'Gennett Suite' recording makes permanent an amazingly fresh tribute to jazz's recorded origins

Wallarab plays an arrangement as Buselli looks on.

When Indy Jazz Fest introduced  "The Gennett Suite" to the world in concert to mark the 2017 centennial of recorded jazz, there were no plans to record Brent Wallarab's composition at the time. That lack has finally received compensation in a splendid two-disc account (Patois Records) that marks another centennial: the contribution of Gennett Records to the historical jazz discography. The label was an offshoot of the Starr Piano Company in Richmond, Indiana.

Performed anew by the durable, much-admired Buselli-Wallarab Jazz Orchestra, the suite's sections celebrate Hoagy Carmichael, Joe "King" Oliver's band featuring Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, and Jelly Roll Morton, with a relevant side tribute to the Gennett-recorded New Orleans Rhythm Kings and its hit version of Morton's "Wolverine Blues," an influence on the short-lived cornetist Beiderbecke (1903-31).

To take the venerated Beiderbecke first, in a concert review of the suite I credited co-leader Mark Buselli with keeping his flugelhorn solo on "Davenport Blues" free of anachronisms. That remains largely true, but his recorded version has hints of harmonic sophistication that can be detected in Beiderbecke's recordings. It isn't hard to imagine that if the cornetist had lived even a quarter-century longer he would have adjusted creditably to bebop, somewhat after the fashion of tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins (1904-1969) in his late career.

Wallarab's focus as arranger throughout this work is to find ways of expressing old material through 21st-century musical speech. The big band itself is an expansion of the context familiar to Gennett Records both stylistically and technically. Wallarab goes beyond such limits in sudden shifts of texture,  color, tempo, and key center. All the variety is logically connected, with inspired passion and wit. His outreach draws from the soloists distinctive statements that also stretch the language of the originals, but never to a bizarre extent. 

He permits himself inclusion of two different approaches for a couple of the tunes: "Tin Roof Blues" and "Riverboat Shuffle." The former classic follows upon the suite's stately introduction, promising a curtain rise to great things. Those start to be delivered as the slow blues unfolds, focusing on Ned Boyd's baritone saxophone, which covers a wide range of dynamics and register. The second part of "Tin Roof Blues" moves to a fast tempo with the tune's internal rhythms changed and Tom Walsh's effusive tenor solo. 

The contrast indicates the wealth of Wallarab's imaginative grasp of the material, and that's also a feature of "Riverboat Shuffle" on the second disc, when the spotlight moves from John Raymond's exuberant trumpet, marvelously set up by flashy ensemble writing and a brief showcase for drummer Sean Dobbins' fills, to a more deep-delving, moody interpretation focusing on Todd Williams' tenor sax, whose early hints of "Wade in the Water" inflect a most soulful shuffle.

It's tempting to trot out even more positive impressions of the suite's great moments, but I'll end with two to celebrate Wallarab and the BWJO's achievement. To find an approach that both honors and transfigures the work of jazz's first great composer/arranger, Jelly Roll Morton, is remarkable in the band's suite-ending excursion through "Grandpa's Spells." 

A comparative challenge is to provide a setting for another well-positioned soloist, alto saxophonist Greg Ward, in Carmichael's "Star Dust," a perpetual hit juxtaposing two inspired melodies. Wallarab and the band rise to the challenge expertly here. They deliver a "Star Dust" you'll want to put on the same shelf with Louis Armstrong's and a few others'. And it's even better to remember that this glorious episode amounts to only about a tenth of a superb 80-minute journey displaying authoritative 21st-century respect for a landmark in Hoosier musical history.