The “Sing, Sing, Sing” Triptych

A couple of months ago here, I posted a long short story I wrote some years back, called “Sing, Sing, Sing.” Whatever else that post might have accomplished, it’s managed to get a certain amount of attention from Googlers. Among other variations, hits have come to the post from searching on these phrases:

• sing sing sing
• sing sing sing arrangement
• carnegie goodman sing sing sing

and my favorite:

• words of sing sing sing by benny goodman

(Hint: The Goodman version of “Sing, Sing, Sing” — despite its title — has no words. Straight instrumental.)

In the interest of serving those who might really be searching for information about or analyses of the piece (surely one of the most famous recordings in jazz history), I thought I’d elaborate some about it, using excerpts from my story.

First, a little background: “Sing, Sing, Sing” the story is in part about an adventure undertaken by a boy named Matty in early 1938. He sneaks out of the house to sneak into, with a couple of friends, a jazz concert by Benny Goodman and his orchestra at Carnegie Hall in New York City. (The concert really happened. The infiltration by a boy anything like the boy in the story did not, as far as I know.)

When I wrote the story, I wanted to provide… well, not a framing device exactly. Sort of a clothesline, maybe — something on which to hang different sections.

What I came up with for this so-called clothesline was a non-existent book by a non-existent author: The Big Hall: The Good Times of Benny Goodman, by Robert G. Ehling.

TO REPEAT: Neither the book nor its author is or was ever real. If you’re writing a paper about the concert as a whole or about “Sing, Sing, Sing” in particular, do not quote from this work.

Got that? Good.

Anyway, about “Sing, Sing, Sing” the song, at least as performed at that concert: The original title of the song is “Sing, Sing, Sing (With a Swing)” and it was written by Louis Prima. According to the liner notes, the version performed at the Carnegie Hall concert (and in similar versions at other times) may be a blend of Prima’s tune and another, called “Christopher Columbus.” Wikipedia confirms this:

The song was arranged by Jimmy Mundy… Mundy’s arrangement incorporated “Christopher Columbus”, a piece written by Chu Berry for the Fletcher Henderson band, as well as Prima’s work.

(Other than that, sorry — I don’t know anything about the “Columbus” piece.)

In the story, Matty manages to sneak inside the concert hall. Here’s what he experienced during “Sing, Sing, Sing,” the concert’s next-to-last number:

As for “Sing, Sing, Sing”: [Matty] thought he might have heard a song by that name once, on the Victrola at Frankie and Tom’s house. But he didn’t remember any song, any time, at all like this one. Songs were like stories: they started, then they went on a little further, then they stopped. But this song wasn’t like a story, not at all.

He thought it was like a trick CrackerJack box: when you ate through all the treats you found a little prize wrapped in paper; when you unwrapped the prize you found not a little toy or dumb four-panel comic but another CrackerJack box, which bloomed to full size when you opened it; and when you unwrapped the prize in this box you found another box, and so on right down to the last prize and when you opened that, the box inside was really the first one all over again.

But that’s not part of the (cough) “Ehling” clothesline. The first bit from this book is a sort of overview of the whole song’s structure:

“Ehling”/Overview:

“Sing, Sing, Sing,” as the band interpreted it that night, was a musical triptych, with a clear beginning, middle, and end. Part One was a conventional ensemble piece, a wild and driven one. Part Three, down at the end, was a hyperkinetic, foreshortened version of Part One, marked by Krupa’s most furious drumming of the evening. As for Part Two, sandwiched in the middle, it was itself a triptych, one in which James, Goodman, and Stacy reached deep down within themselves and pulled out profoundly imaginative solos, all hinged around Krupa’s insistent, obsessive tom-tom-tomming.

What follows in the rest of this post are quotes from that fictional author’s fictional book, describing one of each of the three “panels” in this musical triptych; each is followed by the audio portion of the performance’s recording to which that excerpt applies.

Krupa’s drumming came up unexpectedly, pounding at the back door while applause was still ushering the previous number, “Dizzy Spells,” out the front. The audience turned to examine this new claim to their attention and suddenly were surrounded by trombones, muscling up to the audience, thug-like and almost menacing but with an undertone of joshing. Then not just the trombones but the entire brass section was there, filling the house: sarcastic, shaking a scolding finger, when are you gonna get a job?

…But in the middle of all this brass, up popped Goodman’s clarinet, thumbing its nose and warbling good-naturedly that no job could hold it. The clarinet-brass argument went back and forth a couple of times, then the brass suddenly grinned and whipped off its mask and you realized, this brass section’s only a kid — it’s only been making fun of adults!

(This is the longest section of the song and consists, as “Ehling” says above, largely of a triptych of its own: solos by Harry James on trumpet, Benny Goodman on clarinet, and Jess Stacy on piano.)

Panel Two in the triptych couldn’t have been more unexpected. Its predecessor, after all, had come clearly to an end, a shrill, rousing conclusion — or so the audience seemed to think, so vigorously did they applaud. But they suddenly noticed Krupa, still pounding out his tom-tom rhythm, and they grew quiet, bodies still shaking and swaying, still swinging and swept up…

Harry James, the ringleader, led off with a solo that was an unbelievable swinging fusillade of sound, a wild improvisation that yet did no damage to the underlying melody. The ensemble tried to toy with him a bit but he soared up to some point where they could not follow, where no earthly instrument could possibly breathe… Then Benny himself soloed… leaned into the music, pushed it uphill, reached a minor peak and let it roll back down again, then Sisyphean went back up but this time he made it: he got to the top, pushed the boulder just a little harder and it rocked just over the edge and hung there.

…One reviewer later said that Jess Stacy’s piano solo “plowed a furrow” through the hall. I don’t agree; James and Goodman did the plowing. Stacy’s solo ambled out onto the plowed field on a warm summer night, placed its hands on its hips and looked around, smiling quietly to itself.

…[Stacy’s piano] solo, and the wild ensemble joyride through the conclusion of “Sing, Sing, Sing,” left the audience shaking as one with a single overpowering sensation, one of sheer joy: You have never seen anything like this, it said, You have never been as happy as you are right now, you will never ever be this happy again.