SAVOY BALLROOM.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Jazz War. Handbill for a "battle of the bands" at the Savoy Ballroom. From the collection of Rolling Stones drummer and jazz aficionado Charlie Watts: impossible to ignore handbill for a sensational "battle of the bands" at the celebrated Savoy Ballroom, the scene of many such encounters but in this instance boasting a particularly stellar line up: Chick Webb ("I'll Kill 'Em"), Fletcher Henderson ("I'll Murder 'Em"), Fess Williams ("I'll Slay 'Em"), Teddy Hill ("I'll Slaughter 'Em").The artwork certainly buttonholes the eyeballs: on the left, four "big guns" blast out the names of the participants and, on the right, a mock-up of a newsstand headline declaims "EXTRA - 4 Blazing Bands Declare - JAZZ WAR - Breakfast Dance - All Night Sat. April 13th. 5 pm to 8am - 50¢ Admits You to the Musical Battle Sector".A flavour of the atmosphere of these famous sessions is captured by jazz historian Lewis A. Erenberg: "When the curtain came down on Benny Goodman's Carnegie Hall concert [of 1938], the Count Basie band and many of the other musicians present raced uptown to the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem for the momentous battle of the bands with the Chick Webb Orchestra. 'That was one hell of a battle,' recalled Buck Clayton, Basie's trumpeter. 'All concerned were putting down some heavy swing'… Webb's orchestra, the house band at the Savoy all through the late 1930s and the winner of numerous battles against visiting hopefuls, aimed its 'sensational, whirlwind barrage… chiefly at the ears a

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.