Two of the many fine musicians that I have worked with are a part of my trio on this recording for World Broadcasting, produced by Milt Gabler in New York in 1945. I loved working with Tai Farlow and I would suspect these might be some of his earliest recordings. I hope his many fans won't hold me in poor favor for keeping him locked into the pattern of such solo-limiting arrangements. Tai had been with me two or three months at the Copacabana before these recordings were made. Tai has justifiably become a world-acclaimed guitarist. Paul Edenfield is not as well known as Tai, of course, but Paul had the most remarkable musical ear and a marvelous sensitivity. He had been a part of my trio for several years and came from a guitar-playing family, so he had perfect collaborative training. Oddly enough, you don't have any rubato bass on these tracks and he did that so beautifully. In those early years I was blessed with wonderful musicians, so I came out of a world where I was totally spoiled. My good fortune has not ceased for I have had other great guitarists - John Gray from Enid, Oklahoma, who played with such exquisite taste, and Joe Sinacore, wonderfully sensitive and much fun. And there were Bert Nazer and Sandy Block on bass at different times. I am very thankful that I continue to work with fine musicians today.

This particular session was booked by Joe Glazer, who was representing me at the time and soon after arranged for my RCA Victor date, my second recording session. This was sort of an order placed by World Broadcasting for vibraharp music; they didn't care to hear the piano and strangely enough, I think a little piano sneaked into the opening of only one tune, Gold Braid. I will never know how that happened since I can't even recall a piano being in the studio. I remember telling them I didn't play thirty-six things on the vibes, so I had to change piano numbers into vibraharp arrangements and fast. I'm surprising myself that I played some of the things like Tabu, The Man I Love (which usually included a vocal), C-Jam Blues, and Light Up and the other jazz things switched over from piano to vibes. For variety in performance, I usually left the piano to play a chorus on vibes and then returned to the keyboard. We went into the World studio for two or three days and pulled this all together.

Vibraharp players will notice the very fast vibrato. There are some players now who do not like any vibrato at all, but I always loved the full sound of vibes which was widely accepted at the time of this recording. Lionel Hampton and Adrian Rollini had set the pattern of vibes pretty much as Art Tatum was the great influence on piano. I am sure if Adrian were alive today he would be scaring everybody. He was absolutely a genius with those fo-ur mallets. I never saw him play with two mallets; he did everything very close to the bars with four.

I find listening to the tunes very interesting. There are some I wouldn't play today as I did then, and some that I couldn't. Gold Braid opens with the surprising piano and we obviously enjoyed playing the tune. The title, I think, refers to officers with a lot of gold on their shoulders. There was a lot of gold braid floating around in 1945. On Sophisticated Lady I seem to be playing many extraneous notes behind Tai, and it was a common practice, to make a group of three sound as big as you could. I would take it slower today because it is a beautiful ballad. That's true of most of these ballads, for they are very influenced by the style that Rollini ·set. I called it the "Show" tempo and you could hear it in all the New York clubs played by Chittison or Cy Walter… we laughingly called it the "East Side Mazurka." I would say that my version of It Had to Be You exemplifies the "East Side Mazurka."

The Man I Love has a surprising introduction that I didn't remember at all. We do that double-tempo thing again. You can hear both Tai and Paul quite well and to adl/antage on this one. This is about as much solo jazz as we got a chance to play. Where or When starts in the key of F but moves into D-flat where I normally began the vocal and it is indicative of the way I was to vocally record this song much later on for Stash Records. Light Up was one of the big band hits and World files attribute it to Buster Bailey. I rather recall it as a tune by Al Cooper titled Get Ready, Set, Jump, however, everyone was playing it on The Street. This is one of our jazz numbers in a fancy arrangement that sort of fell together, but originally for piano.

I never liked the drink Absinthe and I have no idea why this tune has that title. Perhaps Tal or Paul will remember. It is in the key of C and lies easily on the vibes. It's one of the things I retained for a long time to use with students. It exemplifies what Adrian Rollini rolled on his mallets, 1-2-3-4, from left to right. Funny it stuck with me so long. The strangeness of this track to me is Tai sounding a great deal like Carl Kress and now, once in a while, I hear Bucky Pizzarelli do something similar. There's a Small Hotel comes out with some nice ideas harmonized. These Foolish Things lets you hear some solid solo bass work as do several of the tracks. In those days we didn't have such flashy bassists. They were quite content to play in tune, the right bottom bass notes while you did your work, which was very wonderful. Many musicians and singers love to work with George Duvivier because he still does this, and I am one of those admirers because when you need him to be there on the bottom he is the Rock of Gibraltar.

Tabu was a piano arrangement and later appeared in the Columbia Piano Moods album. That album was the reverse of this World session in that they did not want vibes heard, just piano. Out of the Tabu arrangement came many ideas for other arrangements using little montunas on the end, copying what I was hearing from Machito's band, and the Dizzy Gillespie influence… grab some chords and really stretch out on them and get back to the head, the main theme, some other time. That was a lot of fun too. We didn't have a drummer in the trio, but we didn't seem to need one to do that. C-Jam Blues is as C-Jam was, except, for us, in D-flat. I certainly like to play and sing in that key. I think I must have been born in D-flat. There is some very fine work from Tai on this track and I suppose it would be considered our limit in jazz, per se, at that time.

I have a hard time relating today to what I was doing then, when almost every ballad seems to be taken up-tempo. I have either become lazy or more relaxed and I'd rather think it is the latter. I just seem to be enjoying more what I am doing now - except I do miss some things.

This was a time in my life, shall we say, I had put aside rather than forgotten, and it was a wonderful five years. I played fine music in fine rooms, dressed up, which was expected, and it was a rather dignified, lovely life. If they classed me as a jazz musician then, well, that's all right for all I was consciously doing was having a ball playing. There are a lot of rooms around today where small groups are in demand that would allow me to keep a group together, and I would like that very much. I regret that young musicians have lost the learning . ground that these many small rooms provided and the exp_osure to this special kind of pleasure: having the freedom to play your own Jazz but working in an organized manner, knowing what your partner is going to do so there is a sound of harmony and cohesiveness, making music with beginnings and endings, not music per chance. Maybe my little album can be a documentary of that time past. It was a great time for meI One other thing, hearing these tracks has made me want to play vibes again. - Dardanelle