Joe Wilder :  Wilder 'n' Wilder  

As with last week's review, this week's All That Jazz is inspired by a biography, this time Ed Berger's thoroughly-researched and warmly-told Softly, with Feeling, about the life of trumpeter Joe Wilder.  The book was published in April of this year, just a few weeks before Wilder died at the age of 92.

Wilder was a classically trained musician who gravitated towards jazz and pop music due to the racial realities of his time.  After serving as a valued section man in the big bands of Lionel Hampton, Dizzy Gillespie and Count Basie (among others), he settled in New York in the mid-1950's.  Through his tremendous musicianship and quiet persistence, this dignified and much-admired man became one of the first African Americans to play in Broadway pit orchestras and television studio bands, and later, after earning his degree from the New York School of Music, he also achieved his goal of playing in classical settings, including occasional performances with the New York Philharmonic.  Berger sketches a quick, yet illuminating, portrait of Wilder in the preface: He, along with such friends and colleagues as Milt Hinton, Benny Carter, Hank Jones and George Duvivier, spent much of their careers defying commonly held stereotypes of both African American musicians and jazz players.  In talking to Joe's musical peers, friends, employers, and students, I can honestly say that the most critical remark I could elicit was {pianist} Dick Hyman's comment, "He always dressed a bit more formally than he needed to."

Wilder 'n' Wilder, Joe's first date as a "leader," features a quartet with at least 2 musicians who were far better known, Hank Jones, on piano, and Kenny Clarke, on drums.  (As Berger points out, Wilder wasn't told he would be the nominal leader until after the album was recorded.).  The album provides a wonderful example of his playing throughout his career...no breakneck tempos, no high note fireworks, no rapid-fire machine-gunning of notes just because he can.  Instead, Wilder plays with a gorgeous, burnished, syrupy tone, mostly staying in the lower and middle registers of the horn, at medium swing or ballad tempos.  His classical chops are evident (check out the wide interval skips in "Cherokee" and the concerto-like descending run at the beginning of "Mad About the Boy"), as is his mastery of that old jazz favorite, the plunger mute (when he comes back for a second chorus in "Six Bit Blues").  The most notable cut is "Cherokee," which Charlie Parker (in a version called "Ko-Ko"), and later Clifford Brown, established as a showcase tune for high-speed virtuosity.  Wilder goes a different route, settling in at a medium shuffle, providing a perfect setting for his pure tone and melodic intelligence.  Berger reports that although Wilder was never particularly famous, this solo was well known and much-studied by later generations of trumpet players.