| Miff Mole |
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| CATEGORIES ABOUT MIFF MOLE | |
| 1898 births | |
| mole, miff | |
| 1961 deaths | |
| american jazz musicians | |
| jazz trombonists | |
| jazz bandleaders | |
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Miff Mole was born in Roosevelt, New York . He became one of the most virtuosic of early jazz trombonists, and perhaps did more to expand the role of the Trombone beyond the early New Orleans "tailgate" style than any other musician before Jack Teagarden . He recorded prolifically in New York City in the 1920s and 1930s , often in the company of trumpeter Red Nichols . He played with the bands of Nichols, Paul Whiteman , the Original Memphis Five, the Radio orchestras of WOR and NBC , and led his own group, often called "Miff Mole and his Little Molers", in addition to playing and recording with numerous pick-up groups. In the early 1940s he was a member of Benny Goodman 's band. Mole then returned to the small jazz combo format, being a regular for many years at Nick's in Manhattan , where he played with Pee Wee Russell , Muggsy Spanier , Baby Dodds , and other jazz notables. Miff Mole died - broke- in New York City in 1961. A benefit gig to raise money for him took place just too late. He was buried in a pauper's grave. One of the first serious jazz writers, Otis Ferguson wrote this (in "Jazzmen", 1939): "Milfred Miff Mole was born in Long Island, studied piano and violin through his school days and then learned trombone from A to Z. Hhe heard jazz and wanted to play it, but he patterened his instrument on the work of the trumpet. He was a slight and studious-looking youngster when he first bobbed up in the Manhatten studios in 1922, with a round face and round glasses (he looked as young as the others, though born in 1898). But he could do things on his jazz instrument that no one else could do, and so all through the twenties, till the late arrival of Jack Teagarden - perhaps only just before that, when Glenn Miller came in with the Pollack band- everybody who thought of organizing a hot band thought of Miff Mole. "He could raise the tension of any band with a four-bar break, he could swing into the pattern of a trumpet solo with a middle eight bars, he could take thirty-two by himself, and double that, and keep the line of interest clear and free. What is more he was old reliable himself in studio work: he could play straight when he had to and when you wanted something else it was there.
"He played jazz when jazz was pretty crude; he played on the beat and on the chord and he played with a certain easy bounding zest. He was so far ahead of Brunies and Pecora when he started that there is no telling what a Friars' Inn background would have done for him. He is still so much more interesting in any stretch than all but Jimmy Harrison and Teagarden that I would not guarantee what might now be said of him if he had died ten years ago in rather horrible circumstances. But he is forty-one now, boys, and forty-one is no age for cutting the brash capers of youth. He has settled down to a peaceful and secure middle age in the studios. He might have been greater if he had been pushed around more by more of the right people at the right time and place; but he was one of the first jazz names I knew; he was a lasting influence on an instrument I admire most for its grand depth and brilliance; and I can still put a Miff Mole's Molers on the machine and feel a genuine living interest-which is not to be confused with the scholastic excitement of archaeology. Regardles of influences, I don't imagine Mole ever had what Teagarden has got inside him. For that matter neither has any trombonist in the world, for my money. But before you follow the crowd in letting him go as merely an expert in plumbing, go listen to ten or twenty good records out of nearly a thousand-perhaps just a couple he did with his own band, 'You're the Cream in My Coffee' or 'Moanin' Low'". |
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