The Battle Of The Bands is a classic format for two rival musical groups to face off for public acclaim. And it is not new, with band battles happening at least as far back as the 1920’s, when big New York ballrooms would set up two bandstands so that groups would take turns trying to best their foes at wowing the dancers.

It has been awhile since we have done a band battle here – I think it was this one, where we compared a big Glenn Miller hit of 1940 with a lesser known version by Benny Goodman. That contest involved very different takes on the same song. Today’s contest is more of a direct head-to-head contest by two very similar and competitive bands – Those of Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw.

We have featured both of these bands in the past – because they were so good and because of their vast output. This time we bring them together. This will be a particularly good match-up: Both bands were led by clarinet players, both were similarly configured. Today’s song is “Sweet Sue, Just You”. It was an old standard from 1928 that was not heavily associated with either of these bands, but shows off how two leaders (and their arrangers) could take the same song and go in different directions with it. So let’s get on with the battle!

1938-39 may have been the height of what is called The Swing Era. In jazz of this period, “swing” was a rhythm that used a pulse or a drive, as contrasted to the more bouncy rhythm of jazz before the mid 30’s. If you want to compare, you can come back to this version of Sweet Sue from 1928 that doesn’t swing one little tiny bit. Although there were some musicians playing with a swing rhythm as far back as the late 20’s, the style really kicked into high gear with the Benny Goodman band. In 1934, Goodman made a daring move (for the time) in hiring the black bandleader Fletcher Henderson as an arranger. Henderson’s charts (arrangements) were unlike what most of the white bands were playing then, and a 1935 cross-country tour was mostly a failure, until a final stop in California, when dancers went crazy for the new sound.

Goodman had recorded Sweet Sue with a small group in 1936, but did so with his big band on April 8, 1938. It will not usually be found on his “Greatest Hits” collections – in fact, I first heard it on a promotional album issued by G.M’s Chevrolet Division in 1961. Goodman was hitting on all cylinders in 1938, and his take on Sweet Sue shows how he could take most anything and make a great performance of it.

Goodman was a disciplinarian, whose bands played with precision. Many leaders would have killed the music’s swing with that atmosphere, but not this one – although by this time some of his early stars like trumpeter Harry James and drummer Gene Krupa had left the band. This record shows off both the band’s ensemble playing and its able soloists, including trumpeter Ziggy Elman and sax player Bud Freeman. And Goodman, of course.

Artie Shaw, like Goodman, grew up as a dirt-poor Jewish kid in a big city. And like Goodman, Shaw played the clarinet. But unlike Goodman, his efforts at leading a band were not all that successful in 1934-36. In 1937, however, Shaw assembled his first really successful band. Artie Shaw was intensely competitive, and always considered himself a better clarinet man than Goodman. This band was built to challenge Benny Goodman straight-up for musical supremacy.

Shaw’s recording of Sweet Sue came about a year after Goodman’s, from a radio broadcast recorded from the Hotel Pennsylvania’s Café Rouge in October of 1939. The Shaw band of this time was pretty much everything that the Goodman band was, but with more of it. And this was almost certainly its leader’s intent. Drummer Buddy Rich drove the rhythm with more intensity, the players played louder and swung harder, and Shaw held nothing back in his solos.

When listening to these two back-to-back, I have a tough time calling a winner of this contest between two of the greatest bands of their era. Benny Goodman’s performances of this period exude a sense of fun and playfulness, and Goodman’s clarinet style makes him sound like the happiest guy on Earth as he plays. Shaw’s music tended to be more musically intricate and his clarinet tone was always a little sharper than Goodman’s. I guess it depends on whether I am more in the mood for a band that has a more relaxed swing (Goodman) or one that swings with more intensity (Shaw).

Me? I know it’s cheating, but I’m going to call it a draw.

Further reading on these two bands of the 1930’s:

Benny Goodman‘s “Swingtime In The Rockies” from 1936

Artie Shaw’s “Donkey Serenade” (in stereo!) from 1939