My listening experience skipped next to Al Hirt at the Mardi Gras, a superb live capsule that sounded great via the 1999 remastering. Despite existing as a perfect time capsule of live Dixieland revival music, it didn't chart at the time, unlike his first two for RCA in 1961. Things changed though in 1961 when he signed with RCA Victor, for whom he recorded two or three records a year through the whole of the 60s. That's a couple dozen albums of all kinds of music for RCA, and then a handful more in the 80s.
His big break occurs in 1963 with Honey in the Horn, which went all the way to #3. It is mostly this type of music he would pump out throughout the Sixties. It's not exactly Dixieland jazz anymore, but it will sound familiar to any observers of the early 1960s. It wouldn't be out of place in the background of a 60s stock footage montage, perhaps at a swinging bachelor pad - or in an elevator. Honey in the Horn features "Java," which was a bit of a runaway hit and became his signature track, appropriately as it captures his near-silly effervescences on the trumpet perfectly. The cringeworthy orientalism isn't exactly out of place in his catalog either, though I'm sorry to say that producer/songwriter Allen Toussaint probably needs to shoulder some of the blame on this one. Toussaint had a year earlier given the track to slip-note-style piano player Floyd Cramer, who just missed the U.S. Top 40 with his version. But it was a big hit for Hirt, and won him a Grammy for best Instrumentalist. It will show up on most of his live albums: first at Carnegie Hall and later with the Boston Pops.
He follows up the success of Honey in the Horny with another album of authentic-sounding New Orleans music, but it doesn't chart nearly as well. His next one does even worse, and deservingly so. Beauty and the Beard with Ann-Margret is almost creepy in the way they verbally flirt and giggle with one another through the album. The whole awkward enterprise is unintentionally campy, though I'm sure some theater freaks out there are going to love it. There are a lot of spoken word and speak-singing duets between the two. For example, in the middle of what could be a perfectly legitimate number, she sings: "Won't you come home Bill Bailey?" to which he speaks in response: "Actually, yes, I'm seriously considering it." <eye roll> And it goes on like that, with him responding to many of the lines she sings, frequently with something as simple as a gruffly spoken, "yea, that's right, baby." This album's ridiculousness was almost intolerable upon first listening, but a dozen albums later it was a distant memory; still, this is at least the worst of his scholocking nonsense singing and un-jazz-like overplaying.
Immediately after that cringey duets album we get something completely different. Pop Goes the Trumpet is his first, but not last, album with the Boston Pops Orchestra, and fair enough- the pairing makes a lot of sense. The album opens with some heavy-trumpet bull-fighting music: it is like Sketches of Spain without taste and subtlety. There are additional orchestral pop numbers. Next, Sugar Lips is where it really starts to come together, or fall apart depending on your perspective- or your definition of "real jazz." He gets back on the pop charts with a return to his signature sound. The title (and) track perfectly captures his main frolicking tone and happy-go-lucky style. Nobody will confuse his tone for the glory of Miles Davis or Louis Armstrong holding a note, but it is a distinct sound that he will mine over and over again throughout the early- and mid-Sixties. His virtuoso dexterity on the trumpet are often cited, but nobody is going to get his tone confused with true jazz greats. At all. This is something completely different. I just can't imagine Satchmo or Miles playing anything close to the jollyness of "Sugar Lips" (later gaining even greater prominence as the theme song to a daytime gameshow called Eye Guess that aired for three years).
It goes on like that with Cotton Candy, which was also released in 1964 (his fourth album that year). It's nominated for the Album of the Year Grammy- and it features the Anita Kerr Singers on backing vocals. The album charts and so does the single "Walkin" - at least the Easy Listening charts, on which the title track goes all the way to #3. Some of these renditions on this album (or maybe it is the reissue 20 years later) are the classic versions that are omnipresent during Carnival and show up on various Mardi Gras compilations over and over again through the years. Many times before cracking this album I'd definitely heard the exact versions of "Basin Street Blues" and "Saints" featured here. I always thought he was playing with Pete Fountain here, but maybe not. It says Al Hirt on the album cover, but it is alternately credited to Al Hirt and His Orchestra or Al Hirt and His Chorus. The next year he keeps us guessing with a Christmas album that is not Dixieland, not swinging bachelor bad music, and not orchestral pops; rather, it is occasionally all three, and I enjoyed it! At this point it was a genuine surprise, but the adaptions are perfect for each song. Al Hirt's Christmas album is deserving of another spin...in December.
Producing several albums a year, every year of the 1960s, his impressive output for RCA Victor pretty much guarantees that a search through a crate of old records at a garage sale or thrift store will turn-up at least one Al Hirt record. There are more...
He reels it in perfectly for Live @ Carnegie Hall, with beautiful, fancy arrangements. He still has plenty more of his main saccharine-sweet thing again on That Honey Horn Sound. Then They're Playing Our Song really settles down for a bit. There are maudlin strings and plenty of them. Remarkably, he takes on a completely different musical persona, playing with the same warm, previously elusive restraint throughout the album. It is kinda sleepy--there is nary a drum beat to be found--but some listeners will surely consider it relaxing. The Happy Trumpet splits the difference between the on-Quaaludes sounding last album and the excessive exuberance that had preceded it. Sure, it has got "The Happy Trumpet" on it and "Candy Man Jones", but it is generally not as as sickly sweet as some of the earlier albums.
Next, he's on TV again playing the soundtrack song from The Green Hornet and releasing a whole album of TV show themes. Quentin Tarantino, who you may recall from the previous blog entry as using Al Green in Pulp Fiction, used the Green Hornet song in Kill Bill, to some acclaim, although it is pretty clearly a rip-off of "Flight of the BumbleBee." The Horn Meets "The Hornet" sees Hirt covering various contemporary TV theme songs while usually adding a very-60s guitar, along with a traditional rhythm section, and occasional keyboards. The mix adds a lovely flavor to these songs, and I enjoyed some of them, especially the thematic pieces that weren't the main theme from The Green Hornet ("The Hornet's Nest" and "Night Rumble"). We also get the themes from Get Smart, The Monkees, King Kong (?), and Tarzan. His rendition of "Batman" is perhaps the best example on record of his fabled overplaying.
Then Al goes Latin! Damn if this guy didn't keep me guessing on every single album, working hard to prevent boredom. His playing is mostly more restrained for this album, and he sings not a note. The first note of the next album, however, reveals that 'ol Sugar Lips is back. Soul in the horn? I should have seen that one coming. I didn't love his version of "Mess Around," a beloved Ray Charles song that was almost unrecognizable. And then he's got the nerve after the "soul" album to return to Dixieland. Yet, color me impressed: that makes like 7 consecutive albums that virtually all hit different genres. Music to Watch Girls By is difficult to comment on; it doesn't break any new ground. In 1968 he released Al Hirt Plays Bert Kaempfert and somehow that is one that charts (slightly) for the first time since The Happy Trumpet, two years and seven albums ago. For a collection of songs by a German guy, Hirt keeps the tone mellow. I mean, really moderate the whole time- not too bright, not too chill, just consistently medium.
He just keeps on rolling. His later 60s jazz albums are very "now" in that they have a contemporary 60s sound for sure, something about those backing vocalists being the only vocals is so vaguely interesting. He does "Wichita Lineman" and some more easy listening classics. The albums are starting to become indistinguishable. Next up is Unforgettable, which is anything but. The strings and back-up vocalists are present, but don't worry - listeners will have no problem hearing that brash horn blowing way on top of all the other sounds. It's absolutely, consistently chill, but it's also very basic. No song rises above the others and the whole things sounds like background music. That said, if you want some sounds to read, sleep, chill, or seduce by then this record will do the job without any invasiveness. Then... he gets hit with a brick in the mouth at Mardi Gras and his prolificness slows down. Saturday Night Live parodied the event.
So after 1969's Here in my Heart he goes almost 20 years without releasing an album again. His return in 1989, Cotton Candy (again- yes, the same album title from 1964) at least makes sense and is a notable return-to-form in his vast catalog, although he stopped working for RCA. Ol' Sugar Lips is back and he's ditched the Quaaludes in favor of a return to some Dixieland roots, albeit with a brashness that bellies his original traditional playing. The next album, however, is definitely and clearly attributed to the Al Hirt Band. Jazzin at the Pops is the sound of an artist running out of steam. Virtually all of these songs have appeared before in his catalog, some of them--like "Java"--repeatedly. And they didn't sound as worn-out the first time through. As pop standards these songs are OK, but it is not great jazz. There's another Christmas album and a couple of live compilations before the end. His last is, fittingly, 1996's Live At Bourbon Street. He passes way at home in New Orleans in 1999.
In the end, a review of his full discography in chronological order forces some questions about Al Hirt. Is this legitimate New Orleans Jazz? Or is it music for squares who don't know any better? Is it really-literally-elevator music from the time period? For what it is worth, in Good Morning Vietnam he's the example of what the uncool DJ wants to play, contrasting with Robin William's hip selections. Yet, paradoxically Hirt is often seen as overqualified for the music he was playing, especially the pop standards if not the Dixieland (though charging him with overplaying is certainly not unfounded). Scott Yanow at All Music put it succulently when he said "he could have done so much more with his talent." He studied classical trumpet at a Chicago conservatory and played in some of the big swing bands before returning to New Orleans to carry the torch of the traditional Dixieland movement; again, that is the retro resurgence, rather than the original players. His work with legendary New Orleans clarinetist Pete Fountain is his best (they both went to Jesuit High School), but that is his early work before degenerating into churning out pop pap endlessly for multiple decades.
In retrospect, as a burgeoning jazz listener and I dare say aficionado, I went into this one with a certain amount of cynicism. Not only have I seen this guy floating around in the used record bin a lot, but I've also heard his versions of some of these Carnival standards also floating around and even in my collection for awhile. Individually some of these sound like corn-ball cheese. and they are. But damn it they are corn-ball cheese from New Orleans, which is worth something in my book. And the sheer variety with with this guys delivers is undeniably impressive and kept me somewhat engaged, even as I grew weary of the over-the-top playing.
[in Colombo voice] There's just one more thing...
Is Al Hirt incredibly racist?
Perhaps not overtly so. Maybe in the 60s whistling "Dixie" wasn't frowned upon with the same weight that it is today. Maybe he's just not-racist, and therefore (since he's not anti-racist) his sees no harm in playing "Going Down to Dixieland" and others like it that paint the slavery-past with cheery colors. Perhaps he views it all as his Heritage. There is no denying that the man is playing in a genre (Dixieland Jazz) that he didn't name himself. Strictly speaking, "Dixieland" is a style of jazz music, but of course it can't help but be associated with "Dixie," which is a nickname for the old South - and you know what that means. But Dixieland is such a foundational genre that we can easily swap it out with the term "traditional jazz" - which is maybe exactly what we should do, even if Al Hirt hadn't figure it out yet. Of course the genre was started by black folks in New Orleans around the turn of the 20th Century--thus raising issues of cultural appropriation--, but it had its heyday in a revival movement that started 20 years later. Hirt is an undeniably large figure in that revivalism. Not to get too into the history of jazz, but it all began a generation earlier: when soloists got bored with big bands and wanted to jam. Hirt's music is "traditional" in the sense that he and other revivalist are implicitly reacting against the emergent bebop and cool jazz styles, which really leaned into the improvisations and experimentation. There's another warning flag: an implied uncomfortableness with and reactionary response to the explicitly racial directions of new jazz. I may not have even raised the issue it it wasn't for a genuinely alarming album cover of his.
Excuse me?! Greatest trumpet artist in America?! "Greatest," eh? Hirt doesn't even make the top TEN list of best trumpet players on this list by folks who know better than me. Here's another well-curated list on which he doesn't even crack the top 15. "Jazzfuel.com" also gives him no love in their exhaustive list. Is he saying all those other guys are not "artists"?
Al Hirt is a lot of things, and a lot of them are good. But to make the claim that this man making silly noises with his horn, playing loudly over the whole band, and rarely understanding restraint- that he is somehow greater than all the other trumpet players in America is a bold claim that only serves to draw attention to its own absurdity. I mean, who decided that he was greatest?! Louis Armstrong is still alive in 1960 and nowhere near the end of his career: in fact, it was the mid-to-late 60s that saw him finally gaining widespread, cross-cultural acknowledgment for the playing he'd been doing for 40 years at that point. He hit it big, unexpectedly, with "Hello Dolly" and then "What a Wonderful World" comes out after that. There's also a trumpet player you may have heard of called Miles Davis. He's at the near-peak of his long career, with many ups and downs yet to materialize: 1960 is the year he releases Sketches of Spain to much acclaim, just a year after the revolutionary Kinda Blue. Maybe, and I'm deadly serious, maybe Al Hirt thinks he is the greatest trumpet player in America because nothing he does is revolutionary. Just off the top of my head, Dizzy Gillespie and New Orlean's own Lee Morgan also come to mind as far greater players. I would be hard-pressed to find someone who thinks Al Hirt's trumpet playing is greater than any of these people, and I worry about what might be informing such an opinion. It's not that hard to imagine that a belief in Hirt being the greatest may even be rooted in prejudice. Are these the same people that credit Elvis for starting rock and roll? Do they also just happen to think that Eminem is the only talented rapper? With some added information that Hirt was the son of a police officer and that he played in the N.O. Junior Police Band, I'm leaning towards "low-key racist AF." #BLM
Still: Hirt was inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame in Nov. of 2009. As such, there is a life-size bronze monument of him inside New Orleans's Music Legends Park, which is a lovely little oasis on Bourbon Street. His was actually the first statue erected there, as he is credited with bringing New Orleans music to mainstream America, for launching the careers of so many local musicians, and for playing regularly so often in the Quarter. And when you put it like that, fair enough - give the man a monument. Fittingly, he stands next to a statue of his old friend Pete Fountain. Here they are together again, going out on a high note, as they encore together at the end of Hirt's show at Wolf Trap in 1979.
