December 2002

Philly Jazz
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By Donald True Van Deusen

He was the world's first internationally known jazz guitarist. His harmonic and rhythmic skills virtually created the jazz guitar standard. He was the master of his instrument and most sought after jazz guitarist of his time. His recordings with Bix Beiderbecke, The Mound City Blue Blowers, Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Paul Whiteman, et al, are classics. It is his matchless guitar work you hear on Bix¹s recording of Singin' The Blues.

He was Eddie Lang, born as Salvatore Massaro, in South Philadelphia on Oct. 25, 1902. He was the first and unarguably the most significant of Philadelphia's many native jazz greats. Incredibly, his 100th birthday was virtually ignored--even in his home town. Not one local paper, radio or TV station bothered to even note the centenary of the Philadelphia native who was one of America's most significant jazz pioneers.

He studied violin for 11 years, but switched to the guitar. He loved classical music, Italian folk songs, and this thing called jazz. He worked during his James Campbell High School Orchestra days on various local club dates and later legendary recordings with his boyhood (and neighborhood) buddy, jazz great, Joe Venuti, who many credit today with virtually creating the jazz violin.

Venuti said, they were playing in the Knickerbocker Hotel in Atlantic City in 1923 where "we used to play a lot of mazurkas and polkas, but just for fun, started to play them in 4/4 rhythm. Then, we¹d start to slip in some improvised passages...we'd just sit there and knock each other out.² They wrote a whole new chapter in jazz history.

Lang led and/or co-led with Venuti some 20 sessions on various labels. under names such as Joe Venuti's Blue Four that became the standard of small group jazz. Leonard Feather wrote in The Encyclopedia of Jazz that they, "achieved a unique style, a tonal finesse and jazz chamber-music quality hitherto unknown in jazz." Many of those numbers such as Goin'Places, The Wild Dog and Cheese and Crackers are available in an 8 CD set recently issued by Mosaic Records. Eddie, a superb ensemble player, could hold a session together and yet take stunning solos that made jazz history. He worked with pop, swing, blues and straight jazz groups. He was scooped up along with Bix Beiderbecke and Venuti by Paul Whiteman, who never really claimed to be a jazz great, but who clearly knew who was.

Lang was also much sought after by pop singers of the day such as Russ Columbo, Cliff Edwards , Ruth Etting and many others because, as one critic noted, he made them sound better. He also worked with blues icons Bessie Smith and Victoria Spivey under his pseudonym of Blind Willie Dunn.

Lang recorded in the 1920's under the name, Blind Willie Dunn and his Gin Bottle Four, with the renowned blues singer-guitarist, Lonnie Johnson, who was African American. Johnson said, "Lang could play guitar better than anyone I knew; the sides I made with him were my greatest experience." Johnson also said of Lang, "He was the nicest man I ever worked with." Lang presumably took the name of Blind Willie Dunn because very few in those days (or today for that matter) thought a white man could really play the blues.

Bing Crosby, one of the few white singers who sang great jazz vocals loved Lang's playing so much he brought him to Hollywood to work with him in films. They appeared together in the film The Big Broadcast in 1932. It was reportedly Crosby who suggested to Lang that he get an operation for his laryngitis. The poorly performed operation causing the loss of too much blood killed Lang. It left Crosby, and many in the jazz world devastated at his early demise.

Lang's pupil, Marty Grosz, said, "Lang was the first, he had to think the whole thing out for himself." Barney Kessel, said , "Eddie,first elevated the jazz guitar and made it artistic." Crosby reportedly searched vainly for another comparable accompanist but that there were none. As one writer noted, "There was only one Eddie Lang."

Author's Note: -The rhythm section in most jazz groups tends to be ignored by the general public. The few numbers featuring them that get attention are the explosive jam session solos such as Gene Krupa's in Sing, Sing, Sing that gets an audience excited. Great ensemble playing and tasteful solos by a master such as Lang that musicians admire (and that really can make a number work) tend to be overlooked.