You Can’t Be Mine
LP Arcadia 2008
The year is 1930, and both the tune and the opening sound point forward in my mind. The tune, because it was recorded a few years later by Billie Holiday, and the sound, because the tune opens with a flute solo, something that you can rarely find on earlier jazz recordings.
After the intro, we are firmly brought back to the “down-to-earth jazz” of the 20s by the cornet playing of Walter A. “Jock” Bennett, accompanied by trombone and tuba. What then follows is a strange mixture of Bennett’s exposition of the melody with a folkloristic-sounding virtuoso flute obligato. The player is Cuban Alberto Socarras, who played saxes and clarinet on Clarence Williams recordings of the period. He continues with his inspired playing right through the good, anonymous vocal. The group is called “Bennett’s Swamplanders,” and the formal band leader shows great skill and power and a “King Oliver-feeling” in his following cornet solo that lasts until the end.