Part 4 - Cafe Bohemia to California Sessions
New York City to Los Angeles, 1947 - 1948
Interlude, Palm Springs, 2008
We three are once again together, sitting on my sister’s patio in Palm Springs chatting about the latest emails from Lars Westin.
“This is amazing! So many musicians writing and reporting and Lars finds it all! So, Daddy came by ship. But did he bring his drums?” We speculate about that. “What happened then?” Our mom remembers that his immigration sponsors were Gil and Marge Faigel. They were from New Jersey, a Jewish couple who were jazz fans. They most likely met the Gripsholm when it docked, gave Uffe a place to stay and an address to register with US Immigration, meals, and what support he needed to get on his feet. “Daddy was in touch with them for years, until they died,” she told us. “We even exchanged Christmas cards every year.”
Uffe and Åke Meet the New Jazz Scene in 1947 New York City
Uffe arrives in the US in July. First reports of him in a jazz setting begin in August when Danish jazz impressario Timme Rosenkrantz writes that Åke Hasselgard is “the talk of 52nd Street” and, “Speaking of Scandinavia, another young man has arrived here, namely Peter Rasmussen’s drummer Uffe Baadh. He also has given good PR to Scandinavian jazz.”
Uffe, Åke, Danish singer Freddy Albeck, and Sweden’s Bob Laine are among the many swing musicians arriving in New York just as the appeal of big dance clubs and swing music in general was declining. The new sound was bebop. Smaller, more agile ensembles drew new audiences to nightclubs, and the recently landed Danish and Swedish players are ready for it.
Cafe Bohemia
In late September, Swedish writer and jazz enthusiast Arne Hanson writes that he was “together with the Danes Timme Rosenkrantz, Uffe Baadh, and Freddy Albeck at a jam session at Jimmy Ryan’s with bebop pianist Lenny Tristano.”
Timme was evidently quite taken by his young countryman and invited Uffe to the opening of his Midnight Jazz Time jam sessions, as he called them. His self styled “Cafe Bohemia” existed only on Friday nights at 15 Barrow Street’s Pied Piper. Thore Jederby remembers his first night in New York was on September 19, a Friday. After a meal with Timme, they went together to the Cafe Bohemia. Timme explained that “whatever money comes in at the door was for himself and the musicians to share.” This worked out to be about $20 per night for each musician. And all the booze they could drink.
Arne Hanson was also there that night, and remembers,
“Suddenly, Uffe Baadh entered with his set of drums. This Danish drummer later became known in the US as Frank Bode, but at this time he was newly arrived. He offered to play for free in order to adjust himself to the overall American style and to get to know the right sort of people. Thus, he contributed a drum set which the place didn’t normally have.”
In Timme’s memoir, he recalls that first night. “We opened with a bang. Crammed behind the railing on the little bandstand were my young Danish drummer friend Uffe Baadh and so many others."
One of the performers at the September sessions was blues singer Doc Pomus. Timme recorded the jams, and this is one of the few tracks that survives.
Here’s Rex Stewart, cornet, Sol Yaged, clarinet, Jimmy Jones, piano, John Levy, bass, Uffe Baadh, drums, and Doc Pomus, vocals, September, 1947, in Pomus Blues
The heyday of Cafe Bohemia lasted only a couple of months. Thore Jederby reports to Sweden that, by the end of November, “Timme has had to cease arranging jam sessions because the musicians were too expensive. Now he is making recordings for his own forthcoming Scandinavian record label Jazz Story and lots of great music will be issued in good time.”
By then, Uffe had already packed up and headed west with his cymbals, hitchhiking west on Route 66 to California. His drum set was left behind in New Jersey with the Faigels.
California’s Golden Call
By the time Uffe arrived in Los Angeles, Åke Hasselgard was the talk of the town. He had left New York for California in late August, an invitation in hand to record with Capitol Records in Los Angeles. He hitchhiked all the way with trumpeter Johnny Windhurst, arriving in time to see Louis Armstrong’s All Stars perform in Hollywood. By November 12, “Stan” Hasselgard was in a concert himself, at the Civic Auditorium, a guest soloist with Count Basie’s band. Uffe might have been at the show, because later that same night, Stan and Uffe were both featured on one of the most popular radio programs in Hollywood, “Alex Cooper’s Clambake Kitchen.”
Dave Hyltone, a jazz correspondent and PR agent for music stars, recalls the scene:
“I arranged the whole thing and drove Stan [Hasselgard], pianist Arne Bergquist and the Danish drummer Uffe Baadh to the radio station, located in Pasadena. For about an hour we played jazz records from Sweden and Denmark that had been sent to me by Nils at OJ, and Cooper interviewed the boys. There were many phone calls from listeners who wanted to know where they could get hold of these records.”
Stan and Uffe made several recordings with Capitol Records in the next months. They worked in the Johnny White Quintet, as Stan Hasselgard and his All Star Six, and as the International All Stars. Uffe was now working as Frank Bode, a name he claimed that he randomly picked from a phone book after realizing that Uffe Baadh did not easily roll off the tongue of Americans.
They all kept in constant touch with their fans back home. On December 18, 1947, Stan wrote to Estrad: “It’s really enjoyable out here: warm weather, nice girls and so on. Bob Laine and Rolf Ericson are said to be around but I haven’t encountered them yet. Uffe is staying with me. I can’t understand his Danish so we have to speak English to communicate!”
Uffe adds a few lines: “Dear Nisse! I am now in Hollywood and I had great luck. I have made some recordings and will probably start playing with Barney Kessel and go on tour with him. All the best to everybody, Uffe.”
Here’s a track from the album California Sessions with Stan Hasselgard, clarinet, Red Norvo, vibes, Barney Kessel, guitar, Arnold Ross, piano, Rollo Garberg, bass, and Frank Bode, drums, recorded at Capitol Records December 18, 1947: Who Sleeps
Benny Goodman, the King of Swing, “Impressed by Scandinavian Jazz”
By 1947 Capitol Records in Hollywood was a major record label, rivaling east coast labels RCA Victor, Verve, and Blue Note. Capitol scored when they signed Benny Goodman that year as he was reorganizing his bands from large to small ensembles and experimented with bebop. No stranger to Scandinavian showmen, Goodman had hosted a radio series with Danish pianist and comedian Victor Borge in 1946-1947. He was very interested in these vibrant new Scandinavian musicians who’d just appeared on the music scene.
Uffe was invited to join Benny Goodman’s Concert Trio for a series of performances in 1948.
Lars Westin points out that recording microphones are clearly visible in the performance photo below, but no recordings have been recovered from that tour.
In the months that followed, Uffe was reported to be working in Los Angeles when he first heard the drummer Buddy Rich. Rolf Ericson writes Estrad in September:
“Buddy Rich is at the Palladium in Hollywood - the band doesn’t sound very good but the arrangements are superb. Buddy himself is so fantastic that Uffe had to take awhile to accept that such playing is possible. Uffe and I have been rehearsing with the ex-band of Artie Shaw. His manager is here and we have been going through his entire repertoire. Something will probably come up in the near future.”
Stan, meanwhile, was working steadily with Benny Goodman. Jazz writer Marc Meyers writes: “In the spring of '48, Hasselgard's Norvo recordings came to the attention of Benny Goodman, who saw in him an eager and polished student and a way for him to learn bebop or feature Hasselgard playing bop in the Goodman style. Hasselgard's extensive touring and recording dates with Goodman through the early fall led to the Capitol solo offer.”
Sadly, Stan’s recording session for Capitol Records, in New York City on November 18, would be his last. He was tragically killed in a car crash outside of Hammond, Illinois on November 23. His sudden death sent shock waves through the jazz world.
Here’s one of Stan’s last recordings, Stan Hasselgard and His All Star Six with Stan, clarinet, Arnold Ross, piano, Rollo Garberg, bass, Red Norvo, vibes, Barney Kessel, guitar, and Frank Bode, drums: I’ll Never Be the Same
Uffe wrote a letter to Estrad, published in January, 1949:
Hollywood 38, California
Dear Old Friends,
I have just returned home after making a disastrous visit to the Capitol Record Company where they as gently as possible tried to tell me that Åke Hasselgård is dead.
We have, in despair and confusion, tried to call the Swedish consulates over half the US, phoned Benny Goodman in New York, phoned newspaper offices in Chicago and police sargeants in Illinois and Ohio - and nobody has a good answer to what, how or why.
I feel I have to write you all immediately and tell you:
Fellows, he wasn’t just a young Swedish boy who had left home to try his luck out in the world, carrying a clarinet under his arm. He happened to be one of the world’s most talented musicians, who in just one and a half years succeeded to fulfill what millions of young people all over the world stay home and keep dreaming of doing, and thousands come here and try in vain - to be a success, to be accepted among the greatest of jazzmen as one of their peers and play on a stage alongside no less than King Benny as a special featured soloist - on clarinet!
Åke and I shared a place to live here in Hollywood for ten months, and we didn’t write home to tell you that there were days with nothing to eat and weeks without a hot meal. We lived at the outskirts of town and became specialists in hitchhiking on the boulevards simply because we didn’t have the ten cents needed for bus fare. It was a period of ordeal, but we managed to survive - not on our hopes but on our convictions that we would succeed. Åke was firmly convinced that he would eventually share the “table” with the grownups, and so he did.
I have lost my friend, and you have lost one of your most important ambassadors, spreading goodwill for Sweden among the young people of America, and we have all lost one of the most promising talents within our art form - and I anticipate with horror the moment when I will realize just what this all means.
At home in Bollnäs is a mother whose only conviction is that the memory of Stan Hasselgard will be revered by all young people. - Uffe Baadh
“Uffe Scores at Last”
In March, 1949, Sweden’s Estrad reports that Uffe had been contracted by Harry James, beating out 40 other drummers in competition for the job. James is said to have a new, fantastic big band. A new chapter in Uffe’s life was about to begin.
Many thanks to Lars Westin and others for their research, translations, and reflections of the times, and to the jazz archives at University of Copenhagen, Swedish jazz magazine Orkesterjournalen/Jazz (OJ), Benny Goodman Archives at Rutgers Jazz Institute, and University of Southern Denmark. - VBG
More to come in Keep the Beat - A Jazz Life
5 - New York and Hollywood / Harry James, Claude Thornhill, Lenny Bruce
6 - Palm Springs / Elvis Presley, Buddy Rich, Tommy Dorsey, Kitty White
7 - Keep the Beat / Red Callender, Cal Bailey, Lars Laine, Shirley Bandar
I love his letter.