The Terror
LP Classic Jazz Masters CJM 1
On the label, it reads “Marvin Smoley and his Syncopaters.” Many record collectors coming across this very hot record may have scratched their heads wondering who this obscure band leader was. In fact, he wasn’t one! He was the musical director of Grey Gull Records and had therewith the power to put his name as leader and claim composer credit on several of the tunes, credit that should have gone to the pianist and real leader Cliff Jackson, who had few opportunities to record his Crazy Kats.
They had a very good reputation, and many musicians remembered them from the Lenox Club at 143rd Street and Lenox Avenue in Harlem. Since they played until seven o’clock in the morning, musicians just came in and jammed with their band. The story goes that their trumpet man, Henry Goodwin, outplayed all the men in Duke Ellington’s orchestra until one night, when the whole brass section, just for fun, came in and played chorus after chorus and won the battle. All this happened at the end of the 1920s, and when we hear The Terror, recorded in 1930, we can understand that the temperature was high in Harlem at the time.