano, leading a sextet that included Stu Williamson
(trumpet), Frank Rosolino (trombone), Claude Williamson (piano), Max
Bennett (bass) and Stan Levey (drums) headed into a Los Angeles studio,
though the initial long-playing release came with Lullabys Of Birdland, a 10-
inch album featuring Chris Connor and the Ellis Larkins Trio, recorded
during August, 1954. Almost immediately, Chris was rushed back into the
studio to cut Lullabys For Lovers, a follow-up that found her working with a
quartet headed by bassist Vinnie Burke and adding her stylised imprint to an
unbeatable selection of timeless songs.

If Bethlehem had a publicity machine, it hardly went into overdrive during
the label’s first year of existence. Other jazz rivals such as Norgan, Clef,
Discovery, Prestige and Pacific Jazz were grabbing most of the headlines.
But, in November, 1954, Downbeat reported: “Among future Bethlehem
projects is a Ruby Braff album on which the Boston trumpeter is back by
Johnny Garner, Walter Page and Bobby Donald son”. Also mentioned in the
same news report were forthcoming releases from Oscar Pettiford, Hank
D’Amico and Bobby Scott.

Jazzes, the year had a seen a geographical war breaking out, a survey in the
December 15 edition of Downbeat announcing: “After the publicity accorded
the alleged West Coast school of jazz, Bethlehem Records, in New York, has
inaugurated a series of LPs to be devoted to East Coast jazz. But an added
purpose of the Bethlehem series, according to Creed Taylor, who handles A/R
for the young company, is to find new jazz talent. First East Coast set is The
Compositions Of Bobby Scott, by the 17 year-old pianist whose first album for
Bethlehem (Great Scott) has already been released. The second album in the
series will feature the Vine Bruce Quartet, while a third will be devoted to
guitarist Joe Pass. Other East Coast jazz releases will showcase Conte Condoli
and Milt Hilton. Not in the East Coast series but soon to have Bethlehem LPs of
their own are altoist Pte Brown (with trumpeter Joe Wilder) and Ralph
Burns.” The label was beginning to fly.

The critics generally heaped praise on Bethlehem’s issues, the first in the
East Coast series receiving a four star rating, though a cautionary note was
struck by the reviewer who opined: “Having already made an impressive
debut as a pianist, the 17 year-old dynamo here conducts, but does not play,
on five of his own works. But Scott could learn from Jones about the
diversification of mood and sources.” Even so, the review was favourable,
closing with the observation that “Tom Dowd’s recording deserves credit.”

In 1955 Bethlehem began producing 12-inch albums also strengthening it’s
vocal roster by signing Bobby Troup, Helen Carr, Frances Faye,  and Mel
Torme. Troup, a singer-songwriter who bequeathed Route 66 to the world in
1946, had already worked for Bethlehem,producing four sides for his prot_g_
(and eventual wife) Julie London. Faye, raised on the sounds of 52nd Street,
was a more broad-based performer, a superior night-club entertainer and
fore-runner of Bette Midler, while Carr proved to be simply one of the most
underrated singers ever to grace jazz, warm with an ability to phrase in a
manner that few could emulate.

Carmen McRae, who’d signed for the label at the close of ’54. released her
debut album through Bethlehem in the spring of 1955. A magazine ad,
announcing its arrival, explained all. ” Just Plain Carmen McRae” it read,
“an exciting High Fidelity LP from the winner of Downbeat’s New Star Award
and the winner Of Metronome’s Singer Of The Year Award.”  Certainly,
Bethlehem’s array of vocal talent was capable of competing with that of
many majors. The arrival of Mel Torme merely confirmed the point.

Torme had notched several Top 20 hits for Capitol and Coral, having
previously charted for such record companies as Decca and Musicraft. Mel
recalls having been talked into signing for Bethlehem by then label boss
Red Clyde, who he recalls as being “a feisty little guy dedicated to creating a
pure jazz label.” All great news to Torme who felt saddled with his ‘Velvet Fog’
crooner image. Oddly, his first Bethlehem album was not to be a jazz release.
“Red suggested by that my first album should be a ballad offering.” But there
were compensations. The singer was told “Pick your own tunes, choose your
own arrangers. I want you to make a great two-in-the-morning type album.”
Andre Previn provided  a couple of arrangements as did Russ Garcia and
Sandy County, while Al Pellegrini contributed one. But the kicker was Marty
Paich’s quartet of scores. “He created four of the most beautiful pieces of
orchestral work I have ever heard,” says Torme. The resulting record,
a moody triumph, was released in September, 1955, to coincide with Mel’s
30th birthday. It proved a considerable birthday present, one that led to
other brilliant liaisons with Paich, and a number of other albums that added
up to one of the most creative body of works to stem from a jazz vocalist.
And so Torme’s years at Bethlehem proved to be among his happiest, the only
moment of dissent occurring when Red Clyde attempted, and succeeded, into
talking Mel into participating in a three-album, all-star version of
Gershwin’s Porgy And Bess  along with Duke Ellington, Frances Faye, Johnny
Hartman, Stan Levy, Bob Dorough, Joe Derise and various others who
contributed to the Bethlehem way of things. “I hated the record,” claims Mel,
who felt that the polyglot of styles just didn’t work. “But”, he adds, “It became
a cult favourite so maybe I’m not in line.”

All-in-all, 1955 was an eventful  one for Bethlehem. They signed what was to
be a stalwart label act in the Australian Jazz Quartet, a combo that reedmen
Errol Buddle and Dick Healey, together with pianist Bryce Rohde and
vibraphonist Jack Brokensha had formed only during the previous
December.
Other releases stemmed from J.J.Johnson and Kai Winding, a redoubtable
trombone pairing who’d already made their mark on sessions for Blue Note
and Prestige; flautist Herbie Mann, a future jazz-rock star; West Coast
trumpeter Conte Condoli, ex-Ellington and Woody Herman bassist Oscar
Pettiford, and British pianist Ralph Sharon who made an album with his wife
Sue Ryan.  Additionally, tenor giant Dexter Gordon contributed  two fine
albums, one as a sideman with the Stan Levey Sextet. But it was not all good
news. In June came the report that Chris Connor, Bethlehem’s first star, had
been suspended because she refused to record more than the minimum
number of sides guaranteed in her contract, which was due to end in
December. By January, 1956, she’d moved on to Atlantic.

By ’56 Bethlehem was considered a label capable of making considerable
waves in the world of jazz. Which meant that there was little surprise when
Duke Ellington, who’d been signed to Capitol, made the switch to the now
flourishing New York company. Though some felt that Duke’s decision to
remake such classic sides as Ko-Ko, In A Mellow Tone and Cotton Tail was
unwise, the two albums he recorded for Bethlehem were superior to
anything he’d cut for Capitol and proved first notice of the rejuvenation
that was to become apparent to the world at large when Ellington triumphed
at the 1956 Newport Festival. For Bethlehem, it was hardly now a case of West
Coast or East Coast. The whole jazz spectrum was theirs, albums by such old
school musicians as Jack Teagarden and Bud Freeman demonstrating that
anyone could join the party. Those that did included  self-destructive bebop
trumpeter Howard McGhee;  post-Bird altoist Charlie Mariano; Red Mitchell,
perhaps the definitive West Coast bassist and an accomplished pianist to boot;
along with one-time Kenton guitarist Sal Salvador. Again the vocal catalogue
was strengthened when superb stylist Johnny Hartman released his first
album for the label, his arrival being accompanied by the signing of Bob
Dorough, a singer who’d once made a living playing at a tap dancing school
near Times Square. Dorough, who began writing vocalese material in 1955,
began Bethlehem Life with Devil May Care, an album whose highlight was
Yardbird Suite, a Charlie Parker classic provided an inventive Dorough lyric.
Then too there was Joe Derise, once a member of Claude Thornhill’s
Snowflakes and possessor of a soft, fragile voice, who claimed that, before
signing to Bethelehem: “I was a real hippy, sang lots of changes
in the first chorus then did all that scoobie-doobie ah-ah stuff in the second.
You know who taught me to know what a lyric means ? My wife. She used to
sing with Woody Herman as Pat Easton.”

The following year saw the arrival on the label of such singers as  Herb
Jeffries, Sallie Blair, Betty Roche, Jerri Winters and Lady Day sound-alike
Marilyn Moore, while the names of  many major instrumentalists continued
to be added to the Bethelehem catalogue.
Names like those of Charlie Mingus, provider of East Coasting, made with a
sextet that included a Bill Evans who’d returned from a late night gig only to
receive a message that he was wanted on a Mingus session that was due to
start at 10 am!  Charlie was also to record the more avante-gard A Modern Jazz
Symposium  a jazz plus poetry concoction that included a suite inspired by
one of Charlie’s female friends. It was inevitable that Art Blakey would bring
his Messengers to the label and in 1957 he did just that, he and his ever-
fluctuating array of sidemen (who,at the time, included trumpeter Bill
Hardman and tenorist Johnny Griffin) providing one album before Art
returned at the end of the year to record an album with a 15-piece, roaring
big band.

There was good news and bad news during ’58. The latter concerned the
Australian Jazz Quartet, who disbanded in the wake of an Australian tour.
Oddly it was Dick Healey, the band’s American member, who caused the
Quartet to split when he wanted to return to live in Australia. Crazy but true.
The good news concerned the signing of Nina Simone. Bethlehem was, at that
point being distributed through King Records of Cincinnati, a company
owned by Syd Nathan, a myopic, asthmatic, overweight who’d nudged into
the record industry as a producer of country records before switching to
R&B and  turning King into  a  great repository of black music, one that
boasted such stars as James Brown, Wynonie Harris, Little Willie John, Bill
Doggett, Freddie King and many others. Nathan had heard a tape of Simone,
made when the singer-pianist played the New Hope Playhouse Inn. “Next
day,” she recalls, “he turned up at my house. He had a bunch of songs he
expected me to play and a list of musicians he wanted me to use as my studio
band.”
But Nathan had never encountered an artist like Nina. She would only record
on her own terms. Eventually, the 14-hour session that produced her debut
album was set up, most of the songs being those she sang on her club dates,
the final song of the session being My Baby Just Cares For Me .When the
album surfaced, one track, I Loves You Porgy was played to death by DJ Sid
Marx at a Philadelphia R&B station. And slowly, as the rest of the country
caught on, Nina Simone became a chart item. Years later, in 1987, the album
would sell once again when My Baby Just Cares For Me became a UK Top 10
hit following its use on a TV commercial.

There were other moments to be savoured. Swinging Introduction, an album
by Bill Evans and  trombonist Jimmy Knepper was among those that kept the
Bethlehem flag fying high during the late ’50s  but the large number of
compilations being pieced together from past sessions didn’t augur well. In
short, the label was having financial problems. When these came to a head,
Syd Nathan’s King Records took over Bethlehem during 1960 and moved the
company’s office to Cincinnati. For a while, Bethlehem remained a name to
swing by, Zoot Sims’ ever-essential Down Home (“A marvellous example of
Sims’ ability to swing” – Down Beat) proving among the best jazz records of
the year.

However, time was running out. The release on Bethlehem of a number of
European recordings by the likes of Michael Holliday, Lale Anderson, Jean
Sablon, Pepe Jaramillo and the Masked Marvel Orchestra, an aggregation
touted as “England’s Top Orchestra”, showed the door to the label jazz
devotees. Within months, there was no Bethlehem at all to cry over or cry
about. The label had become the victim of a soft fade. No farewell, no wake.

Thankfully, during the ’70s and ’80s, the memory of Bethlehem and it’s
marvellous jazz catalogue – one that has not aged one iota with the passing of
time but, instead, gained in importance -  was kept alive through re-releases
on Charley’s Affinity label. And in more recent times, the arrival of the CD
and the acquisition of the catalogue by Evidence, a Pennsylvania-based
company, committed to reissuing a new array of Bethlehem classics, digitally
remastered from first-generation tapes and featuring many previously
unreleased bonus tracks, has meant that Gus Wildi’s dream label will
continue to flourish as long as there are those with ears
to appreciate many of jazzdom’s finest moments.