Donald's Encyclopedia of Popular Music

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ALLEN, Henry 'Red'

(b Henry James Allen, 7 Jan. '08, New Orleans; d 17 April '67, NYC) Trumpet, singer. To NYC with King Oliver '27; first records with Clarence Williams. Recorded for Victor '29--30 as 'Henry Allen Jr and his Orchestra' because his father led a well-known New Orleans brass band; came to wider attention with Luis Russell's band '29--32. With Billy Banks's Rhythmakers '32, the interplay between Allen's horn and Pee Wee Russell's clarinet has been compared to what Ted Curson and Eric Dolphy did nearly 30 years later with Charles Mingus. With Fletcher Henderson '33--4; made small-group records with Coleman Hawkins '33, reissued several times, now on Henry Allen/Coleman Hawkins 1933 on Hep in good transfers by John R. T. Davies: made quickly and cheaply for the new jukeboxes, these were among the most delightful pop music of the time, turning ordinary Tin Pan Alley songs into pearls. (Four CDs of early tracks to '37 on Collector's Classics were remastered by Davies.) Allen was underrated, partly because he was perceived as a follower of Armstrong; in fact he was a link between New Orleans and later jazz: he 'splayed his solos across the bar lines, as sophisticated rhythmically as Hawkins was harmonically ... fragmented yet logical, allusive in the way that other trumpeters -- Miles Davis for one -- were to be a couple of decades later' (Charles Fox; quotes from The Essential Jazz Records Vol. 1). Trumpeter Don Ellis, an important innovator in the '60s, wrote in down beat about how avant-garde Allen was. His singing was also innovative: on 'The River's Takin' Care Of Me' he is not mugging, but recomposing the tune, his 'pokerfaced humour' helping him get away with it (this was when jazz had to be entertainment as well as avant-garde music). He worked for Lucky Millinder; briefly subbed with Duke Ellingon; with Louis Armstrong '37-- 40, residencies with own sextet (incl. J. C. Higginbotham) at clubs across USA until '52; dixielandish combo work NYC; Newport Jazz Festivals beginning '57 and CBS-TV The Sound Of Jazz that year; first visit to Europe '59 with a Kid Ory band; several visits to UK '60s until just a few weeks before death from cancer. At a reunion with Hawkins '58 ('Mean To Me', 'Lonesome Road') he sounded more like Davis than Armstrong, but his lovely muted horn also evoked King Oliver: he was unique. Compilations on Classics and Bluebird (World On A String); the '58 meetings with Hawkins are on Standards And Warhorses on Jass (Stash), combining a dixielandish album and a more modern one, with two different rhythm sections.